Guru Purnima

 

 

A thousand lives, I drove myself to madness
trying to remember your Name.
Then you whispered mine and I remembered:
we are the same breath.
Now we meet in the full moon's shimmering reflection.
What seems to unfurl over the waters like a path,
is really the thrill of your brilliant stillness in my body.
There has never been a pilgrim, a go-er setting out or coming home.
Yet my steps go on, rising, falling, softly on an ocean of silence.

It dissolves into a diamond, that neither is nor is not.
The ever-virgin Name, unveiling creation's music.
I bathe naked in the throb of the vacuum.
Does the body of the Goddess not resemble the curves
of a vina, quantum fluctuations of the void.
Trembling with her un-plucked music, neurons entangle

my heart with all creatures, the dogwood, the trumpet vine
and rose, the throat of the lark. Yet am I not the weaver?

Whoever understands this is unborn.


On a sultry evening in July, the night of his departure,
I watched the Guru dance in a mantle of mist

at the edge of the meadow, wavering between

form and formlessness, drunk with bitter-sweet

ambiguity, teaching me not to cling.  

Drums, gazes, heat lightning in the breast.
I wept, remembering Vrindavan. For when the Guru
melts away, he reappears inside as an un-created glow.
Whoever understands this is newborn.


Without his whisper, this body is a lump of dust.
Without his glance, these chants and bijas, asanas
and pranayams, are bags of ashes lifted by tired bones.
No mind was ever liberated by its work.
Why slave away at methods and techniques?
Your breath is a panther in the vineyard of desire.
Use the golden yeast from those dark purple grapes

to ferment your blood into an even greater wanting.

Whoever understands this, dwells in the forest of amazement


where the serpent of wisdom bewitches the mother of lies.

What lies? The lie that you were born, the crystal-winged lie

in a sunbeam, the swallowtail lie on a blossoming dahlia.
Lie of a wounded rainbow, which is one clear light.

Without our lies, we would only be the empty sky.
Let the w
ilderness becomes a meadow, the meadow a wedding
chuppah, where I thirst for the cup that
is sprinkled
with the pulverized ruby of God's eye. As Christ was in Mary,
I am in the Beloved, and the Beloved in me.

The hollow in a seed, where vines already bend

with clusters, and clusters are already wine.

If you understand this, you are a born lover.

Seekers snuff out knowledge when they fall asleep,
lovers snuff it out when they awaken.
But the silence between stars never slumbers,
the glistening between your thoughts: Tat Tvam Asi.
Don't light the fire, just let it pour out of your darkness.

Be the moon tonight, borrowing splendor from what is unseen.
__________________________________________

Note: This actually happened. I was with Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar on the full moon of the Guru, most sacred time of the year for devotees. We were chanting and drumming on a hot misty night. He would leave the next day. He danced across the meadow, right at the point where the mist enveloped his form. He would appear and disappear. And I broke out in a secret grin of joy, for I understood what he was doing. He was teaching us to give up clinging to his form. What difference does it make whether his form is here or not here. He is here. Space is awake. There is no distance in consciousness.

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