Tuesday, October 29, 2013

A Beauty that Costs Her Life


Did you see an ugly beautiful? Did you see a beautiful ugly? A beautiful face with the ugliest characters. There is something in this; those who are ugly have a beautiful heart and are virtuous, and those who have beauty have substandard characters. Did you notice that? I have seen it in this nothing-to-do place; a very tiny-tipsy kind of place in Yebilaptsa. I have heard people saying so often there is something missing in Khengpas, and this is really true because I have seen it. People usually work less here, and they eat more here, in fact, they drink more. They think only about now and forget completely about the future’s prospects. They are living, and they are dying at the same time. They don’t have life as such. They don’t understand life, they don’t understand love, they don’t understand feelings, they don’t understand silences, they don’t understand stances. They live a jaunty, a perky kind of life.

You cannot have a beautiful woman, a woman who is virtuous, intelligent, and makes an idealized partner in life. If you have, you have an angel.

And most girls and women in this place are a truly disgusting. They don’t have anything – let me be frank-women don’t have anything as such in them. They don’t have women in them. They don’t have the brains to compete. They don’t have the energy to move ford. They don’t have anything inside of them. Because their character is loose. So loose that may ramify them. They don’t have integrity. NOTHING, I would like to shout at them, especially to that red girl. They only have faces – physicalities. That too is truly fabricated beauty. They paint faces like objects, and when they do, they objectify themselves. And this is what women of Khengpas are, they have NOTHING, but they act they have EVERYTHING.

In my life, I didn’t believe any ears. I am a good listener, but a very bad keeper. So, I have never thought that I have my own. I didn’t own anything as such. Only did I realize that I own someone when I got married. I have my precious wife and son now. I do believe in them. Anyways, this is another side of the story.

Now let me tell you about that Khengpa girl, who has a beautiful face, where anyone would fall at first sight, but truly, she does have repulsive characters - I should say. This is a small place. But there are many fishy things going on almost on a daily basis. There would be a boy asking the cell number of a girl in a bar shop. There would be cat and rat chases. There would be a boy showing off all the loftiness of his life. This is his valiance. Now, what is her valiance?  She doesn’t deserve this page or even a word if I were to be describing her characters. She stinks on my page. But if I were to describe her beauty, the pages would flower and smell. What is this beauty? John Keats says, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, —that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” But there is nothing true in her beauty. She has worn a red V-sweater. She has a plumply- smiley –attractive - mesmerizing face. But this red girl acts like a bitch; a hungry bitch. She drinks pegs and pegs of Special Quarial, and throws ruses at her new boyfriend. Gross. She holds onto somebody's shoulder, and she literally embraces all. What a pity? She cries like a wounded bitch without any reason. She follows the boys and goes in search of her new boyfriend. She dares to shout the name of her boyfriend in the night. She dares to run plag-plag-plag like the highwayman in the night.

One night, she fought with her boyfriend. It was just outside my living room. They quarreled for some time and they threw some punches. I pressed my face towards a window glass, and all that I saw was a redshirt girl lying on the ground, throwing her feet and arms angrily towards the sky as she was shouting FUCK YOU. And I felt she had fucked her life herself. She is mannerless, characterless, and good for nothing. She can only live by selling her beauty; a beauty that costs so much pain to be borne by herself. A beauty that blemishes her life.

Friday, October 25, 2013

It’s the Blood Not Poem


We are human and we do make mistakes, but sometimes we nimble on tiny one and do not bother about the big things that encompass us. This smallest of faults takes life with quarrels, divorces, and suicides. The poem talks about suffering while he and his wife misconstrue. The misunderstanding is created because of not knowing ‘Who they are?’ The sharing and trust also matter to have no broken heart. The poem is the reflection of what I feel, and what I have seen over the fences.

 
My tears roll on this page
As I am made to
A sentiment overflows unceasingly;
So painful to take
My life’s thwarted
Lacerated.

I am living to die
I can’t change
Only you can
The dark lines will live;
This faded excitement,
Dimmed view
This dullness
I can’t see
Why can’t I?
What have I done?
Was I very unlike self?

Can’t you cry?
Seeing the falling;
Have I wronged you?
My so many wrongs
Have broken me by your one wrong;
You separated me
This one is brutal.

Now I drink my teardrops;
Drinking it to stop,
But it flows
And on my face its burrow.
It’s fickle, lost and nervous,
Lifeless and oblivious,
Creating enemies with this surge
I blame, this I disparage;
Is my fate destined to be?
Why I am here?
Why I came?
I don’t know.
I am now pointless;
Wandering in a wondering street
Seems flying to the dreary places.

Lack of your love
Droopily I wander
Kicking the block of bricks,
Punching the remains wall
I don’t sense the hurt
I wound my skins red
I sprint to and fro
What place is this?

People pass by
I drift through the swarms;
Nobody bothers to give a glance,
Nobody heeds what’s next to
I am a single in the mass,
I feel, because you singled me out.

My feet took on
And the aches pass on
Days scratch me down
I focus on, but useless
To me, it’s theirs;
This world of charms and jollities
I am away from this magic of living
And in the angle of miseries.

Depressions hover me,
It fogs up with so many reasons for
We shouldn’t have been separated;
What will happen to our kids?
And the trust of our relatives?
To you and me;
To meet, and memories,
Attachment and affection
Every detail will slowly killed

Now those relationships crushed me
I have been so attached,
I call back howling,
Flinging my body on the floor
Love kills me
My skulls break
Why is life cracking like this?
Why is life created like this?
I didn’t craft this situation
Nor anyone’s art.
It’s the movie
And it has reached to climax
To lay myself
Buried
Dying like a cat,
Freeing from everyone’s care and burden,
Since I have been a poor man
I was unmatched to be well-off
And I wasn’t suit to be a husband and a father
And I wasn’t made to love.

Let me lay now,
As distorted man has no heart to give!
Nobody disturb the depraved corpse.
What sin had I committed?
The offense of loving!
The sin of unapprised reciprocal care?
The fault of fathering offspring?
The failing of keeping silent?
Everything happens in life
But not in loving!
I am dead of my sins
These sins make me mad
Atoned me for if I had wronged.
But don’t you know these are our sins?
Don’t you think these are our lives?
I hark on others live;
They say the interferences, the obstacles, the rebukes
Are the parts of lives?
Each one has restricted love
Further by their children
They keep on together
They know each other.

You said and I said, we have;
Sharing, understanding, saying we can grow again
By and by, you must know me
And I must know you
Who am I?
Who are you?
Where do things go wrong?
I knew not you or me
That’s where we got wrong
Sensible, a person must in whatever
Sense is an affair reality
We cannot lead a poetic life
As all people grave down
I have mind now
And I feel I cannot live
It’s hard to live without you
The distance I keep now
Is the millions of years of distance?
The gap between us
The gap between our children
Is the distance of shade?
The gap is a piece of shade.

As you wish
As you wanted me to separate
These distance and gap
The spaces and mountains
Between us is unbearable
When you had told me dithering words
When your father told me to get a divorce
I did what you desired
I asked what I needed
But you fell to provide me
For the love of you
I did everything.
I am a nag, I nag
But now, here I cry
I cry
The songs I hear make me tears
The room I live makes me submerged
I am crushing
In-between two walls
I am bleeding
My blood are all tears
Our children are also crying
You may be crying
Our children might be longing for sweets
What made you cry?
Here I am having sleepless nights
Turning round and round
Glimpsing about the incidents
The incidents that we had created
To go all underground
It came vividly on the walls
You may say, “I am unlike others,”
We are different
But we are bounded by one
Unbreakable love.

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

My favorite Buddhist Parables


Many teachings of Buddhism is taught and told in short and delightful parables. They are usually designed to develop the mind and to free it from distortions and so to connect with our spirit.

Many of them are really inspiring and enlightening. It is helpful to the mind to think about them and feel the deeper meaning. Even if it is not possible to grasp them fully, the beauty and simplicity of the message usually get through to us one way or the other.

Some parables are a selection of the ones I found most inspiring and really worth pondering about. Some may be instantly understood, some others need to be thought through and recognized in oneself. We must always keep in mind two crucial principles: the Buddha Mind and serious practice. Without practice, and without the determination to achieve Buddha-hood for the benefit of all sentient beings (Bodhi Mind), parables merely feed the intellect and may become, in the words of D.T. Suzuki, "mere bubbles." 



1.       The Moving Flag

Two Buddhists monks were arguing about a flag flapping in the wind.
"It's the wind that is really moving," stated the first one.
"No, it is the flag that is moving," contended the second.
A third interrupted them. "Neither the flag nor the wind is moving," he said, "It is MIND that is moving."


2.       Goddess of Wealth / Goddess of Poverty

Once a beautiful and well-dressed woman visited a house. The master of the house asked her who she was and she replied that she was the goddess of wealth. The master of the house was delighted and so greeted her with open arms. Soon after another woman appeared who was ugly looking and poorly dressed. The master asked who she was and the woman replied that she was the goddess of poverty. The master was frightened and tried to drive her out of the house, but the woman refused to depart, saying, 'The goddess of wealth is my sister. There is an agreement between us that we are never to live apart; if you chase me out, she is to go with me.' Sure enough, as soon as the ugly woman went out, the other woman disappeared.
Birth goes with death. Fortune goes with misfortune. Bad things follow good things. Men should realize this. Foolish people dread misfortune and strive after good fortune, but those who seek Enlightenment must transcend both of them. (from The Teaching of the Buddha)


3.       A True Buddha

Three monks were drinking tea.
The Buddhist master asked the first monk, “What do you drink with your tea?”
The first monk replied, “I drink suffering, loneliness and make peace and happiness.”
The master nodded and exclaimed, “Oh, you are great, an enlightened one. You go now.”
The same question was asked to the second monk.
And the second monk replied, “I drink Buddha’s teaching, compassion and the Buddha himself with the tea.”
The master now fully satisfied with his explanation said, “You are a truly Buddha, an enlightened one. You too go.”
Then the master asked the third monk, “What do you drink with your tea?”
The third monk replied, “I picked out the fly from the tea cup and drink only tea.”
The master smiled and said, “You are the right person to sit in my place.”
And the master gave his sit to the third monk.


4.       The Buddha

There were two monks.
Younger is sitting in zazen.
Elder inquires, “Why are you sitting in zazen?”
Younger replies, “By sitting in zazen, I hope eventually to become a Buddha.”
Elder picks up a brick and begins rubbing it on a rock.
Younger laughs, “And what are you doing?”
Elder replies, “I am polishing this brick in hopes that eventually it will become a mirror.”
(The advanced story ends here, but for the rest of us it continues.)
Younger asks, “How can polishing a brick make a mirror?”
Elder retorts, “How can sitting in zazen make a Buddha!”
(And, true to the ancient formula, the younger monk instantly became a mirror.)