Effortlessly,
life moves:
Sometimes still,
Sometimes striking,
She constantly reveals herself to us.
My Poetry
The Beauty of Life
The beauty of life,
already present,
already here,
effortlessly
alive.
Making an effort
simply reveals
you have not seen
that which already is.
Not mine
Nothing is mine.
I did not create
This world,
This body,
Or this mind,
With its thoughts.
They were all given to me.
Yes – even my thoughts were given to me.
None of it has anything to do with me.
Then I look at the ‘me’:
There is no me.
Only this,
None of it mine,
All of it moving.
When you do not cling
When you do not cling
There is no you.
Actually,
There never was a you.
You are just:*
Water in mirage,
The son of a barren woman,
The snake in a rope,
The moon in a pail of water.
*these are all traditional Indian metaphors used to describe our basic mistake (original sin)
You cannot become free
You cannot attain Freedom
-Freedom is here already.
You cannot become Free
– there is only Freedom.
Only this spontaneous happening
This is too obvious for the mind.
We know nothing but this.
There is no process of knowing though:
Only this
Spontaneous happening.
The root concept
It is the concept of a subject,
That gives rise to the concept of an object.
Or put another way,
The concept of ‘me’,
That gives rise to ‘not me’.
But look at your experience for yourself:
What was thought to be the subject
Is actually also an object.
The experiencing entity that we take ourselves to be,
Is actually something we are aware of,
and not the subject at all.
The person looking at and experiencing life,
Is just a part of life,
Totally inseparable from life.
The body,
thoughts,
emotions,
inner sensations,
intuitions,
visions,
dreams.
– all these are objects.
– all these are sensations.
– none of these are ‘me’.
– none of these are ‘mine’.
Sensations cannot themselves sense.
The perceived cannot perceive.
In fact, looking at our own experience,
Where is the subject at all?
Look!
-There are only sensations.
-There are only objects.
-There is only experience.
-There is never the experience of the subject.
Look!
Experience is a seamless whole,
One seamless happening,
And the so-called experiencer, the ‘me’,
Is simply part of that happening.
So what are we left with?
Just this.
Life simply happening,
All by itself.
Still just me
I remember:
My life being lit up,
Without the sun shining any brighter.
Things appeared clearer,
But the same spectacles perched on my nose.
My body became just a wisp,
But I weighed the same.
Wholeness was there,
But I was still just me.
This cannot be figured out
The mind cannot get this,
Cannot describe this,
Cannot come to it by logic.
It cannot be deduced,
Or inferred.
It cannot be gained,
Or lost.
The good news is that it doesn’t need to be.
It is already here.
It is just
whatever’s here.
Direct ‘perception’
The mind cannot get this,
Just as it cannot deduce the existence of a tree.
The tree is perceived directly,
This is perceived directly.
Whatever is perceived is this.
Perception is just an idea,
That implies the existence of a perceiver,
A perceiver with some physiological apparatus.
There is no experience of perception,
Only an inference,
An inference based on the idea of a perceiver,
For which there is no direct evidence.
So,
There is only this,
Just this.
Perception is just another name
For our experience of life,
ie. this
Life,
Naked,
Is without conceptual overlay.
Unadorned,
It adorns itself,
creating its own beauty.
Life,
Unadorned by concepts,
But including concepts as they rise and fall:
– No thinker can be found.
Forget words, definitions, theories and beliefs:
– They are all useless here;
Just more conceptual overlay:
– It could all be entirely mistaken.
Tom Das 