When I Die - Poem by Rumi

When I Die

When I die
when my coffin
is being taken out
you must never think
i am missing this world

don't shed any tears
don't lament or
feel sorry
i'm not falling
into a monster's abyss

when you see
my corpse is being carried
don't cry for my leaving
i'm not leaving
i'm arriving at eternal love

when you leave me
in the grave
don't say goodbye
remember a grave is
only a curtain
for the paradise behind

you'll only see me
descending into a grave
now watch me rise
how can there be an end
when the sun sets or
the moon goes down

it looks like the end
it seems like a sunset
but in reality it is a dawn
when the grave locks you up
that is when your soul is freed

have you ever seen
a seed fallen to earth
not rise with a new life
why should you doubt the rise
of a seed named human

have you ever seen
a bucket lowered into a well
coming back empty
why lament for a soul
when it can come back
like Joseph from the well

when for the last time
you close your mouth
your words and soul
will belong to the world of
no place no time

Life gives a chance

It happened in a flash of a moment - literally. Barely five feet to go to the exit, the fireball enveloped me. The heat seared through my skin and thick black smoke made it impossible to breath. Five or ten seconds more, I would have become tandoor...roasted alive. Then it occurred to one of my companions to tear open the door and I tumbled out, followed by a huge fireball, movie style, close on my heels.

Rest of the events are pretty imaginable. whisked away to first aid post and transported 200 km to the nearest hospital, twenty agonizing days to substantial recovery, the support and goodwill of my staff, friends and colleagues to my wife and the tender care by hospital staff.... I suppose a mere thank you to all of them would be never enough. I presume Santosh Gupta, Choudhary, Satya, Banu Pratap, Chandrasekhar Y Pawar, Durgaprasad, Brijesh Kumar, Devika, Brinda, Anju Kumari, VK Sharma, SV Syed, Surya Bhattacharya, Ambika, Farah Patil, and my dear Mona have become now part of my living memory. May God bless them all and grant them His liberal grace in all their life's undertakings.

Throughout those twenty days, somethings else kept playing out in my mind like a gramophone record - those few moments when I stood inside the envelope of fire. Strangely, I did not feel an iota of fear. Fully aware that the fireball has me in its grip, I was conscious of just three things: one, I may last a few more moments; two, I should not change the direction in which I was going (towards the exit) for I would get disoriented soon; three, not to look around since my eyes will burn out. Keeping both my fore arms to cover my face, I just proceeded ahead, in time to tumble out of the entrance. In fact my hands got burnt in the process of opening the cover on the entrance when one of assistants also helped to pull me out.

I kept asking myself as to how come I did not panic; how the mind remained absolutely clear and unfazed. While a score of explanations like upbringing, training, attitude, physical stamina, etc, kept popping up, the simplest of the explanations holds the fort - life gives a chance. It always and in every absurdly hopeless situation too, it gives a chance. Like Paulo Coelho says, the symbols are ever present. It is upto us to take it and move forward or ignore and be done with.

Osho in every breath says that it is being aware which is essential. Be aware. Awareness is life and not being aware is death. Life calls for an awareness of our being that is beyond mere physical senses. It is transcendental in nature. Every time there is a close call, believe that life is actually giving us a chance. Take it. 

I am my own puzzle..unsolved

Friends are the touchstone of our life. They reflect the real you and many times the reality that they reflect back puzzles you. This is what I felt when a friend of mine asked me a simple question - what do I think my objectives in life were?

Having scored half past a century, I was smug in my comfort zone that I have reached where I want to and the remaining life is just to be lived off the brownies that I have already earned. That is when this poser from a friend came. Sitting back, I reflected on the so called brownies in my kitty. The more deep down I went, the more I realized the transient nature of our objectives in life. The more you garner, the more appears necessary. The playing field never has a definable boundary. That is when I begin to feel that the actual playing field is not outside in the physical world that surrounds me. It is inside. The more the heart craves, the larger the field becomes.

So do I become a Buddha? Give up 'desires'. Stop moving and the field ends there. It is nice to imagine that the mind (and the heart) could be frozen. Like Osho says "be still". Being still is not a product of the control that we have on our mind. It is rather the awareness that we have no desire to control. To be in control is an acknowledgement of desire. It is also an acknowledgement of fear - the fear of having to face the unknown which by controlling we want to avoid encountering.

All our life we try to control things around us. In reality, it is the desire to feel secure in the environment that we feel we keep under our control. Fallacy though it may be, for the forces of nature and those around us exercise larger influence over our life than what we think we control, we still believe that we are in charge.

If that be so, then what objectives do I have or should I have? To control or consciously let go? MDQ - million dollar question. There is an interesting line in the song by Olivia Newton-John:

If you love me, let me know.

If you don't, let me go.

I can take another meaning

of a day without you in it....

Though the song may be on a romantic note, the deeper meaning is worthy of reflection. Let go of control for in essence we own nothing.

Coming back to my friend's question...well, the debate is open.