Trembling Earth
Last night, 3.05am exactly, a sharp jolt, the great tectonic plates far beneath my pillow adjusting themselves, the earth trembling; here on the Pacific Rim of Fire these mini-quakes are common.
Unable to sleep, a swirl of memories, scribbling a poem...
EARTHQUAKE
At first it was a laugh
the vase, trembling
then tiptoeing across the mantelpiece
and you caught the tumbling flowers
just in time
and that tiny hairline fracture
in the plaster, roof to floor –
I dreamed of magma, pouring through
the cracks, a white-hot underworld and fire.
We pored over maps, yes the fault-line
somewhere right beneath,
imagining the giant plates grinding
shockwaves tumbling houses,
fleeing cattle, death
waiting for the hills to
undulate like waves
the jutting prows of continents collide
and unseen carapace of earth
cliffs five miles high and right below
moving, moving, an inch or two
to change or waste our lives.
All night long we listened. The radio talked about the Big One, a pulse
metronomed inside my fingers, counting down.
The cicadas had fallen silent and the moon
flared in your witless, reassuring smile.
I tasted fear, planned my exit
from the falling shattered walls,
waited for the dawn.
– Jogyata.
My God-Hunger-Cry - by Sri Chinmoy
In October of 2005, Sri Chinmoy began a series of prayer-poems entitled My God-Hunger-Cry. We are delighted to feature them here and hope they bring you joy and inspiration.
My God-Hunger-Cry - by Sri Chinmoy
In October of 2005, Sri Chinmoy began a series of prayer-poems entitled My God-Hunger-Cry. We are delighted to feature them here and hope they bring you joy and inspiration.
My God-Hunger-Cry - by Sri Chinmoy
In October of 2005, Sri Chinmoy began a series of prayer-poems entitled My God-Hunger-Cry. We are delighted to feature them here and hope they bring you joy and inspiration.
My Parents
Two stories about my parents...
My Mother
There is a story of the Buddha that, when he first attained enlightenment, even the animals and birds of the forest gathered around him, drawn by his radiance and light. Later, the story goes, as he advanced further in his realisation and wandered in the world to serve others, the birds and animals did not notice him anymore – he had gone beyond that initial realisation and now no self was left to be noticed.
As a seeker this simple story inspired me and reminded me to look for saintliness and spirituality in humility and egolessness rather than in the more overt and obvious manifestations of stature by which we measure others.
My memory of my parents, particularly my mother, is coloured by this perception of things – I consider myself fortunate in having charitable, humble, kind-hearted and loving parents who, even now that both have left this world I remember with much admiration and a reciprocating love. Like her life, my mother's departure from this world was gracious and simple and touched by a certain humility, humour and charm.
I remember her last valedictory wave out of the window as I drove away from our last time together, her face at the window by her bedside, hand aloft, goodbye goodbye. At her funeral Subarata and I played Sri Chinmoy singing Phire Chalo and we read passages from his writings on the nature of life and death – and that the secret of life is that there is no death. I remember that there was a certain feeling in my heart, as though I was participating in or glimpsing some event or experience in the inner world to do with the departing soul.
A month later in New York, I was meditating on the benches while Sri Chinmoy played tennis, and then quite suddenly the same feeling came and I knew my mother was there. At that moment Sri Chinmoy stopped playing tennis, walked back to his gazebo and sat down – then called me over. He told me that my mother's soul had visited him on quite a number of occasions – "In fact," Sri Chinmoy said, "your mother's soul was here just now." I said, "I know Guru, I believe you, just now I really felt she was here." And so Sri Chinmoy confirmed outwardly what I had felt inwardly.
Sri Chinmoy won my mother's heart years earlier on his first visit to New Zealand, in a flute store in Auckland. I introduced her and said, "Guru this is my mother Anne." Sri Chinmoy stood beside me and put his hand on my shoulder and smiled at her with that exquisite divine smile that only he has and said, "I am so proud of your son." That was how in that simple moment my Guru stole my mother's heart.
A Handsome Man
In his last hours at the end of his life, my father lay in a hospital bed, and a very beautiful and powerfully meditative photograph of Sri Chinmoy was on an adjoining table. It was a warm afternoon, kids were playing in a park outside. My father's life was ending, theirs were just beginning – their cries and laughter could be heard in the still room. Then a nurse came in and, mistaking Sri Chinmoy's photo for that of my father, commented, "My, but your father was a handsome man when he was younger!" She found Sri Chinmoy in his meditative aspect to be very handsome.
– Jogyata.
My God-Hunger-Cry - by Sri Chinmoy
In October of 2005, Sri Chinmoy began a series of prayer-poems entitled My God-Hunger-Cry. We are delighted to feature them here and hope they bring you joy and inspiration.
Heart Surgery
Prior to Shardul's fourth open-heart surgery in Auckland, we were sitting in his hospital room waiting for the pre-surgery procedures to begin.
First up was a legal waiver form to be signed, and when the surgeon asked if we clearly understood the nature of the operation we pretended we thought it was a kidney operation! Shardul said, "You're going to open up the abdominal area and remove my left kidney and inspect the other kidney for damage as well, right?"
The surgeon went pale before our eyes and gaped at us in astonishment. Eventually we started to laugh and she realised we were joking, clucking at us in mock disapproval.
Shardul looked ridiculously like a plucked chicken in a bathrobe and every time I looked at him I started laughing. He had been shaven for the operation and wore a white surgical gown and a frilly plastic floral cap over his head, vaguely resembling a female impersonator who had been run over by a car.
Once on a pre-surgical anaesthetic he started to slur his words as well when he spoke and we started giggling like a couple of schoolboys at the ridiculous things he was saying and the comedy of his appearance. Then they wheeled him off and I thought, 'My God, we may never see him again.' I realised then what good friends we were though I knew as well he would be OK because of his connection with Sri Chinmoy.
Later I went back to the hospital to check up on him after surgery – he looked ashen and terrible as he slowly fought his way back from the huge trauma of a four hour long operation. Then I understood what a miracle and what a resurrection it really was.
During the post-op stage we sprinkled copies of Sri Chinmoy's The Wings of Joy among the medical staff and nurses, and even ran into former Prime Minister David Lange, also in the cardiac unit for some running repairs to his heart. He had endeared himself to us years earlier when, during a chance encounter in 1995, he perfectly recalled the song Sri Chinmoycomposed and performed for him during their meeting in 1987, and sang it to us word perfectly.
Sitting in the hospital room by the window one afternoon I wrote Shardul a poem and put it by his bed as he slept. Somehow it disappeared, probably thrown out by the cleaners, but I recall it close enough to recapture.
POST-OP
Here, calm nurses reign
and sagacious doctors, majestic in white
confer and scurry about.
Green lines track and blip across the screens
that measure breath, groans, heartbeat,
evidence of this, your latest resurrection.
Outside, a pastoral scene
meadows bursting upwards
jubilant with spring, seed-heavy,
fragrant with a million
scarlet flowers, haven of finches
and twittering, earth-bound things.
Your own sap blooms
through scars and crimson bandages
and leaking rivulets, missed by errant nurses.
A clock ticks softly
reminding us what’s left
and other certainties of time
that all must pass this way and be bereft.
Beyond the window other lives
unfold in play
and idle cattle stand
then nomad clouds, a caravanserai
in convoy voyage aimlessly across indifferent sky.
The white sheet immaculate
hides your grief and wounds.
A pulse flutters briefly in your neck
a trapped insect trying to get out.
You lie, waiting
inert upon the bed,
pale Lazarus, companion-friend,
returning from the dead.
– Jogyata.
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