iamDrukpa

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Stormy Breeze



I hear the garbled sounds of memories; they hush me by like a gentle breeze;

The breeze is gone and fierce storms blow my wonted vaults and their assorted jeweleries.

Contradictions of various mathematical possibilities leave me flat and hung.

Notions of freedom leave me trapped and all these I sought to reveal or find during my natural born years.
The hair I play with today thins;
The knuckles I crack wrinkles;
The eyes staring me back hollows in empty delight.

Knowing me today is no more familiar than knowing me yesterday.

These woeful songs would have you beguiled and fooled.
The treachery of our minds are just the tip of the mail-berg;
For the base stays grounded in drama and the ensuing hullabaloo is all a part and parcel of our own karma.

There is nothing more left to seek;
There is nothing more left to heed.

I look at me in the pupils of my eyes!
They glisten back inundated with lingering hurtful memories of causes that have resulted in innumerable bruises.

“What did you want, My Sun?”
“Meaning, I guess”
“What kind of meaning, My Moon?”
“The kind that satisfies curiosity, restlessness, boredom, yearning, desire, vanity and emptiness I guess”
“And where did you suppose you’d find them, My Celestial Star?”
“In books, in knowledge, in history, in travels and in love”
“And did you, My Dear Immortal?”
“I thought I did. In the beginning there was curiosity, then there was longing and finally there was the experience”
“And you found the meaning, My Dear Seeker?”
“No”
“Are you still looking for it, My Fearless Warrior?”
“No”
“And why not? My Wealthy Landlord?”
“Because it’s everywhere”
“And did that insight help, My Liege?”
“No. It did not”
“Why not, My Master?”

Because my questions were wrong;
Because the basis of my wandering itself was conceived in ignorance:
Because my yearning for love was fueled by hatred:
Because my very accumulation of knowledge was founded on brittle sticks of ignorance.

I had not known how to love because I had never abandoned the selfishness I carried with such smugness.

I read the sutras and it gave me pride;
I read the classics and they gave me knowledge;
I traveled far and wide and that gave me mileage;
I made good company with females and that left me inflated;
I lived because I needed to do all of that again;
And that made me sad.

I wasn’t alone, I was lonely.
You see, love I echoed aplenty and recognized none;

Today I reap the fruits of my indolence;
Today I taste the bitterness of my nectar;
Today wisdom peeps and my knowledge shudders;
Today truth beckons and I freeze;
Today I’m learning to live with unease.

"Well. Now You Know, My Son, Now You Know!"

Ps: YourLustForLifeStartsRightNow!

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

A Briefness Called Life...

"Do What You Want To, But Do That With Compassion; Minus Aggression...
Yesterday Was Good, Today So Many Birds Flew; Here Is Tomorrow...
When I Saw Your Face, I Panicked And Got No Rest; I Realize Time Flies..."

I Panicked Because I Saw How Fast You Had Grown!Now I Must See You!

"I'm Sorry Miff, This Summer I Could Not Fly; But Seasons Will Come, And Together We Shall Overcome...
Be Happy Mipham, Everything Around You Lives; And You Should Too!"
Once I Was a Boy! Now I Have Become a Man; But I'm Still You!
I'm Mufasa! Scarface Comes And Takes Me Out; But Simba Rules Again!"

Dear Mipham...I come into the office the other day and open my laptop. I go to my mailbox and find a link from my bestest-female-friend Rinzy who's married to Steve (and we get along well- especially after i saw what a doma-chewer he was!).

Kuentsen is also like you...in the sense that his Mother is Bhutanese and his Father is American, just like me being Bhutanese and your mother being Dutch. It is nothing unusual. Lot of people, especially after the turn of the century (when the 1900s started), began inter-marrying. It was possible because modes of travel had changed; instead of horse-drawn carriages there were railways...trains. The railways were an invention as science was shaping in a very revolutionary way the way people would live. It was science that gave birth to all the technology we now have. It continues on. And science is basically the curiosity of man to make his imaginations come alive...come true...like the Wright Brothers' passion for flying, Newton's observation of nature, Darwin's curiosity of the origins of mankind: Like where did we come from? What are we here for?
There were men through-out history who all felt the thirst, or the lack of it, as to "Why are we here?" and "What is the meaning of life?" Questions like these drove men and women like Gautama Siddhartha, who became the Buddha, the Enlightened One. He was born a prince but he was not happy. This made him question the questions of life. "Why do we feel unhappy? What is sorrow, sadness and death" and many more questions.

He left his palace one quiet night and went to the forests of North-Eastern India. He spent time in jungles, open plains, caves, mountains and practiced with sages, men who had renounced the ordinary world to seek their own answers.

Learning from anybody who could teach him and learning by practice, Siddhartha began to understand who he was. What the world was. Why he felt unhappy. Why we die and most importantly, he found a way to live life minus the strife. He taught wherever he went. Slept wherever darkness fell and ate whatever was offered to him by villagers.

In time he died. But he left behind teachings that are still practiced today. In Bhutan Buddhism is the main religion and a lot of our traditions- customs are influenced by Buddhism, named after the Buddha.

There were others too, like Jesus of Nazareth and more recently men like Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa. Men and women of different races and different backgrounds, nationalities...They all had one thing in common, the insight to see the world around them and connect what looks like different parts or different things.

Einstein discovered or rather founded the "theory of relativity" that everything is connected, scientifically. Gandhi taught "Ahimsa" or non-violence- not to hurt others but standing up for your rights. Mother Theresa gave love and took care of the poorest of the poor. She lived in Calcutta in India her whole life; working and devoting all her time to the poor.

Their curiosities of life took them onto these paths. Mandela is a black South African man. By black people mean to say people who are dark skinned, like the kids you see in your class in Holland. He fought for equal racial justice and equal rights. You see, his country was for a long time occupied by white people; from Europe and elsewhere who had all come there to Africa a long time ago and settled down for generations.

The South African white people did not give equal rights to the blacks. So Mandela fought against that discrimination and was jailed, for 20 years. Yet he never gave up. This was his inner-belief. he did not hate white people, he wanted them to treat his people as equals. He was released from prison and became the first black President of his country.
Now at least whites and blacks have equal rights.

Men of science with vast imaginations invented a lot things good and bad. Things by themselves are neither good nor bad but the way we use them makes them so.

So trains were built, along with ships and aeroplanes and automobiles. Factories were built and long distances became short. People could fly from Amsterdam to New York in less than 10 hours.

So more and more people began emigrating to other countries. Black people from Africa were brought to America as slaves. Indians journeyed to all the corners of the earth along with the Chinese. Finally to the point where in one country you could see people of different racial origins.

But it took time to get them to trust each other and time did heal a lot of racial wounds. Today there is a black American president- his name is Barack Husain Obama. His father was Kenyan and his mother a white American. He went to school in Indonesia and in Hawaii.

More and more people today marry each other from different backgrounds. Personally I like it. I think its the best solution to the racial-divide. You will grow up and will have to explain to people that you are half-Bhutanese and half-Dutch, with sprinklings of German and British roots and some Tibetan too!
But in the end you are a human being first and foremost like any other human being- deserving of mutual respect and equal rights regardless of the color of your skin.
This is your natural physical legacy and you can be a bridge between people who do not understand people of other race and culture.

This makes you, Mipham, an Indigo-Child- makes Kuentsen an Indigo-Child...and it is said and i believe it; that the Indigo-Children will intuitively understand the world much better than our generation and the generations before us did: That somethings in life are simple to practice. That one cannot act superior or treat someone else as an inferior because they are yellow, red, black or white.

That your generation will understand that to kill is wrong; to go to war is wrong; to take what is not yours is wrong. That kindness is better. That tolerance is good. That compassion is priceless. That understanding is an art; That Life is All About Living It Fully- That The More You Love, The Bigger Your Heart and Your Mind Becomes.
That In the End, We all Bleed Red and Cry the Same Tears...That We are ONE with Everything in this Wonderful Place Called Earth and this Beautiful Briefness Called LIFE!