Only the whole remains

There are times when I feel sad that I have become as bad as my opponents. Life has become a travesty for me too. I never mean what I say now; I never smile other than in derision, I never think other than to find ways to neutralize my foes. I am not really living now. I only exist. There is a definite vacuum growing inside of me. And vacuum is not productive. It brings forth only nothingness. How right Kapila is!
Nothing only brings forth nothing!

I used to have another life it seems, that of sweet contemplation and peace. But that too have been sadly banished beyond recoverable distances by the charade that I am living. It is as if it has never existed at all. Oh I am not complaining, I chose to come back, I spurned a life of unlimited freedom for one which is chained to the desires of the flesh. But no, I do not think this life is any the less for its volatility. It might be a delusion, but we chose to be deluded. It was a conscious decision on our parts. And this life is complete in its own sense.

“Purnamada purnamidam
Purnath purnamudachyathe
Purnasya purnamaadaaya
Purnamevaavasishyathe”

(This is whole, and that too is likewise,
The whole begets the whole,
If the whole is taken out of the whole,
Only the whole remains)

“Purnam” means whole, complete, absolute, all, entire etc. For simplicity’s sake, I have decided to use ‘whole’ even at the risk of it being parodied into something else by removing W from it! I know, I know, I have this thing about simplicity, some sort of fixation; the learned have torn me into bits because of it. But I can’t resist it, may be it is because I am too great a soul to be caught by complexity (ha, ha-ha).

Oh, forget my translation. You can guess at the meaning I hope? You can even make fun of it, it is allowed, it might even make you remember it long afterwards, but never underestimate its great luminance. It might conquer you yet.
For those of you, who prefer a more learned version of it, look below. But you might not be able to make fun of it!

In short it tells you that this life you have, is not any different from that you yearn after, mighty words, and revolutionary words. This might be what Kafka had in mind when he wanted poetry to be like an Ice axe, shattering the frozen realms within the human mind!

It was not to forsake everything delightful in life that I came back into its fold. Yet the delusion is too powerful. Maha KaIi, that great mistress of time is very subtle. She rules the world and has everything her way. I have become so bewitched by her that I do not feel any of the niceties of life now. See, I can’t even feel anything at a sunset any more. (Sunset, oh my! He is into sunset now! Okay, okay, let me finish at least.)

Anyway I still remember those wonderful evenings that I and friends had at the village. Our village is surrounded by small hills. The sea is only Ten miles away. On a clear day we can see the glitter of the sea like a silver lining on the horizon if we are on the top of the highest of hills. We have witnessed unbelievable sun sets there. Not that I was particular of the sunsets alone. It was the evenings that I was delighted in. I had wanted to sing the praise of the dusk like this too:

“You are the life, oh dusk,
and you truly are death too.”

There is something very sad in the demise of a day as I mentioned some where before. There is also something very grand in it too.

You have never experienced an evening at our village, have you? But we often do not see them too. Even those who live among the wonders of nature sometimes fail to notice them. They are there before you, not caring for your thoughts on them, not minding you. At certain moments you catch on, you feel,

this, oh this, I have known this somewhere, but where, where could it have been……

It is as if every pore in your body has opened up to receive the event. No, no the event is not grand, it is only there, not to be noticed, not to make it your own, it is only there……..

The dusk's that we have, they are alarmingly sudden. We have very short days, the transition from the day to night is magical, and it has all the trappings of a highly enacted drama.

We long for something then. It is a sweet yearning, indefinable, beyond words and meanings. It is like love. Have you ever been in love? I have. It is electric, it fills the being with longing, and it is almost like meditation-only just. You are centered on the loved one, there is no blemish in her, she can’t do anything wrong, she is perfection.

Well, it seems sad that I can’t love like that anymore now. How experiences changes one.
........................................................................

The sloka in a scholars words:

Om ! That (Brahman) is infinite, and this (universe) is infinite.
The infinite proceeds from the infinite.
(Then) taking the infinitude of the infinite (universe),
It remains as the infinite (Brahman) alone.