Oh Lord! How much I wish
I hadn’t said anything
On this wordy Taittiriya mesh*
That entraps our thoughts
And clips their wings!
It all began
With an innocent query
On the lofty Upanishad
See, where it has taken
With heated debates
Well-armed players on stage
The asker having gone
Leaving not a trace
There was this man
Who asked ‘What is the Truth? ’
Placed amidst the manifest
Rootlessly perplexed
The means of knowledge he held
Could only tell
What is what
And how things apparently worked
Working day and night
Sparing not a minute
Pouring over the microscope
Straining on the telescope
Reached he nowhere
And wondered aloud
What could possibly be
The end of this unending game
His means held him good
Many a law and rule he made
Theories and theorems split his hair
Made him gasp for air
Yet, every night he retired
The unanswered poser remained
Lord, what all this I see could be?
The wise told him:
“Eh ye, behold!
This is all One
And that is the Truth
You are caught
In a whirlpool
Of the manifest
Your pitiful domain
Of toil and sweat
Labour, love and lust! ”
“What you need is a boat
That can cut across
The whirl’s cruel centrifugal hold
And take you ashore
To yonder glittering Land
Where the Sun of Truth shines
In His timeless magnificence”
“Where is the boat, Oh, Sages? ”
Asked the lost
“I see only the diverse
Split in so many ways
Well numbered, tagged and named
In an infinite endless surge
Which I can’t hope to bound”
“Read and listen” said the wise
“Search with your inner eyes”
Threw they tomes at him
A sea of words sublime
“Hearken, ye! The blind!
Here is the scripture for you
Means for the End
Domain eternal, the peaceful Land”
Days without number he poured
Over the million sacred words
Into the quest he put
Soul, heart and endless thirst
At last, when he raised his head
The smiling sages heard him ask:
“Oh, wise men, I haven’t seen
Any glittering land or domain
I had before a set of rules
Well defined for the work I do
You have added more to it
And made my quest chaotic”
“If there is a domain other than mine
Does it mean that we have twain?
Words of wisdom, tomes you rained
Aren’t they very much in this mine
This very manifest you want me leave? ”
“Tell me, masters, how they are
Means for yet another domain
Who in his sense would ask for one
When he and the scripture are in this one
Face to face, in tight embrace? ”
The sages left him overawed
Scratching their beards guffawed:
“Who could imagine there could be
Impervious souls so much over-flawed!
Leave him in his hell and let us
Make for snow-clad peaks of peace! ”
The Ganges swirls of the manifest
Roared around in frenetic haste
Lost in a brood, the man realized
Inseparable in her caressing grip
Were he and the scripture, her own babes
The whirls danced unabated
Till at last a surging love
From nowhere whispered:
In his pining ears: “Son dear,
Can you ever be
Other than me, the manifest? ”
He was the dance, he was the swirl,
He was the world’s torrential flow
That needed not know land or shore
Suns or domains afar any more
He was the scripture free of worry
Light of the manifest with all means buried!
* Taittiriya Upanishad – an ancient Indian philosophical text that probes into the substantive of the manifest universe
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