Friday, August 25, 2006

The Flower Garland and the Sword

The flower garland and the sword,
From safety to the brink,
It’s all a case of binaries,
For that is how we think.

The flower garland and the sword,
As old as yang and yin:
One is all about going out,
The other, going in.

Ah, but it’s not such a simple thing
This business of yang and yin,
It’s not as clear as black and white,
Or piety and sin.

Brahma is the God without,
Atma, God within.
Women look for Brahma God,
The Atma is for men.

But that’s because what each one owns
Is the other’s secret need,
The man has always held the sword,
While woman holds the seed.

And so, the woman wants the world
The man, he wants repose.
The woman yearns to wield the sword,
The man to hold the rose.

Now please don’t get all huffy, folks,
I don’t want it on the chin.
Sexual identities in themselves,
Are not of gold, but tin.

The identity of Brahma and Self
Is where the Srutis end;
And the unity of opposites
Is where the genders bend.

The sexes are our greatest clue
To Sri Jugal Kishor,
Where contrasts are at last resolved,
And One makes love not war.


From GD. Again, see the Rabindranath poem.

Sunday, August 6, 2006

Mostly silly stuff from GD

The brain and the heart had a fight
that lasted a day and a night.
The heart said, "It's dawn,"
the brain looked forlorn
and said, "I still can't see any light."

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Our Sri Roopah is soopah doopah.
If you don't like her,
You're a bheng in a koopah.

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This website is a cheat? That's pretty neat!
Who here's the culprit who must take the heat?
So go ahead, sell books out on the street--

That's where shastra tells us we shall meet
a rasik guru at whose lotus feet
bhakta bees taste the raga honey treat.

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kRSNa-bhakti-rasa-bhAvita-matiH
kriyatAM yadi kuto’pi labhyate |
tatra laulyam api mUlyam ekalaM
janma-koTi-sukRtair na labhyate ||

O friend, if you should find it anywhere,
that heart absorbed in Krishna rasa so rare,
be quick to buy, how much the soul’s in need!

In that bazaar is posted just one price;
millions of pious works will not suffice,
the cost is to be paid in coins of greed.

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You should have asked your G.B.C.
before you came and talked to me.
Then you’d have known I've got the curse:
Sanskrit knowledge makes me dangerous.

And then I go and made things worse
by giving answers just in verse.
So now you think, “That’s aparadh.
He thinks he’s better than Prabhupad.”

It’s silly just to write in rhyme.
Sorry, promise I won’t next time.
But you be good, do what you’re told,
and stay away to save your soul.

That’s good advice: just stay away
from asat-sang like me, and pray
to Prabhupad, you’ll be O.K.

But I think it may just be too late,
the horse is gone, why lock the gate?
The fish has swum off with the bait.

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O Great Fish!
My sakhi baited the hook of her heart
with the delicacy of love just to catch you,
casting it into the ambrosial waters.

Not only did you swallow up
both bait and hook,
but you broke the string of her reason--
Alas, what can the poor girl do now?

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Call this the flute’s fault, or call it his name,
Call it his form, or my own past fate;
Call it God if you will—still this flame
burns not with ecstasy, but with pain.

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The Moguls come, the Moguls go.
The British come, the British go.
We take the best and leave the rest.
We still eat curry, our women wear sari,
We live real close and arrange to marry.
So East’s part East and now part West,
That’s globalizing at its best.

Based on a quote by Jerry Rao. (CEO of MphasiS) quoted in The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman.

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