The Lessons of Ananga Sukhada Kunj

The Vraja dust is not so dramatic,
just a thin film that covers everything.

I cleaned the house today.
It looks like a bachelor pad again.
The house is empty.
Not just of you, but of me also.
Any vestiges of me, other than Giridhari, gone.

We sat here, arguing, for five months,
each refusing to make this a home,
locked in a daredevil game of chicken,
negotiations never going anywhere.

This house, Ananga Sukhada Kunj,
on the auction block, the joy that was its name
fleeting, a shadow, a chimera, a dream
that no one had the energy to fulfill.

Ananga Sukhada Kunj, my guru sakhi's home
where she has told me how I cannot live in
the bower of the Bodiless's One's joy.

Times have changed, I have fallen behind;
no one listens to me any more. No one cares.
We can't be householders, we can't be vairagis,
We can't be lovers, we can't be free.
We can't be free of each other.

I crossed a law of nature as fatal as falling from a cliff.
A womanizer, who needs the energy that comes from
the admiration of the opposite sex.
Who finds fulfillment in the successful seduction of the spirit.

A gigolo. A man who looks to women as his meal ticket.
A child. Immature, with unresolved mother issues.
Must be that my mother ignored me as a child
for me to be so needy now. So needy.

And all I think about is sex.
I am under the illusion that sex is the source of love.
Long ago, I was fooled into thinking celibacy is a solution;
I repressed it for years, and now
I have bounced in the opposite direction,
as if making up for lost time,
in even more illusion than before.

The Kumaras wisely opted out of adolescence,
I chose adolescence as a way of being!
Lazy! I could have finished all my projects by now,
I could have written a book, ten books.
Ten years... ten years all for nought.

And do I think myself an expert in Rupa Goswami?
What do I know of Rupa Goswami,
or anything to do with the spiritual path,
just more and more smoke to put in people's eyes
as I grub for puja and pratishtha.

And moreover, a patriarch, a macho,
who thinks that his word is the law
and that a woman should follow it.
And who becomes abusive when she doesn't.

Vrindavan, how can anyone live here?
It is turning into just another crappy Indian city,
filled with crappy, grubby, sleazy Indians
pawing white women in the buses and trains.

Radha and Krishna, who believes any more?
Who believes in love any more?
You no longer believe in mine, nor I in yours.
So much for my Sahajiya nonsense.

For days, I sat like Winston Smith,
sipping gin and tonic in a café
that all good citizens studiously avoid,
staring into space, my shocked mind a vacuum,
slowly disintegrating into the dust,
all ambition crushed.

But today,
Ah, Vrindavan is so empty today,
the heat is oppressive,
why do I feel so free?

Cupid, New or Old?

Like a wil-o'-the-wisp, love came to me
and I tried to hold it. But it turned to mist;
the sylph turned into uncertainty,
like any creature of the mind, a myst.

But such it was that a shadow
hidden somewhere behind my mind,
took on form within the lingering
swirl of fragrant grayness:

It was the God called Love, the mystical Cupid,
who mocks his infinite mirror images
each reflecting but fragments of his splendor,
yet dazzling and dazing the wisest sages.

Now my mind has become an ascetic,
he has turned around to look behind him.
He has given up religion and irreligion.
He has taken the senses with him, his disciples.
He has pierced his ear and placed there a wooden peg,
and now, in selfish and forlorn neglect of the world
he wanders, lost in the desert of separation,
looking for that mirage, his grail, the Divine Cupid,

He has forgotten
the paltry suffering of the Kali Yuga,
for no one suffers like he does now.
How can he give succor?


He cannot hear the cries of communities,
of women and children calling for constancy and continuity?
What howling disorder has he left behind?
Is that what his renunciation does? Is that what love has done?
Is there no compassion for those whose futile search
for love in this world is the source of all misery?

This cannot be! Don't call this Cupid God!
It is against the law of God
to shake the foundations of the world,
to shatter man's dedication to duty,
so he forgets the world and its suffering creatures
so in need of stable steady loving guides!

Was Majnun not fair warning to us all?
What suffering jivas could he save, that madman?
If one love makes us mad,
what will the Whole of Love do?

Is the metaphor of wine not a warning to us fools,
to anticipate the inevitable
delirium tremens to come?

Did you really think that the gopis' suffering
was something other than real suffering,
and their story just a fairy tale?

It is normal

Women just use sex to get what they want from men, he said.

If it were not the truth, I would not know what to say.

But I say that no woman in whom faith in Radha lives

could ever give in to sex without love,

without herself having knowledge of love,

without the empowerment of self-knowledge,

and only when Love herself is the leader of the dance,

and where all that is wanted is love, Pure Love.

What is prema?

Someone asked, What is prema?

Big expert, I thought, what the hell do I know?

What is prema? I once thought I knew,

or at least thought I knew the general direction I was headed

some silicon love story, decorated with spiritual decorations,

a Brahman realization with sexual overtones,

the best of both worlds. It seemed like a slam dunk.

I am the big expert, I have been going from the trite to the triter.

All you need is love. It seems so easy, just love for God's sake.

But we hold a secret, some of us, me the most,

that we really think "love" means "being loved."

It gets lost in the translation. And once lost,

trapped in the forest of male ego,

it searches behind the ever burgeoning weeds of rationality,

and prepares for an epiphany of some sort

to come whirling down from the creepers

like flowers. And the answer to "what is love?"

will be found written in one, like a fortune cookie.

And the answer will be as trite as the answer in a fortune cookie,

"Love and you will be loved."

What is love?

Can I cry my answer in wordless tears?

Can I silently awaken you to the pain in my heart

that cries with unfulfilled fulfillment?

What is love? I seek in the kama bija,

searching in the svadhishthana

I draw the essence of my desire and draw it upward

with my breath and try to pierce the skull

and in my one-pointed mind behold the object

of my worship, sitting on a lotus

sharing sidelong glances and glowing like

ten million suns their love cascading through the universe

touching every atom, every molecule, every creature

in greater or lesser manifestations

and taking this form, for me, for me alone,

and for me to share with someone, with someone

to love by giving this vision, to share this vision

to melt into this vision with the tears of surrender.

And I will cry out in a pure heart

calling out calling out their names

and dancing like a fool as sometimes I laugh--

hahahahahaaaa hahahahahaaaaaaa!

What is love? I will not dance alone!!!

Let me hold this vision before you 

and sing sweetly the holy names.

What is love?

Love cannot live alone.

If love comes to you in your loneliness, you must take it.

You must. Otherwise you are an offender to Love.

No other way to say it. But once Love strikes a man

it seems that her business is to run the damn'd male ego

like a piece of sugar cane through the press

until it runs torrents of juice,

which is really the blood of your false sense of self,

turned sweet through the crushing,

and conjures up the true best of yourself

and will not rest until, through love alone,

she has accomplished her task.

And the gratitude for that love is the impetus to love,

to become a lover, a true lover,

and not one who, bee-like, flits from one flower to another,

but saint-like, plunges into the depths of the Other

with total abandon, doing whatever is necessary,

whatever apparent abasement She demands

to be granted the grace of Her favors

the grace of being One with Her

while being fully one's Self.