Your old room

Another work pops up in my "fb memories" for the benefit of my non-Bikol speaking friends, i tried to put it in English. I wrote this for my grandmother whom i used to visit while she was in the last stages of her diabetes.

This was after the funeral. The room she used to be was now a "happy" room. It was as if the room itself was freed from carrying the burden of having her there, suffering, her blindness, her senility, her hundreds of aches and pains brought by her disease and old age.

Suffering in this world is natural, as my teacher aptly said. We are not supposed to be here in the first place. We must not try to endeavor for a "happy" condition in this place where the natural state is under these four: birth, diseases, old age and death. yes, there is a little happiness here, the first few minutes of holding your new iphone; your first kiss perhaps; or that moment while you were being crowned the most beautiful girl in the world; or the first time you saw your daughter; so on. But like gulps of air before drowning these joys are. they easily lose their flavor. it's like in the desert, you tried drinking the mirage, and finding out it's just sand. this is not our home.

ofcourse we all want to be happy. happiness is our natural condition. but how? we've tried everything: tried drugs, rock n roll, sex; done the money thing, done the title thing, done the power thing, done the health thing, nothing satisfies, nothing fills me up. im still empty.

saintly teachers give us a practical solution: if we want to be happy, we must know what will make us happy. to know what will make us happy, we must know what we are. who we are. who am i? material things cannot satisfy me, i must be made of something else. God through His devotees reveal the truth about our identity: you are the eternal spirit soul, part and parcel of God. You are not matter, you are not your body or your mind. no amount of material things will ever satisfy you.

so we come and pass away from this world believing we are our bodies and minds. we think this is our home so we are in great difficulty leaving this world, and all our attachments. therefore to die peacefully we must be situated in knowledge. i am eternal, i will pass from here to another place. there is another world.

English translation: Your old room.

Your old room, is now the TV room. For those who don’t know what this was before, will never know what it was before. Your rocking chair now blends in with the new sofa, flowery, it goes well with the curtains. Not a single thing now is out of place. Where were these colors when you were still here?Where was this sun? When time was your visitor, no one dared to join in the conversation composed mainly of one long gasp. You were wrung by waiting until you became air. The falling of the curtain.

But darkness has long been in your eyes. Even before the cataract. Perhaps this is the fate of all who looks upon the world. But who am I with my speculations? What do I know about the dark, I who have no heart? My path is haunted by a certainty that will come someday.Someday, someday. Perhaps this is just how the flow pushes every presence to become absent. A dream that quickens as it nears waking. You were just here, now you are not. Someday—someday—even me whose steps can still keep up with the steady movement of the moment, will also stop, someday, until caught up by the arriving, and become past.

Bikol:
Su dati mong kwarto, TV room na palan. Su dai nakaaram kun ano ini dati, dai maaaraman kun ano ini dati. Su liya-liya mo, nagblend in na sa ba’gong sopa, burakan, terno sa kurtina. Dai na lamang ki nawalat na wara sa lugar.Harain an mga kulor na ini kaitong yaon ka digdi? Hain ining sildang? Kan bisita mo an oras, warang muyang umintra sa hururon na kumposo ki sarong halawigon na hangos. Piniga ka kan paghalat, sagkod sa puro kan paros. An pagwaltak kan kurtina.

Ugaring, haloy na bagang uya sa mata mo an diklom. Ba’go pa an katarata. Gabos man garong matang nagmaan sa kina’ban, garo iyo na an padumanan. Ugaring, sisay man ako buda an sakong mga ispekulasyon? Ano man an aram ko sa diklom, akong daing daghan? Pigduduno an dalan kan siertong ngapit? Ngapit, ngapit. Arog sana talaga kaini garo an sulog na nagbubusol sa lambang yaon na pumasiring sa dai. Sarong pangaturugan na nagkakaskas pag harani na an pagmuklat. Yaon ka pa sana digdi; ngonian wara ka na. Ngapit—ngapit—dawa akong nakakalapag pa an kada lakad sa danay na andar kan ngonian na ti’makan, matunong man, ngapit, sagkod, maabtan kan paabot, buda maging nakaagi.

10-16-12. Karangahan.

Here Lies Peace, a poem

i thought i’d give my mind a little exercise, so i flexed my brain muscles by translating this poem i came across in the “fb memories.” i recalled writing this poem after burying the body of my father-- or was it my granduncle? Anyway, it was a significant time for me and a great turning point, as it was when i picked up my chanting beads again and continued on the path of spiritual-consciousness.
my literary education forbids me to explain a poem bluntly, but what the heck, i’ll spare a few words at least. if you’re to read the poem, i am in a cemetery, pondering upon tombstones. i have this habit of reading stuff on tombstones and try to extract a story out of each. how could have this person died? she’s too young...on and on. but more interesting for me are those tombstones that are so washed out that the names are wiped off clean by time and weather. and a question of existence assails me. no name, no person? what happens now? it was a very educational experience for me so i was having fun a bit, but this very same situation would’ve been very different if it weren’t for my background in the science of identity.

when i was growing up i always thought that i was the body. so death for me was an extremely claustrophobic thought: i will be cramped up in that cement box until the angels blow their trumpets for resurrection? so i used to look at tombstones with horror, in fact i seldom look at them at all. but with the mercy of my spiritual guide, the most fearless man i know, i was freed from this fear of death and, yes, tombstones. he simply relayed to me the absolute truth that passed down from one saintly teacher to another, a line which can be traced back to God Himself: i am a spiritual spark of God, i am not my body. i am the spirit-soul within that body. the body will die, but i will go on existing. with the strength of knowledge i faced this fear every single moment.

what we fear about death is not so much the pain of death, but the fear of losing the body we identify ourselves with. with the body comes its extensions such as the name, titles, relatives, race, gender, properties, politics etc. no one, no matter how powerful, can resist splitting away from his body though. demons like Hiranyakasipu who performed superhuman austerities just to prolong his stay in his body are in the end forced out, evicted by God Himself from their temporary apartment. and we are persistent. suppose we lose the body eventually, we ask our relatives to preserve that body like what they are doing to President Marcos. incidentally that’s what we also do to pickles, at least one can eat the pickles... but that glass box will have to go someday and that beloved body will succumb to the earth. if we are not as big as Marcos, we settle with just prolonging our name on a marble. here lies so and so...he was loved... and the cemetery is full of these names on stones, full of dates of births and deaths. hold on, hold on. please don’t forget. but time is death’s master, and he will erase all these names from the face of the earth eventually as evidenced by the clear, flawless tomb stones. everything will be forgotten.

the last line of the poem alludes to John Keats’ epitaph that goes: here lies one whose name was writ in water. such a romantic way to fade away. when you have a debt and it is written in water, it means don’t bother to remember it. these names once written in stone but eventually erased by time are now written in water. we spend our lives having our names placed on a piece of paper to be hung on a wall or on a bronze plate at some door. we take care of our name as good as we take care the body connected to that name but in the end it will end up in some stone in the cemetery someday. oh, but not my name, it’s in history books! okay let’s burn all the books. oh, but mine is etched on a colossal statue. smash that statue down. which reminds me of a poem by Keats’ friend Percy Shelley, “Ozymandias”:
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
__________

Nothing material will endure. Nothing perishable will remain.
The body and everything connected with it are all made of matter. Even the name: material sound vibration. therefore we, being spiritual being, cannot take shelter of our material name, or our president’s name, our country’s name, our favorite superhero’s name, even our parent’s name... they will all be written in water, in the river of time.

but there is a name that will never fade away. there is a name that will endure. a name that is not contaminated by any tinge of matter. the Holy Names of the Absolute Truth, the One Supreme Person, are countless: Allah, Jehova, Govinda, Eloi, Krishna, and many more...These Names are etched not only in stone or scribed in scriptures, but most importantly They are kept in the pure hearts of the devotees who spread These Names time after time. you can take shelter of These Names, for they are incorruptible by time and death, in fact the Holy Name is time Himself in this material realm. simply by chanting These Names, we will be freed from the ignorance exemplified by our hankering to glorify our own lusterless names in stone. thank you very much for bearing the long intro. so here’s the poem:

English translation:
Here lies peace. In stone chests
confined are the breathless hopeful to breathe
again. In the end neither bone nor ash will remain of the ashen
but names, when they were still objects, like us
chiseled on marble, written by paint or molded bronze.
Such anxiety of being forgotten, when oblivion is guaranteed end!
Look at the perfect faded stones. Only these are what's real here.
Realizing that everything akin to the dirt will be food for serenity.
All that is uttered that will remind of warm days and places
will be appropriately called with sound acceptable to silence
All will be given a name written in water.

10-14-16
Karangahan

Bikol:
Yaon digdi pigsasararay an katoninungan. Sa mga gapong baul
Dai makahangos an mga nakalaom na naglalaom na makahangos
Gilayon. Ngapit bako tu’lang o abo an matatadang gira kan mga napara
Kundi mga apod, kan sinda mga bagay pa, arog satuya,
Nakatigib sa marmol, kinurit kan pintura o pinormang bronse.
Kaniguan an hadit na dai marumduman dawa kalingawan an siguradong sagkodan.
Hilinga an perpeksiyon kan mga pulinas na gapo. Ini man sana an totoo digdi.
Patotoo na gabos digding may labot sa kinaban pagkaon kan katoninungan.
Gabos na sina’wod na maparumdom kan mga maimbong na aldaw buda lugar
Tatawan ki nagkakanigong apod na aakuon kan kawa’ran ki tanog,
Gabos bubunyagan ki mga ngaran na nakasurat sa tubig.

10-14-2011. Karangahan.

Ako Pukawa

Ako nangaturugan

Sa sarong pangaturugan

Ki tulong kakanon.

 

Nahiling ko su saro

Kulor puti, su saro kulor dugo

Su saro diklom.

 

Lambang tuludan

Tulo an kagdara

Su saro karahayan

Su saro kamawotan

Su saro kawaran.

 

Pinarong ko, su saro

Burak. Su saro sulo,

Su saro udo.

 

Kan tinanan ko, su saro

Mahamis, su saro maharang

Su saro maranggis.

 

Ako nakakataram

Na ako nagkakan

sa sarong pangaturugan

Mantang nasa sarong pangaturugan

Ngonian na ako na gimata,

Ta mantang itoon duman

Ako warang pagkaaram

Kun nata daing kabasugan

Dawa paburubalyo sa tulong plato.

 

Pero ako ngonian mata

Sa sarong pangaturugan sana.

Aram kong ako turog pa

Ta digdi sa sakong minuklatan

Ako nag-inom sa salog

Sa burabod, sa bubon

Pero dai nahahali

An sakuyang paha.

 

3.24.2015

 

"An solusyon sa satuyang paha, iyo kun masasabutan ta kun SIISAY an napapaha. Kaipuhan tang magimata."

ON FEMINISM

"I saw men exploiting women, now the women want their turn. Not seeing the person in their clothes..." Siddha. 

In college, I attended this class on Feminism in literature. The teacher, a Dr of Feminism, asked me what I think about gender. The class was mid-afternoon and it was nearing summer, I was half-awake when I fumbled for an answer. I managed to blurt out: I don't believe in gender. If there was a fail button in that class, it would be labelled with those words. She was fuming, she was close to pulling out her hair, she paced back and forth the platform like she was contemplating the end to sadness. I wanted to die in my chair. And perhaps my seatmate too, we being the only guys in what was becoming an amazona jungle kingdom scenario.    

The dr pointed out the stark differences in our bodies. You are a man. I am a WOMAN. I go to the girls toilet. You go to the boys toilet. So on and so forth. 

I never forgave myself for saying what I said. Gender is truth, i carved that statement into my psyche. In the next four years of my stay in college I trained myself to think like a feminist. I don't want to fall into another embarrassing situation like that. 

Then I encountered the statement Aham Brahmasmi. I am spirit. I am not my body. I am not my mind. The material body is just a dress. The spiritual body is the actual body. The spirit doesn't have race, nationality, titles and gender. These things are the consequence of our temporary dress: the material body. I had another turn around. 

People struggle for equality. In fact, March is also national women's month. I remembered my college professor Dr. Feminist who breathes (and breathes on people too) I AM WOMAN and the statement I gave her about gender. 

If we have the vision to see that all living entities are spirit souls. Then there is no question of inequality. We are all constitutionally the same in essence: spirit. But if we remain in the material platform then differences abound. You are a negro, you are a muslim, that is a cow, here is my dog, this is my brother, etc. 

The material body is real. And in order to have a civilization men and women should have different toilets. But the belief that i am my body. I am a man, you are a woman is based on ignorance of the absolute truth, aham brahmasmi, I am spirit.

REAL FEMINISM. 

Although it is most apparent in the temporary female form, Femininity exists in the absolute plane. It is gentleness that is not necessarily weakness. It is shyness that is graceful. It is softness that is fair. It is meekness that is tolerant. In essence, as fragmental spiritual parts of the Supreme Spirit, we are all females, regardless of what bodily dress we have now, we are dominated by a force bigger than ourselves. To accept our position as the dominated and not the dominator is accepting things as they are. Celebrate femininity with soft heartedness, mercy, compassion, kindness, selfless love.

A Rose

Everything came from nothing, randomness or chaos, has been the long standing conclusion of science regarding the origin of anything, including life in our universe. As we know it--as they know it. Everything we see in this world came from nothing. Everything just happened to happen. I've thought about it for the longest time, and when I'm in the sterile box of my room full of black and white words on squares it seems to make sense in my mind. But then I see this rose with its layers of intricate petals arranged in a pattern so organized you'd think a machine so complex beneath the ground had manufactured it, that I always return to my heart that says there's got to be someone so supremely intelligent, cool and creative who designed and made that. Come to think of it: everything or most things in this world that supposedly came from chaos or disharmony have harmony, symmetry, patterns: the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, wet and dry season, a woman's menstrual cycle, planting and harvesting, the veins on leaves, the tides, our very aging, birth and death, over and over, again and again, patterns everywhere. If chaos or randomness, had created this rose, then perhaps I can imitate randomness by tearing down this rose, plucking out all its petals, leaves, thorns, etc., put these parts in a box and shake it until all the parts, petals, stem, thorns, scent, fall in the right place and form themselves into a rose. The question then would be how long should I be shaking that box. How many years, centuries or millennia of shaking that box full of petals, leaves, etc., would it take anyone to create one decent rose that the humble earth grows effortlessly? The probability is so slim that I can confidently say it's impossible. I mean, taking randomness aside, who among us or even our brightest scientists who dared explain the universe, with everything our latest technology can offer create a rose just like that? 

On watching "Interstellar" (2014)

Jans here's what i think about your highly recommended sci fi movie.  

It's amazing how human intelligence endeavors to explain the entirety of our universe. How immense? Astronauts had to sleep for months just to reach Saturn. They had to use a wormhole just to get out of our own galaxy. It's mind blowingly big. Then there's time. Simply awesome to think about it. 

But the best explanation I heard about our universe was from my teacher on spiritual science, who said that Everything is contained in the sacred sound 'Krish-na' (or God's Name). All the spiritual and material worlds, universes, variegatedness, time, space or non-space, everything and everything that is outside of that everything, are all contained in the sound 'Krishna'.

Tonight, I look at the stars, and beyond. I recall the images i saw from the film. The little spacecraft floating in space. Somewhere is Saturn (or whatever it is called by entities there), another galaxy or a blackhole. Somewhere there are planets with life. It's almost scary, the vastness is overwhelming. It tells you point blank: you're smaller than no one. Your concerns--sex, fame, money, power--are shamefully insignificant. And it's true. 

I love the part in the movie where it was said that love can puncture the rigid laws of time and space. True love is transcendental. i may just be a speck in one dark corner of the entirety of everything but i hold on to the truth that i am loved with a love that is absolutely constant irregardless of the effects of time, space or variations in gravity.

I am happy that the film resolved it this way: at the end of science or the mind, love will be our light. Love is that connection from any point in this universe to the pivot, core or source: Krish-na. 

Cc: Jamila

I am not my mind

What's the use of having a "great mind" if all i can think of is sex, what's my next meal's gonna be, how do i best others, how do i keep remaining in this temporary condition-and worst of all-i am my mind?

i believe that what is (still)essential is not the fact that we have great minds, but that we can be able to control our minds, great or dull, from dragging us towards the darkest region of ignorance: ignorance about what life is, what our real purpose is, and above all who we really are. 

the mind is a vehicle, you, the spirit self, are the driver. your mind may run from 0 to 230 km/h in a split second and mine in an hour but what should matter is whether you and me are able to drive it and not the other way around. 

it is said also that the mind can be our best friend or our worst enemy: when you are forced by your mind to do things you know are bad for you then clearly it is an enemy, when your mind helps you in remembering things that can help you achieve the real benefits in life, happiness, peace, self realization, then it is your friend. 

Haribol! _/\_