The Bhakti path circulates through
the spoken repetitions of devotion,
imbuing them with life and being nourished
itself in return. That is how it works.
I speak my bhakta heart into the Youniverse
and Multiverse, with verses of concentrated abandon
expressing gratitude toward the sovereignty of Love
sage and seasoned, sensing Harmony in conscious repetition
and feeling surrounded, enveloped in unspeakable Beauty.
Reflecting so, this is Remembrance by repetition.
All sounds of praise are welcome here,
all are active planks in the structure of this Temple
through which a breath passes, sounding and resounding
in far-reaching tones embracing the worlds.
These tones, rich and nuanced all, are in Sanskrit or in Hindi,
Arabic, in Gurmukhi and in Hebrew, in Latin, Aramaic, and English.
The tongues of these faiths were created to praise God,
in Whom we live and move and have our Being,
to celebrate the divine in every manifest body –
not for arrogant supremacism or subjugation
parading and asserting itself as "Religion" . . .
Cherishing this in silence, this is Remembrance on the breath.
When "unbelievers" are scorned, loathed, disabused
by one's pious, dry, colorless, sterile contempt
toward all "others" outside one's own little Club,
then are all of one's so-called "praises" and "pieties"
only poisoned and poisonous, these are their own hell-realm.
That bigotry, racism, misogyny, puerile aggression,
only speaks for itself, the ignorance of any ideology.
To keep free of this and its entrapments, walking amidst yet above
the demonic fray of constant forgetting and manipulating
through fear and anger, through domination and attrition –
to grasp the Bhakti path, to carry it in one's own manifest expression:
Holding the Planet in one's heart, this is Remembrance by Being.
Showing posts with label Arabic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arabic. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Bhakti Certainty
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Monday, October 17, 2011
Editorial pic, 1986 and today, 14 centuries' tradition
The cartoon is from my DLI years, showing a Shi'ite and a Sunni muezzin screaming at each other from the ivory towers of their respective minarets, instead of allahu-akbar (God is most great) to the mass of worshipers: "my god is greater than your god!" underneath reads: "the big problem in the Middle East...." the German headlines in the accompanying two articles (go to the link) reporting the situation in Afghanistan and Iraq respectively, exactly reflect my editorial cartoon. I still plan to get this out to the Arabic-speaking world. Whether it unleashes another Danish-fiasco, remains to be seen...insha'llah.
Photos: 3
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150352222844114.371352.521239113&type=1&l=48b09dfe40
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150352222844114.371352.521239113&type=1&l=48b09dfe40
Monday, September 26, 2011
Woman Rising
A male ultra-orthodox Jew would tell me: that if a woman so much as touches him he has to do ablutions again or he can't perform his prayers, or lay hand on a Torah or a Talmud.
A male orthodox Muslim would likewise tell me: that if he so much as touched a woman he also has to repeat the ablutions before he can orient himself toward Mecca and perform his prayers, or even lay hand on a Qur'an.
I would reply to both: that if I've touched a woman I no longer need ablutions, and if a woman has touched me I can skip the prayers altogether.
The common root for the Arabic "compassionate" and "merciful" is the word WOMB, and it is no accident or coincidence that the cleft in the big cubic Ka'aba holding the sacred black stone for so many centuries, still kissed by throngs of worshippers, strongly resembles a YONI.
The orthodox male is terrified not merely of the power of a woman or of her sexuality - he is terrified of her divinity. Terrified enough to regard her as "weaker," as second order, and as the sexual trap reflecting his own underdeveloped, unevolved ego - so that she remains for him "sexual" in order that he can "master" that in her. (She becomes for him: master-bait.) So he cloisters her or throws a burka over her, beats or brutalizes or humiliates her, owns her or pimps her, or keeps her barefoot and pregnant, or shoots her or pours acid on her, or marries her off to the nearest cousin. Anything but see a partner in her - and why? Because he is "God" - and naturally "God hath no partners"...
The relegating of woman to second or third class citizen in the Name of God will wind up in the dustbin of history, and we will even see women standing in the Catholic pulpits as they once had done among the very earliest Christians - this or the Vatican will crumble once and for all.
The relegating of woman to second or third class citizen in the Name of God will wind up in the dustbin of history, and we will even see women standing in the Catholic pulpits as they once had done among the very earliest Christians - this or the Vatican will crumble once and for all.
The Aquarian Age has arrived.
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