yesterday, we concluded three weeks of intense study at Śabda Institute. my beloved teacher, Amma (Dr. Kavitha Chinnaiyan), and her beloved teacher, Sumitji (Dr. Sumit Kesarkar), helped decode the esoteric meaning veiled within the magnificent Īśopaniṣad, and, with great expertise, made its heavy and charged verses applicable for us – as both householders and as practitioners. i was most touched by the chant’s invocation & by its teaching of wholeness, which inspired me to write a poem that i was greatly honoured to read at the beginning of our fifth class. 🧡
oṃ | pūrṇamadaḥ pūrṇamidaṃ pūrṇātpūrṇamudacyate |
pūrṇasya pūrṇamādāya pūrṇamevāvaśiṣyate ||
Oṃ is the entirety from which everything we see as parts has emerged. The whole remains whole even when a part is taken from it. The whole was born out of the whole. What appears as a part is the whole, and the leftover is whole. The whole cannot be split even when it appears so.
(translation by Sumitji).
☀️ my poem (written as a ghazal):
pūrṇam | wholeness
you were always whole
the grief on your tongue was whole
when longing cut like a knife
the woe stuck to your eyelids was whole
when anger brimmed in your belly
the burn of your cruelty was whole
when the sun washed your cheeks
the glee warming your fingertips was whole
when your heart cracked open
the light trickling through was whole
my parents named me ‘Gift of God’
what gifts are there when all’s already whole?
☀️ praṇām to our two illustrious teachers & to the vidyā they graciously transmitted to us in these three weeks. 🧡 the wonders of Śabda Institute 😊
amaryllis 