All That Was And Is: Poems inspired by the Upanishads

By Bibhu Padhi

'You are the mover and the movement.You move, even in your stillness you move. And you are the moved who is far away,the unmoved spark of intimacyfar inside you, far away from us,and yet it is you alone whom we find nearest to ourselves;you are where the heart is,the bodies claim to be.'All That Was And Is, Bibhu Padhi's mystical collection of poems, is based on the ancient Indian sacred texts, the Upanishads. Each poem is a non-cerebral response on a single Upanishadic mantra. They are quiet like the mantras themselves, trying to unravel and, in turn, define the Supreme and its relationship with the world and the individual or the jiva. Through these lyrical meditations, everything is absorbed into a dreamlike consciousness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins India
• Release date: Feb 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9789353025861

Bibhu Padhi

Bibhu Padhi has published eleven books of poetry. They have been included in numerous anthologies, including Language for a New Century (Norton), 60 Indian Poets (Penguin) and The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry (HarperCollins). He lives with his family in Bhubaneswar.

Book preview

1

You must know that whatever moves in this

ever-moving world is pervaded by the Lord.

Hence, learn to enjoy your renunciation;

lust not after anybody’s possession.

Isa Upanishad, Verse 1

I wonder if you have

ever tried to know

the things you have enjoyed,

that are enjoying themselves now;

I do not know

if you’ve tried to know

what you have been, you are.

Today, it appears as though

all that your senses

are hungry to receive

from whatever is outside yourself,

are, for the first time,

waking up to another meaning

of sight, smell, sound,

taste and touch.

Would you know how

something more than

what they are

seeps through all

that your senses feel,

unknown even to yourself?

Would you know how

every little thing enjoys

the Lord’s supreme liberty—

the rice and the wheat you eat,

the vegetables, the pulses and the fruits,

the wine you drink,

the bitterness of medicine

you cannot tolerate,

the sweetness of honey

that your child loves

in his clean, child-like way?

Each of these is quietened by

your master’s love, drafted by

his own nimble fingers.

You should know

that this is yours just as

they are every one else’s.

What more is there to look at,

look for? What more is there to own?

Your Lord seems to be

everywhere, and this I know,

and having known that,

I must ask you not to look

further than here and now.

2

It is in doing things thus, without attachment,

that one lives for a hundred years without

clinging to his actions at all.

Isa Upanishad, Verse 2

You are the performer,

the director of your own play,

the manager of your own stage,

the prompter that helps you to say

what you might forget to deliver.

You are the worker in the field,

the owner of the field on which

you work, the farmer who

so wonderfully displays

the labour of love in hay-like stacks

in an enchanting arrangement.

You are the dreamer

who dreams of a hundred lives,

each extended over a whole century.

You are the worker

who works his own dreams into

whatever he does, however small

it may be. You are the one who

sows the seed and forgets it until

the seed’s dream is fulfilled

in a blaze of buds, flowers, fruits, and tree.

You are the dreamer who knows

what dreaming indeed is.

I know what you are and believe

in whatever you touch, feel and see.

I believe in your dreams;

I know that how, without you,

the dream would have

remained unfulfilled within me;

but I also know how you have

quietly realized the difference

between placing a seed so it might

flourish into a life full of dreams

as well as the need to hold back a dream

until it