Herbal Soup for Body, Mind and Soul: A Spectrum of Poems to Soothe and Shakeup

By Kiran Kumar

Poetry bursts in my mental horizon like a nuclear explosion, the rainbow, cauliflower clouds destroying cobwebs and dark toxic patches in my being. It was just few years back, though the seeds must be underground for sixty years, expressed in my love of literature, music, and movies (which led me to see, write, and direct a number of movies in these years, especially the last twenty five).
What distinguishes poetry? As a recitation or song, dance, and music, dominated presentation of literature (in fact all knowledge) till just five hundred years back. Even now, it is important, poetry pure or propaganda, in movies, theatre, musicals stage, video, or website.
It is perhaps the rhythm and rhymethe beat and melody and harmonywhich, along with brevity and imagery, make it memorable, communicable, impactful, and entertaining.
My friends call me encyclopedicthe tradition of Plato, Leonardo da Vinci, Bertrand Russell, and others; my critics call me confused!
I accept and benefit from both labels. Ranging from erotica to ontology, physics, biology, and psychology to social concerns, sense to nonsense. I even try to blend them in a cocktail, hoping it is organic, heady, and enduring!
There is not much experimentation with form but with theme and thought, meanings and metaphors, and leaps across mind-sets, cutting across age, subject, and genre.
The flight in space or plunge into oceanic bed of mind and culture has been exciting and liberating, often orgiastic-meditative!
With all humility and pride, I present my work for your relish, provocation, and hopefully, insight and action.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: Aug 2, 2015
• ISBN: 9781482838220

Kiran Kumar

Kumar Kiran (T.D. Kumar) is a person of remarkable range and depth. With masters in physics, in 1960, he went on to become a senior joint secretary (commissioner of income tax) to the government of India. He is an educationist (holding unusual transformational programs I CAN/Excel Motivate, Social Worker/Activist), movie writer, director (several movies of mainstream and art cinema, including a bilingual biopic on Nehru and Sonia, the maker of modern India).

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Copyright © 2014 by Kiran Kumar.

ISBN:      eBook         978-1-4828-3822-0

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Contents

1. Permanence Vs Change

Changing what is permanence,

And seeking to freeze a changing flow into permanence

Universe is filled with changing process and continuity - constancy

But our urge always is to reverse the natural pattern of the fixed and transience.

2. ‘Independent -free Vs dependent- network

A paradoxical trap to be free or net worked,

Independent or dependent

At least interdependent,

Between these opposite urges man is torn and cracked!

3. Why positive instigates the negative

When we are on a commitment or mission, raises the inimical

negative

Why Satan confronts its creator God at every step?

The opposition may be subjective or circumstances opposing the

objective.

4.When right may be wrong

Noise can be part of a song!

If you insist on right with an aggressive intent, it is dogmatic and counter productive

To communicate and enroll in the right, you have empathies with the opponents’ context and objective!

5.Worst is best!

The worst time is the best

For a meditative crest!

A tragedy or trauma may be the best time for meditation

The hard rock of shock and pain may give you a spiritual levitation!

6.Thought and belief are our cage and prison

Why do we get so attached for survival to this prison?

Freedom is so unbearable and insecure!

We need columns and pillars to prop our inner structure in every brittle mood and season.

7.In praise of money and the physical

We either Love or hate too much, money and the physical,

Mostly we pretend or are cynical

The acetic and the epicure are two extreme of the same spectrum,

For the truly spiritual, a balance is very critical.

8.Knowledge may be dangerous, if it can’t cry, laugh and empathies!

If it is too strong to cry

For laugh ‘it is too serious and dry

To self centered to outreach in empathy

Knowledge is disabling and even dangerous in its quality!

9.Intelligence is a multi faced angel

Human intelligence, a giant step in Evolution, Has the multi faceted configuration

Miraculous Intelligence of body, the cerebral intelligence called IQ or intelligence quotient

Further we have the levels of Emotional and spiritual quotient.

10.Real Value is Quality

Trust, love and beauty

Truth, compassion, courage and value based duty

Are all qualities and values; scalars, not directional vectors

They are unconditional in spite of history and only ‘I am responsible, not others’!

11.‘No-mind’, No-idea, ideology and belief

‘No-mind’, No-idea, ideology and belief

Thought is the problem, idea is a prism

Ideology and belief are forts of unreason!

This is Krishna Murthy, Zen, Taoism, Sufi or Vedanta.

A state of no-mind, zero, embracing infinite; no season yet including every season

12:Ode to Error and Entropy!

Both Meta physics and Modern physics affirm; ‘everything came out of ‘Nothing’

All matter, energy and even space- time were born from Shoonyata in conceivable Zeroic ‘Nothing’

Perhaps this ‘Nothing’ is infinite, potential field of consciousness

Slowly manifested billion galaxies, planets life and man’s intelligent self consciousnesses!

13.Suffering is a Racket

A child does not cry after a hurt till he sees his mother!

We all are embedded in hurt, heart break and suffering to get one pay off or other

We may turn an alcoholic, drug addict or even commit suicide

For suffering, sickness, addiction in a racket, pay off is the real brother!

14.New meaning on an empty and meaningless canvas

Life’s canvas is cluttered with million meanings

With significance but they are unconscious, accidental and external things

Awareness and acceptance cleans the canvas and makes them empty and meaningless

Offering us a space to create our own stand and responsible meanings

15.Man is a Co-creator!

Man and god create each other

God is man’s partner

Whatever be the image or reality of god

The powerful and possible interpretation that man is a co-creator!

16.The child is father of the man

Surprisingly he decides what as an adult he can’t or what he can

Wordsworth was right and is supported by modern psychology

A decision made by the childish mind runs his adult life and limits his achievement-span

17.Unconscious, conscious and self-aware

Stone, tree or dead body are not conscious

So, in sleep, coma and fainted condition

In the grip of strong emotion, rage or madness one is robotic and unconscious.

18.Being totally alone is libration

A man told his Zen master, He was feeling very lonely as a novice and starter

‘Close your eyes and sit alone’ he found his family and friends crowding in his mind!

Be alone; drop even your ‘self’, persona and identity of any kind!

19.Dancing your way to the top of the ‘Nirvanik’ Hill

Music, dance even running can be deeply meditative, coupled with thrill

Sufi and ‘Baul’ dance, grate dancer Nijinsky and marathon runners testify this

This is always available to you if other spiritual tracks, you miss!

20.Top down or Bottom’s up?

Both streams blend in knowledge cup!

Analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, reductionist-holistic

Big picture and detail, compliment; exclusive and conflicting alone, each will fail.

21.A single step is a spark that triggers a forest – fire!

An American boy hung a lantern atop a bamboo pole to light up a little, the dark square

Ridiculed in beginning, slowly others started hanging a lantern in front of their house

Soon the municipal officers took notice and lighted up every dark Street and square!

22.Unconditional Love and Giving; Natural or Difficult

Forgiveness begins with ‘F’ for freedom

You free your prisoner and discover,

Its’ ‘you’ who got the freedom!

Unconditional love and forgiveness is the bridge you build

You have to use to cross the abyss to your Freedom!

23.Numbers; Blessing or Tyranny?

A gift or curse of science and culture but their power over us is uncanny

Truth, reality and even Gods are fancy- dressed or chained by numbers!

By 1, 2, 3–- zero, imaginary and infinity

24.All Meetings are to separate!

It has to come down what goes up, With elasticity, it may again come up

Meetings are for separation and connectivity is programmed for dilution or fades out

As co-passengers in a train or hotel residents, to check-in and check- out.

25.Lonely and Un-lonely!

Being forced to be lonely, is a pen and punishment

For man and animal, it is a toxic ferment

The stress even shortens longevity

Social symbiosis is a vital element!

26.Family Wars!

There are more varieties of family wars than out there in the World,

Hot, cold, civil, guerilla, economic and IT wars have for long, plagued the world

But family wars are equally variegated, interesting or vicious

War for TV remote is petty common for viewing your favorite programs you consider so urgent and precious!

27.Worries and anxieties - A sure method of blasting or resolving!

Fill a box with worries and anxieties, written briefly

Go on adding during the week any new problem and check it weekly

Eighty percent might have dissolve, 15% could be curable and only 5% left to be endured

For 15% find out five creative options each and find the best to be tasted immediately.

28.Six levels of Awareness

Six levels with ascending vibrations, steps or complexity

Stone, dead matter or body is inanimate reality

Dead but not so solid or inactive, A swirling electric cloud steeped in probability!

29.Mind- brain cycle; keeping it effective and enduring

We can skip the controversy whether brain, mind is the dominant rider

By treating them as interactive cycle or system; and its creative efficiency can be extended

Recent neurology teams up with spiritualism to make it fusible and easier.

30.Dream, drama and game!

Make the existential frame

The tragic ‘events’ may stab us with tension

Till you surface into awareness that it was just an illusion!

31.Charity may not be sharing or true giving

It is an ego-game for fame or ‘Punya’ acquiring

To reduce the gilt of being rich among the surrounding poor miserable

Even in the receiver does not breed gratitude or dignity but only a sense of begging.

32.Feeling is healing!

What’s important in mind-body healing? Molecules or feelings

Increasingly popping a pill appears to substitute everything

Yet research shows, equally important is proper thought, imagery and even loving!

33.Accepting bondage is a leap beyond, to Freedom

Real freedom is in witnessing attitude and wisdom

Acceptance of bonds and bars is not resignation

While resistance causes persistence acceptance is transformation

34.Stress is not always distress

To be totally stress-free in body and mind

Is being dead with full unwind!

You are to die to go to heaven

Stress and tension is part of universal attractive gravitation.

35.Still Vs. Boredom!

Though they look alike, the two are opposite

Equipoise, equilibrium and balance – stillness is exquisite

Boredom is non acceptance of stillness and is restless

Still is being in the Being, Non-doing and desire-less!

36.Ode to Focus and Congruence

Focus collimation and congruence, Like laser, it is achievement’s essence

All achievers testify to a passionate goal and sustained strategy

You get tremendous power and energy by multi pronged resonance.

37.Breakdown could be turned into breakthrough!

‘If faith gives us a lemon we can make lemonade’

From breakdown a breakthrough can be made!

First step is declaring and accepting the ‘misfortune’

Acknowledge that breakdown happens only when a commitment has been made.

38.Writing no -poem with an inkless pen!

Something like, a No Thought ‘Koan’ of Zen

Unheard Naad, Sound of Silence, of ‘One hand clapping’

Such is my enterprise of no-poem writing!

39.Individuation Vs Collectivisation

Conflict rages in thinkers on Individuation Vs Collectivisation

House, society, sector and city and district, state, nation and human globalization

Separate unitary or federation; the fight goes on!

For division or merger of community, state or nation

40.Flip—Flop!

Besides ‘disturbance’ of fifty thousand thoughts a day

Automatic flow of clouds black, white and grey

We have flip-flops, strong oscillation, up and down, positive and negative

With mind out-of center, in skewed perspective!

41.We are all partially blind

Our personal consciousness is a tunnel vision through infinite field

A tubular perception limited by what our senses yield

There is a tube within tube defined by our interest, emotion and belief