Bliss Rain Quotes

Ô, Wanderess, Wanderess When did you feel your most euphoric kiss? Was I the source of your greatest bliss?

Whoever said ignorance is bliss must have died a horrible death with a really surprised look on his face.

I want you to tell me about every person you’ve ever been in love with. Tell me why you loved them, then tell me why they loved you. Tell me about a day in your life you didn’t think you’d live through. Tell me what the word home means to you and tell me in a way that I’ll know your mother’s name just by the way you describe your bedroom when you were eight. See, I want to know the first time you felt the weight of hate, and if that day still trembles beneath your bones. Do you prefer to play in puddles of rain or bounce in the bellies of snow? And if you were to build a snowman, would you rip two branches from a tree to build your snowman arms or would leave your snowman armless for the sake of being harmless to the tree? And if you would, would you notice how that tree weeps for you because your snowman has no arms to hug you every time you kiss him on the cheek? Do you kiss your friends on the cheek? Do you sleep beside them when they’re sad even if it makes your lover mad? Do you think that anger is a sincere emotion or just the timid motion of a fragile heart trying to beat away its pain? See, I wanna know what you think of your first name, and if you often lie awake at night and imagine your mother’s joy when she spoke it for the very first time. I want you to tell me all the ways you’ve been unkind. Tell me all the ways you’ve been cruel. Tell me, knowing I often picture Gandhi at ten years old beating up little boys at school. If you were walking by a chemical plant where smokestacks were filling the sky with dark black clouds would you holler “Poison! Poison! Poison!” really loud or would you whisper “That cloud looks like a fish, and that cloud looks like a fairy!” Do you believe that Mary was really a virgin? Do you believe that Moses really parted the sea? And if you don’t believe in miracles, tell me — how would you explain the miracle of my life to me? See, I wanna know if you believe in any god or if you believe in many gods or better yet what gods believe in you. And for all the times that you’ve knelt before the temple of yourself, have the prayers you asked come true? And if they didn’t, did you feel denied? And if you felt denied, denied by who? I wanna know what you see when you look in the mirror on a day you’re feeling good. I wanna know what you see when you look in the mirror on a day you’re feeling bad. I wanna know the first person who taught you your beauty could ever be reflected on a lousy piece of glass. If you ever reach enlightenment will you remember how to laugh? Have you ever been a song? Would you think less of me if I told you I’ve lived my entire life a little off-key? And I’m not nearly as smart as my poetry I just plagiarize the thoughts of the people around me who have learned the wisdom of silence. Do you believe that concrete perpetuates violence? And if you do — I want you to tell me of a meadow where my skateboard will soar. See, I wanna know more than what you do for a living. I wanna know how much of your life you spend just giving, and if you love yourself enough to also receive sometimes. I wanna know if you bleed sometimes from other people’s wounds, and if you dream sometimes that this life is just a balloon — that if you wanted to, you could pop, but you never would ‘cause you’d never want it to stop. If a tree fell in the forest and you were the only one there to hear — if its fall to the ground didn’t make a sound, would you panic in fear that you didn’t exist, or would you bask in the bliss of your nothingness? And lastly, let me ask you this: If you and I went for a walk and the entire walk, we didn’t talk — do you think eventually, we’d… kiss? No, wait. That’s asking too much — after all, this is only our first date.

...I became aware of the world's tenderness, the profound beneficence of all that surrounded me, the blissful bond between me and all of creation, and I realized that the joy I sought in you was not only secreted within you, but breathed around me everywhere, in the speeding street sounds, in the hem of a comically lifted skirt, in the metallic yet tender drone of the wind, in the autumn clouds bloated with rain. I realized that the world does not represent a struggle at all, or a predaceous sequence of chance events, but the shimmering bliss, beneficent trepidation, a gift bestowed upon us and unappreciated.

But maybe time was invented so that misery might have an end. So that it shouldn't last forever? There may be something in this. And bliss, just the opposite, is eternal? There is no time in bliss. All the clocks were thrown out of heaven.

A thousand recollected lives were passing through her, a thousand stories - of love and work, of parents and children, of duty and joy and grief. Beds slept in and meals eaten, and the bliss and pain of the body, and a view of summer leaves from a window on a morning it had rained; the nights of loneliness and the nights of love, the soul in it's body keeping always longing to be known.

She sat there alone after getting drenched enough by rain. In the silence of the midnight, Each drop that fell made a sound that was loud enough to wake all the memories inside her one after the other, before she could know what was happening she was lost somewhere in the past where the pictures in mind pushed her into a state of chaotic happiness and a blissful pain.

Happy? Poor, ordinary, everyday word. But what could one say, how could one describe it? It was as though she could hardly stay inside herself, it was as though she were too small to hold so much of joy, it was as though she were washed through with light. And how astonishing to feel this sheer bliss, for here she was, not doing and not going to do a single unselfish thing, not going to do a thing she didn't want to do. ... Now she had taken off all her goodness and left it behind her like a heap in rain-sodden clothes, and she only felt joy.

The Death of Allegory I am wondering what became of all those tall abstractions that used to pose, robed and statuesque, in paintings and parade about on the pages of the Renaissance displaying their capital letters like license plates. Truth cantering on a powerful horse, Chastity, eyes downcast, fluttering with veils. Each one was marble come to life, a thought in a coat, Courtesy bowing with one hand always extended, Villainy sharpening an instrument behind a wall, Reason with her crown and Constancy alert behind a helm. They are all retired now, consigned to a Florida for tropes. Justice is there standing by an open refrigerator. Valor lies in bed listening to the rain. Even Death has nothing to do but mend his cloak and hood, and all their props are locked away in a warehouse, hourglasses, globes, blindfolds and shackles. Even if you called them back, there are no places left for them to go, no Garden of Mirth or Bower of Bliss. The Valley of Forgiveness is lined with condominiums and chain saws are howling in the Forest of Despair. Here on the table near the window is a vase of peonies and next to it black binoculars and a money clip, exactly the kind of thing we now prefer, objects that sit quietly on a line in lower case, themselves and nothing more, a wheelbarrow, an empty mailbox, a razor blade resting in a glass ashtray. As for the others, the great ideas on horseback and the long-haired virtues in embroidered gowns, it looks as though they have traveled down that road you see on the final page of storybooks, the one that winds up a green hillside and disappears into an unseen valley where everyone must be fast asleep.

Some powerful magnificence not human in other words, seemed under me. And it was the same mild pink colour, like the water of a watermelon, that did it. At once I recognised the importance of this, as throughout my life I had known these moments when the dumb begin to speak, when I hear the voices of objects and colours; then the physical universe starts to wrinkle and change and heave and rise and smooth, so it seems even the dogs have to lean against a tree, shivering.

Enlightenment, it is a moment of complete clarity, of pure bliss. At that instant everything will be revealed to you.

Cover mine eyes, O my Love! Mine eyes that are weary of bliss As of light that is poignant and strong O silence my lips with a kiss, My lips that are weary of song! Shelter my soul, O my love! My soul is bent low with the pain And the burden of love, like the grace Of a flower that is smitten with rain: O shelter my soul from thy face!

God is all right—why should we mind standing in the dark for a minute outside his window? Of course we miss the inness, but there is a bliss of its own in waiting. What if the rain be falling, and the wind blowing; what if we stand alone, or, more painful still, have some dear one beside us, sharing our outness; what even if the window be not shining, because of the curtains of good inscrutable drawn across it; let us think to ourselves, or say to our friend, ‘God is; Jesus is not dead; nothing can be going wrong, however it may look so to hearts unfinished in childness.’ Let us say to the Lord, ‘Jesus, art thou loving the Father in there? Then we out here will do his will, patiently waiting till he open the door. We shall not mind the wind or the rain much. Perhaps thou art saying to the Father, ‘Thy little ones need some wind and rain: their buds are hard; the flowers do not come out. I cannot get them made blessed without a little more winter-weather.’ Then perhaps the Father will say, ‘Comfort them, my son Jesus, with the memory of thy patience when thou wast missing me. Comfort them that thou wast sure of me when everything about thee seemed so unlike me, so unlike the place thou hadst left.

Some days I tell myself that my mission is to say something about the art and sometimes the bliss of limitation. And the legibility of landscape. Other days are more dismal. As if I were queueing in the rain outside confessional literature’s nudist colony, mirrors everywhere, blue with cold.

Pam, my new therapist, who’s like some blissed-out, grown-up, yoga-hippie version of Rain, says that the physical body, the idea of the self, is kind of a scar: a brief puckering of time, a fleeting sewing together of energy and heart, which go beyond the physical form, on and on and on, forever.

Hap If but some vengeful god would call to me From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing, Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy, That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!” Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die, Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited; Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I Had willed and meted me the tears I shed. But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain, And why unblooms the best hope ever sown? —Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain, And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . . These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

Angels pawning Halos, Swan-diving through warm drops of rain, Soaking up champagne-shaded rays of bliss.

Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary.

There is no magic weight, no magic size, no magic number on the scale where, as soon as you hit it, confetti rains down and a band starts to play and hidden doors slide open and Daniel Craig walks through them to lift you in his arms (because, thin as you are, he totally can) and carry you into the life of uninterrupted bliss that you just know could be yours, if you only wore a size two dress.

How could the sidewalk’s impassable leaf-strewn lagoons and the grassy little yards oozing from the flood of the downspouts exude a smell that roused my delight as if I’d been born in a tropical rain forest? Tinged with the bright after-storm light, Summit Avenue was as agleam with life as a pet, my own silky, pulsating pet, washed clean by sheets of falling water and now stretched its full length to bask in the bliss.

We are soaked in rain. In pleasure. In bliss. I am raw and exposed as his fingers explore my skin, moving up my stomach as they brush against my breasts. I tingle with excitement. All at once, he takes them into his hands. I nearly explode.

Time does not heal wounds. It's a body's ritual that does. The instinctual cleansing with rain or other waters, the application of salves. Despite the sting. Even neglected, the body begins to take care. To repair itself. Blood clots, tissues regenerate, flesh scars. Soon, the thin white line is the only evidence of the pain. It is the body, not time. Time does nothing except create distance between the body and that which caused it harm. Recollection of fear can be stronger than the original fear itself. Similarly, bliss is sometimes more vivid when recollected. How else do you explain longing? Longing for what has already passed. That's the real pain. But you insisted, you pried with your fingers to see. You retuned to me after I turned away. You made me recollect for you, collect again and again for you, interrupting the healing with your curiosity. Now that I have given you the words, you may long for them. You may miss me. You may try to find the notes to the song again and again and won't be able to find them. Perhaps, the wounds I made will already have begun to scar. Maybe the body will have begun its ritual of forgetting. I told you not to ask for haunted, not to ask me to recollect. Because recollection is like tearing at closed wounds. Like pealing back the careful tissue put there by the body to make it safe. And because remembered pain is always worse than the original pain, because this time it is expected. This time you already know how much it will hurt.

We could go from bliss and harmony to anger and recriminations as fast and with as little warning as a tropical storm. What made it bearable, what made it good, was that the foul weather would pass with equal suddenness, usually leaving something glorious in its wake.

You have the touch of nature you know, where she touches everything that is dead and they spring back into life again. I realised that the day you touched me for the first time. I felt I was standing somewhere I had never been before and all of a sudden life started pouring over me like a rain and drenching me with it. I had never felt that alive before.

I was the muddled concoction of my father’s contradictions. The same man who warned me that “life is a bowl-a shit” was the channel to my bliss. The infection and the cure. He was, at once, the drought that left me parched and gasping, and the rain that nurtured the single blade of grass, pushing itself up from between the jagged cracks in the sidewalk, and into the sun.

No one, not a soul, intimidating stillness. Uncannily, though, in the midst of all this, a fire is blazing, lit, in fact,with petrol. It's flickering, a ghostly fire, wind. On the orange-coloured plain below I can see sheets of rain, and the annunciation of the end of the world is glowing on the horizon, glimmering there. A train races through the land and penetrates the mountain range. Its wheels are glowing. One car erupts in flames. The train stops, men try to extinguish it, but the car can no longer be extinguished. They decide to move on, to hasten, to race. The train moves, it moves into fathomless space, unwavering. In the pitch-blackness of the universe the wheels are glowing, the lone car is glowing, Unimaginable stellar catastrophes take place, entire worlds collapse into a single point. Light can no longer escape, even the profoundest blackness would seem like light and the silence would seem like thunder. The universe is filled with Nothing, it is the Yawning Black Void. Systems of Milky Ways have condensed into Un-stars. Utter blissfulness is spreading, and out of utter blissfulness now springs the Absurdity. This is the situation.

A thousand recollected lives were passing through her, a thousand thousand stories—of love and work, of parents and children, of duty and joy and grief. Beds slept in and meals eaten, and the bliss and pain of the body, and a view of summer leaves from a window on a morning it had rained; the nights of loneliness and the nights of love, the soul in its body’s keeping always longing to be known. She

A morning-flowered dalliance demured and dulcet-sweet with ebullience and efflorescence admiring, cozy cottages and elixirs of eloquence lie waiting at our feet - We'll dance through fetching pleasantries as we walk ephemeral roads evocative epiphanies ethereal, though we know our hearts are linked with gossamer halcyon our day a harbinger of pretty things infused with whispers longing still and gamboling in sultry ways to feelings, all ineffable screaming with insouciance masking labyrinthine paths where, in our nonchalance, we walk through the lilt of love’s new morning rays. Mellifluous murmurings from a babbling brook that soothes our heated passion-songs and panoplies perplexed with thought of shadows carried off with clouds in stormy summer rains… My dear, and that I can call you 'dear' after ripples turned to crashing waves after pyrrhic wins, emotions drained we find our palace sunned and rayed with quintessential moments lit with wildflower lanterns arrayed on verandahs lush with mutual love, the softest love – our preferred décor of life's lilly-blossom gate in white-fenced serendipity… Twilight sunlit heavens cross our gardens, graced with perseverance, bliss, and thee, and thou, so splendid, delicate as a morning dove of charm and mirth – at least with me; our misty mornings glide through air... So with whippoorwill’d sweet poetry - of moonstones, triumphs, wonder-woven in chandliers of winglet cherubs wrought with time immemorial, crafted with innocence, stowed away and brought to light upon our day in hallelujah tapestries of ocean-windswept galleries in breaths of ballet kisses, light, skipping to the breakfast room cascading chrysalis's love in diaphanous imaginings delightful, fleeting, celestial-viewed as in our eyes which come to rest evocative, exuberant on one another’s moon-stowed dreams idyllic, in quiescent ways, peaceful in their radiance resplendent with a myriad of thought soothing muse, rhapsodic song until the somnolence of night spreads out again its shaded truss of luminescent fantasies waiting to be loved by us… Oh, love! Your sincerest pardons begged! I’ve gone too long, I’ve rambled, dear, and on and on and on and on - as if our hours were endless here… A morning toast, with orange-juiced lips exalting transcendent minds suffused with sunrise symphonies organic-born tranquilities sublimed sonorous assemblages with scintillas of eternity beating at our breasts – their embraces but a blushing, longing glance away… I’ll end my charms this enraptured morn' before cacophony and chafe coarse in crude and rough abrade when cynical distrust is laid by hoarse and leeching parasites, distaste fraught with smug disgust by hairy, smelly maladroit mediocrities born of poisoned wells grotesque with selfish lies - shrill and shrieking, biting, creeping around our love, as if they rose from Edgar Allen’s own immortal rumpled decomposing clothes… Oh me, oh my! I am so sorry! can you forgive me? I gone and kissed you for so long, in my morning imaginings, through these words, through this song - ‘twas supposed to be "a trifle treat," but little treats do sometimes last a little longer; and, oh, but oh, but if I could, I surly would keep you just a little longer tarrying here, tarrying here with me this pleasant morn

Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,/And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan.... /These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown/Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.’ I know you know what that means: you believe in God but I believe in ‘Crass Casualty’—in chance, in luck. That’s what I mean. You see? What good does it do to make whatever decision you’re talking about? What good does courage do—when what happens next is up for grabs?

nature aria . . "Autumn wind chases in From all directions And a thousand chaste leaves Give way. Scatter in me the seeds Of a thousand saplings. Let grow a grassy heaven. On my brow: a sun. This bliss is yours, Living World, and alone it endures. Music at midnight. Fistfuls of rain fall hard, fill My heart with mud. An old wind May still come chasing in. Resurrection fire. And me here Laughing like a cloud in trousers, Entreating the earth to bury me.

For most men, ejaculation involves spewing their energy and semen out through their genitals. Afterward, they feel they have released stress. The superior man’s orgasm more often explodes up his spine and into his brain, from there raining down through his body like an ambrosial bliss of rejuvenation. The technique for converting depletive orgasms into rejuvenative orgasms involves contracting the pelvic floor near the genitals and drawing energy upward along the spine, though the use of breath, feeling, and intention.

If you are not spending all of your waking life in discontent, worry, anxiety, depression, despair, or consumed by other negative states; if you are able to enjoy simple things like listening to the sound of the rain or the wind; if you can see the beauty of clouds moving across the sky or be alone at times without feeling lonely or needing the mental stimulus of entertainment; if you find yourself treating a complete stranger with heartfelt kindness without wanting anything from him or her... it means that a space has opened up, no matter how briefly, in the otherwise incessant stream of thinking that is the human mind. When this happens, there is a sense of well-being, of alive peace, even though it may be subtle. The intensity will vary from a perhaps barely noticeable background sense of contentment to what the ancient sages of India called ananda - the bliss of Being. Because you have been conditioned to pay attention only to form, you are probably not aware of it except indirectly. For example, there is a common element in the ability to see beauty, to appreciate simple things, to enjoy your own company, or to relate to other people with loving kindness. This common element is a sense of contentment, peace, and aliveness that is the invisible background without which these experiences would not be possible. Whenever there is beauty, kindness, the recognition of the goodness of simple things in your life, look for the background to that experience within yourself. But don't look for it as if you were looking for something. You cannot pin it down and say, "Now I have it," or grasp it mentally and define it in some way. It is like the cloudless sky. It has no form. It is space; it is stillness, the sweetness of Being and infinitely more than these words, which are only pointers. When you are able to sense it directly within yourself, it deepens. So when you appreciate something simple - a sound, a sight, a touch - when you see beauty, when you feel loving kindness toward another, sense the inner spaciousness that is the source and background to that experience.

A LITTLE while, a little while, The weary task is put away, And I can sing and I can smile, Alike, while I have holiday. Where wilt thou go, my harassed heart-- What thought, what scene invites thee now What spot, or near or far apart, Has rest for thee, my weary brow? There is a spot, 'mid barren hills, Where winter howls, and driving rain; But, if the dreary tempest chills, There is a light that warms again. The house is old, the trees are bare, Moonless above bends twilight's dome; But what on earth is half so dear-- So longed for--as the hearth of home? The mute bird sitting on the stone, The dank moss dripping from the wall, The thorn-trees gaunt, the walks o'ergrown, I love them--how I love them all! Still, as I mused, the naked room, The alien firelight died away; And from the midst of cheerless gloom, I passed to bright, unclouded day. A little and a lone green lane That opened on a common wide; A distant, dreamy, dim blue chain Of mountains circling every side. A heaven so clear, an earth so calm, So sweet, so soft, so hushed an air; And, deepening still the dream-like charm, Wild moor-sheep feeding everywhere. THAT was the scene, I knew it well; I knew the turfy pathway's sweep, That, winding o'er each billowy swell, Marked out the tracks of wandering sheep. Could I have lingered but an hour, It well had paid a week of toil; But Truth has banished Fancy's power: Restraint and heavy task recoil. Even as I stood with raptured eye, Absorbed in bliss so deep and dear, My hour of rest had fleeted by, And back came labour, bondage, care.

Rapture" Thought of by you all day, I think of you. The birds sing in the shelter of a tree. Above the prayer of rain, unacred blue, not paradise, goes nowhere endlessly. How does it happen that our lives can drift far from our selves, while we stay trapped in time, queuing for death? It seems nothing will shift the pattern of our days, alter the rhyme we make with loss to assonance with bliss. Then love comes, like a sudden flight of birds from earth to heaven after rain. Your kiss, recalled, unstrings, like pearls, this chain of words. Huge skies connect us, joining here to there. Desire and passion on the thinking air.

Villagers all, this frosty tide, Let your doors swing open wide, Though wind may flow and snow betide Yet draw us in by your fire to bide: Joy shall be yours in the morning. Here we stand in the cold and the sleet, Blowing fingers and stamping feet, Come from far away, you to greet— You by the fire and we in the street— Bidding you joy in the morning. For ere one half of the night was gone, Sudden a star has led us on, Raining bliss and benison— Bliss tomorrow and more anon, Joy for every morning. Good man Joseph toiled through the snow— Saw the star o’er the stable low; Mary she might not further go— Welcome thatch and litter below! Joy was hers in the morning. And then they heard the angels tell, “Who were the first to cry Nowell? Animals all as it befell, In the stable where they did dwell! Joy shall be theirs in the morning.” Kenneth Grahame The Wind in the Willows

At low tide, much of the sea changes to land, and then more than seven hundred islands can be counted. People come here to hide, to find something they can’t find on the mainland, to get religion through solitude. From June till September, nearly every day is perfect, with the 10,778-foot volcano of Mount Baker rising from the tumble of the Cascades to the west, blue herons and bald eagles crowding the skies, killer whales breaching offshore. The water is exceptionally clear, the result of a twice-daily shift-change in tide, when it sweeps north toward the Strait of Georgia, then back south toward the Strait of Juan de Fuca. In some places, the rip tides create white water like rapids on a foaming river. Being is bliss. But then the winters come and the tourists all go home and clouds hang on the horizon and unemployment doubles and the island dweller is left with whatever it is that led him to escape the rest of the world.

BELIEVE IN ONE LOVE: Bonding of love between polygamous is nothing but only delusion & seductive-shots called sexuality breeds cynicism, despising, criticism and condemnation; each always looks other through the negative lens and creates separation and hatred. Conversely bonding of love between monogamous is everything full of integrity, purity and heartfelt mingling like diluting of hard clout of soil with pristine rain breeds serenity, bliss and lure like magnetism each always looks other through positive lens and creates union and frequently electrify each other to share and care each other feelings of life for the sole purpose of a shared vision; a road-map of life between two bodies into one soul creating success in life through enacting commitment and trust each on other for a win-win situation is called soul-mate-ship. Therefore, each man and woman should choose a path of monogamous making life enjoyable and praiseworthy at the shake of adultery. I earnestly urge of the mankind to believe in one-love making life fullest.

In the Brhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad7 the first form of the doctrine of transmigration is given. The souls of those who have lived lives of sacrifice, charity and austerity, after certain obscure peregrinations, pass to the World of the Fathers, the paradise of Yama; thence, after a period of bliss, they go to the moon; from the moon they go to empty space, whence they pass to the air, and descend to earth in the rain. There they “become food,… and are offered again in the altar fire which is man, to be born again in the fire of woman”, while the unrighteous are reincarnated as worms, birds or insects. This doctrine, which seems to rest on a primitive belief that conception occurred through the eating by one of the parents of a fruit or vegetable containing the latent soul of the offspring, is put forward as a rare and new one, and was not universally held at the time of the composition of the Upaniṣad. Even in the days of the Buddha, transmigration may not have been believed in by everyone, but it seems to have gained ground very rapidly in the 7th and 6th centuries B.C. Thus the magnificently logical Indian doctrines of saṃsāra, or transmigration, and karma, the result of the deeds of one life affecting the next, had humble beginnings in a soul theory of quite primitive type; but even at this early period they had an ethical content, and had attained some degree of elaboration. In

Aubade" Who lives where summer ends knows the hard cold of autumn is blissfully close, although it feels each season newly un- known. You are constantly newly unknown to me, my night-glowing open-hearted sting-of-salt weather. Rains and winds, sleights-of- hand. Who if not you could weigh me enough down. You’d paint my eyes blacker and warmer than they are and soon they would carry whole calendars of black night in them. You say you’re pulled back, but it is a rare thing inside those shocks of minutes that holds without our even needing to touch it. Maybe you think you trade one clean joy for another. But mine is darker, slanted, nitrous blue at the root, an acrostic of what is most free and far. To be another person than the one you were before means more than I understand. But my gradual hands move in streams over you whether you travel or not, as you drop into sleep or not, and in the book of this most-alone-place I am there only when you feel need, a coat so thin and so like skin you can touch the slopes, the smoother pools, dust-mooded winds over roads, the skeleton instrument of your voice as it richens the maps and paths, summer’s last shades of white on dark soil, as if the moon-moth and house-mouth were close against the lashes of your eyes, puzzles-in- flutter, or wandering off through the warm night air, unlikely ever again to find such light as this. from Boston Review: August 21, 2013

Do you remember…(doesn’t that appear in each of my letters?), do you remember that you spoke of how eagerly you experienced that period when for the first time autumn and winter were to meet you not in the city, but among the trees whose happiness you knew, whose spring and summer rang in your earliest memories and were mingled with everything warm and dear and tender and with the infinitely blissful melancholies of summer evenings and of long, yearning nights of spring. You knew just as much of them as of the dear people in your surroundings, among whom also summer and spring, kindness and happiness were dedicated to you and whose influence held sway above your growing up and maturing, and whose other experiences would touch you only by report and rarely like a shot in the wood of which superstitious folk tell for a long time. But now you were to remain out in the country house that was growing lonely and were to see the beloved trees suffer in the rising wind, and were to see how the dense park is torn apart before the windows and becomes spacious and everywhere, even in very deep places, discloses the sky which, with infinite weariness, lets itself rain and strikes with heavy drops on the aging leaves that are dying in touching humility. And you were to see suffering where until now was only rapture and anticipation, and were to learn to endure dying in the very place where the heart of life had beaten most loudly upon yours. And you were to behave like the grownups who all at once may know everything, yes, who become grown up just because of the fact that even the darkest and saddest things do not have to be hidden from them, that one does not cover up the dead when they enter, nor hide those whose faces are sawed and torn by a sharp pain.” ―from letter to Clara Westhoff Schmargendorf (Sunday, November 18, 1900)

There is an uncommonly harsh beauty to the Tibetan landscape. Its nakedness makes it seem incapable of deception, but under its calm deportment it conceals winds so brutal that yaks are known to die while their jaws are in masticating bliss. On hot summer days the sun licks up the rain within minutes. No puddles are formed; no moisture lingers in the air. It is only the droplets on tiny leaves of the baby turnip plant that betray rain.

Time does not heal wounds. It's a body's ritual that does. The instinctual cleansing with rain or other waters, the application of salves. Despite the sting. Even neglected, the body begins to take care. To repair itself. Blood clots, tissues regenerate, flesh scars. Soon, the thin white line is the only evidence of the pain. It is the body, not time. Time does nothing except create distance between the body and that which caused it harm. Recollection of fear can be stronger than the original fear itself. Similarly, bliss is sometimes more vivid when recollected. How else do you explain longing? Longing for what has already passed. That's the real pain. But you insisted, you pried with your fingers to see. You retuned to me after I turned away. You made me recollect for you, collect again and again for you, inturrupting the healing with your curiosity. Now that I have given you the words, you may long for them. You may miss me. YOu may try to find the notes to the song again and again and won't be able to find them. Perhaps, the wounds I made will already have begun to scar. Maybe the body will have begun its ritual of forgetting. I told you not to ask for haunted, not to ask me to recollect. Because recollection is like tearing at closed wounds. Like pealing back the careful tissue put there by the body to make it safe. And because remembered pain is always worse than the original pain, because this time it is expected. This time you already know how much it will hurt.

Honeymoon Charles used to want to go for long walks around Balmoral the whole time when we were on our honeymoon. His idea of enjoyment would be to sit on top of the highest hill at Balmoral. It is beautiful up there. I completely understand; he would read Laurens van der Post or Jung to me, and bear in mind I hadn’t a clue about psychic powers or anything, but I knew there was something in me that hadn’t been awoken yet and I didn’t think this was going to help! So anyway we read those and I did my tapestry and he was blissfully happy, and as far as he was happy that was fine. He was in awe of his Mama, intimidated by his father, and I was always the third person in the room. It was never ‘Darling, would you like a drink?’ it was always ‘Mummy, would you like a drink?’ ‘Granny, would you like a drink?’ ‘Diana, would you like a drink?’ Fine, no problem. But I had to be told that that was normal because I always thought it was the wife first--stupid thought! Terribly, terribly thin. People started commenting ‘Your bones are showing.’ So that was the October and then we stayed up there [at Balmoral] from August to October. By October I was about to cut my wrists. I was in a very bad way. It rained and rained and rained and I came down early from Balmoral to seek treatment, not because I hated Balmoral but because I was in such a bad way. Anyway, came down here [London]. All the analysts and psychiatrists you could ever dream of came plodding in trying to sort me out. Put me on high doses of Valium and everything else. But the Diana that was still very much there had decided it was just time; patience and adapting were all that were needed. It was me telling them what I needed. They were telling me ‘pills’! That was going to keep them happy--they could go to bed at night and sleep, knowing the Princess of Wales wasn’t going to stab anyone.

When shall I be able to allay and quench The dreadful heat of suffering’s blazing fires With plenteous rains of my own bliss That pour torrential from my clouds of merit?

finally it became obvious that my talents lay with flies. That’s a fate that takes some getting used to. Anyway, the hoverflies are only props. No, not only, but to some extent. Here and there, my story is about something else. Exactly what, I don’t know. Some days I tell myself that my mission is to say something about the art and sometimes the bliss of limitation. And the legibility of landscape. Other days are more dismal. As if I were queueing in the rain outside confessional literature’s nudist colony, mirrors everywhere, blue with cold. But

The rain... Each droplet is a different expression of the divine, falling through the sky to rejoin the eternal sea. Always knowing of the bliss of reunion with its source. We are those droplets, always falling through life. Always waiting for the perfect place and the perfect time. To be realized…

Unquenchable Ache to Tongue and inhale Her sweet sensuous arousal Passion Which dripping blissfully from her silky pussy lips begging me Wildly

Fantasy Oh, to walk in the woods, late at night With the smell of the rain in the air With our breaths coming quickly and tight And the moon shining brightly and fair. Oh, to walk, and to talk, and to kiss. Oh, to want and to do, and to dare. Oh, to live in a rapturous bliss, Without torment, or struggle, or care.

It's the whistling," Laila said to Tariq, "the damn whistling, I hate more than anything" Tariq nodded knowingly. It wasn't so much the whistling itself, Laila thought later, but the seconds between the start of it and impact. The brief and interminable time of feeling suspended. The not knowing. The waiting. Like a defendant about to hear the verdict. Often it happened at dinner, when she and Babi were at the table. When it started, their heads snapped up. They listened to the whistling, forks in mid-air, unchewed food in their mouths. Laila saw the reflection of their half-lit faces in the pitch-black window, their shadows unmoving on the wall. The whistling. Then the blast, blissfully elsewhere, followed by an expulsion of breath and the knowledge that they had been spared for now while somewhere else, amid cries and choking clouds of smoke, there was a scrambling, a barehanded frenzy of digging, of pulling from the debris, what remained of a sister, a brother, a grandchild. But the flip side of being spared was the agony of wondering who hadn't. After every rocket blast, Laila raced to the street, stammering a prayer, certain that, this time, surely this time, it was Tariq they would find buried beneath the rubble and smoke. At night, Laila lay in bed and watched the sudden white flashes reflected in her window. She listened to the rattling of automatic gunfire and counted the rockets whining overhead as the house shook and flakes of plaster rained down on her from the ceiling. Some nights, when the light of rocket fire was so bright a person could read a book by it, sleep never came. And, if it did, Laila's dreams were suffused with fire and detached limbs and the moaning of the wounded. Morning brought no relief. The muezzin's call for namaz rang out, and the Mujahideen set down their guns, faced west, and prayed. Then the rugs were folded, the guns loaded, and the mountains fired on Kabul, and Kabul fired back at the mountains, as Laila and the rest of the city watched as helpless as old Santiago watching the sharks take bites out of his prize fish.

Rain is Love, Love is Bliss, Bliss is Blessing.

Part 3: The Between; Chapter 16: The Weight Nate realized that he lacked the time he'd need to scrutinize a dozen plus pages at the moment ‒ nor had he spotted an available pen ‒ but his curiosity got the better of him. So he settled down upon his usual barstool to begin anyway. Introduction: The Burden When the blossom of a dream is given an opportunity to thrive, it embraces the sunshine and rain with equal fervor ‒ while reveling in the chorus sung by spring songbirds celebrating its promise. Yet if it perseveres, this budding creation ultimately matures into a far weightier burden. Like an apple tree whose branches droop ever noticeably amidst the season's wane; or as an expectant mother waddles and shuffles with increasing effort toward the looming moments in which she is fated to deliver new life; nurturing a fanciful idea to fruition will ultimately transform into a progressively more dutiful task ‒ with sporadic flashes of lightning which recall its genesis as a splendidly creative one. As with any labor of love, it is this toil which brings it meaning. That which has been created then ushers forward, towards its own purpose ‒ as its creator proceeds anew. Thus the act of willful creation itself revolves within a perpetual cycle of collaborative nascence. Likewise all stories are tragedies ‒ authored in sweat; in tears and in blood ‒ yet each begins long before its introduction and will too continue beyond its final page. Just as the same sun which illuminates every voyager’s pathway has unfailingly risen and set in the breaking dawns and dusks of ere will assuredly repeat its ritual ergo. Perhaps this helps to shed light on why fairy tales so often begin and end with abstractions. Once upon a time's are merely chosen moments in which their telling resumes while Happily ever after's offer a cheerful auger of adventures hence ‒ a yet told volume patiently awaiting beyond its transitory resolution. If but a single teller of a solitary story endeavored to detail all which precedes, or proceeds from it; there would not be enough paper upon this earth to document those efforts. More so, the "before" after its "after" must likewise persevere this same mix of happy and unhappy realities which give rise to the conflicts that imbue each story with its purpose. This lack of adventure ‒ rather than any presumptions of finality ‒ best embodies the rationale as to why no tale ever begins with such promises of everlasting bliss. Where there is no wretchedness to inspire tension, neither can a hero or heroine arise to prevail over it, or to ‒ at barest minimum ‒ make a courageous effort in its failure.

Nate realized that he lacked the time he'd need to scrutinize a dozen plus pages at the moment ‒ nor had he spotted an available pen ‒ but his curiosity got the better of him. So he settled down upon his usual barstool to begin anyway. Introduction: The Burden When the blossom of a dream is given an opportunity to thrive, it embraces the sunshine and rain with equal fervor ‒ while reveling in the chorus [sung by] of spring songbirds celebrating its promise. Yet if it perseveres, this budding creation ultimately matures into a far weightier burden. Like an apple tree whose branches droop ever noticeably amidst the season's wane; or as an expectant mother waddles and shuffles with increasing effort toward the looming moments in which she is fated to deliver new life; nurturing a fanciful idea to fruition will ultimately transform into a progressively more dutiful task ‒ with sporadic flashes of lightning which recall its genesis as a splendidly creative one. As with any labor of love, it is this toil which brings it meaning. That which has been created then ushers forward, towards its own purpose ‒ as its creator proceeds anew. Thus the act of willful creation itself revolves within a perpetual cycle of collaborative nascence. Likewise all stories are tragedies ‒ authored in sweat; in tears and in blood ‒ yet each begins long before its introduction and will too continue beyond its final page. Just as the same sun which illuminates every voyager’s pathway has unfailingly risen and set in the breaking dawns and dusks of ere will assuredly repeat its ritual ergo. Perhaps this helps to shed light on why fairy tales so often begin and end with abstractions. Once upon a time's are merely chosen moments in which their telling resumes while Happily ever after's offer a cheerful auger of adventures hence ‒ a yet told volume patiently awaiting beyond its transitory resolution. If but a single teller of a solitary story endeavored to detail all which precedes, or proceeds from it; there would not be enough paper upon this earth to document those efforts. More so, the "before" after its "after" must likewise persevere this same mix of happy and unhappy realities which give rise to the conflicts that imbue each story with its purpose. This lack of adventure ‒ rather than any presumptions of finality ‒ best embodies the rationale as to why no tale ever begin with such promises of everlasting bliss. Where there is no wretchedness to inspire tension, neither can a hero or heroine arise to prevail over it, or to ‒ at barest minimum ‒ make a courageous effort in its failure. Similarly without rot there will be no renewal and absent sorrow one cannot find solace.

It went on raining. Day after day. Three days, to be precise. I didn’t mind. At that point I’d have considered sunlight a personal insult.

overloaded horses bent backwards by the chisel of the mason who once sculpted an eternal now on the brow of the wingless archangel, time-deformed cherubim and the false protests, overweight bowels fallen from the barracks of the pink house carved with grey rain unfallen, never creaking, never opening door, with the mouth wide, darkened and extinguished like a burning boat floating in a voiceless sea, bottle of rum down threadbare socks, singing from pavement to pavement, bright iridescent flame, "Oh, my Annie, my heart is sore!", slept chin on the curb of the last star, the lintel illuminated the forgotten light cast to a different plane, ah the wick of a celestial candle. The piling up of pigeons, tram lines, the pickpocket boys, the melancholy silver, an ode to Plotinus, the rattle of cattle, the goat in the woods, and the retreat night in the railroad houses, the ghosts of terraces, the wine shakes, the broken pencils, the drunk and wet rags, the eucalyptus and the sky. Impossible eyes, wide avenues, shirt sleeves, time receded, 'now close your eyes, this will not hurt a bit', the rose within the rose, dreaming pale under sheets such brilliance, highlighting unreality of a night that never comes. Toothless Cantineros stomp sad lullabies with sad old boots, turning from star to star, following the trail of the line, from dust, to dust, back to dust, out late, wrapped in a white blanket, top of the world, laughs upturned, belly rumbling by the butchers door, kissing the idol, tracing the balconies, long strings of flowers in the shape of a heart, love rolls and folds, from the Window to Window, afflicting seriousness from one too big and ever-charged soul, consolidating everything to nothing, of a song unsung, the sun soundlessly rising, reducing the majesty of heroic hearts and observing the sad night with watery eyes, everything present, abounding, horses frolic on the high hazy hills, a ships sails into the mist, a baby weeps for mother, windows open, lights behind curtains, the supple avenue swoons in the blissful banality, bells ringing for all yet to come forgotten, of bursting beauty bathing in every bright eternal now, counteract the charge, a last turn, what will it be, flowers by the gate, shoe less in the park, burn a hole in the missionary door, by the moonlit table, reading the decree of the Rose to the Resistance, holding the parchment, once a green tree, sticking out of the recital and the solitaire, unbuttoning her coat sitting for a portrait, uncorking a bottle, her eyes like lead, her loose blouse and petticoat, drying out briefs by the stone belfry and her hair in a photo long ago when, black as a night, a muddy river past the weeds, carrying the leaves, her coffee stained photo blowing down the street. Train by train, all goes slow, mist its the morning of lights, it is the day of the Bull, the fiesta of magic, the castanets never stop, the sound between the ringing of the bells, the long and muted silence of the distant sea, gypsy hands full of rosemary, every sweet, deep blue buckets for eyes, dawn comes, the Brahmanic splendour, sunlit gilt crown capped by clouds, brazen, illuminated, bright be dawn, golden avenues, its top to bottom, green to gold, but the sky and the plaza, blood red like the great bleeding out Bull, and if your quiet enough, you can hear the heart weeping.

The pons is active during meditation, as we breathe deeply and regularly. It’s associated with the production of delta and theta waves in the brain, which research shows turns on a host of healthy processes in your cells. These include increased stem-cell production and the repair of skin, bone, muscle, nerves, and cartilage. These brain waves also lengthen our telomeres, the most reliable marker of longevity. A remarkable ability of humans is that we are able to activate or deactivate all of these brain regions by consciousness alone. We can shift our thoughts deliberately with meditative practices or simply by focusing on different stimuli. The brain responds accordingly. We’ll see the extraordinary neural effects of this superpower of “selective attention” in Chapter 6, and the evolutionary implications in Chapter 8. Pons Activation Benefits Increases Decreases Quality REM sleep Insomnia Cell repair Longevity Energy Cell metabolism Melatonin Delta brain waves Theta brain waves Dream frequency and quality Lucid dreaming To the Brain, Imagination Is Reality For thousands of years, sages have assured us that our minds create our reality. In Proverbs 23:7, the poet tells us that, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” Two thousand years ago the Buddha said, “We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.” Now neuroscience is showing us how true this is. An ingenious study measured how our brains respond to scenarios that exist only in our imaginations. A research team at the University of Colorado at Boulder took 68 people and gave them a mild electric shock accompanied by a sound. They were then divided into three groups. The first group heard the sound repeatedly, though this time without the shock. The second group imagined the sound in their heads repeatedly. The third group imagined the pleasant natural music of rain and birds. The group imagining the sound showed the same brain activity as the one actually hearing the sound. Two brain regions, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the nucleus accumbens, lit up. As we’ve seen, the first regulates emotions like fear in the limbic system, while the second processes reward and aversion. Later, people in the “rain and birds” group were still afraid of the sound even when it was repeated many times without the shock. But those in the group that heard the real sound, as well as those imagining it, unlearned their fear. In neuroscience, this revision of reality is called “extinction learning.

Over and over again, growing increasingly hostile as he went, he blackened the earth, drawing with the magnet of his rage the storm of the bloody century to my demesne. Worms screamed in anguish as they burned. Moles, disturbed from slumber, whimpered once then crumbled to ash. I suffered the soft implosion of larvae not yet formed enough to rue the beauty they were losing; subterranean life in all its dark, earthy grandeur. The occasional burrowing snake hissed defiance as it was seared to death. Sean O’Bannion walks—the earth turns black, barren, and everything in it dies, a dozen feet down. Hell of a princely power. Again, what the fuck was the Unseelie king thinking? Was he? Incensed by failure, Sean insisted hotly, as we stood in the bloody deluge—it wasn’t raining, that scarce-restrained ocean that parked itself above Ireland at the dawn of time and proceeded to leak incessantly, lured by the siren-song of Sean’s broodiness decamped to Scotland and split wide open—that I was either lying or it didn’t work the same for each prince. Patiently (okay, downright pissily, but, for fuck’s sake, I could be having sex again and gave that up to help him), I explained it did work the same for each of us but, because he wasn’t druid-trained, it might take time for him to understand how to tap into it. Like learning to meditate. Such focus doesn’t come easy, nor does it come all at once. Practice is key. He refused to believe me. He stormed thunderously and soddenly off, great ebon wings dripping rivers of water, lightning bolts biting into the earth at his heels, Kat trailing sadly at a safe distance behind. I was raised from birth to be in harmony with the natural world. Humans are the unnatural part of it. Animals lack the passel of idiotic emotions we suffer. I’ve never seen an animal feel sorry for itself. While other children played indoors with games or toys, my da led me deep into the forest and taught me to become part of the infinite web of beating hearts that fill the universe, from the birds in the trees to the insects buzzing about my head, to the fox chasing her cubs up a hillside and into a cool, splashing stream, to the earthworms tunneling blissfully through the vibrant soil. By the age of five, it was hard for me to understand anyone who didn’t feel such things as a part of everyday life. As I matured, when a great horned owl perched nightly in a tree beyond my window, Uncle Dageus taught me to cast myself within it (gently, never usurping) to peer out from its eyes. Life was everywhere, and it was beautiful. Animals, unlike humans, can’t lie. We humans are pros at it, especially when it comes to lying to ourselves.

All of Life is summed up in Love. It defines all of existence. In Love is found birth, maturity, death and everlasting life - for Love is eternal. It is an all pervading energy throughout all time and space. Love matters because it is matter – neither created nor destroyed. It can change its state, like water, becoming hard, frozen - like ice, yet melt into a liquid and soak into our souls; it can evaporate over time, but then only to rain gently down upon us once again. Love, simply, IS. It is within us; a part of everyone whether they are aware of it or not. It is all around us; you may not see it, but it is there whenever you want and need it. Indeed, you may find IT or it may find YOU. When Love is first with you, be cautious - for that is human nature - but be available to it. Be open to it. Let it be – let it happen. Allow it to unfold as it will, and in its own time. Do not force it. Neither should you try to prevent it. Offer but a little resistence. For if it truly is Love, than it is a gift to be accepted willingly; to be given generously; and to be cherished always. When you find Love, it is simple to understand yet cannot be adequately described. And if you can describe it, than it isn’t Love. So what is Love? It is invisible yet visible to those in Love; it is indescribable; ever present; eternal, yet ever changing. It can be known, but is unknowable; blissful and horrendous; wonderful and terrible. It is joy and agony; exasperating, frustrating, and rewarding - the combination of opposites. It is what it is: Love is Love! And true Love is Love, no matter where, when, or with whom you find it!

Hover through the Fog and Filthy Air Nursery school for demons Getting to know yourself through crime Brain music like a wounded ambulance praying in tongues Telepathic merchandise A rhapsodic interrogation of love Another haunted customer Soothing you to sleep and infesting your dreams with mechanical tarantulas Carnivorous mirage The night that hides inside the night you know The night that knows you The fierce bliss of the holy glint The lethal myth you carried all your life The voice within my voice the only one I listen to was never born Sometimes everything’s my child Emotions are deployed in glassy air Lots of wondering what to do in the empty lobby and the all night laundromat The diamond swimming in the noisy light A little origami holy ghost The rain goes on softly not wanting to know my side of the story Bloodstreams running with whispering stars A loose confederation of feral children without human language living in ruined cathedrals on the moon pledging allegiance to the buildings and how they appear the grey noise of the interstate new understandings of madness and terrible love half buried in leaves The trapeze artist of the abyss Her discipline Her ascetic silhouette The way we never see her face no matter how she twists

1989 I’ve been awake all night in an attempt to maintain some kind of hold on what has happened, on what I have done. My eyes are red and prickling with tiredness, but I daren’t go to sleep. If I sleep, when I wake up I’ll have one blissful, terrible second when I’m unaware –and then it will all come crashing in on me, its power multiplied indefinitely by that one un-knowing second. I think of the last time I saw the dawn in, lying in Sophie’s bed. This time it’s a more tempestuous and bleaker affair. A ceaseless summer rain has been falling all night, and the branch of a nearby tree is thwacking intermittently against my windowpane. It’s not just the chemicals keeping me awake, although I can still feel them coursing, unwanted, around my veins. I’ve been sitting here on the floor for four hours, as my bedroom turns gradually from darkness to a dull grey half-light. I’m surrounded by the debris of my elaborate preparations for the evening that, twelve hours ago, stretched out invitingly, bright with the promise of acceptance and approval. There are three dresses strewn on the bed, with the accompanying pair of shoes for each lying discarded in front of the full-length mirror. My eyes rest dully on the stain on the carpet where Sophie dropped my new bronzing powder and I made a clumsy attempt to wipe it up with a bit of tissue dipped in a glass of stale water. The dress I wore lies in a crumpled heap next to me –I’ve pulled on an old sweatshirt and leggings. There are dark smudges under my eyes and my lips are dry, the remains of my lipstick clinging to the cracks and bleeding into the skin around my mouth. I’ve been sitting here on the floor for so long only because I can’t move. I would have expected my heart to be racing, but in fact an iron fist grips it so tightly that I am surprised it is beating at all. Everything has slowed to a funereal

It's sensitizing, of course, to feel this way, and ideally it should nurture other areas of one's life like gentle rain. But this sort of happiness feels like a dead end. Bliss: but I would still be relieved were it to end. No problem: That can be arranged.

A person cannot endure living in a negative manner. I aspire to accomplish more than merely escaping a morose fixation with prior personal failures and living in constant fearfulness of the unbidden future. I seek to rejoice living in the present, embrace living unreservedly, and awaken each day with unbounded joy. I want to learn how to live in the moment unburden by anxiety and discover how to glide smoothly and gracefully through time free of disenchantment. I want to embrace the floating world where the sky, rivers, and the seas arrest my attention. I desire for the majesty and beauty of the mountains and the forests to captivate me. I wish to divert my mind from suffering and enjoy all the scents and sounds of nature. I want to touch the snow, drink the rain, feel the hot breath of the sunshine on my skin, and cool off in a brisk breeze. On a shimmering night, I plan to stare at the stars and run, leap, and dance in a flowery meadow. Renunciation of everything that I previously believed in will not suffice to bring me freedom of the mind, body, and spirit. I aspire to learn how gracefully to accept all of the explicit and implicit duties, obligations, problems, perplexities, paradoxes, and setbacks of a life well lived.

See I woke up to this God-body movement, three eyes wide open to this God-mind blueprint. The dynamic of this climax at the peak of a God-conscious is what I seek. Subliminally, I speak fluent, 10 figure mind, I just do it. Life unravels its turmoils and these pen to paper sessions ease my pain and free my mind as I watch the rain, looking through the souls window for a sign. Take you pass the senses into the sixth, take you into a place of paradise and bliss in all but only a few notice.

A life of detachment from greed and desires allows a person to appreciate the truly marvelous part of being alive. I cannot acquire the most sublime pleasures of life with money, force, or industry. I must learn to listen to the song of the wind, rejoice in the drumming patter of fine rain falling in a leafy forest, and delight in witnessing the coming of autumn when the leaves turn into orange and red flames. I seek sincerity of being. I hope to find comfort in a modest meal and cultivate joy by witnessing the birthing and playfulness of the young. I am no longer interested in the practical matters that businesspeople attend, exhibit no attentive awareness of political, cultural, or social affairs, and do not wish to inject myself into the warring conflicts of world.

If ineffable, never is one unsatisfied. If unimaginable, it must be bliss itself. Though from a cloud one fears the thunderclap, the crops ripen when from it pours the rain.

It's like when you go into the Tube and the sky is blue and when you come out, it's pouring with rain.

We must understand the significance of suffering in spiritual life; it is only when we go through immense suffering that we start to seek the source of suffering, the purpose of life, and so on, and make a beginning in our journey towards God. Here, for Arjuna, the suffering has come in this form. And by the grace of Krishna, Arjuna’s vishāda transformed as yoga. “śūnyamāpūrṇatāmeti,” says Yoga Vasishtha. When one comes in contact with an Enlightened Master, śūnya becomes pūrṇa; depression becomes fulfilment. Since Arjuna’s vishāda took place in the presence of the Sat-guru, his vishāda itself paved the way for his yoga; otherwise, it would have remained as his roga (disease)! When faced with suffering, rather than lamenting about it to others, if we submit to the Lord, even suffering can lead towards our upliftment. The simplest way to transform sorrow into spiritual energy is to have contact with the Lord. When we turn towards God, all our problems become a path towards bhakti. If we are happy and satisfied in life, we may go to the temple and pray to the Lord and make a show of our bhakti, but it may not have come from the heart. Śruti-mātā consoles us by saying that suffering never comes for the sake of suffering alone—as each dark cloud brings comforting rain, and as each dark night is followed by lustrous light, so too after each sorrow, the cool spring of bliss is sure to follow. Here, Arjuna’s grief became a great blessing for him and the whole world, as it gave us the treasure that is the Gita.