A Meditation On a Merchant Who Had Suffered Shipwreck

Art by: Christoph Rehlinghaus

"In my infinite (anantam) ocean like Self, the unsteady-mind (chitta-vata) attains shanti (prashaamyatii). Just like owing to misfortune (abhagya) a trader (vaNij) loses (vinishwara) his world (jagat) with the ship (pot)."- Ashtavakra Gita, 2.24, tr by I

SALANIO

Ha! what sayest thou? Why, the end is, he hath

lost a ship.

SALARINO

I would it might prove the end of his losses.

- The Merchant of Venice, Act 3, Scene 1.

Nothing comes, nothing goes-
Where has his world gone to?
So palpably real, now not possible,
and in some future time
an improbable one, one as such
that existed in a waking dream.

So palpably real, the almost-now world,
the world that prompted this merchant
build fond hopes,
safeguard anticipated threats,
is now gone, no more.

Say, the appointment book
full with its engagements, flight tickets,
the bonds, the guarantees, promises-
the imperative affairs that left no time
for family, friends, fitness-

The demanding, immediate, next-on-line world,
that mocked at philosophising-
the inescapable reality of the here and now
that asked for response, one after another,
now and at the perceived future-
all of that which were real a thought ago-
are wrecked by a news.

Shipwrecked!-
Wonder now, how one thought
sustains a world,
and another dissolves it.



Thought is all, won't you say?
And yet- look around-
this computer, the tree outside,
birds, dogs, cats- all there is-
Life Insurance, MediClaim, FuturePlus-
don't they signify?


In the graveyard, they say,
where the past meets its end
with all its projected futures negated,
lifetimes of effort reduced
to half-burnt rope bones and ash-
the dancer comes alive in the darkness,
and demons and goblins come with him-
they hop, hoot and sing with joy-

Dead while alive, and alive in death
the dead, if they had any sense
would join Him in the dance.


Afterthought:

While worlds are imagined
      in the margins of time by thought,
death holds dominion on created stuff:
In its multitudinous hands it cups
      the dreaming and the dead.
Nothing comes, nothing goes.