Old pond

Frog jumps in..

Splash.

-Basho

What a sweet irony it would've been if nothing was ever written on this site, leaving infinite possibilities to exist silently, transcending name, shape and form, alive yet unborn.

Yet, as a freak monsoon hits England and a warm, fragrant breeze blows across the land, a frog jumps into the stillness of the mind, creating ripples of desire..

Out of desire is born suffering, as the silent one propounded a few thousand years ago.The tiny suffering of an insect bite that blemished the perfectness of a languid summer afternoon spent on lush grass, sipping beer. The interruption for news for the hearing impaired that scarred the final over of an India -Pakistan cricket match in 1990.

Thus the pursuit of pure pleasure becomes the ultimate desire, and every loose end the beginning of a knot which complicates the tangled web we weave.

I ponder the meaning and depth of a corny line from a movie song. Roughly translated,it means that if the intoxtication was in the wine, then the bottle would dance.A stiff peg of rum convinces me rest of 'the evening, I watch the mind dance to strange tunes. Liberated and unlunleashed, it goes places and has many adventures, then trips and falls, and awakes with a hangover. The Buddha smiles.

I was treating a girl the other day, who has come in many times with deliberate self harm. Her knowledge of pharmacy far exceeds mine, as she knows the exact dose of every drug that will just not kill her. Much more than I can say of some of the doctors I have met.She has taken to cutting herself, and walks in this time, a proud surgical gash on her forearm . An insolent gesture of defiance against the rest, a psychological middle finger flashed at existence. She has by now become an exquisite device for experiencing pain. She laughs and giggles as I stitch her wound, and glares defiantly as I warn her of the impending sharp scratch. I ask her why she does it, she looks into my eyes and says "I have it so I cut it". All of fourteen, a damaged Descartes

Smoking a cigarette, I try to think about the rains of the past, the smell of wet earth, and I, back from school ,knee deep in the filthy water, passionately folding paper boats torn from last year's texbooks. I run out of paper, and contemplate tearing a history test marked 10/10, with a magical"good" to boot, in the red ink handwriting of my class teacher.The joy of that result reappears on the mindscape, slightly faded and sepia toned. It is quickly overwhelmed by the heady sensation of lauching a boat into the swirling, alive rainwater.

Stolen glances and burning moonlight mix with the blue smoke of the cigarette, all arising out of thin air and dissolving into the great infinite, leaving memory traces fading with time.The cobwebs become thicker each day, and as ennui threatens to strangle me, I search for the fabled centre from which radiates consciousness, and the ever-changing streams of the mind.Have to make sense you know, find out the meaning of life and stuff. Escape from cycles and be one with the universe. Anything to avoid boredom.

As I sit with the spine straight and the mind focused on the tip of the nose, I feel purposeful and serious.Just then,an itch arises in the nether regions, and punches a hole in the dignity of the lotus posture. Divine comedy. After half an hour of wrestling the mind ,the pond is still.

With a silent desperation I rush to look in to see the source that I seek.Out of nowhere,insignificant and unseen, a small frog jumps into the pond from between my legs. It disappears into a hidden recess.

I stand there alone, watching the ripples spreading outwards, then laugh at the absurdity of my situation.