You say you have never been to Africa,

But Africa knows you.

You are in her heart

And she, in yours.

As the Light shines

without obstructions,

it nurtures the seeds

of Africa in our hearts.

You will see the sunset,

Bathing the highveldt

The colour of your robes,

As red as blood,

But bolder, giving life,

Not as life seeping away.

He is always present,

In every blade of grass

And stump of every tree

*And* in every gun,

And in every Rand

Over which we fight.

We bathe in His Light,

Whenever we say His name.

So whenever you say His name,

And I say His name,

And my Master says His name,

We are saying it together.

And He is there,

He is here.

I have never been abandoned
I have never been alone
For in solicitude She holds me
Though I fear, though I moan
Though I quake in inward terror
Still I know She’ll guide me home.

For She knows me in my darkness
In the core of what I be
And she holds me in my weakness
In my blindness let’s me see
That it’s mainly through my darkness
That She finds her way to me.

So Mother will You hold me
When I call into the night
Yes, I know, I know You’ll hold me
When I need to be held tight
For Your breath comes as a sweet free gift
And never as a right.

Love someone and you will feel helpless; hate someone and you can do something. Love someone and you are absolutely helpless because what can you do? Whatsoever you can do seems insignificant and meaningless; it is never enough. Nothing can be done, and when one feels that nothing can be done, one feels that one is helpless. When one wants to do everything and feels nothing can be done, the mind stops. In this helplessness surrender happens. We are empty. That is why true love becomes the deepest meditation.

Khalil Gibran - “A man and a woman sat by a window that opened upon Spring.They sat close one unto the other. And the woman said: “I love you.You are handsome,and you are rich and you are always well-attired.”

And the man said: “I love you.You are a beautiful thought,a thing too apart to hold in the hand and a song in my dreaming.”

But the woman turned from him in anger and she said: “Sir,please leave me now. I am not a thought and I am not a thing that passes in your dreams. I am a woman. I would have you desire me, a wife and the mother of unborn children”

And they parted.

And the man was saying in his heart: “Behold another dream is even now turned into mist.”

And the woman was saying: “Well, what of a man who turns me into a mist and a dream?”

Love that comes and goes is only a reflection of the real love. A full moon reflected in the lake looks exactly like the moon, but the reflection can be disturbed very easily by a small wind. It shatters into thousands of pieces of silver all over the lake, and as the lake settles back, it again appears as the moon.

But the real moon in the sky is not disturbed by winds, by seasons, by anything. It is even there in the day, although you cannot see it because the sunlight is too bright.

This state of being love is the ultimate peak of consciousness, called the awakened state or the enlightened state, the state of a Gautam Buddha. He does not love — he is love. He is doing nothing on his part — just his presence radiates love. It reaches all those who are available to receive it.

Love as a state of being is only an availability. You can take as much as you can contain; it is abundant, overflowing. A man in this state, even if he is sitting alone, goes on radiating love. This love is reflected in many kinds of love, but those are only reflections.

When the moon is reflected in the lake, there is joy, there is beauty; and when it is shattered by the wind, or just by a small pebble thrown into the lake, it is all gone — shattered. And we know in our experience that our love relationships with friends, with husbands, with wives, with masters, are all very fragile. Any small thing and the whole love disappears. Not only does it disappear, it changes into its opposite. There are always Judases who can sell their masters.

We are acquainted with all these loves; they are all conditional. Even the love of parents for their children is conditional: if we obey them, if we are not a rebel, if we are going to become what they want us to become, we will be loved; but if we go on our own way — parents even abandon their children, disinherit their children.

But these reflections indicate that there must be a reality which is reflected. Without something real, there cannot be any reflections.

In the enlightened man, love becomes his very nature, his very breath, his very heartbeat. And unless we know this love, we have only been dreaming about love. All those reflections are nothing but dreams, and they bring great misery, anxiety, anguish. In between they give us a few moments of joy — those moments are nothing but consolations.

Authentic love is a tremendous contentment in ourself; it is a settling of our energies at the center of our being. This centeredness brings an alchemical change to our energies. Then wherever we are — with the trees, with the ocean, with the mountains, with the stars, with people, with animals, with birds — we cannot do anything, love simply radiates from us. It is our very life. We cannot prevent it. Preventing it will be committing suicide.

From our so-called love affairs, we should learn only one thing: that there must be something authentic and real and eternal which is reflected in the mirrors of our relationships. Unless we know that love, we will suffer much, and we will gain nothing. And it can be known because it is our intrinsic capacity; we are born with the seed. We just have to take a little care with it, and it will start growing. Soon we will be full of flowers — the spring has come. And once it comes, it never goes. To the very last moment it remains there.

A very beautiful story is told about Gautam Buddha. He informed his disciples that on a particular day, the coming full moon night, he was going to die. As the full moon disappeared, he would also disappear. Thousands of his disciples rushed from all over the place just to see him for the last time. There was great sadness, but people were holding back their tears, not to make his departure difficult. And Buddha asked, “If you have any questions — because tomorrow I will not be here — if in your heart there is some question still which you have not exposed, just ask me. Before I leave I want all my disciples to be completely alert, without any questions. I want my disciples to become answers, not questions.”

Nobody said anything. And at that moment Buddha said, “Okay, then I say good-bye to you. I will die in four steps. First I will leave my body; then I will leave my mind; then I will leave my heart; and in the fourth, the turiya, I will dissolve into the ocean of existence.”

He closed his eyes, and just that very moment a man came running and he said, “I have to ask something. For thirty years I have been postponing it. Buddha has been coming to my town many times in these thirty years, and I have always thought that this time I am going to see him and ask my question. But something or other… and I went on postponing. Just human stupidity — a guest has come, I was engaged with customers, there was a marriage ceremony I had to participate in. So I went on postponing, thinking that there is no hurry, that when he comes next time, then I will ask. But sometimes my wife was sick, sometimes I was sick… and these thirty years have passed. Just now I heard that Buddha is dying. Now I cannot postpone. No reason can prevent me.”

But Ananda said, “You have come a little late. He has begun his inner journey; he has already moved two steps: we can see his body has become utterly silent, and as far as dropping the mind… it is just an empty mind, he must have dropped it. It may take a little while for him to drop the heart, because it was the heart that he was using continuously to radiate his love, his joy, his silence. It is not right to disturb him at this moment. Forty-two years he has been speaking; now it is your fault if in thirty years you could not find the time — it is your question.”

But Buddha returned. His breathing, which had disappeared, came back again, his heart started beating again. He opened his eyes and he said, “Ananda, do you want it to be remembered by the coming generations that Buddha’s love was so small that he could not come two steps back when a thirsty man had come? And I am still alive — I would be blamed forever. Don’t prevent him, let him ask his question. My caresses are never fragile.”

The man was seeing Buddha for the first time, and in a very strange situation: thousands of people were sitting silently, their eyes full of tears. And Buddha was almost half dead: he had taken two steps inwards; just two steps more and he would become part of the oceanic consciousness. But a man who is love even in such a situation will radiate love. Ananda and all the disciples could not believe that for an ordinary man, who is not even a disciple, who has postponed for thirty years…. But Buddha’s love and his compassion are infinite — he asked the man… but the man was so overwhelmed by the situation, he forgot his question.

He said, “I am fulfilled enough. Just your love has answered all my questions. You were half-dead and still you came back just to answer an ordinary man who has been avoiding you for thirty years, always finding different excuses.” He touched Buddha’s feet and he said, “Let me be your last disciple; initiate me. I had come to ask a question, but now there is no question — before your love, all questions disappear. And I don’t want to miss this opportunity to be initiated by you.”

So we shouldnt waste our time just in reflections. Those reflections are good as fingers pointing to the real moon. We should use those reflections to find the real which is reflected, and we will reach home from this strange land of insane people.

Last year, we walked to the gardens at Renishaw Hall, the place that DH Lawrence took for his inspiration for We are lucky to be just a thirty minute walk away. The weather was a little threatening and when we arrived we thought we would look around the italianate gardens, before the rain descended. As you enter, there is sign that tells you what flowers are in bloom. There was the mention of blue poppies, which excited me - i love poppies but had never seen blue ones before. We began walking around but soon had to dive for cover - heavy summer rain fell, large raindrops cascades on the pathways.

Maybe this year…