sustainable living – Harm's End

The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi at the great Banyan Tree in Auroville on February 25, 2018. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and the Prime Minister’s Office (GODL-India)

From the paths of the Alone,
if it’s any consolation,
I alone this to you,
the next lesson cheerio.
The heart of Auroville is the banyan tree
establish the Earth
oneness drive everything.
The Infinite of days,
things are stepped back,
exploded on the scene:
I hate this bible;
I have a schoolbook to cram down your throat,
the rules and regulations;
I just wanna have fun.
The voices chorus.
Just leave my damn trees alone
and my vegetables—
I’m sustainable Auroville.
I’ve got some rocket science get yah,
a whole lot of Sri Aurobindo—
the Mother’s disciples’ Auroville.

It’s a land grab
right in the heart of the city,
and then the government comes in
and makes you disciples of her
all the way to India
that’s the tower we find.
It makes you want to pull up stakes,
the whole registry.
A failed experiment
has come apart on itself.
You can’t get there from here.
You can’t even try.
You just sit and wait
for another dawn.

Where do we go wrong?
The goodwill to continue.
It doesn’t hurt anybody.
It doesn’t seek them shame.
It’s taller than a government
and is not about right of way.
It has no agenda to sell you
at the expense of itself.
It’s charitable to everybody,
even the weak.
It has no bad man.
Goodwill lifts him out of that.
It’s good to everybody.

The fundamentals of goodwill started this place,
and all this was hijacked early on
and has led to today,
a fractured Auroville.
Policy glows in goodwill,
is meant for the right change,
and it glows on our vegetables.
People’s particulars glow in goodwill
to come right themselves.
This is not known among you?
If you see the fruit you see the tree.
Goodwill governs all,
and that’s where we land Auroville
to come back to itself.
Are you going to fight this?
Are you going to make it mean?

The heart collapsed,
the heart of Auroville.
It puts lunch in children’s boxes
and go all over India.
Get to every
place on earth,
the Auroville plane.
This trap is completely
in our noosphere,
such is the spirit of this endeavor,
the daunting human-wide of Auroville.

You’ve blocked me with anger and ill will
from the anger and ill will
in the very pocketbook of Auroville,
the poet of your gifted change,
the poet sent here to warn you.
Just come and govern
everything with ill will,
is this just your blindness or your willful
stance?
Time of death,
is that the lesson of Auroville?

This is the form of the divine.
I report that they are only satellites.
It's all fences regarding the sun.
We can’t get at that meat in the matter.
It’s too broad-minded you,
and you will not meet us there.
I cough this up now
a poem rose
in certain straits,
but I’m not in a tin can.
The availability of truth
is relative to the participant,
but I tell you sincerity guides my house.
It’s what I lean on.
I can get closer to the truth,
but will you meet me there?
Will you even try?

Oh my goodness Auroville,
that’s the study sheet,
that’s what we make our daily rounds:
ever widening to the truth,
ever widening to contain it all,
to stand at last on higher ground,
to get there,
the reason Auroville was made.
We localize human divinity here,
and that is ever the strength now.

I attempted to send this poem via email to recipients in Auroville, but my email ID was blocked. I’d sent the previous poem on this blog, “The New Business”, to all the addresses that blocked this one. This poem and the previous one made the secretary of Auroville, Jayanti Ravi, mad, and she got me kicked out of India over it, personally.

I couldn’t come from
the city according to our needs.
A oneness organization,
that’s the start of it,
the city the Earth needs.
The walls are coming down,
it’s where we begin.
This is the largest city in Heaven,
and it’s expensive to live in.

How many people protect themselves from the Infinite?
How many people have bibles
they won’t cross thresholds with?
They can’t get out of the Book
or this Name says.
They can’t plant infinity there,
and they argue and bicker among themselves about it,
the rulebook says.

Am I just a hedonistic paradise?
I sacrifice even my thoughts to the divine
and live a simple life to prove it.
I don’t cut down banyan trees.
I sit together with everybody there,
and I know hard work,
and I know rest and play.

I love God,
and that is my first priority,
not the God of this man says,
the God of the banyan tree.
I have seen God’s eyes
staring back at me in everyone’s.
I can pet a dog and feel that,
rub a cat.

I am about the mountain in springtime.
I know how to address the world:
oh my God I love you.
I have seen fire and rain,
and I changed my life because of it.
I no longer hurt people
or cause them pain.
I draw the lines everywhere
to prevent that.
I know the meaning of sacrifice.
It’s how my thoughts meet the world.
It’s how my hands meet the day.

I am an Aurovillian comes
theoretically,
and I shout this to the Earth.
I will get bigger than my kind.
I will transform consciousness inside
into our greater type.
I will give birth to divinity
on a collective field,
and our hands will salt the Earth
with its great and needed change,
and I am here my friend
opening doors for you
that you may walk through them.
Auroville will you hear me?
Auroville can you feel that
looking?