Dear Friends Hope you are having a good time. Thanks for your greetings and wishes. Now, I am back, and hope you’ll support and encourage me, like the old days. May God bless you all! Today, I’d like to discuss about the concept of Transience. The topic is inspired by Kokila’s haiku, Transience. The haiku is like one strike of blacksmith, which equals 100 strikes of goldsmith. The haiku is very simple; that’s why, highly sophisticated, as said, “Simplicity is ultimate sophistication.” Let’s enter into the sophisticated world of this simple haiku: soaking up the sun drinking the blue sky, till dusk, endless bliss in bloom Meanings of symbols The beauty of this poem is its paradox. Every symbol used in this micropoetry is paradoxical in nature; for example, sun. Sun could be seen as a symbol of torture in the form of high heat, and sun could also be seen as a symbol of life-supporting system. It is a fact that no life is possible without sun. In a similar way, a blue sky could be seen as a symbol of uncertainty because of its infinite vastness and unknown nature. Uncertainty always scares human. We are afraid of forests and wildness because of their uncertain nature. That’s why, we formed civilization and prefer culture over nature to obtain certainty. On the other hand, a blue sky could also be seen as a symbol of clarity, relief, and certainty, as they are free of clouds because there is always uncertainty about the clouds whether they will shower or not. Also, clouds are considered as symbol of doubts and confusions in the context of mind and thoughts. We often say that clouds are parted and the sky is clear, which means all doubts are cleared and the mind is focused now. Message in context of Karma Yoga    The line ‘drinking the blue sky’ could be associated with a gloomy feeling. Drinking the blue sky could be understood as drinking from an empty tumbler because there are no clouds in the sky. Clouds are associated with water. A blue sky could not shield the heating effect of the sun, as the sky with white or black clouds, which means a blue sky is helping the sun in pissing the life on the earth during hot summer days.    If we consider the first two lines of the poem, we get the feeling of standing in the scorching heat without a single drop of water till the dusk. Dusk is the last part of the day; after it, the night begins. The last line of the poem says about the endless bliss in bloom. It’s talking about the property of flower, its nature that flower is full of bliss, not only bliss but endless bliss; that’s why, the bliss is overflowing through flower in the form of fragrance and calmness one feels around the flower.   If we see the dusk mentioned in the poem as the time of flower’s last breath, then we get that despite bearing the torture of burning sun and cloudless sky, a flower doesn’t keep the fragrance and calmness only to itself but also spreads them in its surrounding without being selective and discriminating the recipients until its last breath. If we could learn anything from the life of a flower, then it is that we should never change our nature because of some adverse circumstances. The only way to have bliss in our life is to live by our own nature, to consistently act in accordance with what we believe our life is truly about. This message is in the context of Karma Yoga, which means for action oriented persons. Message in context of Jnana Yoga The beauty of this haiku is that its message could also be understood in the context of Jnana Yoga, which means for knowledge oriented persons. The sun has a definite shape, size, and volume. It represents form. It symbolizes the part of Existence that has forms. On the other hand, a blue sky is nothing but an empty space. It has no form. It symbolizes the part of Existence that is formless. If we consider ‘soaking up the sun’ and ‘drinking the blue sky’ together with the changed perspective, we get a sense of duality till the dusk. According to Jnana Yoga, the cause of misery in human life is the perceived duality. Kabir said: Looking at the crushing grinding stones, Kabir laments In the duel of wheels nothing stays intact Note the misery will not continue forever. The suffering is only till the dusk. What does the dusk signify in the line? Dusk is a state of non-duality. Dusk is neither a complete day nor a complete night but both. At dusk, duality merges into non-duality. At dusk, day and night looses their identities to become twilight. Dusk is about going beyond duality. Dusk is about transcendence. Dusk is about flowering. Dusk is about bliss. You have often seen in the pictures of Buddha that he is sitting on a lotus flower. It is very symbolic. It depicts the flowering of Buddha. Such flowering could also happen within you when you enter in non-duality. Non-duality is the state of endless bliss. The last line of the haiku: “endless bliss in the bloom” could be understood in context of the endless bliss that lies in the state of non-duality. The message of the haiku, in terms of Jnana Yoga, is that suffering continues until you go beyond duality. Once you enter into the state of non-duality, a flowering happens within you, and you’ll experience endless bliss. Amit Agarwal says about this haiku that it is a priceless, rare work a writer can produce in decades of their writing career. I completely agree with him. It is indeed rarest of rare to summarize the essence of both Karma Yoga and Jnana Yoga in just three lines of a single haiku. Hats off to Kokila.   If you wanna appreciate the effort, please do share: Facebook Twitter Linkedin Google+ Share = Love :-) For reading the posts directly in your mailbox, fill in your email: