Song of a Bamboo Reed

Life, it’s so simple and Natural…When you surrender!

Bamboo reed is a symbol of simplicity and surrender…………
Like the ancient ‘way’ of Tao!
It’s an eternal song of love and pain which comes like an ancient wind comes from the infinite and takes us to the infinite…,
Whenever the intricacies of life drag me down to the mess of complexities and struggle, I recall the story of a bamboo reed which was separated from its source.
Sometimes In the depth of silence I listened to the tiny sounds of music oozing out from my body. Sometimes it’s like a divine music and other times it sounds like a cry, as if you rip apart a bamboo read...
It all comes from within; and varies in its essence…according to the level of purity of our body mind and soul…
But utterly simple and natural…


In that feeling of seperation nothing can be done except singing, and the famous poet Rumi sings... He begins his Masnawi with the story of a bamboo reed that ripped apart from its source, like us, separated from our real source……and eagerly longing to Home

Listen to the reed of the flute, how it a long complaint makes: it, explanation of the tale of separation, loud and faint makes...

“Ever since the time that I was torn away from the reed’s bed
my cries have caused men and women... many a sigh to shed.
I want a chest that has been ripped wide apart by separation
so that of the deepest of longings… I can give an explanation.
Anyone who is staying far from where he came, his real Self:
is always yearning to be returning to the same… his real Self.
That one that utters wailing notes in every crowd, I became:
the teller to the joyful and those weeping out loud, I became.
Each one of them had their own reasons for befriending me...
but none asking my heart my secret tried comprehending me.
My secret... distant from these complaints that I cry, is not,
but still the illumination of the ear and also of the eye is not.
The body veiled from soul... neither soul from the body isn’t,
and yet a single person, the soul to be allowed to see, isn’t.”
That sound, it is of fire that the reed is making... is not wind:
anybody who lacks such fire... is as if nothing… is not wind.
That sound… that is the fire of Love that into the reed fell…
and it’s only to Love… the ferment that the wine freed… fell.
The reed is the confidant of all who are cut off from a friend...
its wail of longing has torn away our veil… from end to end.
Who has ever seen an antidote and a poisoner... like the reed?
Who has seen a sympathetic, a longing lover… like the reed?"
( From Masnavi of Rumi).

Years back Guru Nithya wrote to me replying to my letter -“Dear Sunu, we all come to this earth as a big source of poetry like the great River’s Sindhu or Gangs. But the mind through which this great poetry of Rivers has to flow is being blocked by us, dropping unwanted garbage on its cource”. Guru’s words still echoing in my mind. On its cource we forget about where come from. Until some incidents or ‘happenings’ make us enlightened.

And we have enlightened souls also like great Kabir-the poet-saint-Weaver. Who sang…

“baagon naa jaa re naa jaa
koi prem ki peng jhulaao re” …
"Do not go to the garden of flowers!O friend!
go not there;In your body is the garden of flowers.
Take your seat on the thousand petals of the lotus,
and there gaze on the infinite beauty"

I always used to get amused at one of the stories told about Kabir, that when his saintly hood ripened, he had lots of disciples’ around him.But he was still a weaver by his profession, so disciples feeling inferior about it and asked him, Master why don’t you stop weaving?.he smiled at them..Here Osho says they didn’t understand the meaning of his smile because his weaving was his meditaion! This is so marvelous! Seer and seen becomes one, for him, weaving was not a seperarate entity from his devine ‘being'. What a beautiful state! For the enlightened persons like Kabir, the Poetry and the poet is not defferent. Its one. Kabir says, "Lover's lane is too narrow" so thae lovers have to merge as one to walk on..

For those people, life is a ‘Saundarya Lahari’ (Upsurging billow of Beauty) As the great Saint Sankaracharya described.

To be continued.

Love to All
Sunu