In my new robe\
this spring morning -
someone else.
Basho (1644-94)
Taking the picture above, of the new shoots on the branches of the tree, I am reminded it is Spring - though it is a Sunday afternoon in Delhi.
I first noticed the leaves being shed of the neem tree, in the open space in our locality, which I can see from my Eastfacing balcony. It's perhaps (not) a coincidence that back home in Goa we have two similar balcaos - one facing East, adjoining the kitchen, and one facing West, adjoining the bedroom. Like here.
Even the sky is the same.
Spring is the time for new moves. Of Spring(ing) from one place to another, of broadening horizons, of challenging frontiers. The change of seasons, and the prospect of summer, make the just endured winter, only a memory. And so it is with life. One season yields to another. One place ceases to be the daimon; another takes its place.
When one is springcleaning, one reviews the years gone by. Have the years been worthwhile? Meaningful? Fulfilling? The answers seem to be in the old leaves and the new shoots.
Spring is about recognizing your poetential. With me, it is about publishing my second book of poems A Peace of India: Poems in Transit. While the printing and binding is underway I realise how spring is a season of the self which led me to spring new roots. It led me to an inward journey of the spirit, of self-discovery and greater awareness. Maybe 'gravitas,' centredness - which a close friend of mine said this morning, I had newly acquired.
In 'Seasons of the Spirit' Mike George advises one to meditate on the stages of Spring as they appear in sequence - 'Just as the leaf-shapes reach outward from the centre, so does your goodness reach out from the spirit into the world around you.'
So whether it is here or there, or elsewhere, let the springs of living water from Exodus lead us on to a wider shore . . .
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Mike George, Learn to Find Inner Peace (London: Duncan Baird publishers, 2003)
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