What is in a name???

Oh! It would grief me

To abandon my own

Also shall lament

To turn back on my pals;

Sad shall I be a bit

Sheafing through my brights,

Red, green and blue

Denying for the ‘Whites’.

Oh! Shall I miss the crowd following!

Adding layers of ego on me,

Adulating, applauding, sycophanting

Even the idolizing, the love pouring!

May be I’ll miss the soft bed

While hitting the sack,

Also shall miss the ‘Service’

When I toil and hurt my back.

With my trinkets, I

Had my fill,

The yellow, the shiny, dazzling and dull

That world called silver, diamond, platinum and gold.

Nor the tonsure,

Nor the burning of old wears,

But to shun the ‘name’

Greatest trouble it’ll pose.

‘What is in a name’

Many of them rolled their eyes,

Isn’t it just to pin someone?

Can’t it be a short, sweet call?

‘Viyatprajna’ as I was

Possessor of wisdom deep and wide,

Beckoned me to know that world knew

But ushered me more to the ‘unknown’.

The pyramid of ego

Built around my ‘Name’

Wisdom and accolades that I gained

Like a layer of slime that resisted to worn!

‘Ego was the helper’

That established ‘me’ on this earth,

Now ‘Ego is the bar’

The cage be now unlatched to free the ‘bird’.

About the poem:

This is the musing of a would-be sannyasin, who is thinking about all the materials that he/she has to abandon before entering into the untrodden path of ascetics. He/she doesn’t care about the material things that has to be shun, but it is the name and fame that had adhered the name will definitely pinch him/her because after accepting Sannyasa, he/she has to adopt a new name.

Unless until one is not entirely emptied, cannot receive the spiritual knowledge. The poem is about this dilemma.