The Institute of Reflection
The virtual Agora for Occidental Meditation – A Tool for Clearer Thinking, Emotional Balance and a Rounded Perspective
by <a href="https://instituteofreflection.com/author/hemal-jayasuriya/" target="_self">Hemal Jayasuriya</a>

by Hemal Jayasuriya

Dr Hemal Jayasuriya never ceases to be amazed at the strangeness and fascination of our world, and finds in it a subject for endless speculation. He is a published poet and is acknowledged in the International Who’s Who in Poetry. He obtained a PhD from Trinity College, University of Cambridge. Hemal also obtained a MA in Systems in Management, Lancaster University and a MSc in Computer Science from Heriot-Watt University. Prior to that, Hemal obtained a BSc Honours in Biophysics from Flinders University, Australia. He is a Life Fellow of the Cambridge Philosophical Society and a member of the Aristotelian Society. His articles are published in international scientific journals. His poems are published in academic journals and books. Hemal is inspired by the material and immaterial in the world which shapes his poetry. He is fascinated by cosmology and scientific phenomena in the world.
POEM

Imagining In A New Light

Sat in a carriage

Speeding on rails

As the setting Sun spreads a rosy glow,

You see those trees, trees, many, many trees

From the moving window.

Trees, in one moment, You imagine

Them passing Me, or then again

She wonders, seeing things in a different Light :

No, I must be passing them, for that is

The Reality I know, though now

In this moment, I realise it can be

One or the Other ; that makes Namila

Ponder deeply about things, all alone.

The Train halts. Bombay was

But now, this Village is

My place. The future is here ;

She wonders : can I make it run.

Is it possible for me to be

In this space and grow and thrive,

Be happy. Shiraz, we are two liquids

Of different kinds, in agitation, rotating,

Flowing, mixing, trying to be One,

In an estuarine niche, a Third Space

Becoming one calm hybrid Being like a Coral.

An endless Sea, devoid of stirring, rolling,

Restless waves as is the case in the Mind Seas

As of individual Beings.

She merges herself with waters of all kinds

Imagining the Self in a new Light.

Shiraz, we have been left on a Sea-shore

Some distance away from turmoil, carried

By a rising ripple from the roaring Sea

On this Goan sands, two Living dots,

A Coupled Binary, amongst billions

Of mindless grains of sand, unknowing of Life.

You and this one, Namila, Me, we are wondering

As to why we were brought here, to this place,

Now, under the gaze of those flickering Fireflies

Up there, staring at us from so far, far away