The Mountain is Calling, A Collection of Poems
K.V. Raghupati,
White Falcon, 2019, pages 100, Price Rs200/-

Dr. Raghupati has been a professor of English in the Central University of Tamilnadu in Tiruvarur. The blurb tells us that he is recipient of several awards topped by Best Yogic Publication for the year1998 and the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018, New Delhi. It says on the top: “Highly reflective and meditative poems of wisdom from the pen of mystical poet K V Rahupati is the author of Vice of the Valley, Wisdom of the Peepal Tree, Samarparna and Dispersed Symphonies.

The mountain has something to tell you.

Don’t go back to sleep
It’s not the knowledge of the world
But I is something else
That you cannot grasp mundanely.
Don’t go back to sleep.
The mountain has something to tell you
come and relish before you go back to sleep.

Here is the poet-philosopher’s own exegesis. I quote: “the mountain has its wisdom. No one recognizes it.  Its wisdom id its stillness and silence; it receives rain and light and gives back in the form of trees for birds and animals to dwell. It never grows and never dies; it is ageless, ancient and primitive. … The mountain a mountain; it never dies though the trees die, flowers whither. It is Sthita prajna.  

There are hundred brief declarations each of which starts again and again with “The Mountain is calling, perhaps for due emphasis.

While you, they (bees, birds, and butterflies) are louts
The  moon dances in the dirty pond. (p.2)

You know everything while knowing
The moon is hanging, not in water (p.3)

Samadhi is perfect balance
Deep involvement is action
It is thinking and no action
It is action and no thinking. (p4)

Moksha is doing everything in nothing. (p.6)

The sun never moves, but shines
Nothing moves in  the sky, because there is no sky. (p.9)

When the birds from the south land
When the land recedes not in rain
When the sky is no sky
But yields space for multitude milky ways
There sits a yogi under the Peepal
Who says, “I know not why?’(p.13)

The rat is safe in the hole
Eagle simply lies in the space
Not knowing its illimitable emptiness. (15)

Prudence is seeing ‘suchness’ in things
And no ‘suchness’ in living. (p.16)

In bird less dark sky
My consciousness shrinks like a flower. (p.21)

There is no other way
Yogadharma happens to those who sail alone. (p.30)
And inaction in action

Spirituality is action in inaction
And inaction in action
The bud unfurls
But the plant doesn’t bleed
The roots are strong
Because the earth.
Is not slushy. (p.32)

The vast expanse sky is open to bestow Dharma
But every on is blocking the way. (p.41)

How can there be a shadow upon a shadow?
How an there be a light upon a light?
We live in a nonsensical world of our own. (p.53)

What is seen is my being
Between the sailing moon
And the static stars
There is not a single star visible.
It is my being, my consciousness. (p.65)

The rain has washed every thin
Except misery on the empty land.
The monk feels sorry for failing to see contradictions. (p.67)

Yogadharma never happens
The rocks create their own art in desolation
How can   miss? (p. 68)

He (the perfect man) is a mirror without reflection.
He is a sky with no clouds. (p.73)

The mystique lies in holding
When gulls cannot drink a drop
Humans can hardly predict the events. (76)

All things from the beginning are as they are
Altering the condition is misery (p.78)

In the landscape trees grow natural
While birds make free mating. (p.82)

In the world’s nothingness
In the soul’s nothingness
Is ‘isness’ (p87)

Yogadharma is not something what something is happening
It is, what it is. (p.94)

Yogadharma is simply like this un-orchestrated
Phenomenon.  (p.97)

The mountain in silence deepens.
Birds are grieving
But the mountain in silence intensifies. (p100)

The conclusion after saying the whole thing again is this:

“The majestic mountain is calling” has thinned like a wafer
and vanished like wisps of smoke that rose from the chimney in distance.

A slow and steady reading of this work places the reader in a contemplative mood needing deep introspection.