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A life in four movements

I. The Marketplace

“We suffer not from the events in our lives, but from our judgment about them.”
— Epictetus

A child is born into the bazaar
where turmeric dust hangs golden in the air
and cumin smoke curls like unspoken longing.
Brass bells clang above stalls of saffron and silk,
while vendors cry “Fresh! Pure! Eternal!”
in voices sticky with rosewater and dust.

Longing wears a hundred masks—
desire sold to the hollow-hearted in vials of perfume,
beauty hawked to the unmirrored in mirrors edged with lies,
safety whispered to the shaking rich
behind curtains of heavy incense and cardamom.

Not things, but stories.
Not wares, but wishes dressed as wares.
Sweat on the brow, henna on the hands,
the press of bodies and the taste of sweetened lies—
slowly, softly, without a sound,
the dreamer becomes the dream.

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II. The Root

“I do not know who I am. I am the one who knows that I do not know.”

— echoing Socrates and the Sufi recognition of the nafs veiling the Real

Not your name, which was given.
Not your nation, drawn on a map.
Not your god, inherited.
Not your wound, though it shaped you.
Branch and leaf, all of it—
beautiful, but borrowed.
Ask instead the root-question,
the one that owns no answer:
Who am I?
The Upanishads whisper it.
Rumi whirls it.
A monk in meditation dies into it.
Three words that undo all others.

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III. The Chariot

“Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.”

— Zen proverb

“The goods of fortune are not in our power; use them with humility, leave them with indifference.”

— Marcus Aurelius

A body is needed to move through dust.
Success is needed to move through the world.
Wealth, power, steel, and silver—
all chariots, nothing more.
The modern fever dreams of faster wheels.
The sage asks only:
Why are you traveling?
And toward what sky?
For what use is the swiftest chariot
if the driver has forgotten the road home?
The Stoic knows: prefer the vehicle, but do not cling.
The Zen master sweeps the temple—
each stroke the only scripture.
The Sufi rides the horse of love,
but the Beloved is not the saddle.

IV. The Destination

“When you know yourself, your ‘I’-ness vanishes, and you realize you are the drop that is the Ocean.”

— echoes from Ibn Arabi and Advaita

“Die before you die.”

— the Prophet ﷺ

There is a station beyond stations,
a home not built of memory.
The king in the Kaushitaki sought it—
not another crown,
but that which, once held,
leaves the hands forever full.
The sages call it moksha.
Buddha smiled and said nothing.
Hallaj cried, Anā al-Ḥaqq—and broke the cup.
Rumi called it the field beyond right and wrong.
Aurelius called it the inner citadel.
Death feared is a thief in the night.
Death welcomed is the last veil,
falling from a face
already known.
For the one who has reached the destination
while still walking,
the journey is already complete.
The chariot rattles on.
The marketplace still shouts.
But the passenger looks out the window
with ancient, untroubled eyes,
already home.

Coda

Know yourself—the root.
Use the world—the vehicle.
Travel with purpose—the journey.
Seek that which, once attained,
leaves nothing else to seek—
the destination.

🪔🌿
The lamp is lit by Vedanta, fanned by Zen, polished by Stoicism, and carried through the marketplace by the laughing Sufis.