The wind, called Atman,
blew across the Void,
Brahman’s eternal being,
Before there was time and place,
unimpeded and unheeded,
touching nothing and untouched.
But because nothing was bent by the breeze,
Atman knew not whether it blew at all.
And so it went,
without reckoning,
until a caprice of Brahman.
At once there became a veil
and Atman experienced the first sensation,
as an eddy, pared from Atman’s blowing,
touched the veil.
Now there was a place,
the place of the veil;
Now there was Time,
reckoned by the undulations of the veil.
Atman called the veil Prakriti,
she that arises at once,
The eddy, Purusha,
he that perceives what’s there.
* * *
Purusha curled around
Prakriti’s sheer weave.
He blew across her
and she quivered,
Through her
and she sighed,
Under her
and she snapped.
He caressed her,
delighting in every subtle motion,
fascinated by every sinuous fold.
Received thus by Prakriti,
absorbed in her endless permutation,
Purusha forgot who was Atman,
of whom he was but an eddy.
He forgot that Prakriti
was a whim of the Void.
He forgot he was the wind
and thought he was the veil.
He thought that he quivered;
He thought that he sighed;
He thought that he snapped.
He thought,
“I am she that can do and can say as she will.”
* * *
Purusha and Prakriti, enmeshed,
brought forth from their union
a daughter called Maya,
who is not what she seems.
From Maya came
Avidya, who knows nothing, and
Asmita, who would rule all, and the twins,
Raga, who desires, and
Dvesha, who despises, and at last,
Abhinivesha, who fears to die.
Her children Maya directs
in an intricate shadow play
cast on Prakriti’s weave.
They play it for themselves
with dire purpose,
As children are wont to do,
And Atman blows as ever,
across Brahman’s eternal being.
