The Prince Who Saw Through the World

Rama, and the sacred disillusionment

Prince Rama comes home carrying the strange illness that precedes all wisdom: he has seen that nothing he can hold will stay held. The tradition calls it vairagya and honors it as the first rung — disillusionment with the automatic mind, not with life. The song falls with cello and sarangi, then turns: the emptiness becomes a doorway, and the ache itself points home.

Mantra

Neti Neti

Brihadaranyaka Upanishad · the way of negation

Not this, not this — whatever can be watched is not the watcher.

Let the ache be a compass.

Lyrics

I walked through every golden city I touched the silk, I wore the crown But beauty fades like breath on mirrors And every tower tumbles down What is youth A guest of morning What is wealth A wave that leaves I have seen the river swallow kingdoms Tell me something time can't thieve So I lay my questions at your feet What never dies, what stays complete If all the world is passing through Show me the seer, show me the true Neti neti... not this, not this Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti And in my emptiness, a doorway And in my ashes, hidden light The ache that emptied out my hands Was turning them toward the height So I lay my questions at your feet What never dies, what stays complete If all the world is passing through Show me the seer... show me the true What never dies Show me... show me

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