Pilgrim Of The First Step: You Are Not The House, You Are The Homeward Song

Not from hunger,
not from the crowded marketplace of wanting,
not from the glittering stalls of bargains and half‑truths,
does the journey begin.

It begins when the old road suddenly feels
like a shirt that has grown too small,
when the threads of your days
start itching against your skin,
when a faint wind touches your face
and you realize it is blowing
from a direction you have never walked.

Desire only circles you
like a tethered animal
tracing dust‑circles in a courtyard.
The first step is different.
It is when the rope falls.
It is when the question
stops begging for an answer
and becomes an open sky.

You look at the body first,
this clay house of bone and breath,
this caravanserai of borrowed dust.
You watch the hands performing
their daily circus of gestures.
You watch the feet going back and forth
between familiar rooms of habit.
You watch the lips repeating
the liturgy of your name.

You say:
This I can see,
therefore this is not me.

The body bows in silent agreement,
like a servant relieved
to finally be recognized as a servant.

Then you turn inward,
toward the parliament of thoughts
arguing in your skull.

The mind comes with files and reasons,
with old newspaper clippings of your victories,
with faded photographs of your wounds.
It says:
I am you; look how long
I have been narrating your life.

You watch it as you would watch
a black‑and‑white film in an empty theatre,
images flickering,
stories rising and dissolving
on a screen that never burns.

You say:
This I can witness,
therefore this is not me.

And suddenly the mind,
that age‑old prime minister,
loses its cabinet seat.
It sits down in a corner,
muttering less and less each hour.

Then the tide of feelings comes,
the red flood of anger,
the slow blue of sadness,
the quicksilver of joy
that never holds any shape.

They swell like monsoon rivers,
they shrink like summer ponds.
They insist:
We are your truth,
for what else could you be
but this trembling, this aching,
this sweet burning in the chest?

You do not argue.
You open the window of attention
and let each feeling enter and depart
like a bird that does not know
the meaning of “mine.”

You taste the salt of every tear,
you ride the heat of every longing,
you listen to the silence
left behind by each fading echo.

You say:
This also I can feel and watch.
What can be observed
cannot be the observer.

And somewhere far behind
the high tide of emotion,
a shoreline appears—
a simple strip of untouched sand
where nothing ever drowns.

The journey advances,
not with maps, not with milestones,
but with each illusion
laid gently on the earth
like a used garment.

You pass through the rooms
you called “my life”:

The room of your childhood
where the ceiling still smells of chalk
and the teachers’ voices linger
like dust in sunlight.

The room of your ambitions
with its mirrors and medals,
its calendar that measures your worth
in deadlines met,
in ladders climbed,
in hands shaken and forgotten.

The room of your relationships,
walls layered with photographs,
smiles fixed and fading,
each face a chapter
in the book of becoming someone.

You walk through them quietly,
touching the familiar furniture
with a new tenderness,
like a pilgrim visiting
the museum of a former life.

Everywhere you go,
the same recognition arises:

I am the one who saw all this.
These scenes are the dust on my shoes,
not the feet,
not the journeyer.

Slowly the word “home”
begins to change its meaning.

Once it was an address,
a door number, a city,
a particular balcony
where you learned to watch the rain.

Once it was the circle of people
who know your stories by heart,
who can predict your moods
from the way you stir your tea.

Once it was the fortress of habits
in which you slept without questions.

Now home becomes
a different geography—
a space that travels with you
even when you stand still,
a silence that does not break
even when you speak,
a clarity that does not vanish
even when your eyes are closed.

You realize you have never truly lived
in any of the rooms you decorated.
You have only visited them,
briefly, as the seasons of your life
passed through like traveling theatre troupes.

You are not the house.
You are that subtle returning
which every house points toward.

You are not the road either,
nor the dust, nor the milestones.
You are the nameless yearning
that outgrows all directions,
the listening that remains
when the last mantra has faded.

The saints said:
Look at the body,
you are not the body.
Look at the mind,
you are not the mind.
Look at the feelings,
you are not even those tides
that paint the world
in sudden colors.

And then they fell silent,
for what could be said
about what remains
when every layer has been seen through?

Yet the journey does not end
in some faraway heaven.
It ends where it began—
with a step.

The first step was away
from the hypnosis of desire.
The last step is through
the thin curtain of separation.

You stand in the same street,
among the same faces and noises,
but now the world
rests lightly on your palm
like a soap bubble
that you no longer fear to lose.

You work, you speak, you love,
you eat bread, you pay bills,
you listen to news of wars and markets,
yet somewhere, deep and unshaken,
you sit on the bank of your own being,
watching the river of events
glitter and vanish.

Nothing changed,
and everything changed.

You no longer travel
to reach yourself.
The traveler has reached
the only destination
that was ever possible:
the pure seeing
in which traveler and path
are the same light.

Now even the idea of “journey”
melts like snow in early sun.

There is only this:

A breathing in which
the whole sky participates.
A heart that beats
not for success or failure
but simply because
existence loves to hum.
A gaze that meets
every man, woman, child,
every tree and stray animal,
as if they are
forgotten rooms in the same house
being rediscovered.

From outside,
people still say,
“You are going home.”

Inside, the truth smiles:
Home has been going
toward you all along.
It knocked as hunger,
as confusion, as despair.
It knocked as love,
as wonder, as sudden quiet.

At last you opened the door
not to let something in
but to realize
there was never a door—
only a hand
held before your eyes.

The hand drops.

There is this brightness,
without center, without border,
in which body and mind and world
rise like waves,
shine for an instant
and fall back
into the wordless sea
that you are.

No traveler now.
No path.
Only the fragrance
of that first courageous step
lingering forever
in the air.