Om Namah Shivaya

         THE PEACE SONG

Oh we're all children of the moon and sun,
Our souls are many but the spirits one,
and the golden age would surely come
If we could learn to live in peace

From earth and fire and wind and water
we're all some human being's son or daughter.
I hear the cry from every quarter
Oh why can't there be peace

Nature is a thing of wonder
There's earthquakes, fire and flood and thunder
Only man can tear this world asunder
Oh why can't there be peace

We're drifting in the disc of the milky way
Our planet's just a droplet from the stellar spray
We can shout, we can sing, we can even pray
Oh why can't there be peace.

Oh we're all children of the moon and sun,
Our souls are many but the spirit's one
And the golden age would surely come
if we could learn to live in peace.

SONGBOOK

Sri Pashuram Bhartnaga naga baba

I salute  my Guru,Shri Pashuram Bharti, Naga Baba,
 of the  Sri Panch Das Nam Juna Akkada.
You were a great tyagi and a great charrasi.
Bom Bom Kushiraodum Gurudev

Bom Shiva!
 
I seek refuge in Shiva
Shiva whose form is unaffected by this material universe
Shiva who is manifested within and without this world
within and without the mind
Shiva whose form is variously evolved
through mental ideas and verbal expressions.
 

Om namah shivaya
 
 If someone had suggested thirteen years ago that I would become a wandering street musician and that I should make my living performing to people in city squares, on the sides of roads, in parks and at festivals I think I should have expressed utter disbelief.  However, this is the path that my life has taken since I met my Guru, Sri Pashuram Bharti and spent time with the sadhus of the Sri Panch Das Nam Juna Akkada.  Why this should be so I do not know although it might have had something to do with the fact that since I met my Guru I have consistently applied the holy ashes of Shiva and this has made the possibility of more normal employment less likely.

These web pages contain a colection of the lyrics to some of the songs I have written and sung since I began street performing.  Some of these songs have been sung literally thousands of times and some not very often at all.  They were written all over the planet.  I have never been able to fathom what compels one to write a song but sometimes, in my case, it has been simply that the words have popped into my head.  In other cases I’ve worried away at the lyrics for months before completing the piece.  And sometimes it has been the result of sheer economic necessity.

The photos are predominately of the sadhus of the Sri Panch Das Nam Juna Akada which was founded by Sri Ada Shankarya in ancient times.

Finally I’d like to thank anybody who has ever thrown a coin into my tray.  Without the support of the people I should never have been able to continue singing and performing.

 
  Shiva Blues

There's a blue god who's the god of the blues
He's the god of quantum physics and the trident missile system too
His name is Shiva
And he's got his third eye on you

Now Shiva is the God with a thousand names
Shankar, Shambhu, Mahadeva, Mahayogi
No two are the same
When you realise Shiva
Life becomes an extremely pleasurable game

Now the Lord Buddha, Jesus Christ, Mohammed,
and Mahatma Ghandi too
they were mighty men and there've been lots of mighty women
too
But they were just a part of Shiva the same way Shiva's just
a part of you.

He's the God of exquisite pleasure and unendurable pain,
He's the God of abject poverty and substantial financial gain
I'm a devotee of Shiva and I've got this terrible urge to explain
that there's a blue God,
who's the God of the blues,
He's the God of quantum physics and the trident missile system
too.
his name is Shiva and he's got his third eye on you.......

Dynamite

Oh dynamite
oh dynamite
I just can’t stop thinking about ten tonnes of dynamite
ten tonnes for you and ten tonnes for me
and it’s all wrapped up in an envelope of
hydrogen isotope number three
I mean nuclear dynamite

They told us nuclear power would never kill
I wonder what they think about Chernobyl
there’s a circle there about fifty Ks wide
the people have gone and the trees have died
that’s nuclear dynamite

There’s five billion people living on this beautiful planet earth
five billion souls that the mother Goddess has given birth
that’s five billion people who live in constant jeopardy
because of dynamite wrapped up in an envelope of
hydrogen isotope number three
that’s nuclear dynamite

Well every morning and every night
I just can’t stop thinking of ten tonnes of dynamite
ten tonnes for you and ten tonnes for me
and it’s all wrapped up in an envelope of
hydrogen isotope number three
I mean nuclear dynamite.

Crazy Days, Crazy Days,
why'd we have to live in such Crazy days?

Now everything seems upside down I can't keep my feet on the ground

my thoughts keep spinning round and roundsince I heard that
sacred sound
These are craaazy days

Now I can't tell wrong from right
I can't distinguish day or night
Even colours look like black or white
and peaceful people want to fight
I hope everything's going to be all right in these
craazy days

I was born before my time
raised on junk food beer and wine
Now I'm pure I eat no meat
even carrots are a treat
I'm trying for the yoga of the psychic hear
in these crazy days

Crazy days, crazy days
It's hard to live in such crazy days.

Every day has the same old end,
the sun goes down and soon it's dark again
The stars come out the moon begins so shine
I sit alone but I don't mind

I've had a life, the kind you'll never know
I've been places that folks like you don't go
I've watched 'em laugh and I've watched 'em cry,
Seen babies born , seen children die,

This world you see can be a sad old place
sometimes it's hard to find another happy face
But I go on cause there's no return
I sit and watch and I try to learn.

Every day has the same old end,
the sun goes down and soon it's dark again
The stars come out the moon begins so shine
I sit alone but I don't mind
 
 
 
 

Samadhi

There is a state and I don’t mean a nation
a state of pure being beyond all limitations
Oh samadhi
Oh samadhi

We’re not the body and we’re not the mind
whatever we are we just can’t be defined
Oh samadhi
Oh samadhi

Generations of Himalayan sages
have passed down this doctrine throughout the ages
oh samadhi
oh samadhi

There is a state and I don’t mean a nation
a state of pure being beyond all limitations
oh samadhi
oh samadhi

Om namah shivaya
Om namah shivaya.
 
 

Money

You want to rape a rain forest that's more than fifteen million
years old
it's cause of money
You want to dig up an aboriginal sacred site in search of gold
it's cause of money.
If you're a common slob, a sheep that runs with mob or you race
twelve metre yachts and exploit a lot of hottentots
you need money.

All the food we eat today is polluted with the most disgusting
chemicals
They spray 'em on the crops, put them in beer with hops
They inject them into meat, they're in everything we eat
They're making money

I wonder if anybody listening has ever been to Alice Springs
We'll I've been there and I've got to tell you a few things
Though their businessmen do well out of Pine Gap personnel
When the white bubbles burst and they’re dying on the radioactive
earth
They'll wonder why they took that money'

And the Russkies and the Yanks they keep building better tanks
They're putting lasers into space,
They're gonna fry the human race
They'll make a lot of money

I get around a lot and one thing I find is pretty odd
How many people out there take money for a god
If you’re a worker or a boss
I know you hate to make a loss
but with the whole planet on the skids
it must be time to put the lid on making money

You want to rape a rain forest that's more than fifteen million
years old
it's cause of money
You want to dig up an aboriginal sacred site in search of gold
it's cause of money.
If you're a common slob, a sheep that runs with mob or you race
twelve metre yachts and exploit a lot of hottentots
you need money.

 I salute Shiva. The Lord of the Gods,  the great lord of the beings past and future, the one of green and tawny coloured eyes, the strength, the intellect formed, the one having the tiger hide as his covering cloth,  the lord of the three worlds, Isvara, Hara, the fire, the protector of the worlds, the of great arms, of great hands, the trident bearing, of great fangs, time, the one of huge belly, the destroyer, the one with matted hair, the one of great fame, the one like the early morning sun, the dweller in the cremation ground, the suppresser of enemies,  the one who cuts the cruel ones,  the hour of dissolution, the meteor mouthed, the leader, the fourth one, the fire bannered,  chivalrous in speech, the bikshu of the left wing,  the complicated, the intelligent, the bee, the moving one, the one originating from the hedges of the trees, the creator of the universe, the sustainer of the universe, the eternal spirit, the stable one, the presiding deity of dharma, the three-eyed, the multi-formed, the one as bright as ten thousand suns, the one sounding all musical instruments, the one who releases from all hindrances, the binding one, the most excellent of all virtuous ones, the part, the face, the destroyer of all, the golden eared, of misformed eyes, the enemy of love, the great unknowable, the destroyer of all desires, the one assuming forms at  his will, the hideous, the yogi, the one of secret formulas, the grave,  the terrible, the awful, the fleshy, the mad, the agitated, the vegetation formed, death, deathless, death of death, the attached, the unattached, the one blind with passion and adored by hundreds of passionless devotees, the lord with half female form, the lover ash, the bestower of boons, the lender of support, the one of flowery eyes, the one with a skull in his hand, the one having eight cosmic bodies, the remover of ignorance, the one who is realised through trance, the one whose enemies are not yet born, the one inexpressible in words, the one who sleeps on a bed of ashes, the one stationed in spiritual yoga, the one having the wind as his vehicle, the one clasped by serpents, the miserly, the emaciated, the refuge of the five elements, the terrible, the one of terrible exploit, the deity at the door.  Shiva!

I’m turning green
I’m totally fed us with existing political scene

I know underneath those politicians ties and white suits
they’re just another bunch of power hungry brutes
who’d sacrifice our forests to their corrupt party machines
I’m turning green

Can anybody out there please tell me why
there are holes opening up in the antarctic sky
I don’t want to have to worry for the rest of my days
about being cooked by ultraviolet rays
I’m turning green

I know the human species had better make haste
or we’re all going to be buried under toxic waste
I know it’s time for me to vent my spleen
I want to scream
I’m turning green!
 
 

           KASHI

Elisabeth Joan was twenty three years old
and she’d never been away from home before
Now they’re burning the dead bodies right outside her door
She went to Kashi.

There were naked Naga Babas covered in ash
they were smoking chillums of the finest hash
though she cut a swathe down on Maroubra beach
She knew these strange men were quite beyond her reach
She was in Kashi

In the sacred city dust and heat
wandering cows, beggar women, hungry children grabbing at her feet
those Pitt street clothes she wore soon weren’t so neat
They didn’t follow fashion in Kashi.

In her small green room with a fan
she entertained a thin west german man
they spoke of life after death
and the secrets of  yogic control of the breath
they drank lassi and bhang
the sun set the temple bells were rung
It was arthi time in Kashi

Elisabeth Joan went back to Sydney suburbia
She told here mum and dad from now on her name was Shanti Ma
She refused eggs, fish or steak,
worshipped the God who wears a snake
chanted mantras all day long
greeted her friends with Hari Om
“Hari who?” they said
but she just smiled at them.
She knew they’d never been to Kashi.
 
 

NATION OF ALCOHOLICS

There’s a beautiful land down in the southern seas
but the people there have got the suicide disease
they’re a nation of alcoholics.

Keep them numb and you can keep them dumb
keep them pissed and they’ll never know what they’ve missed
in the nation of alcoholics.

The executives all take liquid lunches
then they play their drunken economic hunches
the wealth of the nation goes overseas
to the Poms, the Yanks and the Japanese
but what can you expect from a nation of alcoholics

“Son”, says dad, “don’t be a mug.
Don’t take any of those illegal drugs.”
Then he pops a tinny, does the chug-a-lug.
In the nation of alcoholics.

Endorphins flood their addled brains
they’ve never learned to deal with existential pain
so they bend the elbow again and again and again
in the nation of alcoholics

This is a song for all you post-nuclear bomb babies
for all of us who share this terrible radioactive destiny
for every person who's ever pondered on the planet's fate
Can the race survive or is it already much too late
Om Namah Shivaya

At the turn of the century it really seemed
that the universe was just an enormous machine
a mechanical thing just the sum of its parts
the mystical vision had no place in men's hearts
Then Max Plank, Neils Bohr and Albert Einstein
removed the distinction between matter and mind
and provided us all with the fantastic insight
that all we're composed of is just compressed light
Om Namah Shivaya

So no when we consider all the problems we face
we must keep in mind we're within an ace
of abandoning those outmoded material laws
that bind us to our bodies and are the cause
of so much personal and international strife
that distort and disfigure the whole fabric of life
Om Namah Shivaya

So if we would the whole world rearrange
it's within ourselves we must begin the great change
for the new laws of physics show with absolute certainty
that I am just you and you are just another part of me
Om Namah Shivaya

So it's up to us
to all us post nuclear bomb babies
To all of us who share this terrible radioactive destiny
to every person who's ever pondered on the planet's fate
whether the race survives or whether it's already much too late
Om Namah Shivaya
 
 

                      Addict

You wake up in the morning reaching for a cigarette
with every breath you take you subsidise a multi-national’s executive jet
but you’re an addict.

You go down the pub after work and drink six glasses of beer
by the time you get home you can’t think too clear
you have a stand up fight with the kids and the wife
your just another dumb do leading a dumb dog’s life
but you’re an addict

Down the doctors you go to get a packet of pills
but valium and serepax won’t fix your ills
and a night when you find that you can’t sleep
you drop three mogadon instead of counting sheep
but you’re an addict

Those six cups of coffee that you drink each day
quarter kilo of brown sugar rots your teeth away
you can’t help yourself when it comes to red meat
your belly’s so big you can’t see your feet
there’s nothing wrong with a bottle of wine
it just sends you stupid before your time
but you’re an addict

You wake up in the morning reaching for a cigarette
with every breath you take you subsidise a multi-national’s executive jet
but you’re an addict.
 
 
  The curse

Two hundred years of so called European civilisation,
have gone to make up this hybrid Aussie nation
but though the crowd gathered to celebrate
there's just one little hitch that they did not appreciate
For there's a curse that lies across this land,
A curse that nobody understands
Too much Koori blood on Gubba hands.

Tales we were told in our youth
about a primitive people but now we know the truth
They had a name for every plant and tree
They knew subtle secrets that blind British eyes
would never see
But they raped their women and they shot their men
Those white forefathers were the real barbarians
And there's a curse that lies across this land
a curse that nobody understands
Too much Koori blood on Gubba hands.

As a nation we use the words fair play
but try to imagine yourself an aboriginal in Australia today
You walk into a pub and get called boong or nigger by some
loud-mouthed ugly ocker who's always bigger.
When you're standing in the unemployment queue
the last one they choose is always you
You live your life in such great distress that your life
expectancy is twenty years less
And your children die at five times the rate
of those whites who did their best to exterminate
the only people in this great land
who can  really be called true Australians
For the rest of us are a mongrel race
And our treatment of the aboriginals is an international
disgrace
And there's a curse that lies across this land
a curse that nobody understands
too much Koori blood on Gubba hands

And now this curse is taking hole
and now's the time it must be told
Unless there's justice this land will know no peace
Unless there's justice this country's fortunes will decrease
Unless we see the right thing done
And clear our Gubba closets of those Koori skeletons
For there's a curse that lies across this land
A curse that nobody understands
Too much Koori blood on Gubba hands.
 

Many things
 
 There are many things that we will never work out
many insoluble questions of that there can be no conceivable doubt
indeed in this world there can be nothing certain
it’s all a dream
an image projected on the cosmic curtain
and that’s the way things were meant to be
The three eyed God is veiled in total mystery.

Om Namah Shivaya

We’ll never know what’s going to happen next
We’ll never know what to expect
for the world in which we live you see
is governed by the Heisenberg principle of total uncertainty
and modern man’s achilles’ heel is to imagine that this
illusory universe is something real

Om Namah Shivay

I pity the poor people who live on this poor person's planet
Their lives are as hard as the hearts of the rich and you know
they're made of decomposed granite.

In some huge third world city they live on the street
Bare pavement’s their mattress, they've got nothing to eat
Or out in the village in some drought stricken land
they watch as their crops turn from soil into sand
I pity the poor people who live on this poor person's planet

All around the world there are men on manoeuvres
They're pushed around by the shakers and movers
There's plots and plots and counter plots,
just be thankful that you're not in some spot that's getting hot
Or you'll just end up one of the poor people who live on this
poor persons' planet

Now the rivers turn black and the oceans turn brown
The ozone layers got cracks, the whole machine's overwound
and sometimes I wonder just how we all stand it
To know that we'll all end up just poor people
Who live on this poor person's planet

I pity the poor people
Who live on this poor persons' planet
Their lives are as hard as the hearts or the rich and you know
they're made of decomposed granite.
 
 

       Execution
 
 I keep searching for a word or phrase to rhyme
with my co-conspirators in crime
but the only word that comes to mind
is execution.

Terrible visions keep coming through
of how they behave when they’re out of public view
they’re the men who love a little execution.

When you hear those shotguns blast
you’ll know that you’ve just breathed your last
you’ve been the victim of a little execution.

I keep searching for a word or phrase to rhyme
with my co-conspirators in crime
but the only word that comes to mind
is execution.
 
 

    Buskers Blues

I’ve been  wandering in distant places
seen an awful lot of strangers faces
been dealt a lot of kings but not so many aces
I’ve got the burnt out busker’s blues

I’ve played in front of Swiss banks,
been thrown deutschmarks, yen and  French francs
a million people stayed for three songs and left and gave me no thanks
I’ve got the burnt out busker’s blues.

Travelling round with my Polish porsche
Hit a week or rain in Dusseldorf
in the winter you freeze and in the summer you scorch
I’ve got the burnt out busker’s blues.

In Tokyo, Sydney, Paris or Rome
They play to the crowd but they’re always alone
I tell you all the street musicians I’ve known
They get the burnt out busker’s blues.

The road ahead it twists and bends
sometimes I wonder what the future’s gonna send
so I say to you my fleeting friends
I got the burnt out busker’s blues.
 
 

    Sickness and Death

For every man and every woman living under the sun
for those who’ve seen and done it all
and for those whose trip has just begun
for those living in high places
and for those laying down lines on shiny electric basses
for prosperous people in the prime of life
with a happy home and a devoted husband or wife
for every incarnated soul who’s ever drawn his or her first breath
at the end of it all,
when all said and done
there’s nothing but old age, sickness and death

Now empires and civilisations
they’re all gonna crumble
all the great cities are gonna go back to the jungle
gold’s gonna tarnish
stainless steel’s gonna rust
even diamonds eventually end up as dust
and for us delicate creatures made of flesh blood and bone
who are here for and instant and then we are gone
I ask you to consider what’s gonna be left
after you’ve been through the process of old age
pain, suffering, sickness and death

Old age, sickness and death!