3 posts tagged “rabindranath tagore”
- Here’s the latest in internet rumors; is Barack Obama the antichrist? Apparently many think so. What’s for sure is the near hysteria he seems to leave in his wake.
- For a dose of reality in an unreal world, check out Neil Kramer’s new post Crossing the Rubicon: Breaking the Fake News Trance over at The Cleaver.
- 2012: A Time Odyssey by Sharron Rose
- Rearranging Stars to Communicate with Aliens by Jaron Lanier
- Some may think so; “Euros Accepted” signs are popping up in New York.
- Note from the bees; rabbits disappear from Yellowstone and the bats are dying off.
- Hey, Coppertop; ‘Power Shirt’ generates watts as you walk; or how about a knee-brace power generator?
- New flashlight weapon dazes and confuses.
- The Secret of the Universe is not 42, as erroneously suggested by the likes of Douglas Adams; it is in fact, 10122.
- Cool underwater car video! Your pen as cutlery!
- One of my all-time favorites, Rabindranath Tagore in conversation with Einstein.
- And if you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend The Story of Stuff.
Readers may know Rabindranath Tagore is near and dear to my heart. He is mentor, master, and gentle guiding spirit. Often it is his words that teach and soothe me above all others. I found the following essay, “Pagal” or “The Mad Spirit” from an earlier work Bangadarshan, which he reprinted in his book, “Of Myself”. This essay was written during his middle years, when the peace and tranquility of his early life was shattered by both his ever-increasing fame as well as the war and upheaval in the world at the time. About these lessons he further explains, “The consciousness that makes our soul know itself arises through obstacles, pulling down the walls of our habits and comfort. The consciousness that liberates us…’is a perilous path, so say the seers’”.
“I know that happiness is an everyday term, joy is something beyond that. Happiness shrinks at the slightest possibility of being touched by dust, joy rolls in the dust and shatters the walls of its separation from the cosmos. So for happiness dust is despicable, while for joy it is an adornment. Happiness is afraid lest it lose something. Joy is satisfied to distribute whatever it possesses. That is why for happiness to have nothing is to be poor, while for joy to be poor is to be rich. Happiness cautiously guards its petty ease within the limits of a system. Joy loudly proclaims its beauty within the freedom of destruction and upheaval. So it is that happiness is restricted by rules outside itself, while joy throws off restraint to create its own rules. Happiness waits expectantly for a little nectar. Joy digests without effort things of sorrow. So the inclination of happiness is merely towards the pleasant, while for joy the pleasant and the unpleasant are one and the same.
“There is a mad spirit within Creation: whatever is unthinkable or unexpected he ushers in without rhyme or reason….The god of restraining laws is trying to convert the paths of all worldly motions into circles, and this mad spirit is busy leading them astray to make spirals. This mad one in his caprice has evolved birds in the family of reptiles and man in the family of apes. There is a strenuous effort in the world at large to maintain what has been and what is; this mad one is upsetting this order and paving the way for what is not. He has no flute in his hand, the song of harmony is not his, the horn blares out, the rituals set by tradition wither away, and from nowhere an unprecedented state comes and takes its place. …
“In the monotonous triviality of our everyday life, suddenly the terrible breaks in, its wealth of flaming locks flying. This terrible one awakens as a sudden upheaval in Nature and a tremendous vice in Man. At that awakening how many happy unions have their binding torn apart, how many relationships of the heart are overturned! O Terrible One, the throbbing flame on your brow, that lights a lamp in dark homes with its spark, is the same flame at whose conflagration houses burn in the night amid the cries and wails of a thousand human beings. O Shambhu, at your dance, at your dance-steps to the right and left, great good and great evil erupt in the cosmos. A pall of mere commonness comes to hang over the world at the touch of everyday existence, and you go on tearing it and ripping it with the powerful blows of good and evil. You make the current of life throb on and on with the excitement of the unexpected, only to give expression to power in its newer and newer dance and play, and to creation in its newer and newer forms. Mad spirit, let not my timid heart shrink from taking part in your terrible jubilation. At the centre of the blood-red sky of destruction, may your third eye that is radiant as the rays of the sun illumine my heart of hearts with eternal brilliance. Dance, O mad one, dance. When luminous nebulae spanning millions and billions of miles of sky break into motion at the whirl of this dance, let not the terrible music lose its rhythm in the convulsions of fear in my heart. O conqueror of death, in all our good and evil may victory be yours.
“This whimsical god of ours – I do not mean to suggest he appears only now and again. In truth his madness is ever-present in Creation – we only catch a glimpse of it every now and then. Every day life is renewed by death, good is brightened by evil, the trivial is made precious by the unexpected. When we catch a glimpse, we witness within beauty the rising of something beyond beauty, and the awakening of freedom within bondage.”
I have heard in my being the voice of Eternal Silence…’ -Tagore
Not many westerners know that Rabindranath Tagore, a great writer, musician and philosopher from , won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913 for his collection of poems, "Gitanjali". His extraordinary life began in 1861, and before it ended in 1941 he had been contemporary of Mahatma Gandhi, written about by Jawaharlal Nehru, W.B. Yeats, and Ezra Pound, and famously conversed with Albert Einstein about the nature of reality. He wrote over 2000 songs including ’s national anthem. He spoke often and loudly against the militant nationalism rising in his day, and in 1919 he repudiated his knighthood as a public gesture against violence.
Tagore was firmly for freedom - freedom of mind, freedom of education, freedom of belief, freedom of existence. Contrary to the educational establishment of his day, he founded a school, called the ‘Abode of Peace’, which eventually became an important center for culture, music, art, languages and even rural development. He was involved in what we now call ‘Third World Development,’ attempting to teach new farming techniques to his struggling nation. He resisted categorization based on race or economics, and believed in the unity of man and nature.
Though some of his work reflects the politics and struggles of his country, there is so much that relates purely to his spiritual being. His words reflect a deep wisdom and understanding of our reality, and man’s proper behavior within it. He rejected the common religious orthodoxy of his upbringing, instead creatively seeking the spirit behind it. His words bring to mind a startling awareness of this Tao, the compassion and openness necessary to perceive it, and the difficulty of explaining it to others.
“It is only the revelation of You as the Infinite that is endlessly new and eternally beautiful in us and that gives the only meaning to our self when we feel Your rhythmic throb as soul-life, the whole world in our own souls; then are we free. O Worker of the universe! Let the irresistible current of Your universal energy come like the impetuous south wind of spring; let it come rushing over the vast field of human life. Let our newly awakened powers cry out for unlimited fulfillment in leaf and flower and fruit.” -Tagore, from "The Heart of God"
