Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore

Poems and pictures

middle aged man in Rajasthan

Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore, the mystic poet and India’s first and the only Nobel laureate in literature, had his life dedicated to social causes We are ever grateful for his gracious uplifting of the downtrodden and the oppressed women and highlighting the tragic incidents of the so-called low-caste people of India. 

‘Punishment’, one of his more powerful books with a social message for corrective measures, is a treatise on social horrors.

But, it is his Nobel-winning book, Gitanjali, that deals with divine and human love, and makes him a messenger of peace and love across the globe. 

With his “song offerings”, Tagore turned himself into an instrument in making the world realise that truth is God and God is truth.

Holi fest. Inzamam Azez Raad

Tagore stood for humanity and humility, and for him God did not dwell in temples and other places of worship; for him God was with the poor and the workers and the tillers in the field. In other words, Tagore wanted to make us realise that work is worship and, therefore, God’s presence is among the humble and those who toil for an honest and truthful living.

Depy’s photos –

Rabindranath Tagore believes that God pervades the whole of the human existence and man is nothing but an instrument in the hands of God, a servant whose duty it is to carry out the commands of his master. The human body is like a frail of a vessel which God empties again and again and then fills it ever with fresh life. Man dies and takes birth in another shape. In this way, human life is constantly renewed. this shows Tagore’s faith in the Hindu doctrine of transmigration.

He compares his body to a flute, made of reeds. God is the musician and He plays upon it everywhere, over the hill, as well as, in valleys. He always plays new and fresh melodies. Tagore believes it is under divine inspiration that he is always able to sing fresh and new songs. As God is everywhere and in every object of Nature, he gets His inspiration everywhere and sings over hills and dales.

Whenever God touches his soul with His immortal hand I.e. whenever He inspires him, he sings with immense joy, forgetting his own physical limitations. He loses his identity in his union of man and God, the eternal soul gets absorbed in Infinite.

God’s bounty knows no limit. His gifts are numerous and He has scattered them everywhere for ages. But the human soul is too little to enjoy in full abundance and profusion of divine bliss. again human soul is compared to a little child, whose hands are too small to hold the gifts which his parents offer to him. God has been bestowing His gifts upon His slaves for ages and still, His blessings are not exhausted. God’s gifts are endless.

Radha Krishna

This is the first poem from the collection of poems “Gitanjali” by Rabindranath Tagore.

Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure, this frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.
This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.
At the immortal touch of thy hands, my little heart loses its limits in joy and gives birth to utterance ineffable.
thy infinite gifts come to me only on these very small hands of mine. Ages pass, and still thou pourest, and still, there is room to fill.

Deliverance is not for me in renunciation.

Deliverance is not for me in renunciation.
I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight.
Thou ever pourest for me the fresh draught of thy wine of various colors and fragrance, filling this earthen vessel to the brim.
My world will light its hundred different lamps with thy flame
and place them before the altar of thy temple.
No, I will never shut the doors of my senses.
The delights of sight and hearing and touch will bear thy delight.
Yes, all my illusions will burn into illumination of joy,
and all my desires ripen into fruits of love.

~Tagore

Curious eyes

Just a taster for anyone unfamiliar with Rabindranath Tagore and his wonderful creative spirit and genius.

Rumi, Thief Of Sleep And Other Poems, You Tube

 

 

“Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.”  Jalaluddin Rumi.

 

 

Hot of the press my new YouTube dedicated to all great Teachers of Truth. Like Rumi says, come, come, come whoever you are, come!  Life is short and there’s so much to learn about love. So Heathen, fire worshipper or idolatrous, come! (I like that. 😉 ) eve   

 

In 1976 the poet Robert Bly handed Coleman Barks a copy of Cambridge don AJ Arberry’s translation of Rumi and said, “These poems need to be released from their cages.” Barks transformed them from stiff academic language into American-style free verse.  Since then, Barks’ translations have yielded 22 volumes in 33 years, including The Essential Rumi, A Year with Rumi, Rumi: The Big Red Book and Rumi’s father’s spiritual diary, The Drowned Book, all published by HarperOne.  They have sold more than 2m copies worldwide and have been translated into 23 languages.

A new volume is due in autumn. Rumi: Soul-fury and Kindness, the Friendship of Rumi and Shams Tabriz features Barks’ new translations of Rumi’s short poems (rubai), and some work on the Notebooks of Shams Tabriz, sometimes called The Sayings of Shams Tabriz.  “Like the Sayings of Jesus (The Gospel of Thomas), they have been hidden away for centuries,” Barks notes, “not in a red urn buried in Egypt, but in the dervish communities and libraries of Turkey and Iran. Over recent years scholars have begun to organise them and translate them into English.”

800 years ahead of the times

“Just now,” Barks says, “I feel there is a strong global movement, an impulse that wants to dissolve the boundaries that religions have put up and end the sectarian violence.  It is said that people of all religions came to Rumi’s funeral in 1273. Because, they said, he deepens our faith wherever we are.  This is a powerful element in his appeal now.”

“Rumi was an experimental innovator among the Persian poets and he was a Sufi master,” says Jawid Mojaddedi, a scholar of early and medieval Sufism at Rutgers University and an award-winning Rumi translator. “This combination of mystical richness and bold adaptations of poetic forms is the key to his popularity today.”

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20140414-americas-best-selling-poet

Keeping Photographs Near To Our Hearts! – Rumi

With the passing of Sathya Sai Baba, the pleasure of remembering those early days has been taken from me, because there is no longer anyone to remember with. Those ashram days are all but over for most of us that visited.  It feels like losing my  co-rememberer and like losing the memory itself, as if the things we’d done, back then, were less real and important to what the day holds for us now. I began the blog with my memories of Sathya Sai Baba, taking notes from my memory and writings to post on to this blog. I eagerly waited for each visit to come around, so I could jot down more experiences and events as they unfolded in his ashram.  Mostly, I was lucky enough to have many stories to pass on to others with  like-minds and who had shared experiences. Now Sai has gone, I’ve turned  to creating YouTubes of  Rumi poems, to add to my list of hobbies. Through Rumi poems and my photography, I’m able to create Youtubes that will keep both photos and the poems I love, alive and at my reach.

This is my first You Tube this year. I hope some of you will visit and take a few minutes to watch.

Thank you. Eve

The Dance Of The Soul – Khan, (Mesmerizing Visual Journey Inside Mosques)

Jameh’s mosque in Esfahan, Iran, 900 years old

Shahe-Cheragh’s mosque in Shiraz, Iran

Making this my day of seeking spiritual beauty and soul searching. I am hypnotized by the beauty of Sufi poetry,  that so speaks to the heart. Also, I have added for eye-candy purposes only,  amazing images of Mosques in Iran, most of which are centuries old. I cannot think of a better offering than stunning architecture and  the beauty of these priceless Mosque’ ceilings. ~Eve

For more ceilings:

http://www.boredpanda.com/mosque-ceilings/

….

“I have loved in life and I have been loved.
I have drunk the bowl of poison from the hands of love as nectar,
and have been raised above life’s joy and sorrow.
My heart, aflame in love, set afire every heart that came in touch with it.
My heart has been rent and joined again;
My heart has been broken and again made whole;
My heart has been wounded and healed again;
A thousand deaths my heart has died, and thanks be to love, it lives yet.
I went through hell and saw there love’s raging fire,
and I entered heaven illumined with the light of love.

…
I wept in love and made all weep with me;
I mourned in love and pierced the hearts of men;
And when my fiery glance fell on the rocks, the rocks burst forth as volcanoes.
The whole world sank in the flood caused by my one tear;
With my deep sigh the earth trembled, and when I cried aloud the name of my beloved,
I shook the throne of God in heaven.
I bowed my head low in humility, and on my knees I begged of love,
“Disclose to me, I pray thee, O love, thy secret.”
She took me gently by my arms and lifted me above the earth, and spoke softly in my ear,
“My dear one, thou thyself art love, art lover,
and thyself art the beloved whom thou hast adored.” ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan,The Dance of the Soul

Old Widow In Her Weeds And Other Poems – Love And Friendship

from the wild garden – this month

 

Shy Marigold

Photographs from the summer garden. This year I grew my wild-flowers from seeds. They survived the driving rain and gusty winds of Springtime, the cold and dull days of early Summer now in August, they bloom and grow as if to reach the sky. So magical to behold. I have taken many photos of them all, especially the Marilgolds although I have only posted a few.  Eve

“A poor old Widow in her weeds
Sowed her garden with wild-flower seeds;
Not too shallow, and not too deep,
And down came April — drip — drip — drip.
Up shone May, like gold, and soon
Green as an arbour grew leafy June.
And now all summer she sits and sews
Where willow herb, comfrey, bugloss blows,
Teasle and pansy, meadowsweet,
Campion, toadflax, and rough hawksbit;
Brown bee orchis, and Peals of Bells;
Clover, burnet, and thyme she smells;
Like Oberon’s meadows her garden is
Drowsy from dawn to dusk with bees.
Weeps she never, but sometimes sighs,
And peeps at her garden with bright brown eyes;
And all she has is all she needs –
A poor Old Widow in her weeds.”  – Walter de la Mare, Peacock Pie

 

Funny Faces

 

 

Marigolds

 

LONELINESS  is the doorway to unspecified desire. In the bodily pain of aloneness
is the first step to understanding how far we are from a real
friendship, from a proper work or a long sought love. Loneliness can
be a prison, a place from which we look out at a world we cannot
inhabit; loneliness can be a bodily ache and a penance, but loneliness
fully inhabited also becomes the voice that asks and calls for that
great, unknown someone or something else we want to call our own.
Loneliness is the very state that births the courage to continue
calling, and when fully lived can undergo its own beautiful reversal,
becoming in its consummation, the far horizon that answers back.

From upcoming The Reader’s Circle essay; LONELINESS
(c) David Whyte

 

Patunia growing in a window box

 

Wild Rose – from the vase in the kitchen

A Belle Maison – House For Sale In France –

Summer time in Central Brittany

    Unique Artisan home for sale in Gourin, Morbihan, Brittany, France.  The house is in walking distances to the town, the supermarket, schools, (some of the best in Brittany.) Salle de Fete and public swimming pool. Well situated and priced to sell.

Oh kay! house selling is a nightmare for anyone outside the major cities. I absolutely agree with that. But miracles can happen eh?  So You, me, anyone of us,  we face our greatest opposition when you are closest to your biggest miracle. I hope the miracle is at hand.. hah! 🙂

  une belle maison http://fabulousbrittanyhome.fr/

The flower garden

The House

une belle maison http://fabulousbrittanyhome.fr/

Love Poems – Jalad ad-Din Rumi video

Creating  videos is hard work but thoroughly enjoyable. I made this one today. It is hot off the press or should I say off the computer. I do hope you spend a few mins. (Two actually,) watching this you tube.  Made with all my love, joy and  much happiness for the gift of inspiration from those enchanting words of  Rumi.

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 …

The ecstatic poems of Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, a Persian poet and Sufi master born 807 years ago in 1207, have sold millions of copies in recent years, making him the most popular poet in the US. Globally, his fans are legion.

“He’s this compelling figure in all cultures,” says Brad Gooch, who is writing a biography of Rumi to follow his critically acclaimed books on Frank O’Hara and Flannery O’Connor. “The map of Rumi’s life covers 2,500 miles,” says Gooch, who has traveled from Rumi’s birthplace in Vakhsh, a small village in what is now Tajikistan, to Samarkand in Uzbekistan, to Iran and to Syria, where Rumi studied at Damascus and Aleppo in his twenties. His final stop was Konya, in Turkey, where Rumi spent the last 50 years of his life. Today Rumi’s tomb draws reverent followers and heads of state each year for a whirling dervish ceremony on 17 December, the anniversary of his death.

The transformative moment in Rumi’s life came in 1244, when he met a wandering mystic known as Shams of Tabriz. “Rumi was 37, a traditional Muslim preacher and scholar, as his father and grandfather had been,” says Gooch. “The two of them have this electric friendship for three years – lover and beloved [or] disciple and sheikh, it’s never clear.” Rumi became a mystic. After three years Shams disappeared – “possibly murdered by a jealous son of Rumi, possibly teaching Rumi an important lesson in separation.”  Rumi coped by writing poetry. “Most of the poetry we have comes from age 37 to 67. He wrote 3,000 [love songs] to Shams, the prophet Muhammad and God. He wrote 2,000 rubayat, four-line quatrains. He wrote in couplets a six-volume spiritual epic, The Masnavi.”

During these years, Rumi incorporated poetry, music and dance into religious practice. “Rumi would whirl while he was meditating and while composing poetry, which he dictated,” said Gooch. “That was codified after his death into elegant meditative dance.” Or, as Rumi wrote, in Ghazal 2,351: “I used to recite prayers. Now I recite rhymes and poems and songs.” Centuries after his death, Rumi’s work is recited, chanted, set to music and used as inspiration for novels, poems, music, films, YouTube videos and tweets (Gooch tweets his translations @RumiSecrets). Why does Rumi’s work endure?

The inward eye

“He’s a poet of joy and of love,” says Gooch. “His work comes out of dealing with the separation from Shams and from love and the source of creation, and out of facing death. Rumi’s message cuts through and communicates. I saw a bumper sticker once, with a line from Rumi: “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”

“Rumi is a very mysterious and provocative poet and figure for our time, as we grapple with understanding the Sufi tradition [and] understanding the nature of ecstasy and devotion and the power of poetry,” says the poet Anne Waldman, co-founder with Allen Ginsberg of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, where she is a professor of poetics. “And the homoerotic tradition as well, consummated or not. He is in a long tradition of ecstatic seers from Sappho to Walt Whitman.”

~courtesy of Culture BBC

The Divine Light Body – Inspirational Quotatations And Poems

 

Gregory, The Teacher

His unquenched thirst for God’s sweetness experienced in prayer moved the righteous Gregory to live as a hermit in a cell outside the monastery. In the year 1326, the threat of Turkish invasions forced him, along with his Athonite brothers, to retreat to Thessalonika. There he was ordained to the holy priesthood.

As a priest, Gregory did not abandon his spiritual labor and hesychasm. He spent most of the week alone in prayer. On the weekends, he celebrated divine services and preached sermons. He cared for the youth, calling them to discuss religious issues with him. Father Gregory was not concerned about abstract problems of philosophy, but about Christian faith experienced in prayer. He wanted to preach solely about problems of Christian existence, which are more attractive and meaningful to the young.

Soon, many of his spiritual sons expressed their desire to live in a monastic setting. So in the serene area of Vereia, near Thessalonika, he established a small community of monks, which he guided for five years. In 1331 the saint withdrew to Mt. Athos and lived in solitude at the Skete of St. Sabbas. In 1333 he was appointed abbot of the Esphigmenou Monastery in the northern part of the Holy Mountain. In 1336 he returned to the Skete of St. Sabbas, where he devoted himself to theological writing, continuing with this work until the end of his life.

But amidst all this, in the 1330s events took place in the life of the Eastern Church that placed St. Gregory among the most prominent teachers of Orthodox spirituality.

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This is Palamas’s talking about his biggest theme: the need for the incarnate body both of men and women and Christ for the work of ‘Theosis’ (Divinization) to happen. Unlike the Roman and Protestant Churches, the Greek Church doesn’t have such an anti-body view. Palamas was defending the mystical practise of the Hesychast monks who claimed to be able to sense the Divine Light of God. They were attacked by a Catholic Monk called Barlaam for saying so. Palamas came to their defence. The result was the Triads, which was the ultimate summarisation of Hesychast and thus Greek Orthodox spirituality.

The idea is that by becoming united with Christ through the Incarnation we take on the Christ-nature; we are transfigured, like him. It’s an idea which exists in some Catholic doctrine and a few Protestant mystics… Here is the quotation..

 

Here is the quotation

 

“In his incomparable love for men, the Son of God did not merely unite his divine Hypostasis to our nature, clothing himself with a living body and an intelligent soul ‘to appear on earth and live with men’, but – O incomparable and magnificent miracle! – he unites himself to human hypostases, joining himself to each of the faithful by communion in his holy Body. For he becomes one body with us making us a temple of the whole Godhead – for in the very Body of Christ ‘the whole fulness of the Godhead dwells corporeally’.

How then would he not illuminate those who share worthily in the divine radiance of his Body within us, shining upon their soul as he once shone on the bodies of the apostles on Tabor? For as this Body, the source of the light of grace, was at that time not yet united to our body, it shone exteriorly on those who came near it worthily, transmitting light to the soul through the eyes of sense. But today, since it is united to us and dwells within us, it illumines the soul interiorly.”

– St Gregory of Palamas, ‘The Triads’

 

In the Orthodox Church he is a giant; in the Western Churches he is virtually unknown. This is probably because he gave the Roman Church a bloody nose after the Hesychast dispute. Plus the Western Churches don’t have any equivalent to Hesychasm.

Hesychasm means ‘Stillness’ by the way.  ~ Just saying.

 

quotation thanks to Jake Murray.

This first paragraph of this article originally appeared in AGAIN Vol. 27 No. 1.