“Fear not what is not real, never was and never will be. What is real, always was and cannot be destroyed.” – Bhagavad Gita
Krishna To Arjuna: “Man must do his duty. Do not think of the fruits, the results. ‘These are mine, those are not mine’ -do not have such thoughts. A wise man treats all alike. Anger and desire dull your intelligence. Accept pain and pleasure in the same way. A man must understand and do what is right. Everyone that is born must die. Justice is more important than human beings. Partha, give up this base faint-heartedness, arise and do your duty.”
Or words to that effect, which changed my life when I first read the Bhagavad Gita, so many years ago. Commit yourself to life, hold nothing back. This perhaps what devotion is, full committal to a path. Of course, the world is littered with what comes from this, both positive and negative. It still seems a bit much to sort out. Over the years I return to these first passages again, and again. They are beautiful, and I dive into them like the questing beast that I am.
Everything turns on what one is devoted too. Life is fed by the passion for itself. Can we really step that far back from it?
Much Love,
G
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On The Menu:
Bhagavad Gita Quotes
Maneesh De Moor – Silent Ganges
Indian Fairy Tale: Pride Goeth Before A Fall
Indian Mystical Poetry – Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo Bio
Bahramji & Maneesh de Moor – Dreamcatcher
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Bhagavad Gita Quotes:
“When meditation is mastered, the mind is unwavering like the flame of a lamp in a windless place.”
“Neither in this world nor elsewhere is there any happiness in store for him who always doubts.”
“Fear not what is not real, never was and never will be. What is real, always was and cannot be destroyed.”
“A man’s own self is his friend. A man’s own self is his foe.”
“Delusion arises from anger. The mind is bewildered by delusion. Reasoning is destroyed when the mind is bewildered. One falls down when reasoning is destroyed.”
“There is neither this world nor the world beyond nor happiness for the one who doubts.”
“One who has control over the mind is tranquil in heat and cold, in pleasure and pain, and in honor and dishonor; and is ever steadfast with the Supreme Self.”
“One gradually attains tranquillity of mind by keeping the mind fully absorbed in the Self by means of a well-trained intellect, and thinking of nothing else.”
“The power of God is with you at all times; through the activities of mind, senses, breathing, and emotions; and is constantly doing all the work using you as a mere instrument.”
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Maneesh De Moor – Silent Ganges
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Indian Fairy Tale: Pride Goeth Before A Fall
In a certain village there lived ten cloth merchants, who always went about together. Once upon a time they had travelled far afield, and were returning home with a great deal of money which they had obtained by selling their wares. Now there happened to be a dense forest near their village, and this they reached early one morning. In it there lived three notorious robbers, of whose existence the traders had never heard, and while they were still in the middle of it the robbers stood before them, with swords and cudgels in their hands, and ordered them to lay down all they had. The traders had no weapons with them, and so, though they were many more in number, they had to submit them-selves to the robbers, who took away everything from them, even the very clothes they wore, and gave to each only a small loin-cloth a span in breadth and a cubit in length.
The idea that they had conquered ten men and plundered all their property, now took possession of the robbers’ minds. They seated themselves like three monarches before the men they had plundered, and ordered them to dance to them before returning home. The merchants now mourned their fate. They had lost all they had, except their loincloth, and still the robbers were not satisfied, but ordered them to dance.
There was, among the ten merchants, one who was very clever. He pondered over . calamity that had come upon him and his friends, the dance they would have to perform, and the magnificent manner in which the three robbers had seated themselves on the grass. At the same time he observed that these last had placed their weapons on the ground, in the assurance of having thoroughly cowed the traders, who were now commencing to dance. So he took the lead in the dance, and, as a song is always sung by the leader on such occasions, to which the rest keep time with hands and feet, he thus began to sing:
‘We are enty men,
They are erith men:
If each erith man,
Surround eno men
Eno man remains.
Ta, tai, tom, tadingana.”
The robbers were all uneducated, and thought that the leader was merely singing a song as usual. So it was in one sense; for the leader commenced from a distance, and had sung the song over twice before he and his companions commenced to approach the robbers. They had understood his meaning, because they had been trained in trade.
When two traders discuss the price of an article in the presence of a purchaser, they use a riddling sort of language.
“What is the price of this cloth?” one trader will ask another.
“Enty rupees,” another will reply, meaning “ten rupees.”
Thus, there is no possibility of the purchaser knowing what is meant unless he be acquainted with trade language. By the rules of this secret language erith means “three” enty means “ten,” and eno means “one.” So the leader by his song meant to hint to his fellow-traders that they were ten men, the robbers only three, that if three pounced upon each of the robbers, nine of them could hold them down, while the remaining one bound the robbers’ hands and feet.
The three thieves, glorying in their victory, and little understanding the meaning of the song and the intentions of the dancers, were proudly seated chewing betel and tobacco. Meanwhile the song was sung a third time. Ta tai tom had left the lips of the singer; and, before tadingana was out of them, the traders separated into parties of three, and each party pounced upon a thief. The remaining one–the leader himself–tore up into long narrow strips a large piece of cloth, six cubits long, and tied the hands and feet of the robbers. These were entirely humbled now, and rolled on the ground like three bags of rice!
The ten traders now took back all their property, and armed themselves with the swords and cudgels of their enemies; and when they reached their village, they often amused their friends and relatives by relating their adventure.
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Indian Mystical Poetry – Sri Aurobindo
Ocean Oneness
Silence is round me, wideness ineffable;
White birds on the ocean diving and wandering;
A soundless sea on a voiceless heaven,
Azure on azure, is mutely gazing.
Identified with silence and boundlessness
My spirit widens clasping the universe
Till all that seemed becomes the Real,
One in a mighty and single vastness.
Someone broods there nameless and bodiless,
Conscious and lonely, deathless and infinite,
And, sole in a still eternal rapture,
Gathers all things to his heart for ever.
—
Because Thou Art
Because Thou art All-beauty and All-bliss,
My soul blind and enamoured yearns for Thee ;
It bears Thy mystic touch in all that is
And thrills with the burden of that ecstasy.
Behind all eyes I meet Thy secret gaze
And in each voice I hear Thy magic tune :
Thy sweetness haunts my heart through Nature’s ways;
Nowhere it beats now from Thy snare immune.
It loves Thy body in all living things;
Thy joy is there in every leaf and stone:
The moments bring Thee on their fiery wings ;
Sight’s endless artistry is Thou alone
Time voyages with Thee upon its prow
And all the future’s passionate hope is Thou.
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The Mother Of Dreams
Goddess supreme, Mother of Dream, by thy ivory doors when thou standest,
Who are they then that come down unto men in thy visions that troop, group upon group, down the path of the shadows slanting?
Dream after dream, they flash and they gleam with the flame of the stars still around them;
Shadows at thy side in a darkness ride where the wild fires dance, stars glow and glance and the random meteor glistens;
There are voices that cry to their kin who reply; voices sweet, at the heart they beat and ravish the soul as it listens.
What then are these lands and these golden sands and these seas more radiant than earth can imagine?
Who are those that pace by the purple waves that race to the cliff-bound floor of thy jasper shore under skies in which mystery muses,
Lapped in moonlight not of our night or plunged in sunshine that is not diurnal?
Who are they coming thy Oceans roaming with sails whose strands are not made by hands, an unearthly wind advances?
Why do they join in a mystic line with those on the sands linking hands in strange and stately dances?
Thou in the air, with a flame in thy hair, the whirl of thy wonders watching,
Holdest the night in thy ancient right, Mother divine, hyacinthine, with a girdle of beauty defended.
Sworded with fire, attracting desire, thy tenebrous kingdom thou keepest,
Starry-sweet, with the moon at thy feet, now hidden now seen the clouds between in the gloom and the drift of thy tresses.
Only to those whom thy fancy chose, O thou heart-free, is it given to see thy witchcraft and feel thy caresses.
Open the gate where thy children wait in their world of a beauty undarkened.
High-throned on a cloud, victorious, proud I have espied Maghavan ride when the armies of wind are behind him;
Food has been given for my tasting from heaven and fruit of immortal sweetness;
I have drunk wine of the kingdoms divine and have healed the change of music strange from a lyre which our hands cannot master,
Doors have swung wide in the chambers of pride where the Gods reside and the Apsaras dance in their circles faster and faster.
For thou art she whom we first can see when we pass the bounds of the mortal;
There at the gates of the heavenly states thou hast planted thy wand enchanted over the head of the Yogin waving.
From thee are the dream and the shadows that seem and the fugitive lights that delude us;
Thine is the shade in which visions are made; sped by thy hands from celestial lands come the souls that rejoice for ever.
Into thy dream-worlds we pass or look in thy magic glass, then beyond thee we climb out of Space and Time to the peak of divine endeavour.
—
I Have A Hundred Lives
I have a hundred lives before me yet
To grasp thee in, O Spirit ethereal,
Be sure I will with heart insatiate
Pursue thee like a hunter through them all.
Thou yet shalt turn back on the eternal way
And with awakened vision watch me come
Smiling a little at errors past and lay
Thy eager hand in mine, its proper home.
Meanwhile made happy by thy happiness
I shall approach thee in things and people dear,
And in thy spirit’s motions half-possess,
Loving what thou hast loved, shall feel thee near,
Until I lay my hands on thee indeed
Somewhere among the stars, as ’twas decreed.
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Sri Aurobindo Bio
From Wikipedia: Sri Aurobindo (Bengali: শ্রী অরবিন্দ (অরবিন্দ ঘোষ) Sri Ôrobindo) (born Aurobindo Ghose; 15 August 1872 – 5 December 1950) was an Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru, and poet.[2][3] He joined the Indian movement for freedom from British rule and for a duration became one of its most important leaders,[4] before developing his own vision of human progress and spiritual evolution.
The central theme of Sri Aurobindo’s vision is the evolution of human life into life divine. Writes he:”Man is a transitional being. He is not final. The step from man to superman is the next approaching achievement in the earth evolution. It is inevitable because it is at once the intention of the inner spirit and the logic of nature’s process.”
Sri Aurobindo synthesized Eastern and Western philosophy, religion, literature, and psychology in writings. Aurobindo was the first Indian to create a major literary corpus in English.[5] His works include philosophy; poetry; translations of and commentaries on the Vedas, Upanishads, and the Gita; plays; literary, social, political, and historical criticism; devotional works; spiritual journals and three volumes of letters. His principal philosophical writings are The Life Divine and The Synthesis of Yoga, while his principal poetic work is Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol.
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Bahramji & Maneesh de Moor – Dreamcatcher
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“Death is as sure for that which is born, as birth is for that which is dead. Therefore grieve not for what is inevitable.” – Bhagavad Gita
