Hearken, O Mādhava, what more can I say?
Nought can I find to compare with love:

Though the sun of the East should rise in the West,
Yet would not love be far from the worthy,

Or if I should write the stars of heaven on earth,
Or if I could pour from my hands the water of all the sea.

-- Vidyapati

I feel my body vanishing into the dust whereon my beloved walks.

I feel one with the water of the lake where he bathes.

Oh friend, my love crosses death's boundary when I meet him.

My heart melts in the light and merges in the mirror whereby he views his
face.

I move with the air to kiss him when he waves his fan, and wherever he
wanders I enclose him like the sky.

Govindadas says, “You are the gold-setting, fair maiden, he is the
emerald”

Among the hills, when you sit in the cool shade of the white poplars, sharing the peace and serenity of distant fields and meadows – then let your heart say in silence, “God rests in reason.”
And when the storm comes, and the mighty wind shakes the forest, and thunder and lightning proclaim the majesty of the sky, – then let your heart say in awe, “God moves in passion.”
And since you are a breath in God’s sphere, and a leaf in God’s forest, you too should rest in reason and move in passion.

-- Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Open your eyes ...

Open your eyes ...

Mirror-pond of stars …

Suddenly a summer

shower

Dimples the water.

-- Sesshi

He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and who has learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, when he comes toward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty(and this, Socrates, is the final cause of all our former toils)—a nature which in the first place is everlasting, not growing and decaying, or waxing and waning; secondly, not fair in one point of view and foul in another, or at one time or in one relation or at one place fair, at another time or in another relation or at another place foul, as if fair to some and foul to others, or in the likeness of a face or hands or any other part of the bodily frame, or in any form of speech or knowledge, or existing in any other being, as for example, in an animal, or in heaven, or in earth, or in any other place; but beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting, which without diminution and without increase, or any change, is imparted to the ever-growing and perishing beauties of all other things. He who from these ascending under the influence of true love, begins to perceive that beauty, is not far from the end. And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these as steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.

“This, my dear Socrates”, said the stranger of Mantineia, “is that life above all others which man should live, in the contemplation of beauty absolute.... But what if man had eyes to see the true beauty—the divine beauty, I mean, pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollutions of mortality and all the colours and vanities of human life—thither looking, and holding converse with the true beauty simple and divine? Remember how in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may.Would that be an ignoble life?”

-- Plato, Symposium

Tuesday, March 30, 2021

No "pity" in the "pagan" world? Here's wisdom from Yayāti, Chapter 90, Ādi Parva, Mahābhārata


“The wise say that for men there are 7 gates through which admission may be gained into Heaven.

There are:-

1.    asceticism (tapas),

2.    benevolence (dāna – invariably, this means Charity),

3.    tranquillity of mind (śama),

4.    self-command (dama – indeed, complete self-control),

5.    modesty (hrī),

6.    simplicity (ārjava – straightforwardness, honesty, rectitude, etc.), and

7.    kindness to all creatures (sarva-bhūta-anukampā).” 

{tapaś ca dānaṃ ca śamo damaś ca; hrīr ārjavaṃ sarvabhūtānukampā
 svargasya lokasya vadanti santo; dvārāṇi saptaiva mahānti puṃsām}

 

I must add that tapas doesn’t necessarily mean asceticism.

It can have varied meanings.

Thus, at another location, the Mahābhārata itself says {12.79.18 – I follow the Hindi translation of Pandit Shastri Pandey}:

ahiṃsā satyavacanam ānṛśaṃsyaṃ damo ghṛṇā

etat tapo vidur dhīrā na śarīrasya śoṣaṇam

“

·        ahiṃsā: to never injure any living being,

·        satya-vacana: truthfulness of speech,

·        ānṛśaṃsya: to abandon all cruelty,

·        dama: to subdue & control the mind & the senses,

·        ghṛṇā: to feel compassion for everyone,

– these are regarded as penances (tapas) by the wise (dhīra) and not the tormenting the body (“śarīra śoṣaṇam”).”

 

This is nothing short of “revolutionary” – it changes everything.

Tapas here is not “penance”, not some sort of rigorous self-mortification, not torturing the body, not daunting self-denial, not monkish discipline involving tormenting hunger & pain, not ascesis meant for recluses who wither their bodies deep inside forests – it has been given a lofty, universal psychological & moral sense, inseparable from kindness, sweetness of disposition, harmlessness, & mercy.

I have given so many quotes by now: and any conscientious reader must ask himself, or herself, if people who constantly reiterated & passionately proclaimed such values, were capable of acts like “Satī”?!

Yes, the word ghṛṇā in Sanskrit does mean compassion, tenderness, “a warm feeling towards others”.

I shall come to the complex subject of tapas sometime else.



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