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To Change the World
To change the world around you.
Give the World
What you have
And Serve the world
With what you are.
By: Sri Chinmoy
Photo by Pavitrata Sri Chinmoy Centre Galleries
The Hour Came
Prayer
Great God, I ask for no meaner pelf
Than that I may not disappoint myself,
That in my action I may soar as high
As I can now discern with this clear eye.
And next in value, which thy kindness lends,
That I may greatly disappoint my friends,
Howe'er they think or hope that it may be,
They may not dream how thou'st distinguished me.
That my weak hand may equal my firm faith
And my life practice what my tongue saith
That my low conduct may not show
Nor my relenting lines
That I thy purpose did not know
Or overrated thy designs.
Photo from: Sri Chinmoy Centre Galleries
Because I could not stop for Death
by: Emily Dickinson
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labour, and my leisure too,
For his civility.
We passed the school where children played,
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.
We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.
Since then 'tis centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.
By: Emily Dickinson.
Photo by Unmesh Swanson Sri Chinmoy Centre Galleries
Poem - Hope
Hope, my pilot-star, hope
I have seen your face.
I have felt your heart.
Therefore
In ignorance-night
I shall no more grope.
Hope, my pilot-star, hope
You are humanity's peerless rope
For human souls to climb
God's transcendental height.
By: Sri Chinmoy
From: Excerpt from Eternity's Breath by Sri Chinmoy.
Photo b yRichard Sri Chinmoy Centre Galleries
Bodhgaya where the Lord Buddha attained enlightenment.
Gaya is located at a distance of 105 km from Patna in the state of Bihar. Buddha Gaya is located 7 miles south of Gaya and is one of the well visited Buddhist pilgrimage centers of the Indian subcontinent.
faint sunlight
faint sunlight
injecting the veins
of a falling leaf
By: Gabriel Rosenstock
-- from Haiku: The Art of Disappearing, by Gabriel Rosenstock (unpublished manuscript)
Photo by Richard
Poems of Gabriel Rosenstock at Poetseers.org
Poems of Gabriel Rosenstock at Poetry Chaikhana
Modern life with all its distractions and features seems particularly unsuited to silence. Even if we have actual outer silence our mind is rarely silent. If we analyse our thoughts there seem to be a never ending stream of worries, anxieties, and regrets.
In meditation we try to do a very difficult thing - silence our thoughts completely. It is difficult only because we are so unused to this idea. The mind is so used to thinking that it is easy to think our existence is defined by our thoughts and this must be our only existence. To quote the famous saying of Descartes “I think therefore I am” However meditation teaches that what we are is unencumbered by thoughts. The real “I” is our self which is beyond thought.
Time
Is everywhere
Precious.
Do not waste time
Thinking of a better future
The futures is here –
In the heart of
Here and Now.
Poems By: Sri Chinmoy
Photo by Kamalika Sri Chinmoy Centre Galleries
Four monks decided to meditate silently without speaking for two weeks. By nightfall on the first day, the candle began to flicker and then went out. The first monk said, "Oh, no! The candle is out." The second monk said, "Aren't we not suppose to talk?" The third monk said, "Why must you two break the silence?" The fourth monk laughed and said, "Ha! I'm the only one who didn't speak."
- Zen Buddhism
- Photo by Pranlobha Sri Chinmoy Centre galleries
India Dream
India Dream
Brindavan,
I'm in Brindavan.
India again.
my feet upon the
dark earth of India,
I breathe her.
a master in bright orange
walks toward me;
we sit on the earth of India.
he tells me,
"I am with you,"
his smile as big as
Brindavan skies,
centuries, and
ten thousand hearts.
the earth,
the shining earth of India.
my hands touch down.
Photo by Unmesh Swanson
Drink Your Tea
by Thich Nhat Hahn
Drink your tea slowly and reverently,
as if it is the axis
on which the world earth revolves
- slowly, evenly, without
rushing toward the future;
Live the actual moment.
Only this moment is life.
Thich Nhat Hanh is a vietnamese Buddhist monk who has written many poems and teaches a form of engaged Buddhism.
Photo by: Bipin: Sri Chinmoy Centre Galleries
"...We see the Pyramids from several miles away, as they rise up behind the palm trees, looking very sharply defined, altogether splendid, awe-inspiring and simultaneously very soft and veiled. They floated in a thick haze, which took from them every appearance of lifeless stone and made them seem merely like airy creatures from a dream - things which, even as we watched, would turn into rows of indistinct arches, or perhaps delicate columns and ever and again transformed themselves into all the lovely forms of architecture, only then to fade delightful away and melt into the trembling air. "
By:Mark Twain (1)
Photo by: Zbigniew Kosc