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Spirit News Blog - September 2007
I feel in all my limbs His boundless Grace;
Within my heart the Truth of life shines white.
The secret heights of God my soul now climbs;
No dole, no sombre pang, no death in my sight.
No mortal days and nights can shake my calm;
A Light above sustains my secret soul.
All doubts with grief are banished from my deeps,
My eyes of light perceive my cherished Goal.
Though in the world, I am above its woe;
I dwell in an ocean of supreme release.
My mind, a core of the One's unmeasured thoughts;
The star vast welkin hugs my Spirit's peace.
My eternal days are found in speeding time;
I play upon His Flute of rhapsody.
Impossible deeds no more impossible seem;
In birth chains now shines Immortality.
By: Sri Chinmoy
Photo by: Jogyata, Sri Chinmoy Centre Galleries
I do not cease swimming in the seas of love,
rising with the wave, then descending;
now the wave sustains me, and then I sink beneath it;
love bears me away where there is no longer any shore.
From- (Diwan al-Hallaj, M. 34)
- Al Hallaj
Photo by: Unmesh, Sri Chinmoy Centre Galleries
Arjuna:
Tell me of the man who lives in wisdom,
Ever aware of the Self, O Krishna;
How does he talk, how sit, how move about?
Sri Krishna:
He lives in wisdom
Who sees himself in all and all in him,
Whose love for the Lord of Love has consumed
Every selfish desire and sense-craving
Tormenting the heart. Not agitated
By grief nor hankering after pleasure,
He lives free from lust and fear and anger
Fettered no more by selfish attachments,
He is not elated by good fortune
Nor depressed by bad. Such is the seer.
Picture Stories of Krishna at Seattle Art Museum
"Sri Krishna was a teacher from the very beginning of his life. Even before he entered into the physical world he acted as a teacher. Before he entered into his mother's womb, he came to his father who had been imprisoned by the king and said, "I am now going to enter into the physical world. As soon as I am born, you will take me out of this prison-cell and take me to Nanda" (one of his relatives). His father saw Sri Krishna vividly before he came into the world of manifestation, and to everybody's surprise, all of a sudden all the doors and gates of the prison were wide open, and his father took him to Nanda's place. Here he started his teaching."
From: Krishna - The Eternal Mystery by Sri Chinmoy
"We must realise that a life of failure is never permanent."
"Patience is the most sublime progress in disguise."
"Life needs these three things: effort, perseverance and patience."
Photo by Tejvan, Sri Chinmoy Centre Galleries
God's Grandeur
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs --
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
By: Gerard Manley Hopkins
Photo from: Sri Chinmoy Centre Galleries
World Harmony Run in Iceland
Links for September 9th
- Sri Chinmoy Inspiration New blog on self improvement and self transcendence
- Life Voices weekly podcast with inspiring people at Sri Chinmoy.TV
- World's Largest Pencil unveiled in New York - A new record for Ashrita.
- How to deal with Anger - 10 ways to deal with anger.
- The Power of Simplicity
- The Secret of Happiness - Desire less, aspire More. At Shane Magee.com
- Peaceful simplicity at Zen habits
Meditation
- The role of statues and pictures in meditation at Meditation Workshop.org
- How Long should I meditate for?
Photo from: World Harmony Run in Iceland
From: Shivaratri celebration in Belur Math.
Brothers offering their Dance to Lord Shiva in the Main Temple of Sri Ramakrishna. Belur Math was founded by Swami Vivekananda. Swami Vivekananda became the leader of the early Sri Ramakrishna movement. Vivekananda had a close to connection to Lord Shiva, the cosmic God of renunciation
Forgiveness
Forgiveness
Is mightier
Than the mightiest.
Negativity
Eventually digs
Its own grave
No human being
Shall remain
Indefinitely unrealised
By: Sri Chinmoy
From: Seventy-Seven Thousand Service Trees part 33
Photo by: Tejvan, Sri Chinmoy Centre Galleries
Sri Harmandir Sahib- Amritsar - Shabad with Pictures by Ip Singh
Based on: Mohan Mistry's song "Hey Ananta Divya Purush
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
- Emily Dickinson [1]
The mystery of death holds both fear and fascination. On the one hand we fear death - death of the body and death of the ego; to some, death is the extinction of all that we hold dear in the world.
But, if we live not only for worldly possessions, we come to feel that maybe there is more to life than this physical being. The Seers and mystics proclaim that death is but a transition: a chance for renewal and rebirth. Death is an end for the body; but for the soul, death is merely the process of discarding its worn-out garment and moving to something higher.
Death is not the end
Death can never be the end.
Death is the road.
Life is the traveller.
The Soul is the Guide
- Sri Chinmoy
"They will come back—come back again, as long as the red Earth rolls.
He never wasted a leaf or a tree. Do you think He would squander souls ?"
- Rudyard Kipling
References
[1] Because I could not stop for death
[2] Quotes on Death
[3] The Sack of the Gods R.Kipling
Photo credit: Pranlobha, Sri Chinmoy Centre galleries
As Once The Winged Energy
As once the winged energy of delight
carried you over childhood's dark abysses,
now beyond your own life build the great
arch of unimagined bridges.
Wonders happen if we can succeed
in passing through the harshest danger;
but only in a bright and purely granted
achievement can we realize the wonder.
To work with Things in the indescribable
relationship is not too hard for us;
the pattern grows more intricate and subtle,
and being swept along is not enough.
Take your practiced powers and stretch them out
until they span the chasm between two
contradictions...For the god
wants to know himself in you.
Photo by Kamalika Sri Chinmoy Centre Galleries
In the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad we get a most illumining description of the immortal Self and its primordial state of complete union with the all-pervading Divine consciousness.
In the Unitive state there is no suffering and pleasure, there is no birth and death; there is only a state of being.
At times the Self may incarnate in a certain body and have a dream like experience in and through this particular body. However whatever may befall this particular body, it is like a mere passing experience which leaves no lasting mark on the state of being.
Thus, when we feel I am hungry or I am in pain, what we really mean is that this particular body is hungry, this body has taken on the experience of pain. In ordinary life we perceive ourselves to be in a body, with a thinking mind and human emotion. But, this is not the real Self. At this point, the immortal words of the Bhagavad Gita throw light on the difference between the material world of impermanence and the Self's reality of absolute permanence
"Even as man discards old clothes for the new ones, so the dweller in the body, the soul, leaving aside the worn-out bodies, enters into new bodies. The soul migrates from body to body. Weapons cannot cleave it, nor fire consume it, nor water drench it, nor wind dry it." [1]