T: Tagore’s Wisdom.

Dear Friend,

“It is hard to say in a few faltering words how I feel when voices greet me…from across the seas carrying to me the assurance that I have pleased many and have helped some and thus offering me the best reward of my life.[1]”

I encourage you in your pursuit of wisdom. It is a lifelong quest which invigorates our path:

 “The small wisdom is like water in a glass:
clear, transparent, pure.
The great wisdom is like the water in the sea:
dark, mysterious, impenetrable.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

Shakespeare mentioned that you have been seeking wisdom on the nature of love and I wanted to share this with you:

Tagore and his wife Mrinalini Devi, 1883.

Unending Love

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, its age-old pain,
Its ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers, shared in the same
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours –
And the songs of every poet past and forever.

 

I must also thank you for reminding me of my own precious children when they were young. I don’t know where the time went. They grew up faster than bamboo. As much as we observe our children getting taller and know their feet have already outgrown their brand new shoes, their minds and spirits are growing just as fast and need to be equally nourished.

“Children are living beings – more living than grown-up people who have built shells of habit around themselves. Therefore it is absolutely necessary for their mental health and development that they should not have mere schools for their lessons, but a world whose guiding spirit is personal love.”

Rabindranath Tagore

 “Don’t limit a child to your own learning, for she was born in another time.”

― Rabindranath Tagore

By the way, this morning while I was walking along the beach, I met your exuberant little black dog, Lady. She’s seemingly found a hole in your fence and had taken herself off for a walk. Wagging her tail with such exuberance that I was reminded of my own precious dog:

Lady.

 Recovery -14

 Every day in the early morning this faithful dog

Sits quietly beside my chair

For as long as I do not acknowledge his presence

By the touch of my hand.

The moment he receives this small recognition,

Waves of happiness leap through his body.

In the inarticulate animal world

Only this creature

Has pierced through good and bad and seen4Complete man,

Has seen him for whom

Life may be joyfully given,

That object of a free outpouring of love

Whose consciousness points the way

To the realm of infinite consciousness.

When I see that dumb heart

Revealing its own humility

Through total self-surrender,

I feel unequal to worth

His simple perception has found in the nature of man.

The wistful anxiety in his mute gaze

Understands something he cannot explain:

It directs me to the true meaning of man in the universe.

Rabindranath Tagore

By the way, might I congratulate you for taking the violin in up later in life. When I was an old man of 60, I took up painting for the first time. It is never too late to learn something new. Just remember that “you can not cross the sea simply by looking at the water.” That means you need to practice and I understand your violin and been idle on the shelf while you’ve been shut away in your writing cave. A writer starves when you shut down your horizons. Creativity needs to be fed.

 

Meanwhile, I have been teaching the children here how to make paper boats but they’re intent on teaching me Minecraft. I wonder who will win out in the end…

Your friend,

Tagore.

 References

[1] Letter from Rabindranath Tagore to Bhagwan Singh Gyanee December 27, 1931, South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA)