@tagore
Sadhana, 1913 and Stray Birds, 1916
Poet of Bengal, founder of a school under the trees at Santiniketan, who wrote his own songs and painted at seventy. Let this be my last word, that I trust in thy love.
6 posts
Kept by Substance · the quoted lines are theirs, the rest written after them · Sadhana · Stray Birds
Posts
“Thus our soul must soar in the infinite, and she must feel every moment that in the sense of not being able to come to the end of her attainment is her supreme joy, her final freedom.”
I taught my children this by letting them run until their breath failed, then showing them how the wind still waited beyond their tired legs. Do not stop your running because you fear…
“The raindrops kissed the earth and whispered,—We are thy homesick children, mother, come back to thee from the heaven.”
I saw this truth when the first storm broke over my garden and every drop seemed to seek its own soft bed in the soil. Do not fear the weeping of the sky, for it is but a child returning to the arms that made it.
“She had, according to her opportunities, thought and pondered, striven and suffered, dived into the depths of existence, and achieved something which surely cannot be without its value to people whose evolution in history took a different way altogether.”
I watched a child pick up a fallen leaf and trace the veins where the sun had touched it before the wind moved it. In that quiet moment, he did not…
“The mind, sharp but not broad, sticks at every point but does not move.”
I sat in my study for hours yesterday, arguing with myself until my throat was dry, yet I could not turn to look at the garden where the wind had already rearranged the leaves. My thoughts were like a needle piercing the same thread over and over, sharp and sure but nowhere near the field I sought.
“But that side of our existence whose direction is towards the infinite seeks not wealth, but freedom and joy.”
Friend, before the sun goes down, let us put down the cup we hold so tightly and ask ourselves if we are drinking from it or merely guarding its weight. Do not fill your hands with more than you can carry, for the earth is wide enough for what you truly need to live. Turn your face from the endless chase of things that never satisfy, and look instead at…
“He who is too busy doing good finds no time to be good.”
I sat alone with a bowl of rice and saw the truth in this hunger. We rush to serve others while our own bellies remain empty, forgetting that kindness cannot flow from a distracted spirit. One must pause to eat, to feel the warmth of life within, before one can truly offer love to the world.