Is This the End?

Is this the end of all that we have been,
And all we did or dreamed, –
A name unremembered and a form undone, –
Is this the end?

A body rotting under a slab of stone
Or turned to ash in fire,
A mind dissolved, lost its forgotten thoughts, –
Is this the end?

Our little hours that were and are no more,
Our passions once so high
Being mocked by the still earth and calm sunshine, –
Is this the end?

Our yearnings for the human Godward climb
Passing to other hearts
Deceived, while smiles towards death and hell the world, –
Is this the end?

Fallen is the harp; shattered it lies and mute;
Is the unseen player dead?
Because the tree is felled where the bird sang,
Must the song too hush?

One in the mind who planned and willed and thought,
Worked to reshape earth’s fate,
One in the heart who loved and yearned and hoped,
Does he too end?

The Immortal in the mortal is his Name;
An artist Godhead here
Ever remoulds himself in diviner shapes,
Unwilling to cease

Till all is done for which the stars were made,
Till the heart discovers God
And the soul knows itself. And even then
There is no end.

— Sri Aurobindo – Is This the End?

Make the interests of others your own

Widen your shriveled heart, make the interests of others your own and serve them as much as you can by sympathy, kindness, presents and so forth. So long as one enjoys the things of this world and has needs and wants, it is necessary to minister to the needs of one’s fellow men. Otherwise one cannot be called a human being. Whenever you have the opportunity, give to the poor, feed the hungry, nurse the sick – do service as a religious duty and you will come to know by direct perception that the person served, the one who serves and the act of service are separate only in appearance.

— Sri Ananadamayi Ma

The 15 laws of life

1. Love Is The Law Of Life
   All love is expansion, all selfishness is contraction. Love is therefore the only law of life. He who loves lives, he who is selfish is dying. Therefore, love for love’s sake, because it is law of life, just as you breathe to live.

 

2. It Is Your Outlook That Matters
   It is our own mental attitude, which makes the world what it is for us. Our thoughts make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light.

 

3. Life Is Beautiful
   First, believe in this world – that there is meaning behind everything. Everything in the world is good, is holy and beautiful. If you see something evil, think that you do not understand it in the right light. Throw the burden on yourselves!

 

4. It Is The Way You Feel
   Feel like Christ and you will be a Christ; feel like Buddha and you will be a Buddha. It is feeling that is the life, the strength, the vitality, without which no amount of intellectual activity can reach God.

 

5. Set Yourself Free
   The moment I have realised God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him – that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.

 

6. Don’t Play The Blame Game
   Condemn none: if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so. If you cannot, fold your hands, bless your brothers, and let them go their own way.

 

7. Help Others
   If money helps a man to do good to others, it is of some value; but if not, it is simply a mass of evil, and the sooner it is got rid of, the better.

 

8. Uphold Your Ideals
   Our duty is to encourage every one in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth.

 

9. Listen To Your Soul
   You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.

 

10. Be Yourself
    The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourselves!

 

11. Nothing Is Impossible
    Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest heresy to think so. If there is sin, this is the only sin – to say that you are weak, or others are weak.

 

12. You Have The Power
    All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.

 

13. Learn Everyday
    The goal of mankind is knowledge…now this knowledge is inherent in man. No knowledge comes from outside: it is all inside. What we say a man ‘knows’, should, in strict psychological language, be what he ‘discovers’ or ‘unveils’; what man ‘learns’ is really what he discovers by taking the cover off his own soul, which is a mine of infinite knowledge.

 

14. Be Truthful
    Everything can be sacrificed for truth, but truth cannot be sacrificed for anything.

 

15. Think Differently
    All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.

— Swami Vivekananda

Man attains a human birth, why does he waste and destroy it?

Joy is brief.
Sorrow and grief are endless.
The mind’s an elephant,
mad, amnesiac.

Air and flame burn as one,
just as when the moth, its eye enchanted by light,
flies straight into the lamp,
and wing and fire flare together.

Who hasn’t found
restful peace in a moment of pleasure?
So you brush aside the truth,
and chase the lies you hold so dear.

At the end of your days
you feel the temptation, you covet joy,
even though old age and death
are close at hand.

The world’s embroiled in illusion, error:
this is the process always in motion.
Man attains a human birth:
why does he waste and destroy it?

— Kabir – Moth – The Weaver’s Songs – Page 151

To become love

It’s only when you become love — in other words, when you have dropped your illusions and attachments — that you will “know.” As you identify less and less with the “me,” you will be more at ease with everybody and with everything. Do you know why? Because you are no longer afraid of being hurt or not liked. You no longer desire to impress anyone. Can you imagine the relief when you don’t have to impress anybody anymore? Oh, what a relief. Happiness at last! You no longer feel the need or the compulsion to explain things anymore. It’s all right. What is there to be explained? And you don’t feel the need or compulsion to apologize anymore. I’d much rather hear you say, “I’ve come awake,” than hear you say, “I’m sorry.” I’d much rather hear you say to me, “I’ve come awake since we last met; what I did to you won’t happen again,” than to hear you say, “I’m so sorry for what I did to you.”

— Anthony de Mello – A Changed Person – Page 96

Lovers are in each other all along

The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.
They’re in each other all along.

— Jalalud’din Rumi – Ghazal 1246 (Translation: Coleman Barks)

I was dead

i was dead
i came alive
i was tears
i became laughter

all because of love
when it arrived
my temporal life
from then on
changed to eternal

love said to me
you are not
crazy enough
you don’t
fit this house

i went and
became crazy
crazy enough
to be in chains

love said
you are not
intoxicated enough
you don’t
fit the group

i went and
got drunk
drunk enough
to overflow
with light-headedness

love said
you are still
too clever
filled with
imagination and skepticism

i went and
became gullible
and in fright
pulled away
from it all

love said
you are a candle
attracting everyone
gathering every one
around you

i am no more
a candle spreading light
i gather no more crowds
and like smoke
i am all scattered now

love said
you are a teacher
you are a head
and for everyone
you are a leader

i am no more
not a teacher
not a leader
just a servant
to your wishes

love said
you already have
your own wings
i will not give you
more feathers

and then my heart
pulled itself apart
and filled to the brim
with a new light
overflowed with fresh life

now even the heavens
are thankful that
because of love
i have become
the giver of light

— Jalalud’din Rumi – Ghazal 1393 (Poetic Translation)

Self-Abandonment

Beauty is not something put together by man. Beauty is when there is complete self-abandonment, a total relinquishing of the self, the “me”, with all its aches and loneliness, with all its despairs, anxieties, and fears. Then you will live in this world as a human being.

— Jiddu Krishnamurti – Talks in Europe

Neither time…

Neither time nor space exists for the man who knows the eternal.

Space and time are real for the man who is yet imperfect and space is divided for him into dimensions, time into past, present and future. He looks behind him and sees his birth, his acquisitions, all that he has rejected. That past is being continually modified by the present which is ever being added to it. From the past man turns his eyes to the future where death, the unknown, the darkness, the mystery, await him.

Fascinated by these he can no longer detach himself from them. The mystery of the future holds for him the fulfillment of all his desires, which the past has denied to him, and in his dreams he flies to that brilliant horizon where happiness must exist, where he must seek it.

Fatal error!

No one will ever pierce the infinite mystery of the future -impenetrable in its evanescent illusion- neither magician, prophet nor God! But on the contrary it will be the mystery which will engulf man, which will not let him escape, which will break the mainspring of his life.

Life is not to be approached through the past, nor through the mirage of the future. Life cannot be approached through intermediaries, nor conquered for another.

That discovery can only be made in the immediate present -by the individual for himself and not for others- by the individual who has become the eternal “I”. That eternal “I” is created by the perfection of the self – perfection in which all things are contained, even human imperfections. Man, not yet having achieved that condition of life in the present, lives in the past which he regrets, lives in the future where he hopes, but never in the present which he ignores. This is the case with all men.

Balanced between the past and the future, the “I” is poised as a tiger ready to spring, as an eagle ready to fly, as the bow at the moment of releasing the arrow.

This moment of equilibrium, of high tension, is “creation.” It is the fullness of all life, it is immortality.

The wind of the desert sweeps away all trace of the traveller.

The sole imprint is the footstep of the present. The past, the future… sands blown by the wind.

— Jiddu Krishnamurti – From Darkness to Light – page 5