"On the seashore of endless worlds children meet
On the seashore of endless worlds is the great meeting of children."
(Tagore - from The Crescent Moon)
Truth loves its limits,
For there it meets the beautiful.
(Fireflies)
Reading Tagore is like looking at the stars, somehow you feel marveled, but you can't even begin to imagine from where all the wonderment comes. It is like looking at pictures from Kagaya or listening to Piana (you can listen to her - and almost anyone else - in Last.fm). Somehow the beauty, the mystery, you have been waiting for all your life, is there. It does not come from them, it is all around you, they just awaken you for it, and they're so much more magical for that!
The sky remains infinitely vacant
For earth there to build its heaven
With dreams.
There are wars in the world, and prizes, and knowledge, and fame, and religion, but, ultimately, everything revolves around this orgasmic beauty, of being alone - one with the universe - one with everything else. Where is the key to this magical realm? Perhaps just wanting, truly wanting, and leaving everything else we do not need - being Love.
This is an excerpt of Sadhana:
“The immortal being manifests himself in joy-form. His manifestation in creation is out of his fullness of joy. It is the nature of this abounding joy to realise itself in form which is law. The joy, which is without form, must create, must translate itself into forms. The joy of the singer is expressed in the form of a song, that of the poet in the form of a poem. Man in his role of a creator is ever creating forms, and they come out of his abounding joy.
This joy, whose other name is love, must by its very nature have duality for its realisation. When the singer has his inspiration he makes himself into two; he has within him his other self as the hearer, and the outside audience is merely an extension of this other self of his. The lover seeks his own other self in his beloved. It is the joy that creates this separation, in order to realise through obstacles of union. The amritam, the immortal bliss, has made himself into two. Our soul is the loved one, it is his other self. We are separate; but if this separation were absolute, then there would have been absolute misery and unmitigated evil in this world. Then from untruth we never could reach truth, and from sin we never could hope to attain purity of heart; then all opposites would ever remain opposites, and we could never find a medium through which our differences could ever tend to meet. Then we could have no language, no understanding, no blending of hearts, no co-operation in life. But on the contrary, we find that the separateness of objects is in a fluid state. Their individualities are even changing, they are meeting and merging into each other, till science itself is turning into metaphysics, matter losing its boundaries, and the definition of life becoming more and more indefinite. Yes, our individual soul has been separated from the supreme soul, but this has not been from alienation but from the fullness of love. It is for that reason that untruths, sufferings, and evils are not at a standstill; the human soul can defy them, can overcome them, nay, can altogether transform them into new power and beauty. The singer is translating his song into singing, his joy into forms, and the hearer has to translate back the singing into the original joy; then the communion between the singer and the hearer is complete. The infinite joy is manifesting itself in manifold forms, taking upon itself the bondage of law, and we fulfil our destiny when we go back from forms to joy, from law to the love, when we untie the knot of the finite and hark back to the infinite.” |
There are many texts from Tagore available on the internet. Here is the Wikipedia entry, check the bottom of the page (external links) and there will be plenty of sites to choose from. In Wikiquote you will also find many quotes. A beautiful page that blends pictures of loved blossoms with quotes from Tagore can be found here.
The world speaks to me in pictures,
My soul answers in music.
(Tagore)