A PSALM OF LIFE

                                        A PSALM OF LIFE

A PSALM OF LIFE is one of ten best poems written by American writer, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882).  It is sub-titled “What THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST.’

Written more than 180 years ago in 1838, the poem has an immortal message for all people, especially the youth.   Didactic in tone, it is vigorously motivational.  It shows the romantic attitude of the poet towards the shortness of human life which can be used , like great men before us, to do sublime  deeds  which future  generations may like to emulate.  There is an evidently existential element in the poem. The poem wants the readers to forget the past, shun idleness, seize the current moment, act immediately and find themselves farther than ever before. He does not want them to trust the uncertain future however pleasant it may appear to be.  His clarion call is to keep on acting in the living present.  He has   also a word of rejection against the religious pessimists who preach that man is mortal; he is merely a handful of dust and ultimately returns to dust after spending a short time on this earth.   According to him, life is not a sheer dream; its soul is real and the grave is not its final goal. Here, the poet reminds us of the words of Lord Krishna to Arjuna in the Gita when he says: that the world is a battle field where an individual has to fight like a brave hero and leave behind him fadeless footprints on the sands of time which coming generations may feel inspired to follow. This is the type of dynamics which the heart of the young man in the subtitle of the poem wants to hear from the psalmist. Unfortunately most of the Christian psalmists as well as the preachers of other faiths and religions deliver uninspiring messages from their pulpits. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is different.  He is a new age motivator and inspirer for a full-spirited active life each moment of the day of a very short life where each individual has a lot of work to do. 

            The poem reads as follows:

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

“Life is but an empty dream!”

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not it goal;

“Dust thou art, to dust returnest,”

Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and no sorrow

Is our destined end or way;

But to act, that each tomorrow

Find us further than today.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

And our hearts though stout and brave,

Still like muffled drums are beating

Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,

In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!

Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no future, howe’er pleasant!

 Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act, ---in the living Present!

Heart within, and God o’erhead.

Lives of great me all remind us

We can our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,

Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then be up and doing,

With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

Learn to labour and to wait.

                                                                                    --------G. R. Kanwal

Meditation: Some Reflections

                                 Meditation: Some Reflections

          The dictionary meanings of meditation go as: contemplation, musing, pondering, considering, reflecting, deliberating, ruminating, brooding and concentrating.  It is also a synonym  of reveries, brown  study and thoughtfulness.

            The religious results of meditation are however different from its literal implications.

            Ac cording to Gandhiji whatever object a man meditates upon, he must assuredly sees God through it.  However, according to him God has no shape and no attributes. So why not meditate on Him? If that is impossible, let us meditate on OMKAR (The syllable OM), or on a figure imagined by ourselves.

            True meditation, says Gandhiji, consists in closing the eyes and ears of the mind  to all else except the object of one’s devotion.  Hence, the closing of eyes during prayer is an aid to such concentration. Man’s conception of God is naturally limited.  Each one has, therefore, to think of Him as best appears to him, provided that the conception is pure and uplifting.

            English Bishop Jeremy Taylor (1613-6) holds that meditation is the tongue of the soul and the language of our spirit; and our wandering thoughts in prayer are but the neglects of meditation and recessions from that duty; according as we neglect meditation, so are prayers imperfect, ----meditation being the soul of prayer and intention of our spirit.

            Finally let us see how Lord Buddha  replied to a disciple when he said: “Teach me, O Lord, the meditations to which I must devote myself in order to let my mind enter into the paradise of the pure land.” The great Lord told the discipline:  There are five meditations.  The first meditation is the meditation of love in which you must so adjust your heat that you long for the weal and welfare of all beings, including the happiness of your enemies.    

          The second meditation is the meditation of pity, in which you think of all beings in distress, vividly  representing in your imagination their sorrows and anxieties so as to arouse a deep compassion for them in your soul.

          The third mediation is the meditation of joy in which you think of the well-being of others and rejoice with their rejoicings.

          The fourth mediation is the mediation on impurity, in which you consider the evil consequences of corruption, the effects of wrongs and evils.  How trivial is often the pleasure of the moment and how fatal are its consequences!

          The fifth meditation is the meditation on serenity, in which you rise above love and hate, tyranny and thralldom, wealth and want, and regard your own fate with impartial calmness and perfect tranquility.

                                                -------G. R. KANWAL

                  

Where Is The Light?

        Where Is The Light?

In his bouquet of songs called Gitanjali which won him Nobel Prize in 1913, Rabindranath Tagore ((1861-1941) asks: Light, oh where is the light?  And then answers: “Kindle it with the burning fire of desire! There is the lamp but never a flicker of a flame, -------is such thy fate, my heat!

          Towards the end of this song, he says: The night is black as a black stone.  Let not the hours pass by in the dark.  Kindle the lamp of love with thy life.

          In poetry as well as in religion , light is stated to be a symbol of knowledge, reason, understanding, deep comprehension, discovery of inner reality , mental illumination, access to  the avenues of goodness, beauty and truth and in Buddhist doctrine, the source of the ultimate reality, which leads to  transcendence and ultimately to  Nirvana. Light of this type is equated with that of the SUN which acts as the avenger of evil forces and darkness.

In day to day life, light also symbolizes positive attitude and optimism. 

In the Bible, light is defined as goodness and righteousness, which are two essential qualities of a true son of God.

Our concern here is with the holy light, not the one which is produced by bulbs, lamps, candles and the burning of wood and charcoal. In his poem “Auguries of Innocence”, English poet William Blake (1757-1827) says:

He who doubts from what he sees/Will ne’er believe, do what you please. If the Sun and Moon should doubt,/They’d immediately go out…..

God appears, and God is Light, /To those poor souls who dwell in night; /But does a Human Form display/To those who dwell in realms of Day.

          Another English poet who had a mystical mindset says: “Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house, i.e. this world, begin to close upon the growing boy, but he beholds the light, and which it flows, he sees it in his joy; the youth, who daily farther from the east must travel, still is Nature’s Priest, and by the vision splendid is on his way attended; at length the Man perceives it die away, and fade into the light of common day.

          The light of the common day mentioned by Wordsworth is the material light of desires and appetites which gratify the body but causes stress to the soul because man gets extremely involved in the darkness of the world and gets removed from the light of God whom he has to confront after losing his existence here and now.

The light of the body is not continuous; it is interrupted by periods of darkness. Contrarily, the light of the soul is everlasting and once its lamp is lit b y any individual with an irreversible resolve, it does not fade but continues to increase and accumulate. Such an individual becomes a Buddha, an enlightened one. Redeemed from all worries and anxieties, doubts and apprehensions.

An American spiritualist, William Ellery Channing (1894-80), rightly says: Science and art may invent splendid modes of illuminating the apartments of the opulent; but these are all poor and worthless compared with the light which the sun pours freely, impartially, over hill and valley, which kindles daily the easer and western sky; and so the common lights of reason and conscience and love are of more worth and dignity than the rare endowments which celebrity to a few.

The ‘sun’ mentioned in this quotation is no different from the SUN mentioned as one of the symbols of light in Para 3 above.

                                                                   ----G. R. KANWAL  

     

Gandhiji’s Views on Religion

Gandhiji’s Views on Religion

On his 150^th birth anniversary let us recollect  some religious  views of Gandhiji , which  are as appreciable  today as they ever were  and  will remain so in future, too..     

 1.My religion is based on truth and non-violence. Truth is my God. Non-violence is the means of realising Him.

2.Rama, Allah and God are to me convertible terms.

3.. For me, Rama and Rahim are one and the same deity.

4. By Ram Raj I do not mean Hindu Raj. I mean by Ram Raj, Divine Raj, the Kingdom  of God.

5. My Hinduism teaches me to respect all religions.  In this lies the secret of Ramarajya. 

6. Hinduism has absorbed the best of all faiths of the world and in that sense Hinduism was not an exclusive religion.

7..Hinduism with its message of ahimsa is to me the most glorious religion in the world.

8.My Hindu instinct tells me that all  religions are more or less true.

9.Hindu Dharma is like a boundless ocean teeming with priceless gems.

10. Belief in one God is the cornerstone of all religions.

11. The final goal of all religions is to realise the essential oneness.

12.” Do  not worry in the least about yourself, leave all worry to God,” this appears to be the commandment in all  religions.

                                                                                                - G. R. KANWAL

     

Gandhiji’s Views on Religion

On his 150^th birth anniversary let us recollect  some religious  views of Gandhiji , which  are as appreciable  today as they ever were  and  will remain so in future, too..     

 1.My religion is based on truth and non-violence. Truth is my God. Non-violence is the means of realising Him.

2.Rama, Allah and God are to me convertible terms.

3.. For me, Rama and Rahim are one and the same deity.

4. By Ram Raj I do not mean Hindu Raj. I mean by Ram Raj, Divine Raj, the Kingdom  of God.

5. My Hinduism teaches me to respect all religions.  In this lies the secret of Ramarajya. 

6. Hinduism has absorbed the best of all faiths of the world and in that sense Hinduism was not an exclusive religion.

7..Hinduism with its message of ahimsa is to me the most glorious religion in the world.

8.My Hindu instinct tells me that all  religions are more or less true.

9.Hindu Dharma is like a boundless ocean teeming with priceless gems.

10. Belief in one God is the cornerstone of all religions.

11. The final goal of all religions is to realise the essential oneness.

12.” Do  not worry in the least about yourself, leave all worry to God,” this appears to be the commandment in all  religions.

                                                                                                - G. R. KANWAL