LIFE’S MIRROR

LIFE’S   MIRROR

‘Life’s Mirror’ is a poem written by  American poet and author Madeline Bridges,  pen name of Mary Ainge De Vere (1844-1920).   She was born in Brooklyn and worked as Professor of Music Education in the School of Music at Belmont University.

            Madeline was a life-long poet. She was a prolific author who wrote a large number of poems and songs which are all-time popular. Two of her famous books are ‘Sing Together Children’ and ‘How to Lead Children’s Choir’.

             Her lyrical poem reproduced below is included in the anthologies of best loved poems of the world. The word ‘Mirror’ in the title of the poem is symbolic of literal as well as of figurative reflection, that is, not only our own mundane thoughts and deeds but also of spiritual truth, illumination, awareness and wisdom.

The whole poem is ‘A Thing of Beauty’ which as John Keats (1795-1821)  said in his long poem ‘Endymion’ is  a  joy for ever. Its loveliness increases.It will never pass into nothingness; but still will keep a bower quiet for us, and a sleep full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.     

             The poem reads as follows:

THERE ARE LOYAL HEARTS, there are spirits brave,

There are souls that are pure and true;

Then give to the world the best you have,

And the best will come back to you. 

Give love, and love to your life will flow,

A strength in your utmost need;

Have faith, and a score of hearts will show

Their faith in your word and deed.

Give truth, and your gift will be paid in kind,

And honor will honor meet;

And a smile that is sweet will surely find

A smile that is just as sweet 

Give sorrow and pity to those who mourn;

You will gather in flowers again

The scattered seeds of your thought outborne,

Though the sowing seemed but vain.

For life is the mirror of king, and slave----

‘Tis just what we are and do;

Then to the world the best you have,

And the best will come back to you.

           

            The moral of the poem is summed up in the last two lines.  To put it briefly, it is equivalent of ‘Do good and have good’ or ‘As you sow, so shall you reap’.

29^th November 2019                                ---G.R.KANWAL

SHAKESPEARE’S ADVICE TO A YOUNG MAN

              SHAKESPEARE’S ADVICE TO A YOUNG MAN

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was an English poet, playwright and actor.  He is universally considered as one the greatest dramatists of the world. Literary critics unanimous declare that “He was not of an age, but for all time.”

            In a well-known passage from his Lecture on ‘The Hero as Poet`, Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) asserted that Shakespeare was a more precious imperial heritage than even India. : “Consider now, if they asked us, will you give up your Indian Empire or your Shakespeare…. Really it were a grave question. Official persons would answer doubtless in official language.  But we, for our own part, should not we be forced to answer: Indian Empire, or no Indian Empire, we cannot do without Shakespeare! Indian Empire will go, at any rate some day; but this Shakespeare does not go, he lasts forever with us; we cannot give our Shakespeare.”    

            The lines that follow are extracted from Shakespeare’s famous play ‘Hamlet’. It will not be wrong to say that the advice given to young men through these lines is eternal. It will never become stale or irrelevant.  It may also be added that great poets like Shakespeare play the role of great teachers of mankind. Their importance is no less than that of sages, prophets, religious leaders and philosophers. That is why they continue to studied generation after generation.

                                  

                 Advice to A Young Man

            Give thy thoughts no tongue

Nor any unproportion’d thought his act.

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.

The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried

Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel,

But do not dull thy palm, with entertainment

Of each new-hatch’d unfledged comrade. Beware

Of entrance to a quarrel: but, being in,

Bear it that the opposer may beware of thee.

Give every man thy ear but few thy voice:

Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgement,

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy

For the apparel oft proclaims the man;

And they in France, of the best rank and station,

Are most select and generous, chief in that.

Neither a borrower, nor a lender be:

For loan oft loses both itself and friend;

And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

This above all, ----To thine ownself be true;

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

27^th November 2019                    ------G.R.KANWAL

  

ENDS AND MEANS

                                ENDS AND MEANS

In simple terms ends are aims, purposes, objectives, goals, targets, intentions, aspirations or whatever we want to achieve.  Means are the methods, resources, rules, procedures, regulations, systems, practices, processes, ways, approaches, manners, measures, modes, styles, courses of actions, or modus operandi which we may use to realize the ends set by us.

In many fields of life, people do not believe in the morality of the methods used by them.  According to them nothing succeeds like us.  They do not mind if they achieve the ends intended by them by hook or by crook.  Here, fair may be foul and foul may be fair.  In short, they can use unfair means to accomplish fair ends.  They decide to abide by the saying ‘All is fair in love and war’.  Such people are called smart, determined, pragmatists, self-willed or worldly wise. They justify the use of wrong methods for right ends by asserting that in a competitive world one cannot avoid the use of practically nor morally useful methods to compete with their rivals as also outdo them.  

 Such people are not afraid of God or any kind of punishment mentioned in the scriptures of their religions. Their conscience does not bite them when they consciously use wicked ways for virtuous ends. They have hardly any fear of the horrible consequences which result from committing a sin or a crime or any immoral deed or act. However, this state of their minds may not last for a long time. A moment may come sooner or later when changing circumstances and the fruits of their actions may compel them to feel that they have to reap today what they sowed yesterday. This situation may be severe enough to ruin not only their own life but also of their accomplices and kith and kith  

In this context, let us have a deep look at the views of Gandhiji, Lord Buddha and Leo Tolstoy. 

According to Gandhiji, impure means result in an impure end.  One cannot reach Truth by untruthfulness. The means may be likened to a seed, the end to a tree, and there is just the same inviolable connection between the means and the end, as there is between the seed and the tree. In Gandhiji’s opinion, it is pernicious to hold that so long as the end was good, any means, however violent or unjust, were justifying.

Relating the issue of ends and means to spirituality, Gandhiji said:: “There are two methods of attaining desired end. Truthful and Truthless. In our scriptures, they have been described respectively as divine and devilish. The final triumph of Truth is always assumed for the divine method.  Its votary does not abandon it, even though at times the path seems impenetrable and beset with difficulties and dangers, and a departure, however slight, from that straight path may appear full of promise.  His faith even then shines respectively like the mid-day sun and he does not despond.  With Truth for sword, he needs neither steel nor gunpowder.  He conquers the enemy by the force of the soul, which is Love.”

Speaking about the relations between politics and religion, Gandhiji says, “I cannot conceive politics as divorced from religion.  Indeed, religion should pervade every one of our actions.  Here religion does not mean sectarianism.  It means a belief in ordered moral government of the universe.

Let us now listen to what Lord Buddha says: “Surely if living creatures saw the results of their evil deeds, they would turn away from them in disgust.  But selfhood blinds them, and they cling to their obnoxious desires.  They crave for pleasure for themselves and they cause pain to others, when death destroys their individuality, they find no peace; their thirst for existence abides and their selfhood reappears in new births.  Thus they continue to move in the coil and can find no escape from the hell of their own making.

“And how empty are their pleasures, how vain are heir endeavours Hollow like the plantain-tree and without contents like the bubble.  The world is full of evil and sorrow, because it is full of lust.  Men go astray because they think that delusion is better than truth. Rather than truth they follow errors, which is pleasant to look at in the beginning but in the end causes anxiety, tribulation, and misery.”

   Russian writer and moral philosopher, Leo Tolstoy (1928- 1910) whom Gandhiji admired time and again, attributes the choice of evil methods to temptations. The world of men, says he, is unhappy only on account of temptations.  Temptations are everywhere in the world, they always were and will always will be; and man perishes from temptations.  Therefore men should give up everything, sacrifice everything, if only they not fall into temptation.  A fox, if it falls into a trap, will wrench off its paw and go away, and the paw will heal and it will remain alive.  Men should do likewise.  They should give up everything, if only not to sink into temptation. 

      To conclude, may I suggest we should not fall a prey to temptations to lead a happy and peaceful life both here as well as hereafter.  

26^th November 2019                                     ------G. R. KANWAL                 

VALUE EDUCATION IN A GRAMMAR BOOK

 VALUE EDUCATION IN A GRAMMAR BOOK

                        It is interesting to note that language books not only impart knowledge but also give character-building tips.  In a grammar book on English, I found a good many short sentences loaded with wit and wisdom.  They had not only a touch of moral and ethical values but also the essence of social, political, commercial, religious and philosophical experiences. 

Given below are fifty such extracts collected from a single book meant for secondary school students. . They are easily memorable and worth quoting whenever a suitable occasion is there.  Moreover, they are as good as the words coming out of the lips of learned guides, advisors and counsellors.

            It took me hardly an hour to pick them up and present them here for the benefit of all and sundry.   

1.     Still waters run deep.

2.     Cleanliness is next to godliness.

3.     Wisdom is better than strength.

4.     Without health there is no happiness.

5.     Every dog had his day.

6.     A live ass is better than a dead lion.

7.     There should not be much talk and little work.

8.     Good wine needs no bush.

9.     It is an ill wind that blows nobody good.

10.                        Hunger is the best sauce.

11.                         Small people love to talk of great men.

12.                        . Open rebuke is better than secret love.

13.                        Of two evils choose the less.

14.                        The longest lane has a turning.

15.                         While there is life, there is hope.

16.                         They never fail who die for a great cause.

17.                        There is nothing like staying at home for comfort.

18.                        An umbrella is of no avail against a thunderstorm.

19.                        We seldom see ourselves as others see us.

20.                         Whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased.

21.                         He that is content is rich.

22.                        He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty.

23.                        You who are mighty should be merciful.

24.                        You who seek wisdom should be humble.

25.                        He that is down, needs fear no fall.

26.                         Those who live in glass houses must not throw stones.

27.                         Who laughs last laughs best.

28.                        Those whom the gods love die young.

29.                         

30.                        He who has lost all hope has also lost all fear.

31.                        Time changes all things.

32.                        New brooms sweep clean.

33.                        A rolling stone gathers no moss.

34.                        A burnt child dreads the fire.

35.                        Amassing wealth often ruins health.

36.                        Success is not merely winning applause.

37.                        Rome was not built in a day.

38.                        Too many cooks spoil the broth.

39.                        38. Wisdom is too high for a fool.

40.                        Trust in God and do what is right.  

41.                        Neither a lender, nor a borrower be.

42.                         Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

43.                        Wisdom is better than rubies.

44.                        Heard melodies are sweet but those unheard are sweeter.

45.                        It is the common doom of man that he must eat his bread by the sweat of his brow.

46.                        Religion does not banish mirth but only moderates and sets rules to it.

47.                        It is a great loss to a man if he cannot laugh.

48.                        Natural thirst is more deliciously gratified with water, than artificial thirst is with wine.

49.                        The real dignity of a man lies in what he has, and not in what he is.

50.                        There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until person experience has brought it home.        

22^nd November 2019                                                 -----G. R. KANWAL

    

LIVING WITH A PURPOSE

                               LIVING WITH A PURPOSE

What should a person live for is a vital question. And it is a question which all human beings should be able to answer. A life without purpose, aim, ambition or aspiration is no life. It is not only meaningless but also wasteful. Ordinary people who lack reflective faculty do not think about the purpose of life, although they live an active, productive life in their respective fields of occupation. However, their contribution to the evolution of life is not very significant.  It is only those great social, political, religious, scientific, philosophical activists, scholars, researchers, discoverers and inventors who leave footprints on the sands of time and become men and women of all time.  Such people use their God-given abilities of head, heart and soul in the service of mankind most extraordinarily and become not only the lasting benefactors of mankind but also enlist themselves among the immortals.

Gandhi, Buddha, Mahavira, Mohammad, Guru Nanak, Shakespeare, Kalidas, Rabindranath Tagore, Alfred Nobel, Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Louis Pasteur, Sir J. C. Bose, Michael Faraday, George Stephenson, J.N.Tata, Henry Ford, Napoleon Bonaparte, Karl Marx, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, Subhash Chandra Bose, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel, Sir Mohammad Iqbal, and many more lived with a purpose , almost every day of their life, and consequently made themselves unforgettable in the annals of the world.

            Given below is a poem taken from the best poetry of the world.  Its author George Linnaeus Banks (1821-1881) was a British journalist, editor, poet, playwright, actor, orator and Methodist. But before I quote the poem let me add that the people who live with a purpose are highly creative and dynamic and never feel unmotivated or uninspired.   

The title of the poem is ‘What I Live For’.  Its beauty is that the poet here lives for multiple pleasures and duties of life.  He is not selective and isolationist but comprehensive and inclusivisi.   There is nothing for which he does not live because he thinks that this is the best way to fulfil ‘God’s great design.”

            WHAT I LIVE FOR

I live for those who love me,

Whose hearts are kind and true;

For the Heaven that smiles above me,

And awaits my spirit too’

For all human ties that bind me,

For the task by God assigned me,

For the bright hopes yet to find me,

And the good that I can do.

I live to learn their story

Who suffered for my sake

To emulate their glory,

And follow in their wake;

Bards, patriots, martyrs, sages,

The heroric of all ages,

Whose deeds crowd History’s pages,

And Time’s great volume make.

I live to hold communion

With all that is divine,

To feel there is a union

‘Twixt Nature’s heart and mine;

To profit by affliction,

Reap truth from fields of fiction,

Grow wiser from conviction,

And fulfil God’s great design.

I live to hail that season

By gifted ones foretold,

When men shall live by reason,

And not alone by gold;

When man to man united,

And every wrong thing righted,

The whole world shall be lighted

As Eden was of old.

I live for those who love me,

For those who know me true,

For the Heaven that smiles above me,

And awaits my spirit too;

For the cause that lacks assistance,

For the wrong that needs resistance,

For the future in the distance,

And the good that I can do.

21^st November 2019                                            G. R. KANWAL 

   

REMEMBERING INDIRA GANDHI

                                                           

REMEMBERING INDIRA GANDHI

Mrs. Indira Gandhi, a former Prime Minister of India, was born on 119^th   November 1917 at Allahabad now renamed as Prayagraj.  Her full name was Indira Priyadarshini Nehru.  She was married to Feroze Gandhi in 1942. A great politician, stateswoman and a central figure of the Indian National Congress, she was assassinated in New Delhi on 31^st October 1984 when she was a little older   than 66 years. Her resting place in Delhi is known as Shakti Sthal. India celebrates   her birthday as National Integration Day. According to her political party, the Indian Nation Congress, Mrs. Gandhi is a symbol of indomitable spirit of India’s unity, harmony and sovereignty.  Today i.e.14^th November 2019 is her 102^nd birthday.

            In this short memoriam, we would have a cursory look at her peculiarly informal education and also read a few important one-liners randomly picked up from her innumerable speeches.

            Mrs. Indira Gandhi‘s first and most important tutor was her own father Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru.  He was a leading freedom fighter and was frequently put into prison by the British Government for long periods. As a child, Mrs.  Gandhi had no settled life.  Her mother Mrs. Kamala Nehru (born in Delhi on 1^st August 1899) was also a freedom fighter.  She passed away on 28^th February 1936 at Lausanne in Switzerland as a patient of tuberculosis which was then. This pitiable situation of being motherless and having a father who was virtually a prison bird, her education could not have a regular start in any educational institution.  It was in such circumstances that her father Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru started educating her through letters written from the premises of the jail where he was serving his term.  

             The above-mentioned education through letters lasted over two years. Subsequently, the whole lot was published in the form of a book entitled “Glimpses of World History.”

As soon as the tutorial task was over, Pt. Nehru wrote what he called the Last Letter to Indira in August 1933. Here is a short extract from that letter:          

            “Your must not take what I have written in these letters as the final authority on any subject. A politician wants to have a say on every subject, and he always pretends to know much more than he actually does. He has to be watched carefully! These letters of mine are but superficial sketches joined together by a thin thread.  I have rambled on, skipping centuries and many important happenings, and then pitching my tent for quite a long time on some event which interested me.  As you will notice, my likes and dislikes are pretty obvious, and so also sometimes are my moods in gaol. I do not want you to take all this for granted; there may indeed be many errors in my accounts .A prison, with no libraries or reference books at hand, are not the most suitable place to write on historical subjects. I have had to rely very largely on the many note-books which I have accumulated since I began my visits to gaol twelve years ago. Many books have also come to me here; they have come and gone, for I could not collect a library here.”     

            Now, a few one-liners:

1.     Communalism, whether it is Hindu or Muslim or Sikh or by any other community, is deplorable.

2.     The older generation will always think that the younger people are wrong.

3.     Life has meaning only through dedication to great causes.

4.     The functioning of democracy should be judged not merely by the size of the electorate, or the percentage of people exercising their franchise, but by the faith which they have in representative institutions.

5.     To have discipline among children, it is necessary to have discipline among the whole population.

6.     The quality of education must be reflected in the quality of life, in its value and grace, in the culture of the social and individual mind and not the least in our intellectual and technological competence to face and master the problems before us.

7.      Engineers are not only builders in steel and concrete but also builders of the nation.

8.     It is obvious that farmers will pay heed to the call for national self-sufficiency only to the ex tent that the programme makes a difference to their lives.

9.     The policies of a country are motivated by its national interests, which are conditioned by Its heritage, traditions and the requirements of the people.

10.                         Dead or dying ideas not only obstruct change but can considerably harm individuals as well as nations.

11.                        We must strengthen and develop all our national languages and give due attention to the task of producing inexpensive books and translations in millions, so that they become vehicles of knowledge and culture, and keep abreast of the progress of science and technology.

12.                        It is necessary to inculcate a regard for every life, which implies respecting everything which maintains health and life, respecting the vital elements of air, water and earth.

13.                        Science is in itself a spirit of enquiry as well as a tool for modernising India a and Indian thought and liberating men from prejudice and superstition.l

14.                        On the issue of what we call secularism, we can never be aligned with any party which believes in one religion or one race or one language.

15.                        Youth is really an attitude of mind; youth is eagerness, the desire to know, to discover the feeling that all of life is not behind us but ahead of us; that the great adventure is not something that has happened, but is going to happen.    

19^TH NOVEMBER 2019               ------G. R. KANWAL

OLD AGE

                                                                      

                                                                         OLD   AGE

            Old age is a mixed blessing. To live a long life is the earnest wish of almost everybody. There are very few people who hate this world to such an extent that they would like to die young. In fact, most of us are afraid of death because we cannot know what happens to us when we are withdrawn from this world to which we get attached in many ways.

            Old people are free from many such weaknesses as they had in their youth. Now there is no passion, no impatience, no intolerance, no temptation, no bitterness, no sensuality, no lust, and no hankering after fleeting  pleasures of the body. There is a greater closeness with God.  In fact, old people direct their attention to holy books, chant the name of their Creator as frequently as possible.  When the night comes and sleep seems to be delaying itself. they recite some short or long prayer to induce sleep to come urgently and relieve them from the torture of insomnia.

            The days and the nights of old people are uncomfortable, if they are afflicted with any disease for which they depend upon multiple medications.  Another curse for some old people is their loneliness. If they are spouseless and have been left alone by their offspring, time becomes very heavy.

            Yet, old age can be maintained as a blessing if one does not sit idle. Action rather than contemplation is the secret of happiness in old age. Old people must keep themselves busy with some sort of work or hobby or social service, even if it is monetarily expensive and totally unprofitable.

Given below are the views of the two old heroes Ulysses and Rabbi Ben Ezra who appreciate old age enthusiastically and make it enjoyable for others.     

Ulysses is the Latin name of Odysseus, the mythological King of Ithaca, and the hero of Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey written in the 8^th century B.C. The word odyssey now stands for a journey of epic proportions.

             The words that follow are from Alfred Tennyson’ poem ‘Ulysses’:

“I cannot rest from travel: I will drink life to the lees….How dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use! Life piled upon life were all too little, and of one to me little remains: but every hour is saved from that eternal silence, something more, a bringer of new things; and vile it were for

some three years to store and hoard myself, and this grey spirit yearning in desire to follow knowledge, like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bound of human thought. ….Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; death closes all; but something ere the end, some work of noble note, may yet be done, not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. “      

                        Rabbi Ben Ezra is the hero of Robert Browning’s monologue of that name. The Rabbi in his poem is modelled on an actual figure, Abraham Ibn Ezra, a twelfth-century Neo-Platonist.

                       Browning was an optimist.  He celebrated life. While he loved the physical delights of life, he entertained none of the fears about growing old which we find in the poems of other poets. For him old age represented the culmination of a full, rich life. This is how the Rabbi begins his monologue:

                        Grow old along with me!

                        The best is yet to be.

            The last of life, for which the first was made:

                        Our times are in His hand

                        Who saith “A whole I planned,

            Youth shows but half: trust God: see all, nor be afraid1”

Somewhere in the poem, the Rabbi says: As the bird wings and sings, let us cry “All good things are ours, nor soul helps flesh more now, than flesh helps soul!

            These are in fact the words of Browning himself In whose humanism nothing is more characteristic than the importance he ascribes equally to the physical as well as the spiritual aspects of man’s twofold nature.  The first one  belongs to youth and the second to old age.

15^th November 2019                    --------G. R. KANWAL