PATH TO TRANQUILITY

 

PATH TO TRANQUILITY

It was just yesterday that I happened to lay my hands on the  book “The Path To Tranquillity”.   It is a collection of the daily meditations of His Holiness The Dalai Lama.  This book was  first published by Penguin Books  in1998.  The first  meditation is dated 1^st January and the last one  31^st December. The back cover page of the book carries  two comments. According to the first comment,  the book “is a collection of sayings, prayers and stories drawn from the life and  teachings of one of  the world’s greatest spiritual teachers. It remains perhaps the best distillation of the Dalai Lama’s philosophy of compassion and non-violence. The second comment is a part of the review published in The Hindu and reads as follows: “This book is a rich storehouse of eternally valid wisdom and philosophic guidance and counsel…One emerges from a close reading of the book, calmed, ennobled and sustained.”

The word ‘tranquillity’ means peace, repose, calmness, serenity,  composure and un-excitability. It is sought by everybody but attained by a few. It can be attained through meditation but not so easily. To quote  the Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti (11^th May 1895 --17^th February 1986): “ The beginning of meditation is self-knowledge, which means being aware of every movement of thought and feeling, knowing all the layers of consciousness, not only the superficial layers but the hidden, the deeply concealed activities….The superficial, conscious mind is occupied with Its daily activities, earning a livelihood, deceiving others, exploiting others, running away from problems ---to know the deeply concealed activities, the hidden motives , responses, thoughts and feelings, there must be tranquillity in the conscious mind. “

    In his foreword to the book His Holiness The Dalai Lama observes: All human beings want to be happy and to avoid suffering. In my limited experience, if we are to achieve this , it is immensely valuable to be able to cultivate and  maintain a positive state of mind…one of the most effective means of doing so is  to engage in meditation…which can sometimes mean sitting in a particular formal posture and stilling the mind, it can also include continuously familiarizing ourselves with  positive thoughts.”

       I have found  The Path To Tranquillity a most  readable book.  Each day’s meditation shows a new way to get rid of restlessness and march towards the goal of eternal tranquillity.       olHH       

       To conclude, here are two specimens of the daily meditations dated 30^th May  and 31^st May.

      1. Encountering sufferings will definitely contribute to  the elevation of your spiritual practice, provided you are able  to  transform  the calamity and misfortune into  the path. (May 30).

       2. Discipline is a supreme ornament and, whether worn by  the old, young or middle-aged, it gives birth only to happiness. It is perfume ‘par excellence’ and, unlike ordinary perfumes which travel only with the wind, its refreshing aroma travels spontaneously in all directions. A peerless ointment, it brings relief  from the hot pains of delusion.  (31^st May).                                                                

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30^TH May 2021                                                                                                            G.R.Kanwal                                                     

WHEN WILT THOU SAVE THE PEOPLE

 

WHEN WILT THOU SAVE THE PEOPLE

            ‘WHEN WILT THOU SAVE THE PEOPLE?’ is a poem written by the English poet Ebenezer Elliott. He was born on  17^th March 1781 and passed away on 1^st December 1849.

According to his biographers Ebenezer was known as the Corn Law rhymer for his  leading the fight to repeal Corn Laws, which were causing hardship and starvation among the poor and though a factory owner himself his single-minded devotion to the welfare of the labouring classes won him a sympathetic reputation long after his poetry ceased to be read.

 Like Walt Whitman, Ebenezer was  a writer of genuine democratic feelings who voiced the aspirations of the people in their own simple language.

            “When Wilt Thou Save The People?” seeks God’s mercy and forgiveness,  not for kings and lords, but nations; not thrones and crowns, but men whom he calls flowers of God’s heart. It is a lyrical hymn seeking mercy for common men, and women , and children who are as fair as God’s own angels .

              At this time of world-wide Covid-19 pandemic, when millions of lives have already been lost,  this old hymn symbolically seeking mercy of God  to end any further loss of lives deserves to be chanted by all of us.        

            THE POEM READS AS FOLLOWS

WHEN wilt thou save the people?

O God of mercy, when?

Not kings and lords, but nations!

Not thrones and crowns, but men!

Flowers of Thy heart, O God, are they;

Let them not pass, like weeds, away,

Their heritage, a sunless day.

God, save the people.

 

Shall crime bring crime forever,

Strength aiding still  the strong?

Is it Thy will, O Father,

That man shall toil for wrong?

No, say Thy mountains; No, Thy Skies;

Man’s clouded sun shall brightly rise,

And songs ascend, instead of sighs.

God save the people!

 

When wilt Thou save the people?

O God of mercy. When?

The people, Lord,  the people,

Not thrones and crowns, but men!

God, save the people,

Thine they are,

Thy children as ‘Thine angels fair.

From ice, oppression, and despair,

God, save the people!                                     *********

 

 

28^th May 2021                                                                                                             G.R.Kanwal

 

PANDIT JAWAHARLAL NEHRU

 

PANDIT JAWAHARLAL NEHRU

(14.11.1889---27.5.1964)

                                    Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was  the first Prime Minister of India. During his tenure as Prime Minister, he was popularly known as the architect of modern India. Though he had a considerable fondness for religion and philosophy, his chief interest lay in science and technology. The development of scientific temperament in all fields of life was the main item on his political and socio-economic agenda.

 

On his 57^th death anniversary , here are some of his most valuable thoughts on  science and technology.

 

1.Science is the spirit of the age and the dominating factor of the modern world. Even more than the present, the future belongs to science and to those who make friends with science and seek its help for the advancement of humanity.     

 

2.The process of change through science and technology is seen everywhere. As it spreads,  the old gods or the old supreme values cease to have  the same validity as before. Physics and mathematics lead to new conceptions which are hard to grasp, where matter disappears and all is energy. One might almost say that the solid world dissolves into some mathematical concept or illusion, perhaps approaching the concept of maya.

 

3. My own main interest in science arises naturally from the social consequences of science than science itself.  We have to face major political, economic and in the main social problems of a growing country and of raising the level of hundreds of millions of our people. It is clear that we cannot solve these problems without taking recourse to science and its application.

 

4. Science ultimately is a search for truth but sometimes that search leads us  to an uncomfortable conclusion; because one has to search for truth and search for it without fear and as objectively as possible.

 

5.Science does not believe in authoritarianism of anything, and, if I may say so with all respect, in Public Affairs and Politics, even in Religion, Science challenges that too, not disrespectfully but simply because it does not wish to accept anything without adequate proof being afforded to it. It does not accept pure speculation. It may indulge in it occasionally but that has to be justified by experiment.

 

6. Without Science there is no future for any society, unless it is controlled by some spiritual impulses, there is also no future.

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27^th May 2021                                                                                                             G.R.Kanwal

      

LORD BUDDHA’S SECRET OF HAPPINESS

 

 

LORD BUDDHA’S SECRET OF HAPPINESS

Lord Buddha (c.500s BCE) is also known as Gautama Buddha, Siddhartha Gotama , Siddhartha Gautama and Buddha Shakyamuni.

Buddha is not a name but a title which one earns after becoming Enlightened. In Sanskrit, a buddha is one who has shed , for all to come ,  the sleep of ignorance .

 Another title by which Lord Buddha is known is Tathagata.  It means ‘The Perfect One.’ There is also one more title ‘The Blessed One.’

According to the Bhagavadgita, the Song of Lord Krishna : What  is night for all beings is the time of waking for the disciplined soul; and what is the time of waking for all beings is the night for the sage who expels all illusions and achieves a rare clarity of vision.  

 In his broadcast on the All India Radio on  May 19, 1956, Dr. S. Radhakrishnan  said (he was then the Vice-President  of India) that prince Gautama was the son of a minor ruler of Kapilavastu, grew up in luxury, married Yashodha, had a son, Rahul, and led a sheltered life where the world’s miseries were hidden. On four occasions when he went out of his palace, he is said to have met an old man and felt that he was subject to the frailties of old age; met a sick man and felt that he was liable to sickness; met a corpse and felt that he was also subject to death; and met an ascetic with a peaceful countenance who had adopted  the traditional ways of seeking religious  truth. The sight of the holy man, healthy in body and cheerful in mind ( without any comforts of life) convinced Gautama  that the pursuit of religion is the only goal worthy of man. It makes him independent of  the temporary  trials and fleeting pleasures of  the world. So, he himself decided to renounce the world; left his home, wife and child, put on  an ascetic’s garb and habits, and fled into the forest to meditate on the causes of human suffering , and how to overcome them.

Then he spent six years in  the study of the most complex  religious doctrines, , practiced severest self-denials, starved himself to mortify physical appetites to attain the  knowledge of truth, but because it did not happen and  he was about to  stumble out of life, he gave up all these practices, resumed normal life, refreshed himself with the water of the river Nairanajana, accepted milk pudding and after gaining physical health and mental vigour  spent seven weeks in the profoundest meditation under the shade of the Bodhi tree where at one night , towards the dawn , he attained enlightenment.

Now he began to address himself in the third person as the Tathagata and announced that he would go to Benares where he would preach the Law of eternal life.  For this, he travelled from place to place, touched the lives of all and sundry, taught  for forty-five years the beauty of charity, the  joy of  renunciation and  the need for simplicity and equality.

 At the age of eighty, when he took leave of the beautiful city of Vaishali and his disciples including Ananda wept and  thought that they had lost their master, he said to them: “Do not weep, do not despair.” Man must depart from all that he has. The doctrine which I now preach is your master.

“ Verily, I say unto you, O monks: All things are perishable; work out your deliverance with earnestness ”

According to Dr. Radhakrishnan these were his last words: “ his spirit sank into the depths of mystic absorption and when he had attained to that degree where all thought, all conception disappears, and when the consciousness of individuality ceases, he entered into the supreme nirvana.”                    

   As for ‘ the secret of happiness’  Lord Buddha spelt it out in his  famous sermon at Benares. It consists of the “Four Noble Truths, which  read as follows: I. Existence is unhappiness. II.  Unhappiness is caused by selfish craving. III. Selfish craving can be destroyed . IV. It can be destroyed by the  following eightfold path:

   1.Right understanding. 2. Right purpose. 3. Right speech. 4. Right conduct. 5. Right vocation. 6. Right effort. 7. Right awareness. . 8. Right concentration.

  May I conclude by saying that whoever walks on this eightfold path will find himself in a perfect state of happiness.  

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27th May 2021                                                                        G. R. Kanwal                           

 

THRILLING IDEAS OF DR. A.P.J. ABDUL KALAM

   

THRILLING IDEAS OF DR. A.P.J. ABDUL KALAM    

Dr. Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam was born in Rameswaram (Tamil Nadu) on 15th October 1931. He passed away on 27th July 2015 as the 11^th President of India from 2002 to 2007.

Dr. Abdul Kalam was the third President to have been honoured with India’s highest civilian award  Bharat Ratna in 1997 for his contribution to the scientific research and modernisation of defence technology. 

He is popularly known as the Missile Man of India for his contribution to the development of ballistic missile and launch vehicle technology.

He also played a pivotal role in organising India’s Pokhran-II nuclear tests in 1998.                   

Gifted with a multi-faceted personality, Dr. Kalam was widely popular with all sorts of people, especially children and  the youth. 

He was a poet, loved music and delivered vigorously stimulating speeches unlike any other                     scientist of his time. .   

His commitment to professional excellence and simplicity of lifestyle won him the hearts of  millions of people  not only in India but also in other parts of the world.  

It is almost impossible to imagine that he will ever be forgotten by the scientific or  political                          fraternity of India.

             What follows is a small specimen of his thrilling ideas.

1.Climbing to the top demands strength, whether it is to the top of Mount Everest or to the top of one’s  career. 2. Success in any mission requires single-minded devotion. 3. If you fail, never give up because FAIL means first attempt in learning. 4.All of us do not have equal  talent but we do have an equal opportunity to develop our talents. 5.Be active,  take on responsibility, work for the things you believe in. 6. We cannot change our future , but we can change our habits which will surely change our future. 7. It is easy to defeat someone, but very hard to win someone. 8. If you want to shine like a sun, first burn like a sun. 9. A person’s  best teacher is his last mistake. 10. Learn to distinguish between beneficial and malevolent forces and choose  correctly between them.  11. Self-respect comes with self-reliance. 12. Become one with yourself and surrender yourself to the wish of God. 12. We have to dream before our dreams come true. 13. Be willing to accept what you cannot change. 14. Success demands single-minded devotion to one’s goal. 15. Great dreams of great dreamers are always transcended. 16. We need a spirit of victory, a spirit that will carry us to our rightful place under the sun, a spirit, which will recognise that we, as inheritors of a proud civilisation, are entitled to a rightful place on this planet. 17. Science seeks truth by  reasoning; in one way science and spiritualism seek the same divine blessings for doing good for the people. 18. I have to be more than what I am  today. 19. One should be ever eager to learn. 20. Belief in divinity and destiny is not superstition. Superstition is dogma and ritual. I am divine in the sense that there is divinity in everybody.

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24^th May 2021                                                                  G. R. Kanwal         

IMMORTALITY

 

IMMORTALITY

            Immortality is the strongest desire of all human beings. Whether they get it or not is both an illusion and reality.  Illusion in this case is depressive; reality stimulative.  

New-borns don’t have to think about mortality or immorality. It is adults whom they  go on troubling throughout life. The redeeming feature is that some prophets of immortality are also available in person or in their writings to help them soothe their troubled minds .   

            Look at  the following quotes:

The seed dies into a new life, and so does man. Those who live in the Lord never see each other for the last time.  The spirit of man, which God inspired, cannot together perish with this corporeal clod. Whatsoever that be within us that feels, thinks, desires, animates, is something celestial, divine, and, consequently imperishable. What springs from earth dissolves to earth again, and heaven-born things fly to their native seat. Nothing short of an eternity could enable men to imagine, think , and feel, and to express all they have imagined, thought and felt. Immortality which is the spiritual desire, is  the intellectual necessity. It is the divinity that stirs within us; it is heaven itself that points out a hereafter and points out eternity to man. A voice within us speaks that startling word, “Man thou shalt  never die!

            The most believable message of immortality comes from Lord Krishna’s address to Arjuna in the Gita. The Lord says:

“Arjuna, the wise man to whom pain and pleasure are alike, and who is not tormented by these contacts, becomes eligible for immortality. The unreal has no existence, and the real never ceases to be. The soul is never born nor dies; nor  does it exist on coming into being. For it is unborn, eternal, everlasting and primeval; even though  the body is slain, the soul is not.

            And this is what Ralph Waldo Emerson says in his poem Brahma : If the red slayer think he slays,/Or if the slain think he is slain,/They know not well the subtle ways/I keep, and pass, and turn again.”     

            And finally what Henry Wordsworth Longfellow, who extends the scope of  immortality , says in his poem : Dedication from Michael Angelo: a Fragment

“Nothing that is shall perish utterly,

But perish only to revive again

In other forms, as clouds restore in  rain

The exhalations of  the land and the sea.

Men build their house from the masonry

Of ruined tombs; t he passion and the pain

Of hearts, that long have ceased to be.

So from old chronicles, where sleep in dust

Names  that once filled the world with trumpet tones,

I build this verse; and flowers of song have thrust

Their roots among the loose disjointed stones,

Which to this end I fashion as I must.

Quickened are they that touch the Prophet’s bones.

 

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22^nd May 2021                                                                        G. R. Kanwal

 

 

EMERSON’S VIEW OF A NATION’S STRENGTH

 

EMERSON’S VIEW OF A NATION’S STRENGTH

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882),  the American  poet, essayist and literary journalist, who was also a great mystic, spiritualist and philosopher had great trust in the faculties and virtues of man.  

For laying the unshakeable foundations of a great nation, he preferred to any other  alternative the devotion of brave and tireless men.

And  the foundations of man himself , according Emerson,  are not in matter, but in spirit whose element is eternity. Undoubtedly, there are , who in sleep-walking, seek money or power, but if you wake them, they instantly quit these false sources  and leap to the true ones.

In his famous essay “The Oversoul” , Emerson tells his readers: “The soul in man is not an organ, but animates and exercises all  the organs; is not a function, like the power of memory, of calculation, of comparison, but uses  these as hands and feet; is not a faculty but a light; is not the intellect and the will; but the master of the intellect and the will; is  the background of our being, in which they lie --- an immensity not possessed and that cannot be possessed. From within and from behind, a light shine through us upon things and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all”.

It is this vision of the enlightened man which Emerson had in his mind when he said  in the following poem : “Not gold but only men  can make/A people great and strong.  

A NATION’s STRENGTH

What makes a nation’s pillars high

And its foundations strong?

What makes it mighty to defy

The foes  that found it strong?

 

It is not gold. Its kingdoms grand

Go down in battle shock,

Its shafts are laid on sinking sand,

Not on abiding rock.

 

Is it the sword? Ask the red dust

Of empires passed away,

The blood had turned their stones to rust,

Their glory to decay.

 

And is it pride? Ah, that bright crown

Has seemed to nations sweet,

But God has struck Its luster down

In ashes at his feet.

 

Not gold but only men can make

A people great and strong,

Men who for truth and honor’s sake

Stand fast and suffer long.

Brave men who work while other sleep,

Who dare while others fly

They build a nation’s pillars deep

And lift them to the sky.

 

                Finally, a critic has rightly said  that one goes to Emerson, not for conclusions, but for beginnings, not for knowledge, but for provocation.

 

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18^th May 2021                                                                                                    G. R. Kanwal

A FEW WORDS ABOUT HEALTH

 

A FEW WORDS ABOUT HEALTH

            Health is defined as a state of the body, the mind and the heart. So, we have phrases like good health, excellent health,  poor health, ill health, physical health, mental health, spiritual health, etc.

In simple terms, a  man is healthy when he has no illness or disease.

In a modern society there is provision for a health care department which is supposed to be responsible for looking after the health of all the people in a country or an area. However, it is unfortunate that although such a  department exists all over the world,  most of the humanity continues to be unhealthy. Innumerable diseases are becoming  a common feature to be treated by latest medicines and surgical skills. All said and done, Man, the Son of God,  remains unhealthy, physically, mentally, and spiritually.

It should be forgotten that besides all other health-friendly aids, good health requires practice of cardinal virtues like chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness and humility, and abstention from deadly sins like pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and idleness

Here are four eternal advisories about the importance and maintenance of good health.

“Regularity in the hour of rising and retiring, perseverance in exercise, adaptation of dress to the variations of climate, simple and nutritious food , and temperance in all things are necessary branches of the regiment of health. ----American author Mrs. Lydia H. Sigourney (1791-1865).

Health is certainly more valuable than money, because it is by health that money is procured; but thousands and millions are of small avail to alleviate the tortures of the gout, to repair the broken organs of sense, or resuscitate the powers of digestion. Poverty is, indeed, an evil from which we naturally fly; but let us not run from one enemy to another, nor take shelter in the arms of sickness.----English author Samuel  Johnson (1709-84).

Regimen is better than physic.  Everyone should be his own physician. We ought to assist , and not force nature. Eat with moderation what agrees with your constitution. Nothing is good for  the body what we cannot digest. What medicine can improve digestion? Exercise. What  will  recruit strength? Sleep. What  will alleviate incurable evils? Patience. ---French poet and dramatist Francois Marie de  Voltaire (1694-1778).

Few things are more important to a community than the health of its women. If strong is the frame of the mother, says a proverb, the son will  give laws  to the people. And in nations where all men give laws, all men need mothers of strong frames. – American clergy Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911).

TAILPIECE  

In the current merciless onslaught of Covid-19, accept medication but  also rely on  meditation and  prayer.  

16^th May 2021                                                                                     G.R.Kanwal  

     

                

THE NOBLE NATURE

 

THE NOBLE NATURE

“The Noble Nature” is a poem written by the English poet and playwright Ben Jonson (1572-1637).

Whereas William Shakespeare (1564-1616) is taken as the greatest dramatist of the Elizabethan era, there were some of his contemporaries who cannot be omitted. The chief among them was Ben Jonson. He had a good education in Westminster school, patronized  by the historian Camden.

To begin with, Jonson served in the war in Netherlands which was being carried on against the tyranny of Philip II.

On his return to London, he joined the players and like Shakespeare , acted and altered plays, until he found his own power as a dramatist.

One of his first plays was Everyman In his humour, first  acted in 1596.

            Jonson was a man with a strong sense of what was right, and had an honest hatred of every kind of folly of affectation. He is still celebrated for his comedies including Volpone and The Alchemist. His forte in these and other plays is the exposure of human vices like greed, vanity, pretension, cupidity and mendacity.   

            Ben Jonson is not a great poet like Shakespeare, yet some of his poems like Hymn to Diana, Still to Be Neat, The Hour Glass, To Celia and The Noble Nature find place in English anthologies. These poems are marked by profuse sweetness and grace.

            The text of The Noble Nature reads as follows:

It is not growing like a tree

In bulk  doth make man better be;

Or standing long an oak three hundred year,

To fall a log at last, dry, bald and sere;  

 

A lily of a day

Is fairer far in May,

Although it fall and die that night;

It was the plant and flower of Light.

In small proportions we just beauties see;

And in short measures life may be perfect be.

 

The words noble, lily and oak in this poem have been used here as symbols. Noble stands for impressiveness in quality and grace. Lily is a symbol of peace, purity, hope, faith and innocence. Although, Jonson does not present the oak in a favourable light, it too, is an established symbol of strength, endurance, longevity and majesty.

The difference between a lily and an oak is that the lily is instantly creative.  It exhibits its beauty, grace and floral  light at the very moment it blossoms.  It does not keep its lovers waiting.  By contrast, the oak tree  lacks this quality. It takes about 150 years to become useful even as farm timber.

Jonson rightly claims that a lily of a day is fairer far in May than an oak tree which  stay for three hundred years only to  fall like a log dry, bald and sere.

Finally, a similar thought by the American journalist  Gamaliel Bailey (1807-59). According to him we live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; in feelings not in figures on the dial; we should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.

 

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15^th May 2021                                                                                     G. R. Kanwal   

       

SELECTED SAYINGS OF PROPHET MUHAMMAD

 

SELECTED SAYINGS OF PROPHET MUHAMMAD

 

There is absolutely no doubt that that Prophet Muhammad shed a brilliant light on all the problems  humanity has to  tackle and  grapple with .  His sayings very few of which are reproduced below  deserve to be studied by everybody who wants to live a perfectly happy, heathy , safe, and blessed life.     

(1). Keep fast and eat also, stay awake at night and sleep also, for verily there is a duty on you to your body, not to labour overmuch, so that ye me not get ill and destroy yourselves; and verily there is a duty on you to your eyes, ye must sometimes sleep and give them rest; and verily there is  a duty on you to your wife, and to your visitors and guests that come to see you; ye must talk to them.

(2). O Lord ! grant to me the love of Thee; grant that I love those who love Thee; grant that I may do the deeds that win Thy love; make Thy love dearer to me than self, family or  wealth.

(3). My cherisher hath ordered me nine things : (1) To reverence Him, externally and internally, (2) to speak true, and with propriety, in prosperity and adversity; (3) moderation in affluence and poverty; (4) to benefit my relations and kindred, who do not benefit me; (5) to give alms to him who  refuseth me; (6) to forgive him who injureth me; (7) that my silence should be in attaining a knowledge of God ; (8) that when I speak, I should mention Him; (9) that  when I look on God’s creatures, it should be as an example for them: and God hath ordered me to direct in that which is lawful.

(4). There is a polish for everything that taketh away rust; and the polish for the heart is  the remembrance of God.’ The companions said , ‘Is not fighting with the infidels also like this?’ Lord Muhammad said, ‘No, although he fight until his sword be broken! ‘

(5).  Verily for God are one hundred loving kindnesses; one of which He hath sent down amongst men, quadrupeds and every moving thing upon the face of earth, and forgive one another; and then by it they are kind to each other; and by it the  animals of the wilds are kind to their young; and God hath  reserved ninety-nine loving kindnesses, by which He will be gracious  to His creatures on the last  day.

(6) . One hour’s meditation on the work of the Creator is better than seventy years of prayer.  

(7).  He who leaveth home in search of knowledge, walketh in the path of God.

(8).  When you speak, speak the truth; perform when you promise, discharge your trust; commit no fornication; be chaste; have no impure desires; withhold your hands from striking, and from taking that which is unlawful and bad. The best of God’s servants are those who, when seen,  remind of God: and  the worst of God’s servants are those who carry tales about, to do mischief and separate friends, and seek for the defects of the good.

(9). Acquire knowledge. It  enableth its possessor to distinguish right from wrong; it lighteth the way to Heaven; it is our friend in the desert, our society in solitude, our companion when friendless; it guideth us to happiness; it  sustaineth us in misery; it is an ornament amongst  friends, and an armour against enemies.

(10). With knowledge man rises to  the heights of goodness and to a noble position, associateth with sovereigns in this world, and attaineth to the perfection of happiness in  the next.

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12h May 2021                                                                                     G. R. Kanwal 

THE GOLDEN AGE

 THE  GOLDEN AGE

 Chronically , ‘The Golden Age’ is known as the best period in the history of a civilization or a particular country.  In the poem that follows,  we have an impressively concise and poetically very  beautiful picture of  the Golden Age of Greek mythology spanning the period circa 70 BC to AD 18.

According to literary historians the term Golden Age in literature relates to the Works and Days of Hesiod, and is part of the description of temporal decline of the state of peoples through five Ages,  the Golden Age being the first and the one that belonged to the  Golden Race of humanity which reflected  primordial peace, harmony, stability and prosperity.

The text quoted in this write up is John Dryden’s English translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses 1, Dryden’s translation dated 1693 was entitled Third Miscellany.

             For us, the charm of the poem lies in the amazing contrast of the society of the Golden Age and the one in which we are living today.     

            The poem reads as follows:

The Golden age was first; when man, yet new,

No rule but uncorrupted reason knew;

And, with a native bent; did good pursue.

Unforced by punishment, unawed by fear

His words were simple, and his soul sincere.

Needless was written law, where none opprest ;

The law of man was written in his breast.

No suppliant crowds before  the judge appeared;

No court erected yet, nor cause was heard;

But all was safe, for conscience was their guard.

The mountain trees in distant prospect please,

Ere yet the pine descended to the seas;

Ere sails were spread, new oceans  to explore;

And happy mortals, unconcerned for more,

Confined their wishes to their native shore.

No walls were yet, no fence, not moat, nor mound:

Nor drum was heard, nor trumpet’s angry sound;

Nor swords were forged; but, void of care and crime,

The soft creation slept away their time…

 

To this next came in course the Brazen Age:

A warlike offspring prompt to bloody rage,

Not impious yet…

 

Hard Steel succeeded then;

And stubborn as the metal were the men…

The landmarks limited to each his right;

For all before was common as the light…

And double death did wretched man invade

By steel assaulted, and by gold betrayed.

 

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11^th May 2021                                                                                     G.R.Kanwal

GRIPPING LINES FROM SOME ENGLISH POEMS

 

GRIPPING LINES FROM SOME ENGLISH POEMS

While I was having a look at some old English poems written by distinguished poets, I realised certain lines were so vigorous that they not only delighted me in  the way good poetry should, but also gripped my heart, mind and soul. So, I decided to share them with the readers of this write up. But before I do so, let us read some definitions of poetry.

a)      Poetry is the criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty. (Matthew Arnold).

b)       Poetry is the identity of all other knowledges; the blossom and fragrance of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language.” (S.T.Coleridge).

c)      Poetry does not become intimate to us through the intellect alone, it comes to us through temperament, one might almost say, enters us through the pores of the skins.”

            The lines which I picked up from a handful of poems  read as follows:

1.A thing of beauty 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 dream, and health, and quiet breathing. (John Keats, 1795-1821, Endymion).

 

2. We look before and after,

And pine for what is not:

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought (P.B.Shelley, 1792-1822, To A Sky Lark).

            3. The sea of faith

             Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore

             Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled;

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating to the breath

Of the night-wind down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

 

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So  various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night. (Matthew Arnold, 1822-88, Dover Beach).

 

4. The world is too much with us; late and soon,

 Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We Have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this,  for everything, we are out of tune,

It moves us not,--Great God! I’d rather be

A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. (William Wordsworth, 1750-1830, The World Is Too Much With Us; Late Or Soon).  

 

5.When the voices of children are heard on the green

And laughing is heard on the hill,

And heart is at rest within my breast

And everything else is still.

 

“Then come home, my children,  the sun is gone down

And the dews of night arise;

Come, come, leave off play, and let us away

Till  the morning appears in the skies.”

      

             “No, no, let us play, for its yet day

            And we cannot go to sleep;

            Besides, in the sky the little birds fly

            And the hills are all covered with sheep.”

 

            “Well, well, go and play till the light fades away

            And then go home to bed.”

The little ones leaped and shouted and laughed

And all the hills echoed. (William Blake, 1757-1827, Nurse’s Song).

 

6. He prayeth best , who loveth best

            All things both great and small;

            For the dear God who loveth us,

He made and loveth all. (S.T.Coleridge, 1772-1834,The Rime of Ancient Mariner).

 

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9^th May 2021                                                               G. R. Kanwal