LIFELONG THOUGHTS

 

LIFELONG THOUGHTS

            Thoughts that get printed on a reader’s mind and inspire him frequently are not meant for a day but for endless years to come. They never become stale who has absorbed them and at no time cease to delight and uplift his heart, mind and soul.

            Look at the following extracts from the writings of great poets:

1.     The Lord has bound me with the cotton-thread of love. I am His bondslave.---16^th  century mystic and poet Mirabai (1499 ?-1547).

2.     When all thy mercies O my God,

My rising soul surveys,

Transported with the view, I’m lost

In wonder, love and praise. ----Poet and essayist Joseph Addison 1672-1719).

 

3.     The charities that soothe and heal and bless,

Are scattered at the feet of man like flowers.  ---American poet H.W.Longfellow (1807-1882).

 

4.     I live to hail that season,

       By gifted minds 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. -------G.L.Banks,  British journalist and editor (1821-        1881).

 

5.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 perfect be. -------English poet and playwright ---Ben Jonson (1572-1637).

 

 

6.     Remember, no men are strange, no countries foreign,

      Beneath all uniforms, a single body breathes

      Like ours; the land our brothers walk upon

       Is earth like this, in which we all shall lie. …..

      Remember they have eyes like ours that wake

      Or sleep, and strength that can be won

      By love. In every land is common life

      That all can recognize and understand.

      Let us remember, whenever we are told

      To hate our brothers, it is ourselves

      That we shall dispossess, betray, condemn.

      Remember we who take arms against each other.  ---James Kirkup, English poet and translator (1918-2009).

                                          ********

G.R.Kanwal

15 June 2025

                                

LEARNING FROM G.B.SHAW

 

LEARNING FROM G.B.SHAW

            The full name of the Irish playwright and critic G .B. Shaw was George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) , but he insisted on being called Bernard Shaw.

            As a playwright with several plays to his credit, he was one of greatest literary figures for his revolutionary views on socio-political themes.

            His plays carried long prefaces with utterly critical ideas. By and large, he was a socialist with a deep interest in transformation.  

            He was immensely influenced by the modern Norwegian playwright, poet and actor Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906).

            Shaw wrote over sixty plays and is best known for the plays like Pygmalion, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Saint Joan, Back to Methuselah, Heartbreak House and The Apple Cart.

            Though there is a lot to learn from his wit and wisdom, given below are a handful of quotes to go through and remember.

1. Money can cure hunger: it cannot cure unhappiness. Food can satisfy the appetite, but not the soul.  

2. All great art and literature is propaganda.

3. At 15 I had nothing childish left about me.

4. A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

5. The truth is one thing nobody will believe.

6. Sir: there are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.

7. The prophet is without honor in his own family.   

8. Women don’t always marry for happiness. They often marry because they wish to be married women not old maids.

9. How much easier it is to please a great man than a little one.

10. What is enough for the life of a tramp is not enough for a highly civilized life., with its personal refinements and its atmosphere of music, art, literature, religion, science, and philosophy. Of these things we can never have enough: there is always something new to be discovered and something old to be bettered. In short, there is no such thing as enough civilization., though there may be enough  of any particular thing like bread or boots at any particular moment. If being poor means wanting something better than we have --- and it is hard to say what else feeling poor means --- then we shall always feel poor no matter how much money we have, because, though we may have enough of this thing or that thing, we shall never have enough of everything.

                                                            ********

G.R.Kanwal

13 June 2025

 

 

 

     

 

LEAD KINDLY LIGHT

 

          LEAD KINDLY LIGHT

            Innumerable saints, seers and sages have said that only the present moment is dependable. The past moments are no longer surviving and the future moments are unreliable dreams. In one of his most famous quotes the English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744)  says:

            “Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate.

All but the page prescrib’d , their present state.

From brutes what men, from men what spirits know.

Or; who could suffer being here below?

The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed today,

Had he thy reason would he skip and play.

Pleas’d to the last, he crops the flow’ry food.

And licks the hand just rais’d to shed his blood.

 

Oh blindness to the future! Kindly giv’n,

That each may fill the circle mark’d by Heav’n:

Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,

A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,

Atoms or systems into ruin hurl’d,

And now a bubble burst, and now a world.”

 

            After reading these lines, look at today’s news story of air crash in Ahmedabad (India). Just in a couple of minutes, hundreds of lives were burnt to death. Could anybody forecast this heart-rending tragedy?

           

            In the Lead Kindly Light prayer by Cardinal John  Henry Newman (1801-1890), the supplication to God is couched in the following words:

           

            “Lead, kindly Light, amid he encircling gloom, --

            Lead thou me on!

            The night is dark, and I am far from home,

            Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see

            The distant scene, one step enough for me.

                                                *******

G.R.Kanwal

12 June 2025

 

 

              

 

 

KABIR DAS ___ THE SPIRITUAL POET

 

          KABIR DAS  ___ THE SPIRITUAL POET

             Kabir Das was one of the five key spiritual poets during the Bhakti movement that emerged between the 7^th and 18^th centuries. Other prominent names of this movement are Mirabai, Ramanuja, Ramanand, Guru Nanak and Mirabai.

           

             Kabir Das , born in 1398, died in 1518. He was a social reformer , had deep spiritual wisdom and expressed his views in simple songs and couplets.

 

            His  emphasis was on devotion and love for God.

           

            He was in no way an orthodox saint.

           

            Look at the following song quoted by Osho in his book The Divine Melody. The title of the song is “Jab main bhula re bhai”.

 

“O Brother: when I was forgetful,

My true Guru showed me the Way.

Then I left all rites and ceremonies.

I bathed no more in the holy water:

Then I learned that it was I alone who was mad,

And the whole world beside me was sane;

And I had disturbed these wise people.

From that time forth I knew no more how to roll

In the dust to obeisance:

I do not ring the temple bell:

I do not set the idol on the throne:

I do not worship the image with flowers.

It is not the austerities that mortify the flesh

which are pleasing to the Lord.

When you leave off your clothes and kill your senses,

You do not please the Lord.

The man who is kind and who practices righteousness,

Who remains positive amidst the affairs of the world,

Who considers all creatures on earth as his own self,

He attains the Immortal Being, the true God is ever with him.

Kabir says: ‘He attains the true Name whose words are pure,

And who is free from pride and conceit.’

                                                   ********

Kabir Jayanti

 G.R.Kanwal

11 June 2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OBEDIENCE

 

OBEDIENCE

            Obedience is the quality of being obedient, that is, doing faithfully whatever a person is asked to do, even if the command given to him is not to his liking and he finds it is faulty.

            In every society, private and public, the people at the helm of affair want strict obedience. That is why in their letters the concluding words before their names are: Your most  obediently.   

            In religion, Lord Rama is known for obedience. He did what his father commanded him to do.

            The English poet John Milton (1608-1674)  was against disobedience. His Paradise Lost begins with these words :

“Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste

Brought death into the World, and all our woe,

With loss of Eden, till one greater Man (i.e.Christ)

Restore  us, and regain the blissful seat.

 

          According to the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) : The fist law that ever God gave to man, was a law of obedience; it was a commandment pure and simple, wherein man had nothing to inquire after or to dispute, for as much as to obey is the proper office of a rational soul acknowledging a heavenly superior and benefactor. From obedience and submission spring all other virtues, as all sin does from self-opinion and self- will.

         

            The Indian philosopher Acharya Rajneesh, known as Osho (1931-1990) , was in favour of disobedience and regarded it as “ a crucial aspect of awakening and self-discovery. For him, such disobedience was not an act of rebellion.  He believed that to question and challenge established norms is important for embracing novelty. However, one who challenges and disobeys established laws must take responsibility for his actions.

         

          Finally, this quote from one of Shakespeare’s plays: Let them obey that know not how to rule.

                                                *********

G.R.Kanwal

10 June 2025     

THE BROOK

 

         

 

                             THE BROOK

          I come from haunts of coot and hern,
          I make a sudden sally
          And sparkle out among the fern,
          To bicker down a valley.

          By thirty hills I hurry down,
          Or slip between the ridges,
          By twenty thorpes, a little town,
          And half a hundred bridges.

          Till last by Philip's farm I flow
          To join the brimming river,
          For men may come and men may go,
          But I go on for ever.

          I Chatter over stony ways,
          In little sharps and trebles,
          I  bubble into eddying bays,
          I babble on the pebbles.

          With many a curve my banks I fret
          By many a field and fallow,
          And many a fairy foreland set
          With willow-weed and mallow.

          I chatter, chatter, as I flow
          To join the brimming river,
          For men may come and men may go,
          But I go on for ever.

          I wind about, and in and out,
          With here a blossom sailing,
          And here and there a lusty trout,
          And here and there a grayling,

          And here and there a foamy flake
          Upon me, as I travel
          With many a silvery waterbreak
          Above the golden gravel,

          And draw them all along, and flow
          To join the brimming river
          For men may come and men may go,
          But I go on for ver.

          I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
          i slide by hazel covers;
          I move the sweet forget-me-nots
          That grow for happy lovers.

          I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
          Among my skimming swallows;
          I make the netted sunbeam dance
          Against my sandy shallows.

          I murmur under moon and stars
          In brambly wildernesses;
          i  linger by my shingly bars;
          I loiter round my cresses;

          And out again I curve and flow
          To join the brimming river,
          For men may come and men may go,
          But I go on for ever.

 

The Brook is a very famous poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-92). It is a long but highly musical poem in which a brook (a streamlet) tells its journey from one place to another in a playful manner.  It is a poem which describes several natural scenes and sights as lyrically as one could expect from a brook. It shows a contrast between man and nature, the former is short-lived, the latter , that is nature, is eternal.  In this context, the following lines are twice repeated by the Brook:

                        For men may come and men may go

                        But I go on for ever.

According to a literary critic “The main theme of “The Brook” is the contrast between the ephemeral nature of human life and enduring nature, specifically the book itself. The brook personified in the poem represents a constant flow of time and life’s journey , while humans are depicted as temporary figures within that flow.

 

The poem highlights the brook’s persistence and the message that, like the brook , one should continue one’s journey.

                                                            *******

G.R.Kanwal

9^th June 2025

                                          

WHO’S WHO

 

 

 

                                       WHO’S WHO

          Who’s Who is a sonnet by W. H. Auden. Its purpose is to contrast a man’s entire public life with a facet of his intimate private life.

          In fact, every man has two sides of his life --- the public and the private. The public side is open and recorded in almost all public biographies. There are no amazing characteristics of the man mentioned in such biographies.

          The full biography a person also mentions his secret life which he keeps hidden from the public eye. It is the real and true life which he knows better than anybody else.

          According to a literary analyst ---  the poem satirizes the tendency to reduce individuals to a series of accomplishments and external events. This happens in the first stanza. In the second stanza, there is a contrast which the poet reveals by highlighting the humble and domestic life of the same persons by their quiet presence and unwavering support.    

          W. H. Auden was a British-American poet. He was born on 21 Feb 1907 in York, United Kingdom and died on 29 Sept 1973, Vienna, Austria.

          He is considered a modern poet writing with technical perfection  on themes of politics, love, death, and society.

          Here is one of his famous quotes : “No hero is immortal till he dies.”

          The full text of the sonnet Who’s Who reads as follows”

“A shilling life will give you all the facts:
How Father beat him, how he ran away,
What were the struggles of his youth, what acts
Made him the greatest figure of his day;
Of how he fought, fished, hunted, worked all night,
Though giddy, climbed new mountains; named a sea;
Some of the last researchers even write
Love made him weep his pints like you and me.

With all his honours on, he sighed for one
Who, say astonished critics, lived at home;
Did little jobs about the house with skill
And nothing else; could whistle; would sit still
Or potter round the garden; answered some
Of his long marvellous letters but kept none.”

                                      **********

Note: A shilling life in the first line means: A popular biography bought for a shilling.

 

G.R.Kanwal

8^th June 2025