Rabindranath Tagore Quotes on beauty of life. Keeping eternal perspective. (September 2022)

Susan's Thursday morning note September 8, 2022
Quotes by Rabindranath Tagore - Nobel Peace Price Winner 1913 in Literature

Good morning!  My angel of dawn peered into the west window this morning with a bright moon over her shoulder.  Several minutes later she peered into the east window handing me bright yellow sunlight.  Encouraging me to begin this day looking towards the heavens before looking around.  Faithfully again handing us all this beautiful gift of today.  Early stillness before life enters.  Cricket trying so hard to befriend me knowing I won’t.  Teaching me persistence.  Maybe he’ll win by my letting him also enter this day.  This week I reread words from the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, the first non-English literature winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1913.  His words help give peace to birth, to pain, to death.  To see all as a gift.

Don’t limit a child to your own learning, for she was born in another time.

The smile that flickers on a baby’s lips when he sleeps- does anyone know where it was born? Yes, there is a rumor that a young pale beam of a crescent moon touched the edge of a vanishing autumn cloud, and there the smile was first born in the dream of a dew-washed morning.

Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.

These days my sole desire is that our lives should be simple and straightforward, that all around us there should be peace and cheerfulness, that our way of life should be unostentatious and full of bounty, that our needs should be small and our aims high and our efforts unselfish and our work for others more important than our work for ourselves.

The fish in the water is silent, the animals on the earth is noisy, the bird in the air is singing. But man has in him the silence of the sea, the noise of the earth and the music of the air.

If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.

I have on my table a violin string. It is free to move in any direction I like. If I twist one end, it responds; it is free.  But it is not free to sing. So I take it and fix it into my violin. I bind it and when it is bound, it is free for the first time to sing.

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.

I ask for a moment’s indulgence to sit by thy side. The works that I have in hand I will finish afterwards.  Away from the sight of thy face my heart knows no rest nor respite, and my work becomes an endless toil in a shoreless sea of toil.  Today the summer has come at my window with its sighs and murmurs; and the bees are plying their minstrelsy at the court of the flowering grove.  Now it is time to sit quiet, face to face with thee, and to sing dedication of life in this silent and overflowing leisure.

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.

When you came you cried and everybody smiled with joy; when you go smile and let the world cry for you.

I have spent many days stringing and unstringing my instrument while the song I came to sing remains unsung.

And because I love this life
   I know I shall love death as well.
The child cries out when
   From the right breast the mother
Takes it away, in the very next moment
   To Find in the left one
Its consolation.

If someone smells a flower and says he does not understand, the reply to him is: there is nothing to understand, it is only a scent. If he persists, saying: that I know, but what does it all mean? Then one has either to change the subject, or make it more abstruse by saying that the scent is the shape which the universal joy takes in the flower.

If I can’t make it through one door, I’ll go through another door- or I’ll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.

A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.

I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.

Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, 
     but to be fearless in facing them.
Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, 
     but for the heart to conquer it.

Reach high, for stars lie hidden in you. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.

Words to now have running through our minds today.  Again words from across the ocean over a century ago affecting our lives this moment.  The quiet mornings this poet wrote in India.  What birds songs were in the air?  What was the color of the sunrise and sunsets as the thoughts first made their way to the paper?  What pen was used?  What paper?  Was there a little child in the room looking at this poet as the words and thoughts formed?  Was he caring for anyone sick in his home as he wrote?  Did he have the eyes of a cat or dog looking at him across the room?  Did he hear rain?  Did he live near a river and walk to think during the day?  Did he see the stars when he awoke early?  What were the scenes behind the words?  Quiet.  Quiet inside.  Looking towards the heavens from India.  Tagore’s angel of dawn arrived faithfully at his window each morning, encouraging him a century ago to the enter his day as our angel peers faithfully each morning peering into ours encouraging us to enter.  To have words in our mind that give us eternal perspective.  To see the beauty of eyes we meet.  To hear the birds that sing as we leave our homes.  “But man has in him the silence of the sea, the noise of the earth and the music of the air.” Thank you for again letting me enter your Thursday morning.  Tonight we will all have the chance to write down moments of our day.  Will we be able to capture a few of the sand grains as they travel through our timers?  Can we stop a few moments mentally and notice the gifts handed to us today.  Eyes of those we love.  Sounds of birds.  Quiet.  Sunlight.  Moonlight.  Beautiful.  Life.  Regardless of what this day may bring we all will be given these gifts.  Susan 

Latin for this week:
silence of the sea – mari silentiumnoise of the earth – vox terrae
music of the air – musica caeli