Spiritual Poetry

Thanks for posting this Andrew--its beautiful. I love Dilip Kumar Roy's poetry.
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You are Me, and I am You

You are me, and I am You -- what is the difference between us?
We are like gold and the bracelet, or water and the waves.
If I did not commit any sins, O Infinite Lord,
how would You have acquired the name, 'Redeemer of sinners'?

When I am in my ego, then You are not with me.
Now that You are with me, there is no egotism within me.
I am joined in true love with You, Lord.
I am joined with You, and I have broken with all others.

Without the Name of the Lord,
all ostentatious displays are useless.

O Love, who else but You could do such a thing?
O Patron of the poor, Lord of the World,
You have put the canopy of Your Grace over my head.

Only You can grant Mercy to that person whose touch pollutes the world.
You exalt and elevate the lowly, O my Lord of the Universe;
You are not afraid of anyone.

by: Ravidas (1400-1448?)

 

Why
THE murmur of a bee
A witchcraft yieldeth me.
If any ask me why,
'T were easier to die
Than tell.

The red upon the hill
Taketh away my will;
If anybody sneer,
Take care, for God is here,
That's all.

The breaking of the day
Addeth to my degree;
If any ask me how,
Artist, who drew me so,
Must tell!


by: Emily Dickinson

 

Melt with the Heart Inside

In the Four Eternal Vedas,
In the study and reading of scripts,
In sacred ashes and in Holy Writs
And muttering of prayers
You will not find the Lord!
Melt with the Heart Inside
and proclaim the Truth.
Then you will join the Light-
Life without servitude.


- Sivavakkiyar

 

Incredible.



Friend, tell me, was it He Himself, my love, who came last night?
Did these my frail and mortal eyes behold His heavenly light?
Who came, loves breeze, and left my garden laughing with flame-flowers,
Moon’s minstrel, playing on His flute in my lone, wistful bowers?
Who came and lit a lovely virgin lamp in my darkling room
To slake my timeless thirst with nectar of His beauty’s bloom?
Friend, tell me, was it He Himself, my love, who came last night?
Did these my frail and mortal eyes behold His heavenly light?

Did these my mortal ears thrill to the call of His anklet- bells?
These hands up-gather the dust of His feet to fill my heart where He dwells
His magic Presence, lo, dissolving life’s din instantly?
Who came to ravish the earth and air with a fragrant ecstasy?
Someone drew nigh and touched me; was it my Beloved, friend, say?
Did these my frail and mortal eyes behold His heavenly Ray?

Sometimes, somewhere, an epiphany reveals His primal bliss,
When Krishna, the Swain of Brindaban, invites us to be His,
Aye, even today! All destined things, friend, do indeed unfold,
But can the impossible transpire, the incredible be told,
When Mira is reborn to laugh and cry with Him to play:
Still tell me, did these my frail eyes behold His heavenly Ray?



Ma Indira Devi.

 

Shiva
On the white summit of eternity
A single Soul of bare infinities,
Guarded he keeps by a fire-screen of peace
His mystic loneliness of nude ecstasy.
But, touched by an immense delight to be,
He looks across unending depths and sees
Musing amid the inconscient silences
The Mighty Mother's dumb felicity.

Half now awake she rises to his glance;
Then, moved to circling by her heart-beats' will,
The rhythmic worlds describe that passion-dance.
Life springs in her and Mind is born; her face
She lifts to Him who is Herself, until
The Spirit leaps into the Spirit's embrace.


by: Sri Aurobindo

 

.

 

From 'Savitri' by Sri Aurobindo.


In God concealed the world began to be,
Tardily it travels towards manifest God:
Our imperfection towards perfection toils,
The body is the chrysalis of a soul:
The infinite holds the finite in its arms,
Time travels towards revealed eternity.
A miracle structure of the eternal Mage,
Matter its mystery hides from its own eyes,
A scripture written out in cryptic signs,
An occult document of the All-Wonderful's art.
All here bears witness to his secret might,
In all we feel his presence and his power.
A blaze of his sovereign glory is the sun,
A glory is the gold and glimmering moon,
A glory is his dream of purple sky.
A march of his greatness are the wheeling stars.
His laughter of beauty breaks out in green trees,
His moments of beauty triumph in a flower;
The blue sea's chant, the rivulet's wandering voice
Are murmurs falling from the Eternal's harp.
This world is God fulfilled in outwardness.
His ways challenge our reason and our sense;
By blind brute movements of an ignorant Force,
By means we slight as small, obscure or base,
A greatness founded upon little things,
He has built a world in the unknowing Void.
His forms he has massed from infinitesimal dust;
His marvels are built from insignificant things.
If mind is crippled, life untaught and crude,
If brutal masks are there and evil acts,
They are incidents of his vast and varied plot,
His great and dangerous drama's needed steps.

 

Song Of A Dream

Once in the dream of a night I stood
Lone in the light of a magical wood,
Soul-deep in visions that poppy-like sprang;
And spirits of Truth were the birds that sang,
And spirits of Love were the stars that glowed,
And spirits of Peace were the streams that flowed
In that magical wood in the land of sleep.

Lone in the light of that magical grove,
I felt the stars of the spirits of Love
Gather and gleam round my delicate youth,
And I heard the song of the spirits of Truth;
To quench my longing I bent me low
By the streams of the spirits of Peace that flow
In that magical wood in the land of sleep.



- Sarojini Naidu

 

Someone Should Start Laughing
I have a thousand brilliant lies
For the question:

How are you?

I have a thousand brilliant lies
For the question:

What is God?

If you think that the Truth can be known
From words,

If you think that the Sun and the Ocean

Can pass through that tiny opening Called the mouth,

O someone should start laughing!
Someone should start wildly Laughing ÐNow!




by: Hafiz

 

A Little Joy
A little joy have I of ceaseless joy,
A little day of timeless day.
Yet knows no bound this empty show of mine;
I march along a goalless way.

O Love! A desert within me ever pines.
Do turn it into a song of dawn.
I know not in what hour of evil night
Thou art, my Lord, from me withdrawn.

Life now must reach Thy Breath of Bliss supreme,
Make Thee the one and only Guide.
Thou art the Bridge between my death and birth;
O let my longings in Thee abide.




by: Sri Chinmoy

 

As I enter deeper into knowing bliss,
the names of old grow more full in minds eye.
Might a mantra rise to its fullness within inner wisdom?

 

I have no scruple of change, nor fear of death,
Nor was I ever born,
Nor had I parents.
I am Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute,
I am That, I am That,

I cause no misery, nor am I miserable;
I have no enemy, nor am I enemy.
I am Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute,
I am That, I am That,

I am without form, without limit,
Beyond space, beyond time,
I am in everything, everything is in me.
I am the bliss of the universe,
Everywhere am I.
I am Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute,
I am That, I am That,

I am without body or change of the body,
I am neither senses, nor object of the senses,
I am Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute,
I am That, I am That,

I am neither sin, nor virtue,
Nor temple, nor worship
Nor pilgrimage, nor books.
I am Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute,
I am That, I am That,

ÑSwami Rama Tirtha

 

The Sun Never Says
Even after all this time
The sun never says to the earth,
"You owe Me."

Look what happens with
A love like that,
It lights the Whole Sky.

by: Hafiz

 

She's Playing in my heart

She's playing in my heart.
Whatever I think, I think Her name.
I close my eyes and She's in there
Garlanded with human heads.

Common sense, know-how-gone,
So they say I'm crazy. Let them.
All I ask, my crazy Mother,
Is that You stay put.

Ramprasad cries out: Mother, don't
Reject this lotus heart You live in
Don't despise this human offering
At Your feet.


- Ramprasad Sen

 

Day and Night
You are:

shining, changeless
bliss,

tasting
neither death
nor birth.

The sun
does not rise
eager, bright-eyed;

there is
no tired, crimson pyre
heralding the stars.

Day and night Ñ

they exist
only for the spinning
world.

by: Ivan Granger

 

Silence II

Silence is not a lack of words.
Silence is not a lack of music.
Silence is not a lack of curses.
Silence is not a lack of screams.
Silence is not a lack of colors
or voices or bodies or whistling wind.
Silence is not a lack of anything.

Silence is resting, nestling
in every leaf of every tree,
in every root and branch.
Silence is the flower sprouting
upon the branch.

Silence is the mother singing
to her newborn babe.
Silence is the mother crying
for her stillborn babe.
Silence is the life of all
these babes, whose breath
is a breath of God.

Silence is seeing and singing praises.
Silence is the roar of ocean waves.
Silence is the sandpiper dancing
on the shore.
Silence is the vastness of a whale.
Silence is a blade of grass.

Silence is sound
And silence is silence.
Silence is love, even
the love that hides in hate.

Silence is the pompous queen
and the harlot and the pimp
hugging his purse on a crowded street.

Silence is the healer dreaming
the plant, the drummer drumming
the dream. It is the lover's
exhausted fall into sleep.
It is the call of morning birds.

Silence is God's beat tapping all hearts.

Silence is the star kissing a flower.

Silence is a word, a hope, a candle
lighting the window of home.

Silence is everything --the renewing sleep
of Earth, the purifying dream of Water,
the purifying rage of Fire, the soaring
and spiraling flight of Air. It is all
things dissolved into no-thing--Silence
is with you always.....the Presence
of I AM

- Elaine Maria Upton

 

Silence

From the Silence Unknowable
To the Sound knowable I came
To play and sing and dance
With a tiny, fragile frame,
And build a rainbow-bridge
Between Heaven and earth
For my sweet Supreme to travel
And flood all-where His Birth.

By: Sri Chinmoy

 

Desperate Needs
The world's most desperate needs:

A crying heart,

A self-giving life,

A God-becoming soul.

- Sri Chinmoy

 

Secret Ways

King, saint, thief, madman -
Love has grabbed everyone by the neck
and drags us to God by secret ways...
How could I ever have guessed that God, too, desired us?

Rumi

 

Looking For Each Other
I have been looking for you, World Honored One,
since I was a little child.
With my first breath, I heard your call,
and began to look for you, Blessed One.
I've walked so many perilous paths,
confronted so many dangers,
endured despair, fear, hopes, and memories.
I've trekked to the farthest regions, immense and wild,
sailed the vast oceans,
traversed the highest summits, lost among the clouds.
I've lain dead, utterly alone,
on the sands of ancient deserts.
I've held in my heart so many tears of stone.


Blessed One, I've dreamed of drinking dewdrops
that sparkle with the light of far-off galaxies.
I've left footprints on celestial mountains
and screamed from the depths of Avici Hell, exhausted, crazed with despair
because I was so hungry, so thirsty.
For millions of lifetimes,
I've longed to see you,
but didn't know where to look.
Yet, I've always felt your presence with a mysterious certainty.

I know that for thousands of lifetimes,
you and I have been one,
and the distance between us is only a flash of though.
Just yesterday while walking alone,
I saw the old path strewn with Autumn leaves,
and the brilliant moon, hanging over the gate,
suddenly appeared like the image of an old friend.
And all the stars confirmed that you were there!
All night, the rain of compassion continued to fall,
while lightning flashed through my window
and a great storm arose,
as if Earth and Sky were in battle.
Finally in me the rain stopped, the clouds parted.
The moon returned,
shining peacefully, calming Earth and Sky.
Looking into the mirror of the moon, suddenly
I saw myself,
and I saw you smiling, Blessed One.
How strange!

The moon of freedom has returned to me,
everything I thought I had lost.
From that moment on,
and in each moment that followed,
I saw that nothing had gone.
There is nothing that should be restored.
Every flower, every stone, and every leaf recognize me.
Wherever I turn, I see you smiling
the smile of no-birth and no-death.
The smile I received while looking at the mirror of the moon.
I see you sitting there, solid as Mount Meru,
calm as my own breath,
sitting as though no raging fire storm ever occurred,
sitting in complete peace and freedom.
At last I have found you, Blessed One,
and I have found myself.
There I sit.

The deep blue sky,
the snow-capped mountains painted against the horizon,
and the shining red sun sing with joy.
You, Blessed One, are my first love.
The love that is always present, always pure, and freshly new.
And I shall never need a love that will be called Òlast.Ó
You are the source of well-being flowing through numberless troubled lives,
the water from you spiritual stream always pure, as it was in the beginning.
You are the source of peace,
solidity, and inner freedom.
You are the Buddha, the Tathagata.
With my one-pointed mind
I vow to nourish your solidity and freedom in myself
so I can offer solidity and freedom to countless others,
now and forever.

- Thich Naht Hahn