A dream

I feel Guru’s poetry has become my passport to the outer world.  I approach people on the train, on the street, in shopping malls, at the grocery store and I ask them if they would like to hear a poem.  Some people tell me to go away, and I happily do.  But most people agree to a short poem.  As our Guru Sri Chinmoy’s poems possess such simplicity and natural beauty, it almost always makes them smile and think and reflect.

One of my favorite poems comes from The Goal Is Won, a book I have only recently learned.  It is this one:

“Lying in the sun
May warm your body,
But it will not elevate your life.

“Crying in the night
May console your heart,
But it will not accelerate
The progress of your soul.

I assure you,
Dying in nothingness
May fascinate others’ eyes,
But it will not fulfil your Goal.”

Sri Chinmoy, The Goal is won, Sri Chinmoy Centre, New York, 1974

I recited this for one older disciple in New York, this past April, and he said the poem embodies a deep reflection on sadhana, and also may refer to the Buddhist concept of dying in nothingness to achieve Nirvana, and how our path is different.  Our path is the path of dynamism, and not extinction.

I also shared it with an older artist I met on the bus, and he said this poem inspires him to pay more attention to each moment, to be awakened to each moment.

I often have a recurring dream about walking through the campus of a college in Chicago, but this college does not exist.  In my dream, it is called St Thomas University, and it is located on a steep hill overlooking the lake.  Chicago has no hills, obviously this school does not exist on the physical plane.  But it is an old, august college, huge classical architecture.  Anyway, I was taking the school trolley in my dream, when a college boy approached me and said, “Mahiruha!”

I looked at him, but I did not recognize him.  He asked me to get off the bus, and that he had a gift for me.  It was a warm summer’s day, and I had nothing to do, so I followed him out at the next stop.  He led me past the school’s cathedral, huge and beautiful, and into a big auditorium.  We were alone.  There was a little closet by the double doors of the hall and he reached in and pulled out a new kurta, still in its plastic wrapper.  On top of the kurta was a little card.  He handed me the kurta and the card.  I looked at the card, and the boy had written that I wouldn’t remember him, but that a few years earlier I had given him a book of poems by Sri Chinmoy, and these poems had changed his life.  They had helped him to understand the mission of Jesus Christ much more deeply, and that he recites and concentrates on these poems every day as part of his devotions.  I was crying and crying in my dream and the young man was also crying.

I woke up with tears streaming down my face and I had the strongest urge to google St. Thomas University in Chicago, but I know it’s only a dream.

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