I’m listening to Haydn’s Opus 50 quartet no 3, in E, one of the strangest quartets ever written. Hayn’s music is characterized by concision and economy, but in the opus 50 quartets, the laconic quality becomes almost oppressive. It’s like Haydn’s playing racquetball in the tiniest court, and hitting the ball from every possible angle, until you can’t believe the inexhaustible nature of Haydn’s imagination, turning leftover Turkey bones from Thanksgiving into the most miraculous post-holiday meal. The music resists labels like happy or sad; Haydn is all about life expressing life for its own sake.
I sometimes get the sense that Haydn had serious mental and emotional problems, but that he took them by the throat and made them work for him. He sublimated them into his music and forced them to dance; he turned his worst inner enemies into his most effective and eloquent servants. Anyone can listen to Haydn’s music and follow suit; he teaches you how to live a beautiful life.
***
Today I was talking to a fellow teacher about various external world situations. She told me that she believes in God and that God will take care of the world. I appreciated her wisdom and quoted Guru’s aphorism: “Falsehood is fearless. Truth is deathless.” I said it four or five times. She was so moved!
“Falsehood is fearless. Truth is deathless.”
She asked me what I felt it meant and I explained that we usually think of fearlessness as a positive quality. But in the case of falsehood, it is not good for it to be fearless.
“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,” warned Alexander Pope.
Falsehood has no fear because it is arrogant, and does not see the red lights. Fearlessness based on stupidity is not a good thing. Just because you don’t see the stop sign does not protect you from the oncoming traffic.
“Truth is deathless.”
It’s an interesting formula, isn’t it? Falsehood is fearless, but not deathless. Truth is deathless.
Falsehood’s bravery, its “fearlessness” will take it to an early grave.
Truth has nothing to fear from falsehood’s fearlessness. It is deathless. It does not have to exhibit its bravery. It knows what it has and what it is. It is eternal, immortal, deathless.
As I repeated the mantra for my colleague six or seven times, I felt the power behind the words. She grabbed a piece of paper and wrote it down. I always like it when people value Guru’s poetry.
***
Interestingly, those many years ago, nineteen years now, when Guru was answering my question on Beethoven and Bach, he said at one point, and this is my paraphrase, “When we think of Beethoven, it is like a fully blossomed tree- very huge tree.” And when Guru uttered those words I leaned into the microphone and said “Yes!”
But I have the recording, and my “Yes!” did not register on the tape. But I clearly remember saying it. Maybe I did not say it into the microphone?
But Guru must have noticed my reaction to his comparing Beethoven to a tree, I guess, because when I got my spiritual name a few weeks later, it included the word “Tree.” Guru’s awareness and discernment is so fine, and so exact.
I was telling another co-worker of mine about the meaning of my name. Guru wrote, in explication of “Mahiruha”: “The God-seeker and the God-lover’s fastest God-climbing aspiration-Tree.” And I really felt the significance of my name! I rarely think of it, the meaning. So, today I decided to devote my time after work to explicitly spiritual activities: I listened to some of Guru’s records, including “Meditation-Sun”, produced by the Canadian disciples around 1977, and I also read some of Vidagdhas’ diaries of her life with Guru in the Eighties. Today I read about Guru’s wonderful meeting with the comedian Eddie Murphy in 1988. Guru had a banner created for him that read : “Welcome Eddie Murphy, Emperor of Parody”. I think I heard that Guru really like Eddie Murphy’s smile.
A poem I stumbled across in my study of Sri Chinmoy’s 1978 book From the Source, To the Source:
“O sun of my soul,
I devotedly love your deity.
O moon of my heart,
I soulfully love your beauty.
O star of my life,
I surprisingly love your purity.
O sky of my search,
I amazingly love your generosity.”
I love that first line especially: “O sun of my soul, I devotedly love your deity.” I remember when Guru gave me my name on 16 November 2016, and I was looking into Guru’s eyes and Guru wasn’t meditating, he was contemplating. If people can find the video “Concentration, Meditation, Contemplation” where Guru demonstrates these three realities, they can see the vast gulph between meditation and contemplation. As I looked at Guru as his eyes began moving, each on its own track and trajectory, I had the strangest feeling that I was looking at Guru not as a disciple, but as a peer. It lasted only a fraction of a second, a nanosecond, and then I was back to being a disciple, a devotee, an aspirant. But I saw something.
Maybe this poem, from Twenty-Seven Thousand Aspiration-Plants may shed some light on my experience:
“True, you have felt something divine
Inside your Master
At least for a fleeting second.
But to his extreme sorrow
You have not felt anything divine
Inside yourself.
Before you pass
Behind the curtain of Eternity,
Your Master wants you to feel
Something divine
Inside your own heart,
Even for a fleeting second.”
(Sri Chinmoy, Twenty-Seven Thousand Aspiration-Plants, part 15, Agni Press, 1983)
