ROBERT BROWNING
Then, (sickening even while I spoke)
^ Let me alone ! No answer, pray,
^ To this ! I know what Thou wilt say !
' All still is earth's,— to Know, as much
' As Feel its truths, which if we touch
^ With sense or apprehend in soul.
' What matter ? I have reached the goal —
' " Whereto does Knowledge serve V^ will bum
' My eyes, too sure, at every turn !
^ I cannot look back now, nor stake
' Bliss on the race, for running's sake.
^ The goal's a ruin like the rest !' —
— " And so much worse thy latter quest,
(Added the Voice) ^Hhat even on earth
" Whenever, in man's soul, had birth
" Those intuitions, grasps of guess.
That pull the more into the less.
Making the finite comprehend
Infinity, the bard would spend
Such praise alone, upon his craft.
As, when wind-lyres obey the waft.
Goes to the craftsman who arranged
The seven strings, changed them and rechanged-
Knowing it was the South that harped.
" He felt his song, in singing, warped,
" Distinguished his and God's part : whence
" A world of spirit as of sense
" Was plain to him, yet not too plain,
" Which he could traverse, not remain
A guest in : — else were permanent
Heaven upon earth, its gleams were meant
To sting with hunger for the hght,—
Made visible in Verse, despite
The veiling weakness, — ^truth by means
Of fable, showing while it screens, —
Since highest truth, man e'er supplied,
" Was ever fable on outside-
'' Such gleams made bright the earth an age ;
'^ Now, the whole sun 's his heritage I
'' Take up thy world, it is allowed,
" Thou who hast entered in the cloud
LIFE SKETCH
Born 28 October 1867
County Tyrone, Ireland
Died 13 October 1911
Darjeeling, West Bengal, India
The name Nivedita means 'the dedicated one.' Who was she? you may ask. What was the 'all' she gave to India, and why?
Sister Nivedita born as Margaret Elizabeth Noble, was a Scots-Irish social worker, author, teacher and disciple of Swami Vivekananda. She met Vivekananda in 1895 in London and travelled to Calcutta, India (present-day Kolkata) in 1898. Swami Vivekananda gave her the name Nivedita (meaning "Dedicated to God") when he initiated her into the vow of Brahmacharya on March 25, 1898. She had close associations with the newly established Ramakrishna Mission.
It is true that we are the children of Mother India. But do we love her enough to give her anything in return for all that she gives to us? Do we love all her children as our own? The great poet Rabindranath Tagore, answers for us: "whoever has seen what reality there was in her (Nivedita's) love of the people, has surely understood that we-while giving perhaps our time, our money, even our life-have not been able to give them our heart." Sister Nivedita had no money to give-for she was poor herself. But she gave her life.
This great offering, giving her life for Mother India, is like a song of love. Love is blind for it sees not the faults of the beloved, and Nivedita never found fault with India. Indeed, she was hard on those who even talked of her slightingly.
This seems wonderful enough, does it not? But it will seem all the more wonderful to you when you hear that Nivedita was not an Indian; she was not even born in India.
She believed that India could not be great and powerful unless there was unity. She was never tired of speaking about this. 'It is true,' she said, 'that in India we have many races, many religions and many kinds of social conditions, but that does not mean that all cannot be united into one.'
Once she most prayerfully made a suggestion for achieving this sense of unity amongst us. She said: 'If the whole of India could agree to give, say, ten minutes every evening, at the oncoming of darkness to thinking a single thought, "We are one, we are one, nothing can prevail against us to make us think we are divided. We are one, and all antagonisms amongst us are illusion"-the power that would be generated can hardly be measured.'
Thus she continued to work for the good of India, as she had always wished to do.
SPEECHES
But the secret of this is a different matter. The gods, it is said, were looking for a divine weapon, that is to say, for the divine weapon, par excellence-and they were told that only if they could find a man willing to give his own bones for the substance of it, could the Invincible Sword be forged. Whereupon they trooped up to the rishi Dadhichi and asked for his bones for the purpose. The request sounded like mockery. A man would give all but his own life-breath, assuredly, for a great end, but who, even to furnish forth a weapon for Indra, would hand over his body itself? To the rishi Dadhichi, however, this was no insuperable height of sacrifice. Smilingly he listened, smilingly he answered, and in that very moment laid himself down to die-yielding at a word the very utmost demanded of humanity.
Here, then, we have the significance of the Vajra. The Selfless Man is the Thunderbolt. Let us strive only for selflessness, and we become the weapon in the hands of the Gods. Not for us to ask how. Not for us to plan methods. For us, it is only to lay ourselves down at the altar-foot. The gods do the rest. The divine carries us. It is not the thunderbolt that is invincible, but the hand that hurls it. Mother! Mother! take away from us this self! Let not fame or gain or pleasure have dominion over us! Be Thou the sunlight, we the dew dissolving in its heat.
Miss Margaret Elizabeth Noble, later known as Sister Nivedita
Sister Nivedita broke down and wept all night in her room in Bodh Gaya saying, "We have failed. The country has not been roused from its slumber; it has not come back to life. We have been able to do almost nothing. The true spirit of India,-what once made India the glory of the world and the heart of Asia, has not been revived. When will the nation be conscious of its glorious heritage, and the distinct place it once occupied in the growth of human thought and human civilization? When will that life, that spirit, return?"
The English had taught the Indian to believe that it was only after the introduction of cheap postage, the extended railway travel and the common use of the English language that India had been united. Nivedita stoutly refused to believe this and said:
If India had no unity herself, no unity could be given to her. The unity which undoubtedly belonged to India was self-born and had its own destiny, its own functions and its own vast powers; but it was the gift of no one.
She ended with a high note of hope and inspiration:
Yet again shall come the great re-establishment of Dharma when the whole of this nation shall be united together not in a common weakness, not in a common misfortune or grievance but in a great, overflowing, complex, actual, ever-strong, ever-living consciousness of the common nationality, the common heritage, the common struggle, the common life, aye! the common destiny and the common hope. And so let me in all reverence and in all grateful memory and love repeat to you again these words that were spoken here in our midst a few years ago by a voice so dear, so well remembered by you all-those words that were the text of his message to his land for ever more-"Arise, awake, struggle on and rest not till the goal is reached."
I believe that India is one, indissoluble, indivisible.
National unity is built on the common home, the common interest and the common love.
I believe that the strength which spoke in the Vedas and Upanishads, in the making of religions and empires, in the learning of scholars, and the meditation of the saints, is born once more amongst us, and its name today is Nationality.
I believe that the present of India is deep-rooted in her past, and that before her shines a glorious future.
O Nationality, come thou to me as joy or sorrow, as honour or as shame! Make me thine own!
If we travel today to the hills of Darjeeling, just below the railway station we shall see the Hindu cremation ground. There stands a memorial built of brick. In the stillness and the quite of that place Mother Nature seems to enfold the memorial with her sweet air and sunlight, and with her singing birds and dancing flowers she seems to tell everyone that it is there.
If you are attracted to it and wonder whose memorial it is, you will see a marble tablet on it with these words:
HERE
REPOSE THE ASHES
OF
SISTER NIVEDITA
OF THE RAMAKRISHNA-VIVEKANANDA
WHO GAVE HER ALL TO INDIA
Bring me my bow of burning gold
Bring me my arrows of desire
Bring me my spear, Oh clouds, unfold
Bring me my chariot of fire!
-William Blake
It begins to be thought that there is a religious idea that may be called Indian, but it is of no single sect; that there is a social idea, which is the property of no caste or group; that there is a historic evolution, in which all are united; that it is the thing within all these which alone is to be called 'India'.
-Sister Nivedita
No comments:
Post a Comment