The Lost Generation Video

Ithaca

When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,

pray that the road is long,

full of adventure, full of knowledge.

The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,

the angry Poseidon—do not fear them:

You will never find such as these on your path

if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine

emotion touches your spirit and your body.

The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,

the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter,

if you do not carry them within your soul,

if your heart does not set them up before you.

Pray that the road is long.

That the summer mornings are many, when,

with such pleasure, with such joy

you will enter ports seen for the first time;

stop at Phoenician markets,

and purchase fine merchandise,

mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

and sensual perfumes of all kinds,

as many sensual perfumes as you can;

visit many Egyptian cities,

to learn and learn from scholars.

Always keep Ithaca in your mind.

To arrive there is your ultimate goal.

But do not hurry the voyage at all.

It is better to let it last for many years;

and to anchor at the island when you are old,

rich with all you have gained on the way,

not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.

Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.

Without her you would never have set out on the road.

She has nothing more to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.

Wise as you have become, with so much experience,

you must already have understood what Ithacas mean.

CONSTANTINE CAVAFY (1863–1933)
translated by Rae Dalven

LOVE POEMS FROM GOD

What keeps us alive,

what allows us to endure?

I think it is the hope of loving,

or being loved.

I heard a fable once

about the sun going on a journey

to find its source,

and how the moon wept

without her lover’swarm gaze.

We weep when light does not reach our hearts.

We wither like fields if someone close

does not rain their kindness upon us.

--- Daniel Ladinsky.

A Quote

If a drop of water falls on a lake it makes no identity,

but if it falls on a leaf of lotus,

it shines like a pearl .

Colors of The Earth - North Bengal

Aquainted With The Night

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain — and back in rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet

When far away an interrupted cry

Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-bye;

And further still at an unearthly height,

O luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

---- Robert Frost

Gitanjali

When You Are Old

When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face among a crowd of stars.

--- William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

Morning Rain

A slight rain comes,

bathed in dawn light.

I hear it among treetop leaves

before mistArrives.

Soon it sprinkles the soil and,

Windblown, follows clouds away.

Deepened Colors grace

thatch homes for a moment.

Flocks and herds of things

wild glisten Faintly.

Then the scent of musk opens across

Half a mountain -- and lingers on past noon.

--- Tu Fu

THE INVITATION

By Oriah Mountain Dreamer

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.

I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting in your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are.

I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon.

I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or become shrivelledand closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit in pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to becareful, be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you're telling me is true.

I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself, if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. I want to know if you can be faithful and therefore be trustworthy. I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty every day and if you can source your life from God's presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes!"

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.

I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done for the children.

It doesn't interest me who you are, how you came to be here.

I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.

I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

At some time in our life the devil within all of us wins. It is not having been in the dark house, but having left it, that counts.

Do You Love Me?

A lover asked his beloved,
Do you love yourself more

than you love me?
The beloved replied,

I have died to myself

and I live for you.
I’ve disappeared from myself

and my attributes.

I am present only for you.

I have forgotten all my learning,

but from knowing you

I have become a scholar.

I have lost all my strength,

but from your power

I am able.

If I love myself

I love you.

If I love you

I love myself.

--- Jalaluddin Rumi

THE TAO TI CHING

Nothing in the world
is as soft and yielding as water.
Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible,
nothing can surpass it.
The soft overcomes the hard;
the gentle overcomes the rigid.
Everyone knows this is true,
but few can put it into practice.
Therefore the Master remains
serene in the midst of sorrow.
Evil cannot enter his heart.
Because he has given up helping,
he is people’s greatest help.
True words seem paradoxical.

---LAO TZU

Gifts

I gave my first love laughter,

I gave my second tears,

I gave my third love silence,

Through all the years.

My first love gave me singing,

My second eyes to see,

But oh, it was my third love

Who gave my soul to me.

SARAH TEASDALE

The Prophet On Pain

And a woman spoke, saying, “Tell us of Pain.”
And he said:

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;

And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.

And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.

Much of your pain is self-chosen.

It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquillity:

For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,

And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.

KAHLIL GIBRAN

Eagles and Storm

Did you know that an eagle knows when a storm is approaching long before it breaks? The eagle will fly to some high spot and wait for the winds to come. When the storm hits, it sets its wings so that the wind will pick it up and lift it above the storm. While the storm rages below, the eagle is soaring above it. The eagle does not escape the storm. It simply uses the storm to lift it higher. It rises on the winds that bring the storm.

When the storms of life come upon us - and all of us will experience them - we can rise above them by setting our minds and our belief toward God. The storms do not have to overcome us. We can allow God's power to lift us above them. God enables us to ride the winds of the storm that bring sickness, tragedy, failure and disappointment in our lives. We can soar above the storm. Remember, it is not the burdens of life that weigh us down, it is how we handle them.

Unending Love

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms,
Numberless times,
In life after life, in age after age forever.
My spell-bound heart has made and re-made the necklace of songs
That you take as a gift, wear around your neck in
Your many forms
In life after life, in age after age forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love,
Its age old pain,
Its ancient tale of being apart or together,
As I stare on and on into the past,
In the end you emerge
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount
At the heart of time love of one for another.
We played alongside millions of lovers, shared in the same
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-
Old love, but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you,
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life,
The memories of all of loves merging with this one love of ours-
And the songs of every poet past and forever.

Rabindranath Thakur, 1861-1941

The Boat of Time Sails On

The sky calls me,

The wind calls me,

The moon and the stars call me.

The green and the dense groves call me,

The dance of the fountain calls me,

Smiles call me, tears call me.

A faint melody calls me.

The morn, noon and eve call me.

Everyone is searching for a playmate,

Everyone is calling me, “Come, come!”

One voice, one sound, all around.

Alas, the Boat of Time sails on.

by Sri Chinmoy

Love Poems

Was it really you I saw,

Or is this joy

I still feel

Only a dream?

~Teishin

In this dream world

We doze and talk of dreams--

Dream, dream on,

As much as you wish.

~Ryokan

Say I Am You

I am dust particles in sunlight,

I am the round sun.
To the bits of dust I say, Stay.
To the sun, Keep moving.
I am morning mist,
and the breathing of evening.
I am wind in the top of a grove,
and surf on the cliff.

Mast, rudder, helmsman, and keel,
I am also the coral reef they founder on.
I am a tree with a trained parrot in its branches.
Silence, thought, and voice.
The musical air coming through a flute,
a spark of stone, a flickering in metal.

Both candle,and the moth crazy around it.
Rose, and the nightingale lost in the fragrance.
I am all orders of being, the circling galaxy, the evolutionary intelligence,
the lift, and the falling away.
What is, and what isn't.
You who know Jelaluddin,
You the one in all, say whoI am.
Say I am You.

Translation by Coleman Barks

On My Way To Chicago Bookfair

I was flying from New York to Chicago to attend the book fair held in the American Booksellers Association. Suddenly, a young man stood up in the aisle of the plane and announced:
"I need twelve volunteers each willing to carry a single rose when we get off the plane."

Several people raised their hands. I did too, but wasn't chosen. Even so, I decided to follow the group. We landed, and the young man indicated a young woman in the arrivals hall at O'Hare Airport. One by one, the passengers presented their roses to her. At last, in front of everyone, the young man asked her to marry him, and she accepted.

An air steward said to me: "I've been working here for years, and that's the most romantic things that has ever happened in this airport."

Paulo Coelho

Wish

"Wish we had a second chance
to live the days once more,
And rectify mistakes we've made
to even up the score.
Wish we had a second chance
to use our knowledge gained,
Perhaps we might become at least
as fine as God ordained.
But we can't retrace our steps,
however stands the score,
BUT tomorrow brings another chance
to finally try once more."

What's In A Name?

The first rays of the morning sun kisses my face, making me bask in its warmth and light, filling me with a deep sense of bliss and I wake up with a jolt from my sleep. What must I give in return? Can I?

The moment this thought pops up in my mind I think of the mechanism, named relations, that is existing since times immemorial. Relations. Life is a river of relations - moving faces of people around you. They happen to you for a certain reason. The reason can be as simple as giving you company when you are in need of silence! When one starts discussing about this otherwise taken-for-granted mechanism of existence, one instantly returns to the relations, past and present in one's life. But must all relationships have names? What was your relationship with that lonely figure watching you from a distance when you returned from school? What was your relationship with that stealing glance and lowered eyes when she pretended to ignore you? What was your relationship with that stranger in the street who helped you in times of trouble? What was your relationship with that baby in his mother's lap, who just gave a toothless smile with twinkling eyes and stole your heart away? Can you give a name to such relations? Perhaps not! Do they make you sad? Never!

As time grows, so does the nature and depth of relations. Some painful, some blissful - but they are all there. As maturity overwhelms the child in us, we come to understand some relations are just there - no beginning traced, no questions asked, no expectations expressed, no meaning unearthed! Its just there - just like the rays of the sun touching the earth and spreading its warmth and light. The moment you try to dissect its existence, limitations and boundaries crop up, expectations arise, additions and subtractions are calculated, blame game begins and the relationship starts to groan under the pressure of too many explanations!

So, some relations are better left pure - untouched by our bottled, worldly thinking pattern. The rose does not think about where to its fragrance will travel, while blooming; the apple tree does not think about who will eat its fruit when it is ripe and neither does the rain think about what it is worthy of giving when it rushes down to meet the earth! And we the earthlings know the riches we reap because of their unawareness in giving unconditionally. I wish, sometimes, so be it with us, to realize the beauty of a spiritual bond! No wonder Rumi once penned, " Beyond what is right and wrong there is a whole existence. Lets find each other there."

Pamira