Garden of Flowers. Kabir

Garden of Flowers

Do not go into the garden of flowers

O friend, go not there.

 

In your body is the garden of flowers.

Take your seat on the thousand petals of lotus

and there gaze upon the infinite beauty.

 

There is a strange tree,

which stands without roots,

bears fruits without blossoming.

It has no branches and no leaves.

It is Lotus all over.

Two birds sing there:

One is the Guru and the other the disciple.

The disciple chooses the manifold fruits of life

and tastes them

And the Guru beholds him in joy.

Kabir

photo by the author of the blog

Beautiful World

On Saturday, we watched a movie “The Patriot” with Mel Gibson in the main part. Americans’ struggle for independence. Many families are ruined, houses are burnt. In the middle of the film, one of the characters asked what they were fighting for and another one answered that when they were free they would get an opportunity to build a new, beautiful, world.

This phrase just did not leave my mind… Americans got freedom. Two hundred years have passed since then. What is their world now? Loss of values, extreme consuming, money-thirstiness, spiritual coldness in families – what can be called beautiful there?

I do not say through hearsay. Having lived one year in the States (I met the millennium there), I also became infected with money making (though, on returning home, thank God, my zeal was cooled down).

Another example. India. The previous century. A struggle for freedom. India got physical independence by many victims. Not much time has passed since then (what are decades for history?) but what is happening in this country now where spirituality have been nurtured for centuries? Spiritual values are being exchanged for cheap aspects of western culture.

As being known everything that we create is the reflection of what we are inside. Only a pure (dharmic) person can create beauty around. As far as the beautiful world is concerned.

***

…Interviewer: The theory that scientists say that man came from a little cell from heaven know where; how did you feel about those?

Shri Mataji: It’s a fact, it’s a fact. He (man) came through a cell, evolved through a cell. How did he evolve? Why did he evolve? What is the purpose of his life? It is not all answered by science. What is the power that males you evolve? Also, that is not answered. So, in Sahaja Yoga you know all that. Not only you evolve but with the same power you go higher.

Interviewer: What is your theory about that then? Why are we here or, why are we so long in the process?

Shri Mataji: You see anything that you create, even human beings for example, you have created things. A beautiful lamp is to give us light, isn’t it, the power. So, that’s how God has created us, to give His power to us that we feel Him and know Him in our awareness and understand and we emit His powers and enjoy it; to say in the words of Christ ‘to enter into the kingdom of God’…

Interviewer: Is it what Self Realization means; that You mean as a Realized Soul?

Shri Mataji: Yes, Self Realization means when the Self, which is talked about in all the scriptures, starts emitting its manifestation in our conscious mind; means that time when we become aware of it. To this extent our central nervous system starts recording the power of our Spirit, of oneself and we start feeling the breeze-like vibrations of the Spirit which is called in the bible as the ‘Cool Breeze of the Holy Spirit’…

Interviewer: Two very interesting thoughts come to my head at this point. One, is it through being Realized that one gets to knowledge of what’s on the other side of death, as it were and two, whether one really through this Realization that one finds a little bit of God inside oneself?

Weather and Life – much in common

It is the same place (Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, the Volga river) which the pictures are taken of.

Watch the time.

At the same time on the other side:

The whole picture was, approximately, like this:

It is like this in life: first it seems that the sun is shining and then that a cloud is approaching (the change of the mood and state takes place very quickly and often). But in nature it is planned so as only having gone through both of them you find what is in the middle – balance, joy and beauty (a rainbow in this particular case ).

The pictures are taken by my friend, Ann Myilenkova

To Be Free – the way not to get tired

 

We were going from Saint Petersburg (Russia) to Moscow by train yesterday. It took us 7 hours and it was a surprise for me that I was absolutely fresh and full of energy when we finally arrived. The trick was that while in the train I was looking through the window and enjoying the fields with fresh green spring grass, fluffy clouds forming different figures, tall slender birches with small leaves and the sun shining so brightly into the window. I had a very strong feeling that my Spirit was absolutely free and at the same time it was a part of the loving and caring nature.

And I also remembered the words of my old uncle suddenly uttered by him one day before his death, “The Paradise is here, on the Earth!”

Through Art to Purity and Love

If the desire to create goes from your heart and not just mind, the process of creating may purify you and reveal all the best in you. Especially when you are working with natural materials. I am sure you have noticed that hand-made things have something about them because of which it is so pleasant to take them in hands, to have them at home. And it is not only a piece of soul and love of the person who has created them but also the love of the All-pervading power, the vibrations of Paramchaitanya. As when our heart is open, we allow the Creator to use us as his “paintbrush”. It is He who is the real Creator working through us.

And we really felt what I have just described when we crossed the threshold of an ordinary (from outside) building of Saint-Petersburg Children’s Art House. As soon as we had entered it we found ourselves in a real Palace. There was such love and joy, purity and beauty around! It is a world of morality and history, a place to rest from the daily routine of the working days in a big modern city.

Kids are taught so many things here (for free!): making laces, weaving, embroidery, making things of birchen bark, painting, history of the city, ceramics, origami, making soft toys, painting on wood, video shooting, karate and other sports, design, singing, dancing, etc…

And the motto of the Children’s Art House says: If there is no Sun in the sky, find it within yourself!

In fact, we came to the studio of ceramics where our friend, Sasha, teaches.

True Values. The Earth from the Space

When astronauts return from space, what they talk about isn’t the brute force of the rocket launch or the exhilaration of zero gravity. It’s the view. And it’s mankind’s rarest view of all, Earth from afar.

Only two dozen men – those who journeyed to the moon – have seen the full Earth view. Most space travellers, in low orbit, see only a piece of the planet – a lesser but still impressive glimpse. They have seen the curvature of Earth, its magnificent beauty, its fragility, and its lack of borders.

The first full view of Earth came from the moon-bound Apollo 8 during the waning days of a chaotic 1968. Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders put it in perspective in a documentary: “We came all this way to explore the moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.”

For Earth Day this year – at a time when perhaps some perspective is needed – the Associated Press asked space travellers to recall what it’s like to see Earth from above:

The Wedding. Interesting Traditions

True marriages are said to be made in Heavens. But the earthly wedding plays an important role as well: it is a kind of acknowledgement of the new family from the part of society (which is a very important psychological moment for the newly married). And especially it is so nice when no rude traditions (like excessive drinking or fighting) spoil the wedding. One gets such a pleasant feeling when everything happing at the wedding is pure (by the way, in the West the white color of the bride’s dress is meant to highlight purity).

I have visited many weddings (as a guest and as a photographer) but only at the wedding of my friends last Friday I saw what I had never expected to see – an unknown to many wedding tradition.

Pure Desire. Know Thyself

 

In general, most of our human desires are not true as they cannot be satisfied. As soon as we get what we, as we have thought, want, we immediately want something else. The joy from reaching the aim lasts for a very short time. We are constantly discontented (on the one hand, it motivates us to seek but shouldn’t we find what are looking for at last?!)

To know Thyself, to know your own Spirit – it is such a beautiful experience! It is what the pure desire is. To know thyself and, due to it or because of it, refuse from all the doubts, fears and conditionings… Instead of it, many of us are sinking in the quagmire of this world.

To know thyself, to know the Spirit. But how?

Nature and Fashion

During the last two months, until the previous weekend, the ground was covered with snow. And each day it was so beautiful and so different.

Only one week has passed. The snow has melted away. But the ground is already in some other attire – small colorful flowers make the insects and… people, who are able to notice the beauty of the surrounding world, happy.

Unintentionally one draws a parallel: if those are the “attires” (white, or green, or yellow and red) of the Earth that gladden the eye, if one feels cheerless and uncomfortable seeing bare trees and fields, why then people strive for the opposite in the modern vogue, not adorning the body but showing it off?

If you are a woman, you can learn how one can create her own image following the traditions of decorating the body here.

And here are the flowers – decoration of the Earth which appeared already in a week after the snow had melted:

Thought for the day: “The human body wants good only for himself and people give way to this deception. And as soon as the man lives only for his body and not for the soul, he diverges with people and God and do not get the good which he is seeking” (Leo Tolstoy, Russian writer).

Photo by the Author (April 3, 2007)