12. SING WITH SHAKESPEARE- 6

12.SING WITH SHAKESPEARE-6

"...for us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one." Albert Einstein

Insight of the Rishis

INDIANS  are naturally preoccupied with Immortality. At any rate, this is true of those Indians who still retain their traditional cultural affinities, in spite of nearly two centuries of Macaulayan assault in the name of modern education. This is the result of millennia of philosophical reflection on the mysteries of Time and Life on the part of their Rishis and their Insights. The Indian discovery is that there was not a time when we were not, and will not be! The Rishis called :

शृण्वन्तु बिश्वे अमृतस्य पुत्रा

आ ये धामानि दिब्यानि तस्थुः 

 Shrunvantu Vishve Amrutasya Putraa
Aa ye dhaamaani divyaani thasthu:

 Listen Ye Children of Immortality [Immortal Bliss]  and those occupying the celestial spheres!

The wandering saints and singers, the minstrels of God, spurned fame and fortune in the courts of royals, traversed the length and breadth of the country and brought the message to the common people. Even unlettered Indians [ still untouched by the poison of modernist ideas ] are still imbued with this conviction.

Our present birth is but a link in a long chain. It is said that we are reminded of our past just before our birth by a Divine Presence, and the new born cries at the loss of this vision when he is thrust into this world! And when infants laugh and cry in the cradle on their own for no apparent reason, we believe it to be due to remembrance of some scene from past lives ! This is what we believe; let the modern scientist break his head or pluck his hair!

Mystical Time!

Every great poet who writes of Time is aware of its mystical dimension and connection with Immortality. For the Jnani, there are no artificial divisions of time into the past, present and future. It is an eternal continuity. They live in the eternal present.

We have these lines from Khalil Gibran:

And an astronomer said, "Master, what of Time?" 

And he answered: 

You would measure time the measureless and the immeasurable. 

You would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons. 

Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing. 

Yet the timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness, 
And knows that yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream. 

And that that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space. 

Who among you does not feel that his power to love is boundless? 

And yet who does not feel that very love, though boundless, encompassed within the centre of his being, and moving not form love thought to love thought, nor from love deeds to other love deeds?

And is not time even as love is, undivided and paceless? 
But if in you thought you must measure time into seasons, let each season encircle all the other seasons,

And let today embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing.

We are all born with some innate sense of our immortal nature but as we grow we forget it in the hurly-burly of the world.  Our hope is that we shall recover it sometime!

Modern or modernist poets have lost this sense of a vision beyond the physical.  Wordsworth asked:

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

This question  greatly exercises Shakespeare. He writes about the strong hand or wave of time against which none has power.

Time: its office and glory


Time's office is to fine the hate of foes,
     To eat up errors by opinion bred,
     Not spend the dowry of a lawful bed.#

[ #money should not be spent in ways adversely affecting marriage]

Time's glory is to calm contending kings
To unmask falsehood and bring truth to light,
To stamp the seal of time in aged things,
To wake the morn and sentinel the night,
To wrong the wronger till he render right,
     To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours
     And smear with dust their glitt'rng golden towers.

To fill with worm-holes  stately monuments,
To feed oblivion with decay of things,
To blot old books and alter their contents,
To pluck the quills from ancient raven's wings,
To dry the old oak's sap and blemish springs,
     To spoil antiquities of hammered steel,
     And turn the giddy round of fortune's wheel.

To show the beldame daughters of her daughter,
To make the child a man, the man a child,
To slay the tiger that doth live by slaughter,
To tame the unicorn and lion wild,
To mock the subtle in themselves beguiled,
     To cheer the ploughman with increaseful crops,
     And waste huge stones with little water drops.

[The Rape of Lucrece]

rsc collection

Time does strange things. Great heroes are forgotten, along with  their glorious deeds. No one can therefore rest on his laurels, but continue to work to renew the reputation. This is the message given by Ulysses to Achilles.

Envious and Calumniating Time

Time hath, my lord,
A wallet at his back, wherein he puts
Alms for oblivion, a great sized monster
Of ingratitudes.
Those scraps are good deeds past,
Which are devoured as fast as they are made,
Forgot as soon as  done.
Perseverence, my dear lord,
Keeps honour bright. To have done is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty nail
In monumental mock'ry. 
Take the instant away,
For honour travels in a strait so narrow,
Where one but goes abreast.
Keep then the path,
For emulation hath a thousand sons
That one by one pursue:if you give way,
Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,
Like to an entered tide they all rush by
And leave you hindmost;
Or, like a gallant horse fallen in first rank,
Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,
O'errun run and trampled on.
Then what they do in present,
Though less than yours in past,must o'ertop yours.
For time is like a fashionable host,
That slightly shakes his parting guest by th' hand
And with his arms outstretched as he would fly,
Grasps in the comer.
Welcome ever smiles,
And Farewell goes out sighing.
O let not virtue seek
Remuneration for the thing it was;
For beauty, wit,
High birth, vigour of bone,desert in service,
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
To envious and calumniating time.
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin-
That all with one consent praise new-born gauds
Though they are made and moulded of things past,
And give to dust that is a little gilt,
More laud than gilt overdusted.
The present eye praises the present object.

[Troilus and Cressida ]

We live in the age of instant celebrities- 'present eye praising present object'! And instant communication brings us worldwide  news of 'heroes' in various fields, so that people with the same interests and inclinations- be it politics, foot-ball, cricket or cinema  instantly band together : "one touch of nature makes the whole world kin."! Yet each hero has a very short run! 

Shakespeare reckons only two things to stand against time: for a man to raise a family and get children who will perpetuate his name. And  his verse will stand against time and also make the subject immortal!  

Sonnet 12

When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls all silver'd o'er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves
Which erst fro heat did canopy the herd,
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the waste of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
     And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
     Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

Sonnet 60

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end,
Each changing place with that which goes before;
In sequent toil all forwards to contend.
Nativity once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
And time that gave doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow;
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.
     And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,
     Praising thy worth despite his cruel hand.

Sonnet 65

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o'ersways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O how shall summer's honey breath hold out
Against the wrackful siege of battering days
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but time decays?
O fearful meditation! Where, alack,
Shall time's best jewel from time's chest lie hid,
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back,
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
     O none, unless this miracle have might:
     That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

The sonnets are generally regarded as love poems. If we examine the contents of these sonnets, Shakespeare's concern with the question of time and how it snatches away youth, looks, everything, and his engagement with the idea of immortality  are unmistakable.

 Shakespeare shows how time heals some things but also changes things for ever. It takes away everything it gives. Great poetry  can defy time.

Authentic Indian poets have never lost touch with the mystic quality of Time. Gurudev Tagore writes:




Endless Time 

Time is endless in thy hands, my lord.

 
There is none to count thy minutes.

 
Days and nights pass and ages bloom and fade like flowers.

 
Thou knowest how to wait. 

Thy centuries follow each other perfecting a small wild flower. 

We have no time to lose, 
and having no time we must scramble for a chance.

 
We are too poor to be late.

 
And thus it is that time goes by
while I give it to every querulous man who claims it, 
and thine altar is empty of all offerings to the last. 

At the end of the day I hasten in fear lest thy gate be shut; 
but I find that yet there is time.

Oh, what a beautiful thought!

11.SING WITH SHAKESPEARE- 5.

11.SING WITH SHAKESPEARE-5

SCIENCE and technology have destroyed nature in the name of progress. We read daily in the newspapers some aspect of this destruction brought to our notice, but not to our attention! The seas and oceans are polluted, the rain forests are destroyed, the globe is warming, climate changing and the polar ice is melting, monsoons are disturbed, etc are items of news we read but do not bother to know their implications or consequences, still less to halt the process or seek a remedy.

Haggstrom, Mikael 2014.

Harmony with Nature

Pre-Christian world view considered man as part of Nature- an organic whole, an essential unity, a chain of Being. Nature animated with life and feeling! Earth was considered the Mother. Christians spread the doctrine that the world was created for man's benefit and enjoyment , as they interpreted the Biblical words "subdue the earth". Then came Science to teach man that the world was inert, and they invented technology to exploit everything in nature for man's immediate pleasure and comfort, and increasingly for commercial profit.  It is only now serious thinkers are beginning to realise the absurdity of the whole enterprise : if nature is conquered and subdued fully, where will man be? And how will he be? Man cannot destroy nature and still be man!

People used to talk of living in harmony with Nature. This was the overwhelming attitude in India till the era of planning began. Then big dams were constructed on our rivers, obstructing the natural flow of the waters, and altering the water table and ecology. Railway lines and airports were constructed , destroying uncounted acres of fertile farmlands. Highways were constructed, gobbling up more farmlands and forests, felling millions of huge trees. Our forests are shrinking, even as the forest department of the govts are expanding! Every city and town has expanded on all sides, swallowing more farmlands, interfering with all the natural systems and cycles. Our fresh water resources have been polluted and /or destroyed  .   These are changes we have seen in the last two generations, but we call it development. Modern Science and technology came to India late, but have brought destruction much faster, compensating for the late arrival. The trend is still continuing unabated. Science has polluted our minds and blinded us to the reality of Nature.

Nature beyond the physical

When we talk of Nature, most of us have only the physical aspects in mind. But, they stand for something larger: sun and moon and stars,lakes, rivers and oceans, mountains and hills, trees and flowers, animals and birds and insects- everything stands for something beyond and behind it. It is a chain, enclosing everything in the universe.

Ralph Waldo
Emerson, American transcendentalist philosopher has written one of the finest essays on Nature. He begins by saying that we have lost our living connection with Nature, but merely repeat the older traditions:

Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition..?

To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. If a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The stars awaken a certain reverence, ...but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit.

When we speak of nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most poetical sense in the mind. We mean the integrity of impression made by manifold natural objects. It is this which distinguishes the stick of the timber of the woodcutter from the tree of the poet.

Intimations from Nature

The problems to be solved are precisely those which the physiologist and naturalist omit to state. It is not so pertinent to man to know all the individuals of the animal kingdom as to know whence and whereto is this tyrannizing unity in his constitution... endeavoring to reduce the most diverse to one form,... all thought of multitude is lost in a tranquil sense of unity..... that wonderful congruity  which subsists between man and the world....finds something of himself in every great and small thing..

This is a mystery to be experienced in our connect with nature, else we are merely looking at physical things. There is something that connects everything, and this is the sense of harmony that true perception of nature induces in us. It is not just the external, and momentary, beauty of the object like a flower or   singing bird. This capacity to perceive the unity is in man!

Here, Emerson quotes the 17th century metaphysical British poet George Herbert.

Man

Man is all symmetry, 

Full of proportions, one limb to another, 

And all to all the world besides; 

Each part may call the furthest brother, 

For head with foot hath private amity, 

And both with moons and tides. ##

Nothing hath got so far 

But man hath caught and kept it as his prey; 

His eyes dismount the highest star; 

He is in little all the sphere; 

Herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they 

Find their acquaintance there. 

For us the winds do blow, 

The earth doth rest, heav'n move, and fountains flow. 

Nothing we see but means our good, 

As our delight, or as our treasure; 

The whole is either our cupboard of food, 

Or cabinet of pleasure. 

The stars have us to bed; 

Night draws the curtain, which the sun withdraws; 

Music and light attend our head; 

All things unto our flesh are kind 

In their descent and being; to our mind 

In their ascent and cause.

## This will remind those who have read our scriptures of Purusha Sooktham.
But in other respects this poem reflects the Christian view that the world was made for man: 'for us the winds do blow", etc. This is not the spirit of our scriptures.

Then, Emerson says:

The foundations of man are not in matter but in spirit. But the element of spirit is eternity.

We distrust and deny inwardly our sympathy with nature.

A man is a god in ruins.

Wisdom beyond words

The silent communion with nature inspires us and endows us with a wisdom beyond words. Yet, poets are able to capture the essence of it at times. As Aristotle said: "Poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history." [ we may add: or even science!]. Emerson himself expressed it in a beautiful poem:

THE APOLOGY

Think me not unkind and rude

     That I walk alone in grove and glen;

I go to the god of the wood

     To fetch his word to men.

Tax not my sloth that I

    Fold my arms beside the brook;

Each cloud that floated in the sky

     Writes a letter in my book.

Chide me not, laborious band

     For the idle flowers I brought;

Every aster in my hand

     Goes home loaded with a thought.

There was never mystery

     But 'tis figured in the flowers;

Was never secret history

     But birds tell it in the bowers.

One harvest from thy field

     Homeward brought the oxen strong;

A second crop thine acres yield,

     Which I gather in a song.

In another poem, epigraph to his 1841 essay  [Second Series]  on nature, he said even more pointedly:

The rounded world is fair to see,
Nine times folded in mystery:
Though baffled seers cannot impart
The secret of its laboring heart,
Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast,
And all is clear from east to west.
Spirit that lurks each form within
Beckons to spirit of its kin;
Self-kindled every atom glows,
And hints the future which it owes.

Under the greenwood tree

Ah, that is it! Throb thine heart with nature's throbbing breast! Attune to nature! 

Our master Shakespeare expresses all these ideas in a beautiful song!

Under the greenwood tree

Who loves to lie with me,

And turn his merry note

Unto the sweet bird's throat,

Come hither, come hither, come hither:

            Here shall he see

            No enemy

But winter and rough weather.

Who doth ambition shun

And loves to live i' the sun,

Seeking the food he eats,

And pleased with what he gets,

Come hither, come hither, come hither:

            Here shall he see

            No enemy

But winter and rough weather.

[As You Like It ]

Read straight, this poem celebrates the simple pleasures of the pastoral life, living with nature.This involves seeking to meet our needs, and putting a voluntary check on our greed, which the modern commercial culture seeks to encourage in all possible ways.

 There are  critics who say this is a "lie" , that is mere fantasy. Who but a fool would give up the life of ease in the city or in the king's court? This is in fact said by another character in the play in reply:

If it do come to pass
That any man turn ass,
Leaving his wealth and ease,
A stubborn will to please,
Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame:
Here shall he see
Gross fools as he,
An if he will come to me.

This is a more cynical view of the issue- like our own! Are we not enjoying the fruits of a modern civilization, the result of economic progress? Who but an ass would like to go back to the drudgery and boredom of  rural life in the name of living with nature?

But it is happening! There are many in the West who spurn the rage of gain and riches and luxury, and modern trappings, leave the city and settle quietly in the countryside! Duane Elgin chronicled some concrete instances in his 1981 book.

Cover of the 2010 edition by Harper.
Shown here for educative purpose.

The New York Times reported a case in  May,2008:

AUSTIN, Texas — Like many other young couples, Aimee and Jeff Harris spent the first years of their marriage eagerly accumulating stuff: cars, furniture, clothes, appliances and, after a son and a daughter came along, toys, toys, toys.

Now they are trying to get rid of it all, down to their fancy wedding bands. Chasing a utopian vision of a self-sustaining life on the land as partisans of a movement some call voluntary simplicity, they are donating virtually all their possessions to charity and hitting the road at the end of May.

"It's amazing the amount of things a family can acquire," said Aimee Harris, 28, attributing their good life to "the ridiculous amount of money" her husband earned as a computer network engineer in this early Wi-Fi mecca.

Our Rishi tradition

We have a mighty tradition of Rishis living in the forest under the trees and deriving inspiration. Did not the great Buddha sit under the Bodhi tree? 

In the West the Oak , which lives for hundreds of years and thus connects generations is considered the best of the greenwood trees. Here is a short and lively write up that I came across on the Net:

For generations upon generations, people have gone to sit beneath the mighty Oak to gain strength and spiritual renewal. The outside world can be forgotten and the inner world can slip back into perspective. The Oak can help you to find new understanding and vision, gained from your experiences. This in turn will bring strength and courage to face whatever life has to offer you. The Oak tree's mighty presence will help restore faith in ourselves and with this lies the ability to go ahead and aim for what we most want in life. It is well worth finding the time to go and sit with an Oak tree and to receive the qualities it has to offer us. Remember to thank the tree after each communications, not because the tree needs your thanks but to keep open your channels of love and respect for the tree kingdom and all of nature. This will enhance your ability to receive their qualities on the deepest level.

www.whitedragon.org.uk. Accessed: 12 April,2017.

Seeking such a connection with nature involves the conscious cultivation of the qualities of one's head and heart. It is a steeling and scaling  of the soul.  As Wordsworth said:

'Tis the most difficult of  tasks to keep

Heights which the soul is competent to gain.