Daily Archives: January 5, 2015

“You’re in love when nobody can understand the way you feel.”
-Unknown
 
Kabir – The couplet
अकथ कहानी प्रेम की, कहत कही न जाए ।
गूंगे केरी सरकार, खाए और मुस्काए ॥
 
transliterated:
Akath kahani prem ki, kahat kahi na jaye|
Goonge keri sarkara, khaye aur muskaye||
 
Translation:
The story of God’s love is indescribable. No description is befitting|
Just as the dumb person, having eaten candy, smiles in joy but cannot describe it ||

My understanding:
Some emotions have to be experienced to be understood. No one can understand the pain of childbirth, far less explain the look of transcendent joy on the mother’s face on first contact with the newborn, despite the ordeal just completed.

No words can completely describe the emotions running through a marathon runner’s mind on having completed the run – or fully explain the look of achievement on the face atop a completely drained body.

When we cannot find words for emotions and experiences we humans see repeatedly in our life, how can we expect to find words to describe the union, meeting and communion with that energy that no physical senses can sense? For our words limit their story to the more basic of the physical world’s experience, no more.

Try to read not much into the story of other’s experience, and find similitude – look rather to create your own experience so you may truly understand.

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”
-Daniel J. Boorstin
 
Kabir – The couplet
बूँद समाई समुन्द में, जानत है सब कोई ।
समुन्द समाये बूँद में, जाने बिराला कोई ॥
 
transliterated:
boond samai samund mein, jaanat hai sab koi|
samund samaye boond mein, jaane birala koi||
 
Translation:
When a drop merges into the ocean, everyone understands it |
But when the ocean merges into the drop, seldom does one understand it ||
 
My understanding:
Our presumption of knowledge is our greatest weakness, our most glaring fault. We (mostly) define our understanding based on our sense of rationality and the input from our five physical senses. So what does not fit into our modes of understanding is mostly discarded as “impossible”, “unreal”, “fantasy” or some other such fancied definition. This despite the fact that all the great inventions known to man would not have happened if the inventor had subscribed to this way of thinking or rationality. If we all still lived under the belief that metal is heavier than air, no planes would ever fly. If we did not believe in energy we could not touch, feel or see, we would have no electricity.
 
And yet, we still continue to deny the existence of the soul, our innate metaphysical abilities, or the teachings of the old books.
 
That we cannot see the ocean of the this world’s students merge into the single consciousness of the single teacher is the loss of the student – for the master will patiently continue to teach, and wait for the student to learn to truly still the physical senses so the student begins to see.
 
Until then….