Filed under: Adult Scripture Class, Arsha Vedanta Center | Tags: bhagavad gita, Dharma, emerson, rathiraja
As I slowly pierce through Emerson’s seminal piece called ‘Nature’, a pattern emerges. A grand scheme of Dharma and Isvara as non separate from each other – interpenetrating and inseparable. The vision of Chapter 10 of the Gita, which outlines the Vibhutis (Glories ) of the Lord, is equally charged with the grandeur of nature as presented to us. Wherever you see Nature in her resplendent form, the patient, glorious Ganga, the soaring peaks of the Himalayas, the sounds of saints chanting, the ever guiding Polestar, Dhruva, you can capture that Unity, that Brahman as the substratum of all.
Bhagavad Gita – Chapter 10 -Verse 8:
ahaḿ sarvasya prabhavo; mattaḥ sarvaḿ pravartate; iti matvā bhajante māḿ; budhā bhāva-samanvitāḥ
TRANSLATION: I am the source of all spiritual and material worlds. Everything emanates from Me. The wise who perfectly know this engage in My devotional service and worship Me with all their hearts.
In Emerson’s words:
“All things are moral; and in their boundless changes have an unceasing reference to spiritual nature. …This ethical character so penetrates the bone and marrow of nature, as to seem the end for which it was made. Nothing in Nature is exhausted in its first use….. In God every end is converted into a new means. … Every natural process is a version of a moral sentence.”
“All the endless variety of things make an identical impression…..A leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time, is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole. Each particle is a microcosm, and faithfully renders the likeness of the world……. Thus architecture is ‘frozen music’….A church ‘petrified religion’…..The law of harmonic sounds reappears in the harmonic colors… So intimate is this Unity, that, it is easily seen, it lies under the undermost garment of Nature, and betrays its source in Universal Spirit.
“The central Unity is still more conspicuous in actions….A right action seems to fill the eye, and to be related to all nature. The wise man, in doing one thing he does rightly, he sees the likeness of all which is done rightly.”
Love
Rathi
- Emerson – A revolutionary mind. I see parallels between the Vedic seers who explored consciousness and the nature of Reality with such vigor, letting seemingly foundational pillars fall by the wayside, fearless yet compassionate. These seers helped us understand that not only is Reality not what we think it is, but also not a cause for fear. This they pursued with so much love that we can melt in that understanding, liberating our minds from the prison bars of stale thinking.
- Some of Emerson’s thoughts on Nature:
1. 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, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?
2. I have confidence in the laws of morals as of botany. I have planted maize in my field every June for seventeen years and I never knew it come up strychnine. My parsley, beet, turnip, carrot, buck-thorn, chestnut, acron, are as sure. I believe that justice produces justice, and injustice injustice.
3. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view.
Love
Rathi
Dedicated to all my friends who have suffered deep losses this year.
Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am in a thousand winds that blow,
I am the softly falling snow.
I am the gentle showers of rain,
I am the fields of ripening grain.
I am in the morning hush,
I am in the graceful rush
Of beautiful birds in circling flight,
I am the starshine of the night.
I am in the flowers that bloom,
I am in a quiet room.
I am in the birds that sing,
I am in each lovely thing.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there. I did not die.
Mary Elizabeth Frye (1904-2004)
