A Universal Perspective
“…the reason why he can say one thing well, is because his
vision extends to the sight of all things, and so he describes
each as one who knows many and all.”
-- Emerson
Another central attribute of the aphorism is universality. It transcends personal opinion or observation. The universality of the seer-poet’s utterance, however, is contingent upon our shared conviction that there must exist higher truths which shed meaning and purpose upon our common human existence. The role of the seer-poet is to reveal these truths, to name them, to somehow make accessible to us a wider vision in the light of which we can evolve socially, morally and spiritually.
Implicit in our reverence for the seer-poet, therefore, is our acknowledgement that he embodies a degree of wisdom to which we aspire. That is why in most cultures, especially those of the East, aphorisms are synonymous with the sayings of the sages – Lao Tzu, Confucius, Marcus Aurelius, the seven Vedic sages and so forth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson issued a soul-stirring challenge to his time and country to “write in a higher spirit, and a wider knowledge, and with a grander practical aim, than ever yet guided the pen of poet.” Sri Chinmoy has responded to that call with his lofty aphorisms.
Nothing divine can ever decay.
Nothing divine can even fade.
In this couplet, the second pronouncement acts as an echo of the first, mirroring its pattern exactly until the substitution of the final two words. The haunting lilt of these parallel sentences, with their final slant rhyme, leads us to discover in their culminating verbs the full weight of the poet’s meaning. What decays? That which is organic, living. What fades? That which has colour – be it earthly or in our memories. By invoking tangible and vibrant associations of dissolution and, by extension, death, the poet is able to summon the opposite reality, to suggest that the divine is beyond the things of this earth. It is imperishable. It suffers no loss of form, not even the slightest loss of lustre.
Sri Chinmoy’s technique of employing a double negative anaphora to introduce his thought is reminiscent of the Upanishadic approach. “Neti, neti” – “not this, not this,” says the sage Yajnavalkya. Negative theology is not, in fact, a denial, for when we eliminate everything that is not, we are left with the enduring reality of what is. Negative theology is rather an admission of man’s incapacity to express the transcendent.
Sri Chinmoy proceeds similarly. After we eliminate all that decays, all that fades – literally, all the things of this earth – we are left with the celestial realities.
He does not need to specify those things that decay or fade. Indeed, he deliberately chooses not to introduce such detailed references. It seems that he does not want to link the image with anything that can be closely identified with a particular region or culture. So he leaves it to the imagination of the reader to supply the content of the image.
In addition to aphorisms like this example which have two parts with the same grammatical structure, Sri Chinmoy is fond of consecutive aphorisms that share the same characteristics – repeated words or phrases, linked ideas and a fusion of sounds.
On January 15th, 2007, he wrote the following pair of aphorisms:
War takes birth
In the mind-factory.
Peace takes birth
In the heart-sea.
There is an authority inherent in each of these aphorisms, a sure sense of truth that gives them the feeling of being final pronouncements or utterances. Typically, however, the touch of the master-poet is also there. In the first aphorism, he sets up the first element in what will emerge as a cluster of opposites – war/peace, mind/heart, factory/sea. In the second aphorism, he makes the substitutions and thereby fulfils some longing in us for answers, for closure. If there is war among men, where can we find peace? The poet does not speak in the future tense. He assures us that both realities have the potential to be ushered forth at the same time, though from vastly different sources.
His compound noun “mind-factory” aptly conjures up the image of the dry mind mechanically churning out endless animosities, rationales for conflict, schemes and endless debates. It recalls the famous aphorism by United Nations Secretary-General U Thant: “Wars begin in the mind of man.”
Additionally, this very dense compound noun cannot but evoke images of factories producing weapons of war. There is a kind of baseness and facelessness to the image, a greyness, which simulates the factory conditions.
This most desolate of images is then complemented by Sri Chinmoy’s second aphorism which depicts the birth of peace. Here he distances peace from the realm of the mind. It takes birth, he avers, “In the heart-sea.” Immediately, we have the impression of the fathomless depths of the sea, its serenity, its vastness – above all, the sea is not of mankind’s manufacture. Unlike a mere factory, it existed, it exists and shall continue to exist. We hear in the rhyming scheme the play of opposites – factory/sea – and suddenly the poet has cleared the path ahead for us; he has simplified our choice between war and peace by guiding us ineluctably towards the “heart-sea”.
Sri Chinmoy’s twin aphorisms are applicable to all ages, and he gives us no indication as to what set of circumstances has called forth this response from him. But one only has to look up the state of the world as of January 15th, 2007 to see that his words have a most urgent message for our times.
Many other aphorisms by this seer-poet reflect on the destructive qualities of the mind as opposed to the peaceful and loving qualities of the heart:
The mind does not know,
And does not want to know,
That it is shrouded in darkness.
Sri Chinmoy suggests that the mind stubbornly clings to its own limitations and imperfections, that it does not want light to penetrate it.
In another aphorism on this theme, he bluntly states:
To be happy
With the mind
Is to enjoy
A withered flower.
Again we notice that the poet tends to concentrate the entire focus of the poem on a single word (in this case “withered”) or compound noun. The unfoldment of the poem’s meaning relies on our ability to give full value to this image. In many ways, this stark isolation of various nouns or verbs or adjectives reawakens us to the power of words themselves. The poet dwells on single words, he coins compounds, renames things according to his own inner discoveries. We cannot help but feel something of the freshness or luminosity of a new discovery irradiating the poem.
Perhaps that is one of the positive advantages of coming to English as a second language. Although he is a native speaker of Bengali, one of the great poetic languages of the world, Sri Chinmoy has lived in America since 1964 and written in English since long before that time. Nevertheless, he retains a delight in the language that prompts him to continually expand its possibilities.
The compound noun, in particular, allows him to yoke together two words that are entirely dissimilar in such a way that one casts new light upon the other:
Compromise-food
Is empty of taste.
Surely no other poet in the world would liken “compromise” to “food”, even more, to insist that it actually is a kind of food. And yet the image brilliantly conveys the poet’s disdain for compromise. We think of compromise as being a yielding, a magnanimous concession. We believe in something, but we feel compelled to modify our stand and accept a lesser option. Sri Chinmoy forcibly reminds us that we also have to live with this option, we have to eat it, as it were. The result, we come to discover, is something entirely unsatisfactory.
In actual fact, compound nouns of this kind incorporate an element of witticism on the part of the poet and move such aphorisms further along the axis towards the epigram. Coleridge defines the epigram thus:
What is an Epigram? A dwarfish whole;
Its body brevity, and wit its soul.
It is telling in a poet-seer such as Sri Chinmoy that wit or a certain wry humour can coexist with high seriousness. While many of his aphorisms are on an elevated spiritual plane, there are others which have a punch line, or involve a play on words, or offer practical advice that displays a rare astuteness. This breadth in the poet’s work is a testimony also to his ability to communicate on many differing levels.
Let us consider two oft-quoted non-poetic epigrams by Oscar Wilde: “I can resist everything except temptation” and “The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.” Sri Chinmoy further adds to this dialogue with his epigram:
Temptation
Does not come to us
Uninvited.
Suddenly he has swept the whole context of the debate into a spiritual perspective by asserting that weakness precedes temptation and not vice versa. One can almost imagine the participants engaging in this verbal joust and then Sri Chinmoy capping the argument with his wry and extremely perspicacious retort.
There is a similar underlying keenness in examples such as:
Life means
An eternal test,
And not an eternal rest!
God loves
Only the needy
And never the greedy.
In both cases, the thrust of the poem comes from the poet’s discernment of the crucial differences between two rhyming opposites. Such poems expose our human weaknesses and, at the same time, offer positive choices. Sri Chinmoy does not see his role as one of criticism, but of inspiration, encouragement and support. His astringent observations notwithstanding, he accepts human mistakes, follies and imperfections without judgement or condemnation, as evinced in the following:
Everybody gets lost
At least once
Along the highways and byways
Of life.
God will embrace you
Only after
You have forgiven yourself.
In some aphorisms, he even goes to the extent of placing two alternatives before the reader and allowing him to choose the answer for himself:
Who has disowned whom?
God, the unconditional Lover,
Or man, the endless beggar?
In another poem, he asks a similar rhetorical question, except that here God and man have reversed their roles:
Who is calling whom?
God the Beggar
Or man the wanderer?
The poet maintains his aesthetic and spiritual distance while subtly guiding us to find the inescapable answer in the depths of our heart. Emerson once said, “The great never hinder us.” Sri Chinmoy proves this to be true time and again. His greatness is such that he leads us beyond the surface realities towards an experience of the Infinite, of the Divine, and there he leaves us, at the very threshold, as it were. It is we who have to take that final step.
