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THE ANSWER

Wait and see.
The temporary emptiness
Of not discovering
The answers of life
Cannot last,
For the Answer itself
Is blossoming
    Petal by petal
        For you.[39]

In the same way that the flight of the bird was seen in an eternal dimension, so this subtle unfoldment of the divinity within man is portrayed as a continuing act that is forever caught in a balance of motion and stillness. Explaining this capacity of art to freeze motion and yet still to communicate it, Tagore writes:

In perfect rhythm, the art form becomes like the stars which in their seeming stillness are never still, like a motionless flame that is nothing but movement. A great picture is always speaking ... [40]

The following poem exhibits this very quality. Using the lotus, the mysteriously beautiful flower of the East, Sri Chinmoy paints an image of the flower in its first moment of opening:

To You I bow, 0 Lord of my worship. Like a white lotus of purity I place myself at Your feet And bloom with all seekers of the spirit. This is my sole longing this morning.[41]

The corresponding flower of the West is the rose. Its fragrance and perfection have, over the centuries, provided Western man with a constant source of inspiration. This tradition of symbolic usage undoubtedly influences the poet to use the rose in a ceremonial rather than in a phenomenological sense: