Sri Chinmoy Poetry

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Sri Chinmoy's poetry modulates from description to meditative analogy without disjunction, holding the inner and the outer nature in balance with countless shades of ambiguity. He freely employs pathetic fallacy (example, "hope-buds are eternally wide awake") in order to shift a precise, descriptive word into the realm of paysage interieur. Consequently, there is a continual sliding away from the literal meaning of an expression towards symbolism. In the example quoted above, the literal identity of "bud" is realised in conjunction with the abstract meaning of "hope," thereby forming a compound which invites us to conceive of hope as something tangible, with its own particular identity and verifiable reality. The basis of this process in which the meditative mind makes the transition from one mode description to another, deeper kind of thinking, is intuition. The intuitive mind does not formulate analogy with a preconceived intellectual purpose. Rather, it operates by spontaneously assimilating and reducing certain strategic aspects of nature. Intuition enlists their properties of light, dimension and characteristic movement in order to construct a locus for the spiritual element in the poems:
 

A MAP OF SILENCE

What do I see in my
Heaven-free mind?
I see a map
Of midnight-silence
With a stupendous
Satisfaction-smile. [45]


WHILE WALKING

While walking along
The avenue of my aspiration-heart,
What do I do?
 I harvest my heart's sunlight.
How?
 Slowly, steadily and selflessly.


The poet becomes a true participant in nature, for the landscape which he perceives outside is an echo of his own inner nature.

No study of Sri Chinmoy's nature symbolism would be complete without reference to the sun. If light is the nexus of unity in the poems, then the sun, as the penultimate symbol of light, is at the heart of that unity. The sun within, more luminous and more effulgent than the outer sun, is at once the source and goal of man's aspiring soul:

 

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