Perhaps I am like the moon in that sky, yet I feel myself to be a bird in your sky. Such a vast expanse you have given me that even if I spent every moment of this life wandering through your firmament, I might never see all of its grandeur. My mind knows, the pure longing of my heart circles only around you. With what shall I fill that broad canvas of your sky—I myself do not know. Perhaps even without knowing, I shall carve out my own place, claim my own world from you—just see! You know I did not come to steal; I came to earn. The moon shall remain yours, true enough; I ask only for your sky. I read your writings always. How it is that I become attuned to your mind troubles me with wonder. You say there is much likeness between your thoughts and mine, but truly, I needed do nothing special to become as your mind. Your pen, your thoughts—the way they draw me inward is precisely the way I become yours. When you love someone and that love is returned even a little, you become, of your own accord, a person shaped to their heart. Then everything of theirs becomes dear to you, and from that very fondness you wish to arrange and order yourself according to their mind—from that urgency there is no escape. It is a strange mystery, an indissoluble spell of enchantment.
Did I not say one day that you are entirely what I am? When I become yours, the palace of victory that builds itself within me, moment by moment, grows ever higher. To be able to surrender oneself entirely to the person one loves—this is the true treasure of love. And only when one surrenders completely does a person become pure. Perhaps in that surrender the old self is lost and cannot be found again, but what greater gain could there be than the achievement of rising above oneself? To become the muse of another's poetry, this very purification is what seats one in that place. The goddess of fortune whose dwelling and refuge is in our heart—she seeks only the purity of the heart! All the pieces in your 'Vague Journal' series draw me powerfully. I have kept all eight of those entries in my notes. Whenever my mind grew troubled for any reason, I would read them, and had been doing so for long before. I have read your essay 'Melancholic Beauty' many times over. I know you admire the writings of Bhaskar Chakraborty, particularly 'The Bed of Sleep,' which you asked me to read, but I have never read his work. Only once in one of your pieces did I come across two lines of his poetry—'Poison mingles with the blood, beloved, now life departs, slowly, it ebbs away.' Oh, what a smooth and tender magic of existence!...That much alone do I know of his poetry.
When I read the pieces in your 'Vague Journal' series, one thought alone comes to mind: how utterly pure must a heart be to write such words! That certain writings spring not from mere practice in writing but from the purity of the heart—surely you know this better than I? In truth, all the answers to these questions—what communion with the Creator means, what it signifies, what prayer truly is—I have learned them all from that writing of yours. Prayer means precisely a way of communicating with the 'you' that dwells within you; and whoever can pray with the greatest perfection of spirit is that much happier, that much more successful, and that much greater a human being.
The person who can worship properly finds the greatest peace, and creates the most beautiful things. To worship rightly—that is no small matter. When a batsman steps up to play, his entire attention fixes upon that ball; the better he can focus on it, the better a batsman he becomes. In that moment, the ball itself becomes his creator. His heart and soul—his outer and inner self—both must converge upon that ball alone. Not even the memory of his dearest person in the world can enter his mind then. Neither birth nor death should shake him in that instant. If he brings anything else into his thoughts, he cannot play; he cannot hit a six. The better the batsman, the better he understands the ball. This very act of understanding the ball is his worship.
Often, when a player looks skyward after hitting a six, he is praying to his creator, for he believes the creator dwells above. Yet if someone else believes and looks at a clock instead, they receive the same result. The creator’s dwelling is in the human heart; so people place the creator wherever they believe him to be, in order to awaken that heart. When they take their mind and soul there, the inner “I” awakens within them, and this has a direct effect upon their body, their mind, their thoughts—and thus they reach their desired goal. The better one performs the work, the better a player one becomes. The whole matter rests entirely upon faith. Wherever the batsman believes and looks toward his creator, there his creator’s presence manifests. What matters is the direction of faith itself. Performance is what is primary here, not where one is looking. The moment a person looks toward something in faith, that very instant their heart begins to respond. A signal comes from within saying: now you are connected with the creator. Receiving such a signal, they grow joyful; confidence awakens in them. And it is precisely this confidence that allows them to hit another six off the next ball. The creator dwells fundamentally in one’s heart; the awakening of the inner “I” is itself the grace of the creator. The better one awakens one’s inner self, the better one lives, the more at peace one remains, the more one can work with confidence. Failing to grasp this simple truth about connecting with the creator, we instead make it a source of conflict with one another. What folly! Yet all paths speak the same essential truth—connection with the creator. All that is external to us is human-made; all that is fundamental happens only through union with the creator. The creator is nothing but the inner human being. When the heart speaks, that is the creator’s voice. Whoever performs this work well is the greatest believer, the greatest devotee.
In my seven-fold love,
she does not know how far she ranges.
In every lane and alley of my being
her presence shakes me—
does she know any of this?
Your love, your significance answers for me all those unwritten questions that have burned within me for so long. Now when someone brings those very troubles to me, they no longer trouble me as they once did.
# The Scar
The wound may heal, but the scar catches the eye, and with it come the memories of all that happened. This is why, when they come to me seeking solutions to their personal troubles, those old days return unbidden, and I grow weak. Sometimes it is terribly difficult for me to accept that an unwanted mark has been left upon my life. As long as no one brings their problems to me, or nothing of that sort occurs before my eyes, I forget everything. But the moment they begin arriving with their difficulties, the moment I start thinking of how to find a way through, my past seems to turn and hurl new questions at me. Yet I do not much care to speak about marriage and divorce and such things. They seem to me ancient, worn. Though certain matters do trouble me from within, certain questions that gnaw at me: am I truly doing right when I encourage people to begin anew, to forget all that lies behind and start again? There is a fear that works within me about my own actions—am I making a mistake somewhere? Am I harming them in the name of help?
—
There are some things I wish to tell you today. You know, even now I cannot accept the fact of my own separation. Why do I feel that I have never wronged anyone, so why should such a thing befall me? I have always wanted only the simplest life, the most ordinary and uneventful. So why should my life itself become so tangled? I have never found an answer to this. Yet there are some questions whose answers I have found only now. When they would come seeking my help for the ending of a relationship, I would imagine: these are their problems, and now I find myself in that very position, so I must find solutions bearing this in mind. I was always opposed to breaking, to severing. I never thought relationships so cheap that they should shatter for nothing. It always seemed to me—it always will seem—that a relationship must be regarded as one of the five precious things of this world. I have always given relationships their due weight, because in this world, if people are to live, they must sustain and tend to their bonds. Perhaps no one can do it alone, but one must hold on to someone—though people, in the end, learn only through being knocked down. It was for all these reasons that separation was always repugnant to me, and perhaps this is why the Creator has placed me within such a trial. What a person cannot bear is precisely what befalls them, what they must endure.
—
No, I have never feared separation; I have only weighed it seriously. Whenever they would come and lay bare to me the troubles of their intimate lives, their conjugal troubles, the first thing that would occur to me was this: why are these people revealing to me the innermost things, the things that should remain only between husband and wife? It seemed to me almost like a public disrobing. I know something of how much disrespect and contempt one must harbor to do such a thing. Yet however great the anger, one ought not do it, because through all this, so many ugly truths about both of them come spilling out—truths which, if others did not know, if one did not tell others, would truly cause no harm. Each person ought to conceal the faults of the other as much as possible.
# On Separation and Compassion
Two people cannot live together. They are different from each other, they think differently. Without judging which is right and which is wrong, if we accept that both are right—because each person’s thoughts are the capital of their own life—then it seems that perhaps both stand rightly in their own place, yet they cannot easily accept each other’s thinking. In that case, let them part ways if they must, but let there remain between them a mutual respect. And whatever happens, they did spend time together once. Was there not even a single moment during that time when each felt affection for the other? Has that affection no worth? Yes, they are separating, very well, but does that mean the two of them must now become each other’s enemies? They are parting precisely so that they may be well, are they not? Then let them stay within the bounds of tolerance toward each other! In doing so, at least—no matter what else—the respect that one human being ought to bear toward another remains intact.
I wished that if separation must come, neither should harbor any hatred toward the other afterward, nor should either become vengeful. For in the end we are all human, and we all make mistakes, will make mistakes, however careful we may be. When we see another’s error, we are often oblivious to our own. The scar on another’s cheek catches our eye first; how many of us remember then the countless holes in our own cheek? Sometimes some people would form a judgment about me from a distance, while others would come seeking my counsel. I have never told anyone to leave, nor have I rendered judgment according to my own lights, because I knew that if I erred, these people would suffer the consequences, and I too would suffer with them. If one cannot give honest counsel, it is better to remain silent or say, “I don’t know about this.” To give bad advice and plunge someone into danger or trouble is a kind of sin.
I have only tried to show them what position they stand in, whether any mistake is occurring from that position, and in such cases, what matters are within their power to control—because even if we wish it, we cannot control everything in the world, or such external things. And then I would think: there is no reason to seek solutions from others about such a simple matter. Yet why did they come to me? The next moment I would reflect: when we truly face a problem, or pass through a difficult one, our mind, our brain is mostly unsettled and unquiet. Then even a simple matter seems terribly difficult to our eyes. This is why we then wander from door to door seeking solutions to our problems from others. We go to those who have already faced such problems and found their way through them. This is indeed the right course. Who knows a situation better than the one who goes through it? Yet fear would grip me when someone would leave a marriage of ten years and come to my door. Then I would wonder what could have happened that even after bearing it for ten years, they felt they could bear it no longer, or the person standing before me could bear it no longer? The truth is, people carry many kinds of sorrow.
I am not the sort of person to judge one side after hearing from only one party, though both sides did not always come to me.
And yet, I have always tried—always—to see if those relationships could somehow be sustained. Whenever I failed, I would turn back and reconsider my actions, searching for where I might have gone wrong. Finally, when I saw that there was nothing more I could do, I told myself it was because I had already made every possible effort to keep those relationships alive. But even then, a doubt persisted within me: was I only breaking things, only capable of breaking things? Could I not mend anything at all? Though I knew that where none of us have control, it is the Creator’s will that prevails. Then, when you told me that I had done nothing wrong, that I had tried my utmost and this was my work—that I could only do this much and the rest was surely in the Creator’s hands—I felt an extraordinary relief wash over me. The thought came to me: I was not wrong. I had chosen the right path.
Since hearing those words from you that day, a great burden has lifted from my shoulders. For so long, I had carried a suppressed guilt, a shame directed at myself for thinking that I knew only how to break things, that I could mend nothing. That weight has slowly become my strength. Rather, when you said that when a relationship truly breaks, what happens is that after much effort, people are forced to step back from futile attempts, and that this is how it should be—when someone comes to me after a decade of effort, seeking the hope of a new life, a fresh beginning, that person has already spent those ten years trying to repair that relationship, and when they find no new solutions, then they come to me. And it struck me how much pain I must have caused them in those early days, when I kept sending them back to the same place, asking them to try again and again. This is not right. Force achieves nothing. If a relationship is held together by force, against the heart’s will, nothing but suffering flows from it. I used to think then: none of them are in the circumstances, the situation in which I myself went through separation—so how could I suddenly ask them to do something? In many cases, I remained neutral. I never imposed a decision on anyone, because I know that it is they who must carry their own life forward; I can perhaps only show them possible paths.
I knew I too could be wrong. But today I am truly glad when I see that they are better off than before. Whatever their situation, whatever place they find themselves in, I have always wanted their wellbeing. In such matters, it is right to remain neutral. They should be told what they hope to hear, what they wish to understand. They already know what they should do. They come to me only to hear their own heart’s truth spoken from my lips—nothing more. Yet in most cases, it is better not to return to the old place. Why? Because truly, when a divorce happens, when such a relationship breaks, it happens out of profound suffering. There are very few cases where people have returned to the old place and found happiness.
Rather, I’ve seen it happen many times—someone finds happiness in a new place with another person. But returning to the old place and finding happiness? That rarely happens. Because that person has already spent day after day trying, failing, and then made the decision to leave. If after two hours or two days of counseling with me they must return to that same old place, haven’t they already tried for two or four years before coming to me, only to fail? So why come at all? Merely to pursue the same solution in the end?
To go backward is to accept many things in silence. To tolerate them with lips sealed, to swallow many things unwanted. To give such a difficult decision is to kill a person mentally. The first task of a human being is to be happy, to live in joy. A person could die at any moment, and after death, no one asks whether that person lived in happiness or in suffering during their remaining days. Not a single other person in the world cares about it. It matters to no one whether someone else is happy or in pain. Only that person themselves suffers—nothing more. All their deprivations belong only to them. And if they possess something, those possessions are not theirs alone, because possessions can be shared and are shared. No one can enjoy their achievements in solitude. But pain and deprivation—these are only theirs. Suffering is only theirs; happiness can be divided. When a person enjoys their accomplishments, many gather around unbidden, but failure is entirely one’s own, and one must endure it alone, however agonizing it may be.
When patients go to a doctor, they go as much to hear “you will get well” as to cure the illness itself. Yet that same person, when speaking with someone close to them outside the doctor’s office, does not wish to hear what they wished to hear from the doctor. Then they seek compassion from that close person, a refuge from burden. Because that close person is not a doctor, and they know it. This is why we expect different things from different people. I know that those who come to me seek certain words from me, and I give them those words, that courage they need in that moment. If they return to their old state even after coming to me, then there was no need to come, because they have already tried and, seeing no other way, came to me. Suppose they hear my words and correct their mistakes. Suppose they change themselves for the sake of the relationship. But the other person has not heard my words, so that person will not budge an inch from where they stand. They will remain as before and repeat their old mistakes. If anything, if one person becomes flexible, the other will only take greater advantage. Sometimes, bringing two people, both parties, together can resolve such troubles. But you cannot fix a relationship by correcting only one side—it is impossible.
# Translated Text
Perhaps if I could make those two people hear these words, then maybe the rest of their lives would be beautiful, filled with happiness—that is, if they accept my words or find them worth accepting! At the same time, they would gain considerable mental strength, something they would be unable to acquire without my telling them in this way. What they can do for themselves, no one else can do for them, however much they might wish to. If I can give those people—one or two of them—a little courage, a little peace, then truly I am doing the right thing.
Sometimes it grieves me to think how many I have turned away, offered no help to. If I had spoken with them, perhaps they would have been better off, perhaps their lives too would have become a little better than before. But I have also seen this: many treat marriage as if it were a game, a trifle. They use relationships carelessly, thoughtlessly. Marriage is a decision of great importance—something I have learned from my own life. My parents, certainly, had the responsibility to teach me this, for I knew nothing of it then. That every relationship should carry respect, a sense of reverence—I did not learn this from my family. I learned it myself, through my own struggles. Marriage is not merely a bond; it is the question of how to spend the rest of one’s life in peace, of spending it with beloved people, where even if all needs are not met, the relationships remain sound, where each cares for the other, becomes a companion to the other’s sorrows. One can be happy even in poverty, amid countless limitations and hardships, if there is genuine mutual understanding. We must share and live together only for our own needs. Not for others’ needs. It was our parents’ responsibility to teach us this—those who came into the world before us, at least for a day. But what shadow are they themselves chasing so desperately that the very things most precious to them become hollow and worthless, and perhaps they will not realize it until they have lost everything?
We labor day and night for ourselves, to keep those near us a little comfortable, drawn by the promise of bringing some worldly happiness into their lives. Yet in the midst of all this, we are slowly losing those very people, without even knowing it. We are forcing, ceaselessly forcing those close to us, those around us, to become as we wish them to be. We are constantly compelling our loved ones, our neighbors, to accept our thoughts and convictions, or we are simply imposing them. But there is a limit to all tolerance, and when something exceeds that limit, it must provoke a reaction, must demand a response. We wonder: where is our fault? We enjoy thinking this way. As long as we continue to see ourselves as blameless, what better can happen to us than this? Those upon whom we force our decisions, those who accept them under compulsion—they too awaken one day, they too learn to make their own decisions. Do we ever pause to think how we hide our guilty face from them? Their hatred, their reproach, their spit—one day it will surely strike our face.
We hardly grasp this truth—that the suffering we have thrust upon others, forced them to endure day after day without reason, merely to satisfy our own stubbornness or whim, we ourselves will not truly understand until the moment that same suffering settles upon our own shoulders. We reap, in the end, what we have sown.
—
Dear Kāvyalakṣmī, when you tell me I write good poetry, or that I possess much grace, whom do I credit? Everything I have, everything that draws you to me—it is all your creation. I have truly learned nothing; or what little I have learned amounts to nothing more than a diary full of errors. I burned those pages, though one cannot burn the lessons life teaches through its daily unfolding. Yet I never sought your approval, nor do I seek it now. But when you come and set right what is broken in me, what I have neglected to build properly, it feels as though—after all these years—I have finally found someone who matters to me, someone for whom everything about me has worth. My goodness, my failings, perhaps not all can be remedied, but never before has anyone accepted me as I am. Wherever I have gone, people have only held up my faults before me with pointed fingers. Then I would think: Am I nothing but a flawed, hapless creature? Have I learned nothing? Is there no good within me? They never looked inside. I would not let them, because I believe that whoever cannot hold all of me has no right to know anything of me.
—
I harbor no particular anguish over the matter of divorce, for it has become irrelevant to me, grown old and stale—though you once said such things remain eternally relevant. A thousand years ago, when someone abandoned another, the ache was the same; it is the same now; and a thousand years hence it will be identical still. These matters never grow old. They are eternal. That fear dwelling within every human heart—the fear of losing or being lost by the one we love—it works in everyone, it worked before, it will work forever. Such feelings are eternal. There is no difference between one person and another in this regard. You taught me that those problems which money cannot solve require, in most cases, only a little courage from the sufferer—a little daring, a dream of beginning anew. But how many will offer even that? People have grown terribly busy, and worse still, dreadfully inhuman.
—
Not everyone finds themselves in the same circumstance. Mental strength, capacity—these vary from person to person. In such cases, perhaps I can share my own experience, but I cannot prescribe how they should apply it to their lives. That work must be theirs alone. For it was my own sincerity toward that work, my faith in the Creator, that—coupled with prayer and genuine intention—sustained me through my darkest hours. I prayed repeatedly; I called upon the Creator. What this means is that I awakened myself within. Through ceaseless prayer, I remade myself, tempering my spirit until I could bear what had come to pass.
# Awakening the Heart
I found no easier path to awakening my own heart than the one that lay before me, for I have walked it since birth, and thus it is familiar and tested. I view the Creator in such a way that the more I pray, the more my inner self awakens. As my inner self awakens, a certain strength and self-confidence arises within me, which directly influences my efforts. And I will see the fruit of my endeavors. To obtain that fruit, I must strive more, pray more, surrender myself more completely to the Creator.
When I no longer have any control over something, then surrendering it completely to the Creator is the real work. If we do not let go of those matters to the Creator but instead remain unnecessarily anxious, they will weigh upon us all the more heavily. Yet the moment we fully surrender matters to the Creator, what happens is this: we are sending a signal to our brain that we will no longer worry about that matter. Our brain understands no religion; it understands only the signal we send it and acts accordingly. Therefore, whenever we surrender something completely to the Creator with faith, thinking that the Creator may now do as He wishes, what this means is that our brain receives this message: it need no longer trouble itself with this. Our brain then gradually ceases to fret needlessly about that matter, and whenever our brain ceases to worry about something, it swiftly begins to yield positive results.
When someone asks, “How are you?” I often hear people say, “Alhamdulillah, I am well,” or “By God’s grace, I am well,” or some such comforting words. But what does this truly mean? When I say this, does it necessarily mean I am actually well? Not always. Those who speak this way do not necessarily live happier or easier lives than we do. When I say it, what it means is that in that very moment, I am sending my brain this signal: whatever my current condition, I place its entire responsibility upon the Creator. The brain then accepts that there is no need to be anxious about this. Whatever is to be done, He will do it. Then we gain some additional strength in our minds, and some peace comes along with it. This awakening of the soul, this liberation of the soul from anxiety, this purification of the soul—this is the great matter, this is the fundamental work of faith, this is the fruit of religious practice. For many who do not think in this way, this simple faith alone can keep me far better than it would them, even though the actual circumstances remain unchanged. Nearly all the origin and growth of our suffering occurs within our minds. Once we learn the techniques for escaping from there and practice them regularly, we obtain many kinds of peace in life. If we can diminish fear and worry, life becomes far easier.
In truth, our life constantly offers us the chance to live anew, to think anew. We ourselves sometimes grow inattentive and search for something we cannot quite name.
Constantly, doubts and hesitations drive us in pursuit of one phantom dream after another, and in that chase we lose sight of life’s true purpose. Is our life merely a race toward some destination, or is it simply a long journey on which we must keep walking until death? Whichever it be, what I understand by the meaning of life is this: as long as we are alive, we must keep moving forward. It is not as though we shall always wear the crown of victory—there will be failures, there will be shame, there will be tears. Yet whatever comes, victory or defeat, we cannot stop. We must push ourselves from within, must keep going until our last breath. Here, there is no option to stop before death arrives. Only death can bring everything to a halt.