AN INDIAN FOLK RELIGION By RABINDRANATH TAGORE

What was more, those men who felt the love welling forth from the heart of Buddhism, as one with the current of the Eternal Love itself, were struck with the idea that such an effluence could never have been due to a single cataclysm of history—unnatural and therefore untrue. They felt instead that it was in the eternal nature of truth, that the event must belong to a series of manifestations ; there must have been numberless other revelations in the past and endless others to follow.

The idea grew and widened until men began to feel that this Infinite Being was already in every one of them, and that it rested with themselves to remove the sensual obstructions and reveal him in their own lives. In every individual there 'was, they realised, the potentiality of Buddha—that is to say, the Infinite made manifest.

We have to keep in mind the great fact that the preaching of the Buddha in India was not followed by stagnation of life—as would surely have happened if humanity was without any positive goal and his teaching was without any permanent value in itself. On the contrary, we find the arts and sciences springing up in its wake, institutions started for alleviating the misery of all creatures, human and non-human, and great centres of education founded. Some mighty power was suddenly roused from its obscurity, which worked for long centuries and changed the history of man in a large part of the world. And that power came into its full activity only by the individual being made conscious of his infinite worth. It was like the sudden discovery of a great mine of living wealth.

During the period of Buddhism the doctrine of deliverance flourished, which reached all man-kind and released man's inner resources from neglect and self-insult. Even to-day we see in our own country human nature, from its despised 'corner of indignity, slowly and painfully finding its way to assert the inborn majesty of man. It is like the imprisoned tree finding a rift in the wall, and sending out its eager branches into freedom, to prove that darkness is not its birthright, that its love is for the sunshine. In the time of the Buddha the individual discovered his own immensity of worth, first by witnessing a man who united his heart in sympathy with all creatures, in all worlds, through the power of a love that knew no bounds ; and then by learning that the same light of perfection lay confined within himself behind the clouds of selfish desire, and that the Bodhi-hridaya "—the heart of the Eternal Enlightenment "—every moment claimed its unveiling in his own heart. Nagarjuna speaks of this Bodhi-hridaya (another of whose names is Bodhi-Citta) as follows :

One who understands the nature of the Bodhi-hridaya, sees
everything with a loving heart ; for love is the essence
of Bodhi-hridaya. (Outlines of Mahdydna Buddhism, by Dr. D. T. Suzaki.)

My object in writing this paper is to show, by the further help of illustration from a popular religious sect of Bengal, that the religious instinct of man urges him towards a truth, by which he can transcend the finite nature of the individual self. Man would never feel the indignity of his limitations if these were inevitable. Within him he has glimpses of the Infinite, which give him assurance that this truth is not in his limitations, but that this truth can be attained by love. For love is the positive quality of the Infinite, and love's sacrifice accordingly does not lead to emptiness, but to fulfilment, to Bodhi-hridaya, "the heart of enlightenment."

The members of the religious sect I have mentioned call themselves " Baul." They live outside social recognition, and their very obscurity helps them in their seeking, from a direct source, the enlightenment which the soul longs for, the eternal light of love.

Last edited by mamonjafran (2011-01-07 16:45:03)

II

One day, in a small village in Bengal, an ascetic woman from the neighbourhood came to see me. She had the name " Sarva-khepi " given to her by the village people, the meaning of which is " the woman who is mad about all things." She fixed her star-like eyes upon my face and startled me with the question, " When are you coming to meet me underneath the trees ? " Evidently she pitied me who lived (according to her) prisoned behind walls, banished away from the great meeting-place of the All, where she had her dwelling. Just at that moment my gardener came with his basket, and when the woman understood that the flowers in the vase on my table were going to be thrown away, to make place for the fresh ones, she looked pained and said to me, " You are always engaged reading and writing ; you do not see." Then she took the discarded flowers in her palms, kissed them and touched them with her forehead, and reverently murmured to herself, " Beloved of my heart." I felt that this woman, in her direct vision of the infinite personality in the heart of all things, truly represented the spirit of India.

In the same village I came into touch with some Baul singers. I had known them by their names, occasionally seen them singing and begging in the street, and so passed them by, vaguely classifying them in my mind under the general name of Vairagis, or ascetics.

The time came when I had occasion to meet with some members of the same body and talk to them about spiritual matters. The first Baul song, which I chanced to hear with any attention, profoundly stirred my mind. Its words are so simple that it makes me hesitate to render them in a foreign tongue, and set them forward for critical observation. Besides, the best part of a song is missed when the tune is absent ; for thereby its movement and its colour are lost, and it becomes like a butterfly whose wings have been plucked.

The first line may be translated thus : "Where shall I meet him, the Man of my Heart ? '" This phrase, " the Man of my Heart," is not peculiar to this song, but is usual with the Baul sect. It means that, for me, the supreme truth of all existence is in the revelation of the Infinite in my own humanity.

"The Man of my Heart," to the Baul, is like a divine instrument perfectly tuned. He gives expression to infinite truth in the music of life. And the longing for the truth which is in us, which we have not yet realised, breaks out in the following Baul song :

Where shall I meet him, the Man of my Heart ?
He is lost to me and I seek him wandering from land to land.

I am listless for that moonrise of beauty,
which is to light my life,
which I long to see in the fulness of vision, in gladness of heart.

The name of the poet who wrote this song was Gagan. He was almost illiterate ; and the ideas he received from his Baul teacher found no distraction from the self -consciousness of the modern age. He was a village postman, earning about ten shillings a month, and he died before he had completed his teens. The sentiment, to which he gave such intensity of expression, is common to most of the songs of his sect. And it is a sect, almost exclusively confined to that lower floor of society, where the light of modern education hardly finds an entrance, while wealth and respectability shun its utter indigence.

If this were not true, then it would be an utter humiliation to exist at all in this world. If it were solely our business to seek the Lover, and his to keep himself passively aloof in the infinity of his glory, or actively masterful only in imposing his commands upon us, then we should dare to defy him, and refuse to accept the everlasting insult latent in the one- sided importunity of a slave. And this is what the Baul says—he who, in the world of men, goes about singing for alms from door to door, with his one-stringed instrument and long robe of patched-up rags on his back :

I stop and sit here on the road. Do not ask me to walk farther.
If your love can be complete without mine, let me turn back from seeing you.
I have been travelling to seek you, my friend, for long ;
Yet I refuse to beg a sight of you, if you do not feel my need.
I am blind with market dust and midday glare,
and so wait, my heart's lover, in hopes that your own love
will send you to find me out.

The poet is fully conscious that his value in the world's market is pitifully small ; that he is neither wealthy nor learned. Yet he has his great compensation, for he has come close to his Lover's heart. In Bengal the women bathing in the river often use their overturned water jars to keep themselves floating when they swim, and the poet uses this incident for his simile :

It is lucky that I am an empty vessel,
For when you swim, I keep floating by your side.
Your full vessels are left on the empty shore, they are for use ;
But I am carried to the river in your arms, and I dance
to the rhythm of your heart-throbs and heaving of the waves.

The great distinguished people of the world do not know that these beggars—deprived of education, honour, and wealth—can, in the pride of their souls, look down upon them as the unfortunate ones, who are left on the shore for their worldly uses, but whose life ever misses the touch of the Lover's arms.

Bauls have no temple or image for their worship, and this utter simplicity is needful for men whose one subject is to realise the innermost nearness of God. The Baul poet expressly says that if we try to approach God through the senses we miss him :

Bring him not into your house as the guest of your eyes ;
but let him come at your heart's invitation.
Opening your doors to that which is seen only, is to lose it.

Yet, being a poet, he also knows that the objects of sense can reveal their spiritual meaning only when they are not seen through mere physical eyes :

Eyes can see only dust and earth,
But feel it with your heart, it is pure joy.
The flowers of delight blossom on all sides, in every form,
but where is your heart's thread to weave them in a
garland ?

These Bauls have a philosophy, which they call the philosophy of the body; but they keep its secret; it is only for the initiated. Evidently the underlying idea is that the individual's body is itself the temple, in whose inner mystic shrine the Divine appears before the soul, and the key to it has to be found from those who know. But as the key is not for us outsiders, I leave it with the observation that this mystic philosophy of the body is the outcome of the attempt to get rid of all the outward shelters which are too costly for people like themselves. But this human body of ours is made by God's own hand, from his own love, and even if some men, in the pride of their superiority, may despise it, God finds his joy in dwelling in others of yet lower birth. It is a truth easier of discovery by these people of humble origin than by men of proud estate.

The pride of the Baul beggar is not in his worldly distinction, but in the distinction that God himself has given to him. He feels himself like a flute through which God's own breath of love has been breathed :

My heart is like a flute he has played on.
If ever it fall into other hands,—
let him fling it away.
My lover's flute is dear to him.
Therefore, if to-day alien breath have entered it and
sounded strange notes,
Let him break it to pieces and strew the dust with them.

So we find that this man also has his disgust of defilement. While the ambitious world of wealth and power despises him, he in his turn thinks that the world's touch desecrates him who has been made sacred by the touch of his Lover. He does not envy us our life of ambition and achievements, but he knows how precious his own life has been :

I am poured forth in living notes of joy and sorrow
by your breath.
Morning and evening, in summer and in rains, I am
fashioned to music.
Yet should I be wholly spent in some flight of song,
I shall not grieve, the tune is so precious to me.

Our joys and sorrows are contradictory when self separates them in opposition. But for the heart in which self merges in God's love, they lose their absoluteness. So the Baul's prayer is to feel in all situations—in danger, or pain, or sorrow—that he is in God's hands. He solves the problem of emancipation from sufferings by accepting and setting them in a higher context :

I am the boat, you are the sea, and also the boatman.
Though you never make the shore, though you let me sink,
why should I be foolish and afraid ?
Is the reaching the shore a greater prize than losing myself
with you ?

If you are only the haven, as they say, then what is the sea ?
Let it surge and toss me on its waves, I shall be content.
I live in you, whatever and however you appear.
Save me or kill me as you wish, only never leave me in
others' hands.