The Gardener XLIII: No, My Friends
No, my friends, I shall never be an
ascetic, whatever you may say.
I shall never be and ascetic if she
does not take the vow with me.
It is my firm resolve that if I
cannot find a shady shelter and a
companion for my penance, I shall
never turn ascetic.
No, my friends, I shall never leave
my hearth and home, and retire into
the forest solitude, if rings no merry
laughter in its echoing shade and if
the end of no saffron mantle flutters
in the wind; if its silence is not
deepened by soft whispers.
I shall never be an ascetic.
poem by Rabindranath Tagore
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Related quotes
Who'd stay hermetic
lid on absent lid tonight,
play grey, ascetic?
haiku by Jonathan Robin (03 April 2005)
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The Ascetic
The Narrow, thorny path he trod.
“Enter into My joy,” said God.
The sad ascetic shook his head;
“I’ve lost all taste for joy,” he said.
poem by Victor James Daley
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The student who deceives himself into thinking that he is giving his life like an ascetic in the spirit of sacrifice for art, is the victim of a deplorable species of egotism.
quote by Alma Gluck
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Lord Buddha the Guide
He was born in Lumbin,
Delivered his first sermon in Saranath,
And shed his body in Kushinara,
The Lord Buddha, the Light of Asia.
He is
Siddhartha, the one who accomplishes,
Tathagata, the perfect one,
Bhudhisattva, the enlightened one,
Sakhya Muni, the ascetic of Sakhya clan,
Goutama, the ascetic,
And Jina, the conqueror.
Truths are four:
The existence of sorrow;
There is cause for it;
Cessation of the cause;
The conquest.
Rules are five:
Abstinence from injury;
Abstinence from stealing;
Abstinence of wrongful indulgence;
Abstinence of falsehood;
Abstinence from intoxication.
Paths are eightfold:
Right understanding;
Right thoughts;
Right speech;
Right action;
Right living;
Right effort;
Right mindfulness;
Right contemplation
Self indulgence and
Self mortification,
Are two extreme steps;
Choose the middle path.
To eat and drink, to live
Is not evil.
To do to be merry is evil.
To nurse the health is not evil.
To do the opposite is evil.
The one who conquers the all
But not one’s self, conquers nil.
Buddha ruled ‘the Hindus’
Before Rama and Krishna ruled.
His shrines had been replaced
With the shrines of Hindus,
Which were again replaced
With the shrines of Islam.
If Buddha is to return to his place,
Rama has no place to return to.
26.05.2002, pakd
poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar
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A commercial society whose members are essentially ascetic and indifferent in social ritual has to be provided with blueprints and specifications for evoking the right tone for every occasion.
quote by Marshall McLuhan
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No sane man can afford to dispense with debilitating pleasures; no ascetic can be considered reliably sane.
quote by Robert M. Parker, Jr.
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I love my work with a frenetic and perverse love, as an ascetic loves the hair shirt which scratches his belly.
quote by Gustave Flaubert
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Paradoxical Alikes
Blazing red
Ascetic saffron
Appeal to me
In same tone
Radical cannons
Vedic canons
Sound to me
In same tune
Rishi Marx
Rebel Manu
Seem to me
Right addresses
Take my route
Learn the truth
(Manu was a great exponent of Vedas. He wrote Manu Smrithi
a codified Hindu law based on Vedic tenets)
BY sathya narayana
dt: 11-11-2008
poem by Sathya Narayana
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Communion
I touched the sofa
Where once she sat
Reading Emily Dickinson
With candles lit.
Her soul was still with me
Like a sweet dream
Even before I sank
Into sacred sleep.
I don't want to walk through life
Mournfully like an ascetic nun
Living in a cluster
Hidden from the sun.
I have a heart of silence
Gazing at the sunset
Asking for spiritual guidance
And not the ability to forget.
I think you can find God
As easily in a theater as a church,
True religion is the comfort and support
You find in humanity.
I'm going to have to walk
To the corner bar
Or a public park
And find someone
To share the communion
Of conversation.
poem by Uriah Hamilton
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Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.
quote by Bertrand Russell
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Discourses XVII ‘Like in my eyes’
Like in my eyes
I would have believed
The difficulty
The possibility
I still looked
To the lightness
Of your steps
Envious wishes
Who held you in embrace
Some day
I might see you again
The ascetic in isolation
The one who thought
Will find you in heart
The reality goes otherwise
Denial of present
For unknown future
Lost is the present
And lost the future
10/4/2009
poem by Sadiqullah Khan
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Searing Heat
An ascetic dies in a shoe
spilling blood.
A surreal moon
wants to investigate –
a sectarian divide of
fraudulent sky.
And you want to be buried
under rose petals –
courting controversies
to clean the polluted river.
A lifeboat was needed
to take you for a quiz –
singing national anthem.
Emblematic,
You were sharpening
your nails.
poem by Satish Verma
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I Am The Lover
After separation from death
rain-scented moon was rising
in broken sky. Night birds started
fluting one to another relentlessly;
earth unjointed, was speechless, in
failures we meet often, a little while.
I was ascetic scaling blood pollution,
the life had no mercy, incapable of healing.
You surge for the bleeding miner, the
gold missing, priest was innocent, behind
the peels lies the empty hand, insanity in
parallel depression will find a new praise.
The infinite solitude of the soldier in war
fights the demons of blind desires. One by
one they kill you from the mountain. You
rise from the ocean under twilight of winged stars.
poem by Satish Verma
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Loveless And Sexless
are you going on an ascetic
adventure?
i ask you how is your sex life
you said none
and so i ask about your love life
and you said
that i better ask about your sex life
and you said there is none about both
and so i ask you
about your life, on such a very basic question
you still have no answer.
let me ask you: how about death?
shall i have your answer now?
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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The Gardener LXXV: At Midnight
At midnight the would-be ascetic
announced:
"This is the time to give up my
home and seek for God. Ah, who has
held me so long in delusion here?"
God whispered, "I," but the ears
of the man were stopped.
With a baby asleep at her breast
lay his wife, peacefully sleeping on
one side of the bed.
The man said, "Who are ye that
have fooled me so long?"
The voice said again, "They are
God," but he heard it not.
The baby cried out in its dream,
nestling close to its mother.
God commanded, "Stop, fool, leave
not thy home," but still he heard not.
God sighed and complained, "Why
does my servant wander to seek me,
forsaking me?"
poem by Rabindranath Tagore
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And I Lounged and Lay on Their Beds
When I went to that house of pleasure
I didn't stay in the front rooms where they celebrate,
with some decorum, the accepted modes of love.
I went into the secret rooms
and lounged and lay on their beds.
I went into the secret rooms
considered shameful even to name.
But not shameful to me -because if they were,
what kind of poet, what kind of artist would I be?
I'd rather be an ascetic. That would be more in keeping,
much more in keeping with my poetry,
than for me to find pleasure in the commonplace rooms.
poem by Constantine P. Cavafy
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Only after conquering desires
Only after conquering desires
You can declare nothing is world
And the world is nothing
And nothingness means
Nothingness is woman to ascetic
Nothingness is life to warrior
And with truth I do not want
To go to heaven
Only after conquering desires
Only after conquering desires.
poem by Gajanan Mishra
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Mind In A Mirage
Every second I crave,
For new substance to play,
Every second a new Avatar,
Intelligence of my subconscious,
An attractive manifestation,
Thousands like Jesus and Buddha,
To save mankind,
Servants of slippery circumstances,
Left unenlightened black souls,
Travelling towards renunciation,
Keeping pride,
Weakening from the inset,
Effort to escape my Karma,
Left in vain to get it right,
Felt like an ascetic,
Away from the world,
Wandering in search,
For what they call, 'Peace',
Idiots, straying for a thing within ourselves...
poem by Vikrant Jog
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Dangerous Things
Said Myrtias (a Syrian student
in Alexandria; in the reign of
Augustus Constans and Augustus Constantius;
in part a pagan, and in part a christian);
"Fortified by theory and study,
I shall not fear my passions like a coward.
I shall give my body to sensual delights,
to enjoyments dreamt-of,
to the most daring amorous desires,
to the lustful impulses of my blood, without
any fear, for whenever I want --
and I shall have the will, fortified
as I shall be by theory and study --
at moments of crisis I shall find again
my spirit, as before, ascetic."
poem by Constantine P. Cavafy
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Experienced
once ascetic, one jumps to an experimentation of life
giving up to passion, maximizing the sensuality of the flesh
enjoying the fulfillment of every dream of lust
catering to all amorous adventures
following the flow of every impulse of the glands
without any fear, taking in whatever is wanted
to fortify the will of the mind less the spirit
and having learned all these through a first hand experience
one can say at the end
' i was there, and it was good, and it was enough'
now back to myself again.
alone. strong. powerful. knowledgeable.
after evil, the good prevails
as always.
back to purity. wash and clean
the past.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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