“Is the body a beautiful flower or a walking pillar?” Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu would ask his students. One would answer, “Calling the body a tower doesn’t take away its flower-like characteristics. The imminent connection between the soul and God is our body. The body even connects the outside world to our mind.”
Helen Keller was born deafblind. On her visit to India she met Rabindranath Tagore. She asked him if she could touch his eyes. Tagore gently took her hands and placed them on his eyes. She said, “Great are these eyes that saw the beauty in the world and great are your hands that put that beauty into words for blind people to see.” Tagore said that, that day he understood the true importance of his body. What will it take for us to value our body and stop us from taking it for granted?
A plastic surgeon turned psychiatrist stated that humans need to cater more to the mind than to the body. We can easily tell with a stomach ache that our body isn’t fine but it is very difficult to know whether our mind is fine. We do feel stress, restlessness, sleeplessness or depression but we never take it seriously. We don’t actively look for peace, even if we find it we can’t recognise and even if we do recognise it we fail to understand its true power. This is equivalent to not noticing the ganga when it is flowing in our own backyard.
Shraddha [faith] is another immortal flower. When difficulties arise in life it is our shraddha that always comes to our rescue. Faith is the base and foundation of our road to salvation.
God has created thousands of flowers but one man can’t possibly smell all. If we even recognise the important flowers and take in their sweet smell our human birth will be successful.
“गुरु प्यार है, गुरु प्यार है,
तु ही प्रीत है, तु दुलार है,
तु ज्ञान है, तु ही ध्यान है,
गुरु प्यार है, गुरु प्यार है "
One saint was very famous for his amazing oratory skills. While handing over control of the ashram to his disciple he asked, “You have my blessings for everything, but ask for whatever you want and I shall give it to you.” His disciple asked for his oratory skills. The saint replied, “After 25 years you still did not understand that speech is a worldly virtue. Out of everything you wanted this? The greatest thing in the world is love. You should ask for love, kindness, humanity and compassion. A man isn’t great if he can get the stars to the earth with his words, he is great if he can grow flowers of love within the hearts of the people he meets.”
A man who was always happy was asked what was the cause of his never ending happiness. He said, “I realised that I can control all my thoughts. I started concentration on happy thoughts and that has resulted in this. Worldly situations cannot control my line of thought anymore.” If we can learn to do this our hearts too will become gardens full of flowers of love. We all have to spread love in this manner. Spread the love to one and all. God has given us all equal amounts of love but it is our lack of understanding that stops us from spreading it.
The power of love will pass from one person to their family, their neighbours and so on. Everyone in contact with the person will experience happiness and peace. Understanding of true knowledge and the awakening of our soul nurtures this flower of love. Our soul is a desert without this understanding but with it our soul can become a garden. Once this flower of love starts blooming within us, its scent will slowly spread to whoever you meet and eventually in the world. We must all light the candles of love within our hearts to break away from this world of attachments.
An expression of Selfless Love
A Poem by Brahmnisht Minalben
A day to shower supreme love on our special one
A time to openly express our feelings and enjoy the eternal fun.
Our divine master who is the ruler of our heart
We seek your blessings as you are the cherry on our tart.
We offer you red balloons representing our naughty mind
We place at your feet our attachments from the entire mankind.
We surrender the riches of our ego and our pride
We have given up all and kept only you by our side.
What a feeling of pure, sacred sense of fulfilment
We can see the pinnacle of peace as we have begun our ascent
Steady and firm is our gaze on your serene eyes
We hold on to you tight, leaving behind all worldly ties.
We can momentarily experience the bliss in which you dwell
Our mind, body and soul is in unison is all we can tell.
We bow with deep veneration and selfless love today
To convey our heartfelt devotion on this Valentine's Day.
We not only just love you, we worship you and adore you
Oh our dear Bhaishri there is none other than you, you and only you.