Born in 1861, Tagore was a Bengali poet, artist & musician who reshaped Bengali literature and music in the late 1900’s & early 1900’s. He was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 (primarily for his genius work “Gitanjali: Song of Offerings”), and was highly influential in introducing the best of Indian culture to the West (and vice versa). Tagore is generally regarded as the most outstanding creative artist of the modern Indian subcontinent, being revered in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan, with the former two having adopted two of his compositions as their respective national anthems.

At age sixteen, Tagore released his first collection of substantial poems under the pseudonym Bhānusiṃha (“Sun Lion”) when he was sixteen years old. This work was of such high quality that literary authorities & critics soon thereafter became convinced that they had stumbled up a series of long-lost classics.

A bit later in his life, the British Crown granted Tagore a knighthood in 1915, though he renounced the same after the the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre, and he thereafter became an advocate for desired social reforms — among them the independence of the Indian subcontinent from British imperialism — preferring freedom for all, and the dismantling of the Indian caste system and its depraved belief in “untouchability” — preferring a dignity unconditional.

“According to the true Indian view, our consciousness of the world, merely as the sum total of things that exist, is imperfect. But it is perfect when our consciousness realizes all things as spiritually one with it, and therefore capable of giving us joy. For us the highest purpose of this world is not merely living in it, knowing it and making use of it, but rather realizing our own selves in it through the expansion of Compassion; not alienating ourselves from it and dominating it, but comprehending and uniting it with ourselves in perfect union … I slept and dreamed that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted – and behold, I came to understand that service was joy.” ~ Rabindranath Tagore

“He who merely desires to do good knocks at the gate; he who actively loves finds the gate open … The most important lesson that man can learn from his life is not that there is pain in this world, but that it depends upon him to turn it into good account, that it is possible for him to transmute it into joy… Man’s freedom is never in being saved from troubles, but it is the freedom to take trouble for his own good, to make the trouble an element in his joy… that in pain is symbolized the infinite possibility of perfection.” ~ R. Tagore

“To understand anything is to find in it something which is our own … And yet this relation of understanding is only partial, whereas the relation of Love is complete. In Love all sense of difference is obliterated and the human soul fulfills its purpose in perfection, transcending the limits of itself … Therefore Love is the highest bliss that man can attain to, for through it alone he truly knows that he is more than himself, and that he is at one with the All.” ~ R. Tagore

 

Filed under: In LOVE with Humanity by Scaughdt