Rabindranath Tagore’s third poem from Gitanjali has the human and the divine speak through the same breath. The poem asks a simple question about music and then yields a gentle practice of surrender. The speaker will say they do not know how the master sings and then will listen in amazement. That amazement is not bafflement. It is a welcome that opens the chest and softens the borders of the self.
The poem moves in small steps. Light of music illumines the world. The life breath of music runs from sky to sky. The holy stream of music breaks through stony obstacles and rushes on. These images make a single point in many shapes. The source that sings is not separate from the song. The finite instrument and the infinite song are shown as one movement. That is nonduality in a human face.
When the poem says the heart longs to join in the song it names a longing most paths call sacred. The longing is a recognition that the heart is a hollow instrument made to sound. To be hollow is not to be empty in shame. It is to be prepared to hold and to pass through what is given. Breath that moves the reed is not the reed and yet the reed sings because it is touched. The same happens to a heart that is touched.
Speech does not always catch the music. The poem says speech breaks not into song and a cry of bafflement follows. That moment is honest. It admits some encounters cannot be turned into clever lines or neat doctrines. The voice that matters may be softer than the voice that explains. The poem asks the reader to trust silence as a form of answer.
The teaching is simple and radical at once. The self is not an island that must defend itself. The self is a channel that at its best allows the universal to pass. To practice nonduality is to stop making the world into separate pieces. It is to see breath and breath as one breath. It is to hear music and music as the same music. From that listening life takes another shape.
This poem keeps its grammar of devotion small on purpose. It does not lecture about metaphysics. It uses light, breath and stream so the reader can inhabit the images rather than be lectured by them. The images are large enough to hold different faiths and small enough to feel close. A listener from any tradition can rest in the lines and name the presence they know by another name.
There is also a sense of abundance rather than scarcity. The stream breaks through obstacles and keeps running. The music does not run out. The speaker is made captive in endless meshes of music. Captivity is turned into shelter. Being caught is shown as being carried. The heart that once longed becomes a part of the ongoing melody.
For those who will listen to a recorded reading this poem offers a way to practice nondual attention. Close the eyes and listen without trying to translate the lines into doctrine. Feel where the chest opens. Notice if words leave room for silence. Let the music in the poem remind you the same life that sings answers.
In that listening the poem does its work. It moves the listener from a scattered self toward a simple recognition. The master sings. The world is illumined. Breath passes and the song carries on. In that carrying there is a single life that both sings and is sung.
Arup K. Chatterjee 