Rabindranath Tagore’s fourth poem from Gitanjali reads like an everyday vow made holy. The voice speaks to a presence that is both intimate and vast. The body is addressed as life of life. The mind is called to truth and reason. The heart is invited to keep love in bloom. Each pledge is small and clear and it adds up to a single way of living. The poem asks us to treat our lives as places where the universal spirit is meant to be visible.
What gives the lines their force is the steady movement from inward care to outward action. First the body is kept pure so that the living touch may rest upon every limb. Then the mind is guarded against falsehood so that reason may shine. Then the heart is kept free of evil so that love may flower. Finally the outer life is offered as proof of the inner life. The sequence shows a nondual logic. The inner and the outer are not separate. What rests in the body or in the heart becomes a way to reveal the universal in the world.
Nonduality in the poem does not appear as a philosophical argument. It arrives as a lived discipline. The speaker does not claim to know the mystery. The speaker simply pledges to keep the self ready. Purity is not a removal from the world. It is a way to let the living touch be felt in small acts and ordinary movements. Truth is not an abstract dogma. It is what kindles reason in a particular mind. Love is not a sentimental idea. It is a practice that must be kept in flower. The hard work of spiritual life is shown as attention to the humble facts of daily being.
The poem also shows a subtle view of the divine as immanent. The presence addressed is not far away. It sits in the inmost shrine of the heart. It rests upon limbs and lights up reason. That language invites a reader to see the sacred everywhere. There is no need to seek a separate realm. The universal is already at work inside breath and thought and affection. To notice this is to practice nonduality. The divided map of sacred here and profane there falls away. What is holy is continuous with what is ordinary.
Tone matters in these lines. The voice is steady and loving. There is no fury and no despair. There is a quiet resolve. That tone keeps the poem from preaching. It invites rather than commands. The pledges feel like gestures one can try tomorrow morning. The moral is practical. Keep the body pure. Clear the mind. Let the heart be gentle. Let acts reveal the unseen power. The process is patient and repeatable. That patience itself is a spiritual method.
Finally the poem carries a hope about embodiment. The body is not merely a vessel to be denied. It is the very place where the living touch is made visible. The world of limbs and deeds becomes the arena of grace. To live is to act so that the universal spirit can be sensed by others. This turns devotion into responsibility. Spirituality becomes a public thing when the inmost shrine lights the outer life.
If you read or listen to this poem with quiet attention you may find its practice simple and demanding at once. It asks you to pay attention to small things and to see them as openings for the universal. It asks you to live so that the hidden power within you finds form in what you do. That is a gentle form of nonduality. It does not try to erase the one or the many. It shows how both can be held together in a single, everyday life.
Arup K. Chatterjee 