Deity of the ruined temple

The worm things its strange and foolish that man does not eat his books.
- Rabindranath Tagore


That knowledge by which one undivided spiritual nature is seen in all living entities, though they are divided into innumerable forms, you should understand to be in the mode of goodness.
- Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 18, Verse 20)


Deity of the ruined temple!
The broken strings of Vina
Sing no more your praise.
The bells in the evening proclaim
Not your time of worship.
The air is still and silent about you.

In your desolate dwelling
Comes the vagrant spring breeze.
It brings the tiding of flowers -
The flowers that for your worship
Are offered no more.

Your worshiper of old wanders
Ever longing for favor still refused.
In the eventide, when fires and shadows
Mingle with the gloom of dust,
He wearily comes back
To the ruined temple
With hunger in his heart.

Many a festival day comes to you
In silence, deity of the ruined temple.
Many a night of worship
Goes away with lamp unlit.

Many new images are built
By masters of cunning art
And carried to the holy stream
Of oblivion when their time is come.

Only the deity of the ruined temple remains
Un-worshiped in deathless neglect.
-Rabindranath Tagore (Geetanjali, Verse 88)


From the One Reality,
Which is neither Spirit nor Matter
But both,
Life issues,
And issuing flows endlessly in streams,
Branching more and more into innumerable single lives,
Each specialized in its way,
Thus manifesting an infinite diversity
Of effects, qualities and capabilities.
This process reaching its limit,
The differentiated lives,
Turn back to unite,
Thus to re-become the Unity they ever were.
- N Sri Ram.


All virtues are really forms of perfection
Which is a blossoming form of the one Divine Seed
Which holds within itself
All that is pure, wonderful and sublime to man.
- N Sri Ram.