Sumangali.org: In The Spirit Of Serendipity

A Chicken and Egg Situation

I spent a while teaching English as a second language in Thailand many years ago, and had a splendid time. Not only did I find the language (especially the written characters) more beautiful than my own English equivalent; the culture, the etiquette, the people, the weather, the food, everything beguiled me and I felt entirely at home, as if remembering a Heaven where I once belonged. Maybe I’ll tell you more about it another time, but I will say two things for now:

1. My grasp of the Thai language extended barely beyond the basic pleasantries and the buying of food. This was mainly due to the importance of inflections and polite appendages, which English has no care for. The word “khai” could sound from me at random as the verb “to sell” or the noun “egg” or the noun “chicken” depending on its delivery. Vegetarian as I am, my linguistic state was precarious.
2. Explaining English to other people made me extremely glad that it is my first language, so I don’t have to struggle with its peculiarities from a text book or teacher. The more I explained, the more baffled I became by my own explanations, gradually realising that there are as many exceptions as rules. I was tempted to take the stance of Frenchman G. Nolst Trenité:

“Finally, which rhymes with enough —
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!”
[source]

Image: Kedar Misani

Contextual Complexities

Learning our first language comes from constant immersion combined with dire necessity. We pick up meanings largely from the words’ environmental context, and grammar from their verbal context. This leaves us able to use a large number of words effectively but often only notionally; without really knowing their precise meaning, let alone their origin.

Words such as man, woman, cat and dog have not changed throughout the ages, but more complex phrases evolve relatively fast:

“…the phrase ‘willy nilly,’ which we now take to mean ‘any which way’ originally had a much different meaning. Willehe-nellehe was an Old English term meaning ‘whether he will or whether he won’t’ and implied someone doing something against their wishes — whether they wanted to or not. Over time this concept has been misinterpreted to the point where its meaning is entirely different. Extrapolate this example across the language and you get constant evolution.”
[source]

The speed and accuracy with which we pick up a language no doubt depends on many factors; partly environment/encouragement, partly our own propensity. Elizabeth Barrett (pictured) is one extraordinary example; something of an infant prodigy in the world of words, not just speaking but reading before she can walk. Elizabeth read her first word when she was 13 months old, from then devouring books with exceptional voracity. In her father’s words:

“I think she has some special abilities that have just been a fortunate thing she’s been born with.”

“This is something we never expected,” added his wife. “We didn’t teach her this. We don’t sit down and drill her on words. She loves reading books.”

[source]

Believing in reincarnation as I do, I can’t help wondering if such capacity is not only to do with nature and nurture, but past experience. Perhaps the name Elizabeth Barrett is a clue?

The Word Burglars

So the English language is as fond of breaking rules as it is of making them up as it goes along, it also is in a constant state of evolution because we don’t always really know what we mean when we speak it. Add to that the (disputable) fact that it has the largest vocabulary, and I am yet more glad I don’t have to learn it from scratch.

“The Oxford English Dictionary lists a total of 171,476 words with an additional 47,156 obsolete and 9,500 derivative words as subentries, giving almost a quarter of a million words in the English language, even when technical terms, place names and multiple word senses are excluded.”
[source]

But that includes all the words we’ve half-inched from other languages. So-called loanwords are “a consequence of cultural contact between two language communities”. As such contact will presumably only increase, so will our vocabulary.

So far we have taken ketchup from… Chinese (yep), gingham from the Pacific Islands (and I dread to think what we gave in return), Japanese gave us karaoke (whether we wanted it or not), American Indian gave us avocado and hurricane (a mixed blessing), African languages gave us jitterbugs and zombies (which we probably could manage without, but it’s the thought that counts), Arabic gave us caravan (thence all sorts of traffic problems during the British summertime), Hindi gave us bungalow and chintz (to be used sparingly, especially in a bungalow), German gave us poodle, noodle and apple strudel (enough said), Dutch gave us smuggle and freebooter (well, we stole them really), French gave us garage and sachet (which we’d struggle without), Italian gave us opera and umbrella (which we needed badly), Spanish gave us mosquito and tornado (which we didn’t). Shall I go on, or are we sufficiently incriminated?
[source]

Shakespearean Tragedy?

I’ve already briefly touched on the subject of poets adding to our lexicon in John Milton and the Origin of Space, but, says Stuart Waters, Shakespeare et al are doomed:

“There is no motive in this crime of the future, just an inevitability based on one undeniable fact. Language changes, and ironically, Shakespeare was himself perhaps the greatest ever at introducing new terms, concepts and metaphors into the language. The very craft he mastered will eventually consign his works to history.

“Technologically, the very nature of communication is changing on a daily basis and we are only at the beginning of this revolution. The internet, email and text messaging are tremendously fertile fields for the growth of new words and concepts and because this type of technology changes so quickly it is very difficult to see where it will take the language. On the one hand communication technology exerts pressure for language evolution, but on the other hand, it puts everyone in touch with everyone else, breaking down the barriers of distance and culture which traditionally fuel language change. What will be the outcome? Who can say.

“It is clear however that sooner or later the poetry and artistry of the Bard will be lost to all but historians of English, just as the works of Homer are unintelligible to modern Greeks.
[source]

Outcome 1: Pidgin

“What will be the outcome?” asks Waters. Well, Pidgin English is one (pidgin, not pigeon).

“A pidgin is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common, in situations such as trade. Pidgins are not the native language of any speech community, but are instead learned as second languages.
[source]

English may have the largest vocabulary. Its offspring, Pidgin English, claims to have the smallest, but is possibly yet trickier to learn. With just a few examples from the version spoken in Papua New Guinea, I am amply convinced of that, (although it does have logic, phonetic continuity, and absolute cuteness in its favour):

• television: bokis wailis wantem piksa
• corridor: ples wokabaut insait long haus
• antiseptic: marasin bilong kilim jem
• bathroom: rum bilong waswas

[source]

Outcome 2: LOLspeak

LOLspeak is born of our modern-day 24/7 culture where everyone is multi-tasking, communication is as urgently important as breathing, and everything is too much hassle to do properly or fully. Some familiar examples of LOLspeak are OMG (oh my God), BRB (be right back), and the eponymous LOL: laughing out loud, lots of love, or…

Depending on the chatter, its definition may vary. The list of its meanings includes, but is not limited to:
1) “I have nothing worthwhile to contribute to this conversation.”
2) “I’m too lazy to read what you just wrote so I’m typing something useless in hopes that you’ll think I’m still paying attention.”
3) “Your statement lacks even the vaguest trace of humor but I’ll pretend I’m amused.”
[source]

Does LOL mark the demise of the beautiful English language? IMHO, no. Whatever it signifies for humans, it is a mark of progress for all other species. If it counts for English, animals have finally started to speak, and even nuborned ones are typing their own messages on sites such as cuteoverload.com, ihasahotdog.com and icanhascheezburger.com (pictured). So LOL is progress. Officially.

(Ono! U meen dey don type teh msgs demself?? Srsly?).

Who Has The Largest Individual Vocabulary?

Whatever may happen in the future, regardless of species, who has the largest English vocabulary right now? This is not a straightforward question. Michael Quinion explains why:

“What we mean by word sounds obvious, but it’s not. Take a verb like climb. The rules of English allow you to generate the forms climbs, climbed, climbable, and climbing, the nouns climb and climber (and their plurals climbs and climbers), compounds such as climb-down and climbing frame, and phrasal verbs like climb on, climb over, and climb down. Now, here’s the question you’ve got to answer: are all these distinct words, or do you lump them all together under climb?

“The other difficult term is vocabulary. What counts as a word that somebody knows? Is it one that a person uses regularly and accurately? Or perhaps one that will be correctly recognised — say in written text — but not used? Or perhaps one that will be understood in context but which the person may not easily be able to define?
[source]

Of all the people I know, my meditation teacher Sri Chinmoy (pictured) definitely has the largest vocabulary, however it’s measured. Growing up in East Bengal, English was not his first language, but I regularly come across English words in his writings which I have never seen before. Take my favourite example: sesquipedalian (meaning a very long word).

Sri Chinmoy published almost 1600 books during his lifetime, including around 117,000 poems. Whatever happens to the English language; however it evolves, however it is used and misused, I will always relish it and cherish it, and I will always look to my teacher Sri Chinmoy for new words and new inspiration. It is not only his vast vocabulary, but the use of it which I love. He reminds me to stay in my heart, and to try to use whatever capacity I have for goodness. Although he passed away last year, and I still miss him dearly, he left behind the legacy of his writings for us all to enjoy forever. Read to your heart’s content for free at Sri Chinmoy Library!

“No more am I the foolish customer
Of a dry, sterile, intellectual breeze.
I shall buy only
The weaving visions of the emerald-Beyond.
My heart-tapestry
Shall capture the Himalayan Smiles
Of my Pilot Supreme.
In the burial of my sunken mind
Is the revival of my climbing heart.
In the burial of my deceased mind
Is the festival of my all-embracing life.”

—Sri Chinmoy (from The Dance of Life)

Image: Pavitrata Taylor

Old News: Gardening is In

Once again in the UK it has been suggested that we are behind the eco-friendly times, now caught red-faced and red-handed with basket-full of imported vegetables.

The production and transportation of food is responsible for 23% of our carbon footprint; above home energy, personal travel, and running shared services like hospitals and schools. [source]

China, Japan and Cuba are way ahead of us in their responsible actions, but being a tiny, densely populated island with horrible weather is no excuse, according to the more heroic amongst gardeners.

No, gardening, especially growing vegetables, is not just for your granddad, a left-over habit from the War. It’s possibly the coolest pastime of now. To be caught with compost under your fingernails and a faint whiff of Brussels sprouts, rather than an air-freighted fistful of Zimbabwean mangetout, may be your ticket to unimaginable kudos.

The Urban Farmer

Take Fritz Haeg for example. The architect and design academic, with exhibitions at the Tate Modern in London and Whitney Museum of American Art under his belt, chooses to spend his time on an inner-city council estate in south London with a trowel.

Last year Prime Minister Gordon Brown admitted “We need to make great changes in the way we organise food production in the next few years.” In his book Edible Estates, Haeg paves the way, urging you to dig up your front lawn for an “edible landscape”. Last year the Tate challenged him to make a permanent “edible estate” in the concrete metropolis known as Elephant and Castle.

The grass plot, previously used as a playground for drunks and dogs, was transformed into a paradise of fruit trees, tomato plants, aubergines, squashes, green vegetables, herbs and edible flowers. With a design based on ornate flower beds at Buckingham Palace, it not only looks beautiful, but no doubt smells a lot better than it used to.

Amazingly, although the plot is accessible to the public, no theft or vandalism has been witnessed. It’s not just venerable pensioners who are turning out to help; most of the volunteers are children and teens. Carole Wright, who manages the garden designed by Haeg, notes the project’s social benefits:

“People who have not spoken for five years are suddenly chatting again, discussing what they’ve grown. And it brings together people from different cultures too – they lean over the fence and reminisce about the vegetables they grew in their countries as children – okra, bananas, yams, sweet potatoes.”

[source]

The Guerrilla Gardener

The British government is not always so supportive of gardening. The intrepid Richard Reynolds (a resident of… Elephant & Castle) just grows ever stealthier in his undercover missions to bring blossoming beauty to public areas neglected by the council.

The council says it’s against the rules, the police say it’s committing criminal damage, and warrants arrest, but the Guerrilla Gardener is undeterred. Relying on donations of overgrown house-plants, seeds in the post, and whatever he can appropriate from his mum’s garden, Reynolds is on a crusade: not to feed the world so much as make it more beautiful.

And that’s a crime?

“I’d rather the council did things I can’t do, like fix the lifts. I’d rather do the gardening myself. I’m not an eco-warrior, I just like nice gardens and want to be left alone to garden peacefully. There’s no sadder sight than a paved-over front garden.

“Why spend so much effort cultivating your back garden when no one but you can see it? So many people live in big cities and don’t have land of their own, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be able to garden.

[source]

Pigs May Fly

For Toronto Scientist Gordon Graff, urban gardening is not just pie in the sky. His 58-floor SkyFarm concept is designed to provide food for 35,000 people per day.

The trouble with growing crops on the roof (well, the main one at least) is the weight of the soil used in traditional methods. The plan here is to use a “hydroponic” irrigation system, where nutrient-rich water is recycled through the building. One added bonus is that a lot of diseases thrive on soil, so without it chemical pesticides are no longer needed.

There are rumours that a similar building in Las Vegas would also house not only crops, but pigs. I’m sure much stranger things have happened in Vegas, so I’m ready to believe it. [source]

Further Reading

• The Guerrilla Gardening offical website: see how you can fight the filth in your area… if you dare.
• For all the latest gen on gardening check out Gardenerstips.co.uk
  (“What a great logo!” I hear you cry, “They surely must have got it from Pure Web Designs!” )

The Song-Bird of St Petersburg pays tribute to Sri Chinmoy at the Royal Albert Hall

Boris Purushottama Grebenshikov is a living paradigm in the world of music and poetry, justly lauded in his Russian homeland and throughout the world. Tapping the ‘infinite silence’ within as a source of his prolific creativity, his songs are his direct interpretation of the universal musical consciousness.

No wonder then that he found in Sri Chinmoy a profound inspiration. With almost 1600 books to his name and over 21000 songs, here was a Spiritual Master who shaped his own life’s service from the very fibre of music and poetry, singing the songs of Heaven into the ears of the earth.

Sri Chinmoy was born in East Bengal, 1931. Following an inner calling he moved to New York in 1964, to be of spiritual service and inspiration to the west. From then until his passing in October last year, his meditation brought forth a wellspring of creativity in many fields.

Sri Chinmoy met Grebenshikov in 2005, and offered him the spiritual name Purushottama. A unique friendship blossomed from there. The immediate bond between teacher and student was exceptionally deep given its outer brevity; a recognition and reflection of true inner harmony. In Grebenshikov’s own words:

“Before meeting him I could never imagine I would see with mine own eyes the enlightened spirit operating from within the frail human body. It made me realize we do not really understand how strange it is to be fully realized in the world that misunderstands Divine realization. And I am endlessly grateful for his love and unflinching selfless courage.”

As part of his soulful service, Sri Chinmoy offered over 700 free public concerts in the span of his life, which he dedicated to World Harmony. London’s Royal Albert Hall ranked among the most notable venues, where he last performed in October 2003. In this same spirit, and at the same venue, Boris Purushottama Grebenshikov paid tribute to him last week.

Under a 14-foot portrait of Sri Chinmoy, flanked by statues of Ganesha and Saraswati, the setting was an Indian garden at night. An enclave of trees and glowing candles waited on a backdrop of winking galaxies. Hoards jostled outside for a place in the hall, peering over galleries high up into the roof to catch a glimpse of the artist. The legendary Song-Bird of St Petersburg entered with a smile of joy equal to his air of poise and humility. As he took centre stage his audience could not have been more attentive, appreciative, or more alive with electric anticipation.

Some 20 musicians joined him, mostly from the Indian and Irish genres, and some of the finest in their fields. Two were from Grebenshikov’s original band Aquarium, which dates back to the early 1970s. The tabla talked in rhythm to four Irish bodhrans; a sarangi sang sweet melodies over a group of classical strings. The fiddle, tin whistle and Uillean pipes carried on an Irish banter with such unbounded effusion, precision and harmony, that the crowds could not contain their shouts of delight.

All the while Grebenshikov was an ocean of depth, speaking through an acoustic guitar as if it were a part of himself. His singing voice itself was, as always, an exquisite blend of strength and sensitivity; ageless and imperturbable wisdom with a sweet and heart-melting centre. The essence of the poetry, although mostly in Russian, could be felt even by the uninitiated, such was its earnest delivery.

The songs vaulted from pin-drop soulfulness to ebullient joy, via countless spirited forays into new musical realms. They stopped neither at folk, nor jazz, nor rock, nor classical, nor world music, but spun into a whirl of all these, where no division or identity could be defined, where music sprang forth unbounded and unadulterated from its source.

As a finale, Grebenshikov offered a bhajan he wrote in Sanskrit for the goddess Saraswati, and a loving song in the ballad style, which he wrote for Sri Chinmoy during one of their earliest meetings. The Sri Chinmoy Centre Choir accompanied him on the refrain:

“O, Guru Sat, we may be far apart,
O, Guru Sat, forever in my heart.”

It was a poignant end to a magical evening; an evening whose spirit seemed to have no age, no beginning, no end; no limits or worldly boundaries of any kind. With simplicity and utmost self-giving, Boris Purushottama Grebenshikov offered a tribute to his teacher which was at once fittingly grand, heartfelt and joyous.

IMAGES:
Portrait of Boris Purushottama Grebenshikov by Antonov Pavel

LINKS:
More about the concert at GrebenshikovConcert.com
Review by Tejvan Pettinger at SriChinmoyBio.co.uk
Photographs of the event by Pavitrata Taylor at Pavitrata.com
Download a PDF of the official programme (26Mb)

It’s been hot in England. That’s newsworthy enough, but you know how we Brits love to talk about the weather. It seems like summer is just around the corner, (perhaps somewhere in Spain or Portugal). The tulips are big as goblets, the birds compose new rhapsodies until bedtime, and new-mown lawns send out their familiar green perfume, which itself acts like a happy pheremone on me. All these triggers lay forgotten in my mind through winter, as they always do, to be rediscovered like a perennial gift each year, never losing their thrill.

Another sure sign of summer is the flight of hot air balloons in the morning. The long roar followed by soft silence tells me they are coming near, and I rush to the window to find them in the sky. I have never flown in one, but so love to watch them, strangely fast and graceful for their imposing dimensions.

I lived in Bristol for a few years, and always looked forward to the annual Balloon Fiesta. Up to 100 balloons gather together from around the world, in all their fantastic colours and shapes: there a flying mobile phone is not out of place next to a floating dog, a fire extinguisher a similar size to an entire inflatable cathedral. At night they stay tethered to the ground with lit flames for a beautiful “balloon glow”. In the early morning and at dusk they mount the sky in flurries. To see them closely and in numbers is to witness not only their true size, but their unique charm.

Now that we have more reliable methods of flight, the hot air balloon has been reduced almost to a novelty; largely the plaything of champagne breakfasters and the mouthpiece of corporate advertisers. In 1783, however, hot air ballooning was a more serious, and a much more dangerous affair. An intrepid (probably unsuspecting) sheep, duck and rooster were the first passengers. Following their survival of 15 minutes in the air, the Montgolfier brothers took off from Paris two months later, not only staying up for 20 minutes, but also, like the farm animals, staying alive. Human flight (with any notable degree of success) was born. [source]

That which flies is not necessarily light in weight though, as any jumbo jet will tell you. Last year my meditation teacher Sri Chinmoy (then aged 75), lifted some hot air balloons, seated with one arm overhead. They are not so buoyant beneath their natural habitat of sky. A 140-foot tall rabbit weighed in at 369 pounds (167.4 kg), followed by a multi-coloured 90-foot balloon at 397 pounds (including the pilot and basket).

Speaking of Sri Chinmoy’s one-arm seated lifts of a 575 pound (260.8 kg) dumbbell a few days earlier, longtime registrar of the British Amateur Weightlifters Association Jim Smith commented: “Sri Chinmoy is giving back to people the importance of having the mind, body and spirit together. No other human being on earth has ever lifted over 3 times their own body weight, even with two hands and while standing!”

Up until Sri Chinmoy’s passing last year, age 76, he strove to inspire people to transcend their limitations through sports and meditation. He was also a prolific writer. Here is one of his many uplifting aphorisms:

You do not have to fly
To the blue-vast sky.
The blue-vast sky will enter into you
If you turn your mind into
a silence-home.

—Sri Chinmoy
From Twenty-Seven Thousand Aspiration-Plants, Part 211

You can find our more about Sri Chinmoy’s weightlifting feats, and see some video clips, at Sri Chinmoy TV

There was an earthquake in England last month. It was a small one, but our biggest in a quarter century, so it caused due commotion. It woke my friend in town, and in her half-sleep she thought the wind had got up and was buffeting her house.

It woke me too, I remembered later. “It’s just a train,” I told myself, but was troubled by how long it was, and how very silent. My semi-conscious decided it must be a ghost train, and (most disturbingly of all) I went back to sleep. Funny how the mind takes pains to account for unusual things, but only in familiar terms, however implausible.

I almost didn’t arrange a viewing for my current home when I was house hunting; on the map it’s practically on the railway. I think it was always meant to be mine though, and the trains have become my fond neighbours.

Rusted bunkers of coal squeak and trundle by, fringed with graffiti, open to all weather. InterCities slither past in festival colours. They all grind on the railway seam, and some send the houses shivering.

This time of year, like a migrant bird, a different visitor returns, chased by a plume of steam. Its breathing makes me smile and stop my work. Huff, huff, huff, more like a giant dog at play. The plume, bright white, tumbles by the window, and I must get up to watch. No one can remain uncharmed by a steam train.

All seem solemn in electric trains, whatever the class of their carriage. Heads are usually down in a book or paper, rarely peering through the window’s grime to wonder where they are. The trains hoot like they’ve heard a bawdy joke: high-looooow-high. They are hot inside. There’s lots of plastic, coloured grey so you can’t tell if it’s clean or not. The air is full of stale coffee and fragments of loud discussions on the phone. Thoughts are always fixed on the destination: What’s for supper? Where shall I meet you? I’ll be late, can you feed the cat?

Not so with steam trains, though they use the same tracks. The windows, invariably open, are full of faces, and madly waving hands. The carriages shine with dignity. The tables have lamps and lace. The driver sends their arrival ahead with a sweet sound, much longer than necessary, like one huge panpipe in the sky. I dare say he has a smile like his cargo, strong coaly hands and a blue cloth cap, but I never reach the window in time to see.

Dads and windswept youngsters, pensioners in walking gear, all beam alike. Where do they go? It seems they don’t much mind; the journey is the thing to them. Will they hide their faces in a paper come Monday morning, sprinting between cities on electric trains? Or are they an entirely different breed?

• More on the steam trains of North Yorkshire Moors Railway at nymr.co.uk. (Image from the same source)

Alleluia: Qui timent Dominum
“He healeth those that are broken in heart: and bindeth up their wounds.”

This line shines from the page handed to me at the entrance of King’s College Chapel, part of a sung mass I am about to hear.

I have been here once before, many years ago, in the company of my Spiritual Master, Sri Chinmoy. He had come to pay homage to his own Guru, Sri Aurobindo, once a student at Cambridge University. I sat in these very pews and heard a similar mass. So much has changed in me since then, but the chapel stands quite the same: a vote of integrity in a changing world.

Almost everything reminds me of Sri Chinmoy, more now than when he was alive. The earthly loss of him, less than a month ago, is still raw in this fragile human heart. One thought is still enough to prick my eyes with tears. But just as the reminders of him come swift and hard from unexpected sources, so does solace to counter each blow. I am in Cambridge to meet with other students of Sri Chinmoy—about a hundred from Britain, Ireland and France. There is no sweeter solace than the family feeling amongst those I love.

King’s College Choir is considered one of the finest in the world, and I am especially fond of religious music. “We pray that you will sense something of the presence of God…” says the printed welcome. I pray the same, and that prayer is soon answered.

The ceiling is all half fans of stone, delicately crimped, sweeping to meet each other along the nave. It is as well to be indoors on a sunny day, if “indoors” has such a body of stained glass. The robes of saints glow as magnified rubies, sweet strong faces, soft leather shoes, strange serpents, rocks of orange gold, all the tales I do not know, as I was not raised a Christian. It is enough to gaze up to them and see the devotion that made them reflected onto me.

The Dante Quartet arrives accompanied by all its stately poise, then the choir in red and wide pleated white, some so tiny, barely old enough to leave their mothers’ sight. Schubert’s Mass in G could not have found a more subtle and receptive home, warm pure notes climbing the golden-white stone.

One—is he even ten years old?—commands a solo so brilliant, so strong, each note exquisitely tuned and executed, such as any cherub would envy. I study his features for the source of it, but find only a tiny boy, soft face bespectacled under a wide brown side-parting, standing quite firmly on the earth in sensible black shoes. Baffling.

The Bishop of Winchester treats us to a sermon on “Continual Godliness”: to maintain a general goodness in our own lives. Rather than thinking it the sole property of our elders and mentors, seeing it as something real and achievable. A most encouraging reminder.

Amazed, I remember the tune to one of the hymns. I disliked hymns at school, simply because they came at a very difficult time of life. Rather than giving me strength they always pulled me into melancholy—the jollier the worse somehow. But perhaps I am grown out of that phase: I hear only the jubilant praise of one God, my God, as we sing into a listening cavern of coloured glass.

Out in the autumn chill, we seem suddenly caught in an old movie; these views are such a dear part of England, and a dear part of my own memory. I breathe in their dignity and nobility, hoping to carry them home as inner souvenirs, so much more real and valuable than postcards.

The trees are in that state of perfection which only lasts two or three weeks. Red flames litter the roads, and yellow half-fans, delicately crimped. My walking companion tells me these particular yellow leaves were just so in the days of dinosaurs. I feel a sudden solace in that fact, and their mirroring the shapes of stone I had seen earlier; a hint at God’s Constancy perhaps.

We drink some tea and eat together, then watch a slide-show of Sri Chinmoy. To see him in health brings him so alive. To see his smile brings me tears: tears of thanks to God that I could spend these years absorbing all I could of his wisdom and joy.

Riding home I let my thoughts spin out from a melting sun as it disappears into a pine forest. Memories become a potent balm, softening the recent sense if loss. The heat of grief dissolves like the sun.

English was secretly my favourite subject at school. I say secretly because as a teen it’s only considered proper to laugh at those stuffy poets in tights and ruffs or Brylcreem and cravats, puffing on long pipes in leather chairs. The fact is I, (and maybe secretly everyone) found them brilliantly riveting. I still do, but now I think I can safely admit to it. Shakespeare, Jane Austen and Oscar Wilde are my favourite comedians.

I knew Oscar Wilde from a younger age, through his fairytales, opulently illustrated by Charles Robinson. Snuggoled under an eiderdown with my mother and brother with mugs of hot cocoa I would travel through other times and climes on the wings of his words. He was a welcome relief from the dark grimness of the Brothers Grimm, or the fascinating strangeness of Dr Seuss, and AA Milne must sometimes have been ragged and tired from over-use.

I knew and loved Oscar Wilde’s words later at school through his plays, but I love them all the more now, the more I know them. Lady Windermere’s Fan, An Ideal Husband, and The Importance of Being Earnest are some of the wittiest stories I know, and with brilliant twists of plot. But the frivolous exterior (great fun in itself), thinly veils a profound sensitivity, and depth of perception. Although Wilde was Irish I must include him among the English, who have no greater joy than in laughing at themselves. (And as rightly pointed out to me on the Sri Chinmoy Inspiration Group recently, we do have so very much to laugh about).

Revisiting in relative adulthood the stories I loved as a child I am enchanted and deeply moved by the beauty of the writing. What’s more, and perhaps most surprising of all, their perfection is often completed with profound spiritual morals, especially in the case of his most famous: The Happy Prince. If you have not done so, or if you have not done so in a while, read yourself this bedtime story: The Happy Prince.

Another favourite is The Nightingale and the Rose. Its painful cynicism would be funny if it weren’t so exquisitely crafted in prose. I tried to read them each aloud recently but tears stopped my voice on both occasions, so moved was I by their unutterable beauty. I hope you enjoy them even half as much as I do.

I was brought up as an atheist, so it may count as rebellion that I went to church today: a Sunday… perhaps… until you hear I went as a tourist.

I am not an atheist, far from it. I must get that straight. Straight away. I never have been. I am not a Christian either. My path is the path of meditation. My spiritual teacher Sri Chinmoy believes in embracing all sincere religions and other spiritual paths as paths to one God. This is something I have always felt in my heart as true.

I know surprisingly little about Christianity for someone who was born and brought up in a Christian country. It is as if I tried to read Christ’s Words but they are in a language I do not know… yet I feel them in my heart as good and true.

So I entered my local church today, overwhelmed like a foreigner, yet somehow at home. York Minster is very big, and very old; too big and old for my mind to comprehend, thus to express or even appreciate. For a thousand years York has been a site of pilgrimage as spiritual capital of the north of England; her Minster at once the reason for and the result of her wealth.

Many times I wanted to stand back and take some perspective, but it seems the architects made sure I could not, almost as if to remind me that God cannot be captured in the span of my eyes. Caught in the cross-fire of flash photography, I wanted to be there alone so as to grasp it all in silence, but that would almost be more daunting a task.

I decide to start at the top, perhaps thinking the vigorous exercise of climbing 275 steps will bring me some focus. On the contrary, dizzy from turning in a spiral and testing my lungs beyond their usual scope, I take my eyes from the steps to note that carving graffiti is not only a modern sport. I try to find the earliest date. Lost somewhere in the 1600s I return my full attention to the task of placing my feet on ever-narrowing stairs, since a tumble in such a place could be quite inconvenient.

There is something in the human instinct which makes one look for familiar places when reaching a height. Perhaps the thought of seeing my house was embedded in my desire to climb in the first place. Some Italians seem to be hoping for a glimpse of their hotel, while I follow the city walls out of comfortable sight to wonder which brown dot is my own.

Someone is practising the pipe organ as we descend, and I want so much to hear it closely. One can only go so fast on such a precarious route though, especially with legs still jellified from the upward climb. I am disappointed when I find the instrument; not by its commendable beauty, and not by the player, even though he makes and polishes many mistakes, but the sound is damped, so I cannot drown in it as I had hoped, even when standing directly underneath.

I try to avoid treading on the worn names of many distinguished gentlemen long-deceased, but there are so many set into the ground. I imagine them shifting uneasily beneath and tutting under their breath through hundreds of years. I am looking for a happy face in stone, but all are solemnly in prayer, unless they are one of a hundred gargoyles, whose job is not to smile.

St Peter stands forever on a little plinth holding outsized keys. He looks weary from the responsibility of his job. The face is so endearing I think to comfort him, but remember I am nobody to do so, and the image of him only stone. One has no face at all, a boy in grey marble, the body a likeness of one who fell too early some time in the 1300s. Was there a face? Was it worn away by the weight of a mother’s grieving caress, or did the mason fall early too? Some seem at the unflattering mercy of unskilled craftsmen, but I suppose tools were brutish in those days, so could bring only vague refinement in any hands.

Glass painting was clearly easier. I stare long at many windows, great beauteous works of art. Circa 1260? Such devoted intricacy, all in greys and greens, a murky yet mesmeric light gazing back at me through time. 1422? Such delicate lines, yet such strange faces have endured so long the same expression.

But where is God? He is not on the coloured map in 6 folds that the ticket man gave me at the entrance so I’m not sure where to look. I thought I saw a lady talking to Him as she sat alone, until I saw her bluetooth headset. I used to come here in my youth when something troubled me, hoping God would hear out my grievances. I always felt better for sitting in this majesty. It made my problems seem smaller. I sit and listen for Him this time, assuming He must have grown tired of listening to me here. It is too big for me though, too grand, too old, too daunting. I open a book of hymns but there the foreign language speaks again. I follow the pattern of the notes for a while and head for home.

For me God is in my little white room at home. We listen to each other there. I am sad at my failing to truly appreciate the grand and ancient place of pilgrimage on my doorstep, but then remember it is just not my path to tread. I crane my head through the window and smile at her from afar, picking out one face of the tower that I climbed. I can love her all the same, even though I cannot understand her language. I am glad and grateful she is there.

I wonder whether to be sad that an entrance fee is necessary these days; that wealth comes to the city through tourism rather than worship. I decide not to see that as a sign of declining spirituality in our time, as that is too dreadful a thought, but instead that people are choosing to look for God inside themselves at home. I hope it’s true.

“God has an easy access
To every place,
Specially to our heart-temple.”

—Sri Chinmoy
(Seventy-Seven Thousand Service Trees, part 7)

(Related article: God In A Nutshell)

I creep in at the back five minutes early, but my shoes squeak on polished wood, damp from the squalls outside. A stillness has arrived before me and sits like a living presence in the room; the arching roof higher, the golden wood warmer, the white walls purer because of it. Many have followed its silent lead and sit within it, hems soaking above boots from their assorted journeys.

The stage is in the air, it seems, or is it in a tree? The churchyard yew cradles a view to absorb my eyes for the next hour and a half, through a wide bay of glass. A half-dome of starry blue lights pressed into the ceiling above hangs like a child’s dream of Heaven.

But we are asked by our host to close our eyes first, immersing ourselves in a flow of breath, emptying the hubbub of our thoughts from the waiting universe within.

Then the music comes—a warm familiar joy—and I jump headlong into the ocean of it. Each of Sri Chinmoy’s songs is a fond friend, but each dressed in bright newness; a rousing drum here that I have never heard, a sweet player there whom I have never seen. A golden smile is growing from inside me like many suns rising at once: the chuckle of a delighted infant, the Bravo! of a sister, the sweet slow nod of a mother, the vast silent pride of a father. The music is mine, his, hers, theirs. Ours.

Outside, mist runs fast along the mountain’s base like a hungry flock, climbs to show another green band of height and gallops down again, swallowing the roughness of the ground under its pure white hooves.

Adarsha sings Madhavi Latar (translation from Bengali):

“Sweet, soft and translucent creeper
In silence steals away my heart.
Above me, the vast sky.
Under me the wind blowing.
Today I dance in ecstasy supreme.”
–Sri Chinmoy

Does the mountain listen too? Its slow dancer’s petticoat of mist rises to its own rhythm, drifts down with the fall of unseen feet below.

Inside, clear strings, little bells, white lights, listeners a choir of silent faces, canvassing assorted worlds of meditation.

Were crows always beautiful? I had not noticed. They play at rough-and-tumble with the wind, black wings in fast precision like Chinese ink on a painter’s page. They will never seem the same again. Can music open the eyes?

The last song performed stays with me until the next morning, more a suite of five songs, all to the words “I fly in the Heart-Sky of my Dear Supreme.” If there must be an end, then let it be this perfect one.

We listeners move gently so as not to shake up subtle inner worlds. We are back in the outer, but bring a draught of Inner with us. Gradually we are a joyous crowd of smiles and re-unitings.

What of Rydal Cave, I ask? Why is the Concert-In-The-Cave Not-In-The-Cave this year? Stones were falling from its roof. Such scant facts were enough from which to fashion a legend over the past twelve months: that Adarsha’s mighty voice brought down the cave last year and it is now no more than a trembling pile of shale. Still, the Ambleside Parish Hall is a fine backup, and if one is going to fashion a legend then let it be sensational, yet suspiciously credible.

We drive out through a woolly cloak of roughness. Rusty scrubs of heather peer into wind-ruffled water. Aggressive grey sits on the air beside a sweet hopeful green. A waterfall elbows its way between two crags and runs to tell its secrets to a lake.

Then all is soaring majesty. The mountains stretch to see who’s taller.

Everything is different now… yet just as it always was…

* * *

To sample the inexpressible:

• Hear Shindhu’s “Heart-Lotus” at Radio Sri Chinmoy
• Hear Shindhu’s “Sacred Dawn” at Radio Sri Chinmoy
• Hear Adarsha Kelly’s “Singing the Songs of Self-Offering” at Radio Sri Chinmoy
• Hear Ananda’s “In The Heart-Sky” at Radio Sri Chinmoy
• Hear Ananda’s eponymous album at Radio Sri Chinmoy
• Find out more about Ananda at AnandaMusic.co.uk
• Photos from In-The-Cave 2004 at the SriChinmoyCentre Gallery
• Photos from In-The-Cave 2005 at the SriChinmoyCentre Gallery

After eleven years alive, I had lost all thoughts of calling somewhere home. Like a dry leaf on the wind of life, I went where it went, ever poised for the transport of its next gust. It pointed to Yorkshire, so we went north. I was determined not to like it there.

My cat spoke my thoughts that day, so I stayed silent. Her metal-lined box sounded more full of banshee than cat, and after an hour of teeth and claws it succumbed to her wrath. She flew about, heedless of windows or steering wheel, finally to settle groaning for hours under the passenger seat. She and I felt the same way about long journeys, and seemed equally pleased to move house.

The house seemed to have narrowly survived a brunt of exceptional hatred from its last owners. The woodwork had paint thrown at it in a spite of bright violet or pink, the walls asphyxial yellow from nicotine. Names were carved into windowsills, carpets more thrashed than trodden. Without human umpire, plants and trees were left to throttle one another in the grounds outside. The adjoining shop—the reason for our purchase—had been forced to close for failing to meet the basic rules of health. Be glad that my memory forbids a description, but for the weevil holes in every packet. The hungry creatures invited themselves to join us in the house, but I suppose they left or starved eventually, as things were kept in tins from then on.

Secondary school began for me soon after our arrival. My mother—through kindness, to avoid my standing out from other pupils any more than my southern accent betrayed—followed the school uniform guidelines to a T. I did not hint until a year later that I was peculiarly distinctive in my Clarks shoes, A-line skirt two inches below the knee, and shirt with a top button that fastened down to neatly accommodate a tie.

Choice of seat on the school bus said everything about social rank, thus the clamour at 7.30 each morning; thirty or forty gnashing teenagers vying for the back seat, or as far back as they dared. I, vying with a few for the front, so desperate to avoid confrontation, was heaved upward with the mass, often leaving a Clarks shoe behind as my feet quitted the ground.

I have forgotten what was taught to me at school, but I learned many new words and customs. I learned new skills too, such as dodging knives and staying the correct distance from brick fights. I quickly discovered that hair-style and respect had an uncanny, almost perfect, correlation. I longed to study Latin, but would have won the wrong sort of attention, so took a sudden interest in metalwork instead. “Is this it?” I wondered as I finished my first wrought iron candlestick.

Our first was the hardest winter the north had felt in decades. It was hardened still by the boiler—beaten to within an inch of its life—breathing its last at Christmas when nothing could be done to help it. To quell our festive eagerness, and perhaps to stay warm, we took long walks. Drifts of snow towered far above us, drilled with hailstone tunnels like giant weevil-holes. We scraped tracks in the ice to receive shop deliveries. Fizzy drinks froze on the lorry and gushed out of their bottles as they thawed.

I assumed this was what living “up north” would be forever more: cold, leaky, weevil-holed and shaded with nicotine. Of course it was not. Our little shop soon flourished, and I grew some social standing on the back of it, as our forecourt became a fashionable teenage hang-out. Like any 80s tween, life was all about riding horses or bicycles, eating sweets, and waiting for games to load from a tape recorder to a ZX Spectrum. “Is this it?” I sometimes wondered when I lost at Manic Miner. When will life begin? Or does it not? Does one just gradually look older but feel the same?

By thirteen I had grown the right sort of hair style and grown out of my Clarks shoes. Life was all about baby-sitting enough during the week to buy enough Pernod in bars at weekends to obliterate dull memories of evenings spent baby-sitting in the week. “Is this it?” I wondered, waking bruised and confused, but doing it again for want of a better idea. “Must laughter and relief be so quick to perish?”

At sixteen I moved on, alone, packing all my unanswered questions in some part of my memory labeled “York”.

* * *

The leaf, twenty-one years on, has settled in York again. Only twenty-one years? Is this the same life even? These city walls stood for a millennium, but now in the space of my life are they so changed? Through my open window, breezes bring the bells of the Minster, surging like a tide. This is it. Strangers smile at me in the road, one, two, three, before I realise I was already smiling, and they perhaps politely returning. Was that old cherry tree there in those days too, hurling confetti into a brilliant sky like the mother of some cherished bride? Is that the river inn where once I turned sixteen in a frenzy of loud friends, a cheap euphoria of sunny cider, my feet lolling in the green of the water? There are other loud frenzies now, and some look my current age. Is their joy as hollow as my own once was? As fickle as a draught? Are they still wondering “Is this it?”

It was not this place that was bleak then; it was these eyes that saw it so, and these same eyes that see it beautiful now. Many times I have thought and said that only since learning meditation do I really see; before I merely looked, and even then reluctantly. Again it shows itself to me as true, revisiting the same place on the long circular journey of life. I thank Sri Chinmoy for teaching me to see and to walk gladly in the world. He has travelled so much further in his life journey but lives on to encourage those, like me, who are only just setting out.

Journey
Onward, upward my heart proceeds.
I, the finite, perceive the One.
His soulful boundless Heart of Love
Awakes my bosom’s inner Sun.
Impossible deeds of yore to-day
Have reached their lofty wonder-goals.
My heart is changed, my world is changed,
I love all souls and own all souls.
I inspire the world to forget its woe,
I long for its inner cry to increase,
The far no more remains afar;
Now fast approaches my mind’s release.
—Sri Chinmoy

Excerpt from My First Friendship With The Muse by Sri Chinmoy