O for the voices of animals—
O for the swiftness and balance of fishes!
O for the dropping of
Raindrops in a song!
O for the sunshine
And motion of waves in a song!
O the engineer’s joy
To go with a locomotive
To hear the hiss of steam,
The merry shriek, the steam whistle,
The laughing locomotive!
To push with resistless way
And speed off in the distance.
Through your ears to hear, to listen and to understand
Is to make gold of grain and golden grain of sand.
Only when what’s to be got from listening has been got
May one turn to what from eating may be brought.
Offerings turn stone to Gods
Listening makes humans of gastropods.
Learn by listening if from reading you cannot
That’ll be the staff from which your grip on life is got.
Most of us are wearing our ear buds and we have barred ourselves from our surrounding sounds. What are we listening to? Music, self-improvement, YouTubes, spiritual discourses and other subjects. Are we practicing pratyahara by shutting ourselves from external sounds? Continue reading