Category: tips

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True happiness according to Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore sketched by Dutch artist Martin Monnickendam during a lecture tour in September 1920 © Stadsarchief Amsterdam

“True happiness is not at all expensive. It depends upon that natural spring of beauty and of life, harmony of relationship. Ambition pursues its own path of self-seeking by breaking this bond of harmony, digging gaps, creating dissension. Selfish ambition feels no hesitation in trampling under foot the whole harvest field, which is for all, in order to snatch away in haste that portion which it craves. Being wasteful it remains disruptive of social life and the greatest enemy of civilization.” | Read the full lecture >>

Source: Rabindranath Tagore in “Robbery of the soil” (Calcutta University, 1922), posted by Tony Mitra on a blog “Exploring citizens duty on food security, environmental sustainability, covid and freedom issues” (27 September 2015)
https://www.tonu.org/tag/robbery-of-the-soil/
Date visited: 12 January 2021

Worldcat lists compiled by Ludwig Pesch

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How will we experience music in 2050? To play music together and connect!

Ideally in a very profound way – the way families have shared music for thousands of years, and long before music became a commodity:

So it’s a rainy day in 2050 and you and your friends decide you’d like to see a concert. […] Emmy Parker, a cultural futurist and former brand manager for synthesizer maker Moog Music, said that the future could also allow us to experience music and sound in a very profound way, the way families have shared music for thousands of years, and long before “music” became a commodity.

“How can we expand that simple idea, which has been on planet Earth probably for 150,000 years, that we play music together to, number one, connect with each other?” said Parker.

19:40 we play music together, to connect to our higher self or God or universe; to our ancestors, to bring us back to another time and place […] very similar to a time traveler.

We use to heal our minds, our hearts and spirit, and our body, and connect to each other, to our families.

Listen to Spark’s Next Big Thing series, which explores how technology in various guises might affect humanity in the far future >>

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Creation, Kabir says again and again, is full of music: it is music – Rabindranath Tagore

Kabir was essentially a poet and musician: rhythm and harmony were to him the garments of beauty and truth. Hence in his lyrics he shows himself to be, like Richard Rolle, above all things a musical mystic. Creation, he says again and again, is full of music: it is music. At the heart of the Universe “white music is blossoming”: love weaves the melody, whilst renunciation beats the time. It can be heard in the home as well as in the heavens; discerned by the ears of common men as well as by the trained senses of the ascetic. Moreover, the body of every man is a lyre on which Brahma, “the source of all music,” plays.

Everywhere Kabir discerns the “Unstruck Music of the Infinite”—that celestial melody which the angel played to St. Francis, that ghostly symphony which filled the soul of Rolle with ecstatic joy.

Songs of Kabir by Rabindranath Tagore, p. 19
https://archive.org/details/songs-of-kabir

Listen to Tagore: Unlocking Cages: Sunil Khilnani tells the story of the Bengali writer and thinker Rabindranath Tagore: https://bbc.in/1KVh4Cf >>
The acclaimed BBC 4 podcast series titled Incarnations: India in 50 Lives has also been published in book form (Allen Lane).

“I was moved by how many of these lives pose challenges to the Indian present,” he writes, “and remind us of future possibilities that are in danger of being closed off.” – Sunil Khilnani quoted in a review by William Dalrymple in The Guardian (14 March 2016)

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Mein Leben in Indien: Zwischen den Kulturen zu Hause von Martin Kämpchen

Patmos Verlag >>

Anlässlich seines 75. Geburtstags erscheint Martin Kämpchens Autobiografie. Wie kein anderer Zeitgenosse ist der seit fünf Jahrzehnten in Indien lebende Deutsche in das religiöse, kulturelle und soziale Leben des Landes eingetaucht. Der promovierte Germanist und promovierte Religionswissenschaftler ist bekannt als kluger Berichterstatter aus Indien für große deutsche Tageszeitungen ebenso wie als geschätzter Übersetzer des bengalischen Literaturnobelpreisträgers Rabindranath Tagore. Er ist Initiator und Förderer sozialer Projekte in Indien.

Die Geschichte eines außergewöhnlichen Lebens und ein Einblick in das Leben Indiens aus der Nahsicht.

Mehr von und über Martin Kämpchen

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“We have a natural ability to both learn and teach”: Interview with Sanjay Sarma – cbc.ca

Human beings are very unique in the sense that we are learning animals. We have a natural ability to both learn and teach, and that is called parenting. And being a child, the system of education is relatively recent, where you sit people down in classrooms and, you know, systematically teach them. But what’s happened is that in doing that, we’ve lost the thread a little bit because in fact, the human mind works on curiosity, works on building a model of the world. It needs a lot of love and attention. And parents know how to do that, but we sort of ignored it.

Listen to Quirks and Quarks or read the interview here:

An online learning expert explains how the COVID crisis might help change education for the better >>