Unending Love
A small remembrance of why I continue to write and record: that beneath all we have come to believe ourselves to be, there remains a love beyond measure.
As I send out Rabindranath Tagore’s Unending Love once again, having shared it before, I’m reminded of why I write, why I record, why I keep saying these things.
It is not because the truth has not been said before. Perhaps it is because the truth must be remembered, again and again.
We forget.
We become frightened. We contract around the small identity we have made. We mistake our wounds, our histories, our defenses and our thoughts for who we are. And then something—a poem, a voice, a moment of stillness, another human being—opens the door again.
And for an instant, we remember.
Oh yes. This is what I am.
A love beyond measure.
That is why I continue to write and record, and why I send you this beautiful poem again: to do whatever I can, in myself and perhaps in you, to help us remember the truth of who we really are. Nigel
I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, its age-old pain,
Its ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.
You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played alongside millions of lovers, shared in the same
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.
Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours –
And the songs of every poet past and forever - Rabindranath Tagore
Nigel Lott teaandzen.org
Meditation Sans Frontieres 501 (C) 3 Registered Charity Tax EIN 81-3411835
May the work offered here serve peace, serve healing, serve remembrance, and serve the quiet dignity of being alive. May this sanctuary belong not to one person alone, but to the field of life itself.
And may all who encounter it feel, even for a moment, that nothing is missing and they are not alone.
TEA AND ZEN
