Sadhana The Realization of Life

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful; more than spirit-sustaining.
Review: I am careful in spiritual pursuits--notions of spirituality have to win me by changing me with their beauty and honesty. Tagore's Sadhana does this time and again.

I fell in love with physics and mathematics because of my liking for their perfectness, exactness, and trimness; perfect form. (No large claims; a physics major and math minor, no graduate work.) For the same reasons, vague or inconsistent pictures of the universe are difficult for me to take in--I often take a statement, rework it, rework myself, think carefully, stay honest, and in the end sometimes come up with an expanded understanding of things; almost always the statement and I both must be reworked; there is no problem with that, it is just the natural metabolism of thinking.

But Sadhana is so honest and well thought through that my first reading of it was smooth, beginning to end. And it was expanding. And it was perfect. And it was beautiful because it was true; it was perfectly beautiful; however you want to put it, I was taken.

The book presents a perception of things which goes to their root; fortunately and unfortunately, I find no other words for this than "spiritual;" I must be careful to point out that this spirituality is grounded in the world; it is not pained to explain ugliness; it is honest about things--this honesty does not make it less beautiful; but a rather awe-filled more. The integrity of perception of things is wonderful, and makes it a joy to read; any inch of slack can be overlooked in loo of the expansiveness, truth, and depth of insight provided.

It is the only presentation of a cosmology I have found which seems (to me!) 1. entirely consistent with a physicist's beliefs of the nature of things, and 2. which even encompasses the physicists's awarenesses, without at all attempting to (at least not by the same route). And yet with all this, it is more a work of poetry of the heart than a work of philosophy or analysis. It successfully remains part of the *lived* world.

I would like to continue about how I came to *Sadhana* in the first place, but it is best read in quiet, absent commentary by others. Get to the book. Make it "yours" first, perhaps, and then talk with others (just a thought).

Perhaps I can say this final bit (it only clues you in to the table of contents):

I came to this book a few months after finishing Plato's *Republic*, and I know that Plato's work helped me develop the ideas and questions which led me to find Sadhana.

I felt--coming from my reading and response to *The Republic*--that there was something worthy to pursue related to such notions as beauty, self, soul, and consciousness. Unfortunately, keyword searches on these called up not much helpful; mainly, they were works arrived at with too much fear and desire pushing for a crystallization of philosophy, or which lacked depth of heart.

The best writings I didn't find under these searches, but instead under searches related to poetry, music, or art--nothing directly speaking of "soul," "self," and so forth. Yet I finally queried the library computer for any books which contained all four above words (the initial four). The fact that anything came up at all, with such 'different' notions, was unusual--I approached it warily, yet with subdued and slightly hopeful stride. My wariness soon evaporated away; dissolving. I read. It was Tagore's Sadhana, you assuredly have guessed.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful; more than spirit-sustaining.
Review: I am careful in spiritual pursuits--notions of spirituality have to win me by changing me with their beauty and honesty. Tagore's Sadhana does this time and again.

I fell in love with physics and mathematics because of my liking for their perfectness, exactness, and trimness; perfect form. (No large claims; a physics major and math minor, no graduate work.) For the same reasons, vague or inconsistent pictures of the universe are difficult for me to take in--I often take a statement, rework it, rework myself, think carefully, stay honest, and in the end sometimes come up with an expanded understanding of things; almost always the statement and I both must be reworked; there is no problem with that, it is just the natural metabolism of thinking.

But Sadhana is so honest and well thought through that my first reading of it was smooth, beginning to end. And it was expanding. And it was perfect. And it was beautiful because it was true; it was perfectly beautiful; however you want to put it, I was taken.

The book presents a perception of things which goes to their root; fortunately and unfortunately, I find no other words for this than "spiritual;" I must be careful to point out that this spirituality is grounded in the world; it is not pained to explain ugliness; it is honest about things--this honesty does not make it less beautiful; but a rather awe-filled more. The integrity of perception of things is wonderful, and makes it a joy to read; any inch of slack can be overlooked in loo of the expansiveness, truth, and depth of insight provided.

It is the only presentation of a cosmology I have found which seems (to me!) 1. entirely consistent with a physicist's beliefs of the nature of things, and 2. which even encompasses the physicists's awarenesses, without at all attempting to (at least not by the same route). And yet with all this, it is more a work of poetry of the heart than a work of philosophy or analysis. It successfully remains part of the *lived* world.

I would like to continue about how I came to *Sadhana* in the first place, but it is best read in quiet, absent commentary by others. Get to the book. Make it "yours" first, perhaps, and then talk with others (just a thought).

Perhaps I can say this final bit (it only clues you in to the table of contents):

I came to this book a few months after finishing Plato's *Republic*, and I know that Plato's work helped me develop the ideas and questions which led me to find Sadhana.

I felt--coming from my reading and response to *The Republic*--that there was something worthy to pursue related to such notions as beauty, self, soul, and consciousness. Unfortunately, keyword searches on these called up not much helpful; mainly, they were works arrived at with too much fear and desire pushing for a crystallization of philosophy, or which lacked depth of heart.

The best writings I didn't find under these searches, but instead under searches related to poetry, music, or art--nothing directly speaking of "soul," "self," and so forth. Yet I finally queried the library computer for any books which contained all four above words (the initial four). The fact that anything came up at all, with such 'different' notions, was unusual--I approached it warily, yet with subdued and slightly hopeful stride. My wariness soon evaporated away; dissolving. I read. It was Tagore's Sadhana, you assuredly have guessed.

Rating:
Summary: In My Top Ten of World Spiritual Classics
Review: Like the constancy of the great cellestial constellations, Tagore's Sadhana delivers the message of the human connection to universal transcendance in hauntingly beautiful English prose.

Perched as he was at the cusp of the Twentieth Century, Tagore saw with penetrating insight the fallacies of the age of science when he wrote,

" The man of science knows, in one aspect, that the world is not merely what it appears to be to our senses; he knows that earth and water are really the play of forces that manifest themselves to us as earth and water -how, we can but partially comprehend. Likewise the man who has his spiritual eyes open knows that the ultimate truth about earth and water lies in the apprehension of the eternal will which works in time and takes shape in the forces we realize under those aspects. This is not mere knowedge, as science is, but it is a perception of the the soul by the soul. This does not lead us to power, as knowledge does, but it gives us joy, which is the product of kindred things. The man whose acquaintance with the world does not lead deeper than science leads him, will never understand what it is that the man with the spiritual vision finds in these natural phenomena. The water does not merely cleanse his limbs, but it purifies his heart; for it touches his soul. The earth does not merely hold his body, but it gladdens his mind; for its contact is more than a physical contact, -it is a living prsesence."

When I first read these words over twenty years ago, they took my breath away.I have read and re-read Sadhana many time since then. Each reading or re-visting of favorite passages is as fresh as the first.He says much more that is worth reading in this 164 page gem.

Sadhana is also an excellent primer on classical Hinduism, as Tagore beautifully quotes the Vedas and Upanishads with Sanskrit transliteration to convey the lovliness of the vocal cadences of that ancient tongue.

Sadhana ranks with Psalms, the Tao De Ching, the Dhammapada, Zen Mind Begginers Mind and other enduring classics of world spiritual literature for its directness, simplicity and beauty of expression. My copy is beginning to fall apart so I am delighted to find it is again in print.

Finally, I thank Dr. Purshotam Lal of Calcutta for having introduced me to Tagore as Visiting Professor at Hofstra University in the 1960's. Lal, a Tagore Scholar, also produced a lovely translation (or as he preferred, a "transcreation") of the Dhammapada then published by Farrar Straus in New York. Thanks again, Lal.

Joel Freiser Hoboken, New Jersey

Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: My grandfather bought this book in the 1940's while he lived in Japan, his copy was printed in 1919. I eventually inherited it. I read it last year sometime, and I thought that it was one of the best books that I had ever read. If you are fond of Tagore, or just like philosophical/poetic works I strongly recommend that you buy it! I hope that anyone who buys this will enjoy it as much as I did! Namaskar!