Swami Suryadevananda

Can the Heart Expand to This?

Can this be considered with an 

open heart and mind?...

It takes a big heart and mind

To let each and all have their room

And not get worked up about it.

Just let people and things be as they are

As each must bring about self-change

From within themselves and by themselves—

And till then, each is each other's training aid

Acceptance enlarges heart and mind

Expand the heart so there's room for all—

Including all these things we are appalled by

It is very difficult but real spiritual practice

The heart must have room for the whole world!

When you include all within your heart

They do not bother you anymore

Abandon outsideness and otherness

And see—you stand together with everything

He who made kittens and rabbits

Also put snakes in the same grasses

In nature each understand compatibility

Without contempt—just living carefully

To respond naturally amidst everything

We first have to return to naturalness

Naturalness knows how to move about

Amidst the multitude of its own variety

We try to compensate by shrewdness

It does not work, we hurt and hurt others

Naturalness does not fumble here at all

It does what is right every moment naturally

Some may still get hurt in nature's play

But this is seeing things from outside

Nothing stands outside nature, it includes all

Waves rise and fall in the same ocean

Differences are nature's call to you

To return to inward no-difference

Rooted in the unchanging there's no problem

The ocean never worries about her waves

( Extract from a poem by Swami Suryadevnanda)