Page:Shantiniketan; the Bolpur School of Rabindranath Tagore.djvu/69

Rh held in the temple once or twice a week at which the poet himself, when present, addresses the boys. When he is away one of the teachers gives the address, and the boys join in the chanting of certain Sanskrit mantras. The subject of these addresses varies, and many of them have been published in a series entitled “Shantiniketan,” which has been published by the School authorities. As an example I may give the notes I took of an address given by the poet on the last night of the old year. The service was held after sunset and in the darkness it was only possible to distinguish the speaker dimly outlined against a background of white-clad figures seated on the floor all round him.

He began by saying that when a year comes to its end we sometimes think only of the sadness of ending, but if we can realise that in this ending there is not emptiness but fulness, then even the thought of ending itself becomes full of joy. In this very process of ending we once again have the leisure to throw off the coverings and wrappings of habit and custom and thus emerge into a fuller and more spacious conception of life. Even the ending of life in death has this element of fulness in it when viewed from the right standpoint. Death really reveals life to us,