Page:The Spirit Of Oriental Poetry.pdf/46

((rh|36| THE SPIRIT OF ORIENTAL POETRY|}} The injustice done to our poct by an essentially epicurean world is due to a misunderstanding. The drinking of the cup, as a protest against the over- strict commandments of the Koran, was in the spirit of the times, the general sign of the real mystic con- version and the tavern was the mystic lodge Our poet appears in a million moods, he docs not know when he contradicts himself What are poems but pictures of the transient postures of the mind against the background of the Infinite ? Even if we read Omar in the original, we cannot grasp him, for he transcends his own words The poct, however, can never be happy but in himself His “ wine is divine incbriation, flowing to him from the eyes of his Beloved, the Divine teacher, who fills him with joy when his sonl runs dry Why should he philoso- phise on theism to prove himself a Saint It is well that his poetry is agnostic when it goes towards the impersonal First Cause, all divine poetry must at least be honest These poets can never get beyond the Love of the God-Personality which is symboliscd by Khayyam and Hafiz in their beloved Saks “I seek the refuge of Buddha'” “I seek the refuge of Man Salutations to Buddha" "He is foolish who asks me what is God and more foolish is he who answers," was what Sakya Muni said. Guru Nanak never defines God; it is the Beloved, the Bridegroom There is no theological God in life, Dor in any true religion It is wicked to interpret the " teasm "I of the Japanese as something secular. 1.There is a garden path called 'Roji' so to say, the passage into self-illumination, leading from the without to the within that is to say, the tea house under the world-wearied grayness of age known trees by the solitary granito lapters, solitary like a saint or a philosopher with the beacon light in heart, at 1s here that you have to forget the tamultuous seas of the world on which you must ride and play at morel equilibrinm and slowly enter into the Teaism' or the joy of astbeticism"--Noguchi