Loving Kindness by Azad

Loving Kindness

by Azad

Nuria proposed to Yaqin that we could have this edition of Spirit Matters look at love and kindness as the theme or topic for this issue. This followed a Zoom group meeting on the subject of love and kindness. Having had a few health set-backs, shortly after I went to Ireland, Nuria found that help i.e. love and kindness in practical ways were given to her willingly, especially by mureeds in Melbourne. This happened as well on a spiritual – in the literal sense - in that her spirit was uplifted as well - as in the practical or pragmatic sense her material needs; shopping etc. were also attended to. Social services also played their part, by providing a home help, physiotherapists, a home safety alert system as well as checking by phone, occasionally, if everything was satisfactory.

Now a cynic, would say, “So what? – this is how it should be!”

The reality is that life isn’t truly like that. So this got me thinking on what is love and what is kindness? – are they compatible? Is there any way we can differentiate between them? Is it possible to distinguish one from the other when it comes to feelings or emotions, rather than the physicality of both?

Audre Lorde has told us ‘that poetry names the nameless so (that) it can be thought’ And ‘poetry speaks to the way we could be’. So what is kindness? Is it love personified? Or what?

Here is a definition of Love from a book entitled ‘101 Quotations to make you think!’: ‘Love is when you take away the feeling, the passion, the romance, and you find that you still care for that person.’ Here are two poems about love – two, from hundreds of thousands – written about love.

The first is by Pablo Neruda and the second is by William Butler Yeats.

17 of 39

Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write, for example, 'The night is starry and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one, I held her in my arms. I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too. How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines. To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her. And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her. The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance. My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer. My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees. We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her. My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses. Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

Pablo Neruda

18 of 39

When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

William Butler Yeats

Both these poems at first sight appear to be just that love poems, but I know a little about Yeats and about this poem.

Yeats meets Maud Gonne

Yeats was infatuated by an English lady – a heiress - called Maude Gonne, who despite being born in England became a fierce, and ardent Irish nationalist. Her love of Ireland, of country, was intense while Yeats was more dispassionate or even disinterested. Nuria sees Maude Gonne as representing his soul so that in effect she was his soul as this reflects his great love and passion for her. He totally loved and idolised her as expressed in the sentence; But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you.

But for her as the embodiment, of the soul, her love, first and foremost, was for the land and country which she held sacred above all else. According to Yeats’ biographer R. F. Foster, Maud Gonne appeared to Yeats as a;

"majestic, unearthly… immensely tall, bronze-haired, with a strong profile and beautiful skin, she was a fin-de-siecle beauty in Valkyrie mode". It was the start of a mutually obsessive relationship that would last half a century. (Times of India)

19 of 39

Soon after he met her, Yeats had experienced an obsessive love and desire for her, which had a significant and lasting effect on his poetry throughout his life. He proposed to her no less than four times, in 1899, 1900, 1902 and finally in 1916. She rejected him on each, and every occasion. The last two lines of this poem are very well known throughout the world.

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Despite his persistence and her resistance she finally did marry but it was to Major John McBride in 1903, roughly one year after Yeats’ third proposal had occurred; and that is where the two lines of his poem (When You Are Old) are significant:

And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you

I think the reference of false love is a reference to John MacBride as the marriage to Maude only lasted up to 1905, and the one man who loved the pilgrim soul is referenced to himself.

It is also clear that he is writing about John MacBride in the very well-known poem ‘Easter 1916’, Yeats refers to the Easter Rising, as ‘the casual comedy’ towards the armed insurrection in Ireland during Easter Week in April 1916, of which MacBride was a part of. He writes of MacBride as;

This other man I had dreamed A drunken, vainglorious lout. He had done most bitter wrong To some who are near my heart, Yet I number him in the song;

20 of 39

He, too, has resigned his part In the casual comedy; He, too, has been changed in his turn, Transformed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.

MacBride was executed along with 15 others for taking part in this rebellion against British rule in Ireland. The last three lines reflect Yeats’ change of attitude.

He, too, has been changed in his turn,

Transformed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.

So what to make of this turbulent romance? This unrequited love? Does ‘love’ have any relevance to ‘kindness’ at all?

Gonne had rejected Yeats on four separate proposals of marriage because, in her opinion he had a much more detached view of Irish nationalism; Gonne was very active in many issues - she was a suffragette and very active on many fronts and on many committees. She had also converted to Catholicism, and Yeats had refused to do so. But Maude Gonne was of the opinion that her refusals had been the catalyst for some of his finest poems. She thought that the world would be grateful for her rejection of him.

She refused many marriage proposals from Yeats, not only because he was unwilling to convert to Catholicism and not because she viewed him as insufficiently radical in his nationalism, but also because she believed his unrequited love for her had been a boon for his poetry and that the world would thank her for never having accepted his proposals.

When Yeats told her he could not be happy without her, she replied:

“Oh yes, you are, because you make beautiful poetry out of what you call your unhappiness and are happy in that. Marriage would be such a dull affair. Poets should never marry. The world should thank me for not marrying you.”

21 of 39

In complete contrast we have a fiery passionate revolutionary Latin American poet Pablo Neruda, who unabashedly supports revolution, sensuous sexuality and says what he feels, rather than writing or talking in metaphors.

Pablo Neruda was a fascinating character and a great writer of love poems. He was a poet, a diplomat and a senator who also won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

I have included a Wikipedia link should you be inclined to know more about his life and his death and that – his death – is an intriguing story in itself. He, unlike Yeats, was a revolutionary and was quite vociferous in support of many causes especially those in South America. He began writing poetry when he was 13 years of age.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Neruda

Veinte Poemas also brought the author notoriety due to its explicit celebration of sexuality, and, as Robert Clemens remarked in the Saturday Review, “established him at the outset as a frank, sensuous spokesman for love.” While other Latin American poets of the time used sexually explicit imagery, Neruda was the first to win popular acceptance for his presentation. Mixing memories of his love affairs with memories of the wilderness of southern Chile, he creates a poetic sequence that not only describes a physical liaison, but also evokes the sense of displacement that Neruda felt in leaving the wilderness for the city.”

22 of 39

This is quite the opposite of Yeats and you are left in little doubt about the male’s feelings, or are we confused with the mixed messages?

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too What does it matter that my love could not keep her. The night is starry and she is not with me. I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.

And at this point I began to question what was the point of this article? What was I trying to say? What did these poems reflect? I had started out with idea that there was little difference between love and kindness and then thought, No! There is quite a distinction! I blame Neruda for this as he – at least to me – swings back and forth as can be seen from the few lines above.

And then belatedly it struck me, the connection is the heart. So obvious! It is at the centre of our Murshid’s teachings. We label these emotions as love or kindness but these feelings cannot be restrained by a label. They are a part, an integral part, of being human. We are sentient beings. Thanks to God. We cannot corral these into a label, phrase or even a poem as they are beyond all boundaries.

In the Sufi Message Murshid writes:

“When man analyses the objective world and realises the inner being, what he learns first and last is that this whole vision of life is created by love; love itself being life, all will in time be absorbed in it.

It is the lover of God whose heart is filled with devotion, who can commune with God; not the one who makes the effort with his intellect to analyse God. In other words, it is the lover of God who can commune with Him, not the student of His nature. It is the ‘I’ and ‘you’ which divide, and yet it is ‘I’ and ‘you’ which are the necessary conditions of love. Although ‘I’ and ‘you’ divide the one life in two , it is love that connects them by the current which is established between them; and it is this current which is called communion, which runs between man and God.”

23 of 39