One
August is always hot in my memory, and kolkata is so cool at this time, which I did not expect. Although the summer mango and coconut nuts are my daily necessities, the breath blowing in the wind is clearly the meaning of early autumn in South China. West Bengal in August, the rainy season in the middle of the day, fell into my eyes and alarmed the most tranquil and peaceful dream in my heart. At these times, in addition to being in the poetry of nature, I may be able to enter the deep thoughts of the holy poet Rabindranath Tagore.
It was at such times that I visited the holy land of education and poetry in modern India: Santiniketan (Santiniketan, meaning "Village of Peace", "Quiet Town") in the northern suburbs of Calcutta, and Visva Bharati, a land of peace that the poet Tagore began to dream of in 1901 and was initially created in 1921. In 1921, in his belated acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature, he made clear his original intention:
"I am determined to create an international organization where students from the West and the East can meet and share a common spiritual feast. ...... Think of this university as a common bridge between Eastern and Western civilizations. May they be able to contribute and contribute to the work of their lives, and let us work together to make it full of life to represent the true humanity of this world that can never be separated. ”
This time, in order to rush to the International University in Lonely Village, I took the No. 12337 train from Howrah to Bolpur. This is a better choice, both in terms of time and the quality of the cabin air conditioning. Polpur is the last stop on the way to Lonely Village, guaranteeing the tranquility of the Peaceful Village. More than a hundred kilometers, it takes three hours to run, if not compared with Chinese mainland, it is already the first choice here.
Thanks to tagore's painstaking management for more than forty years in the second half of his life, Lonely Village has long been famous all over the world, becoming a place of pilgrimage for countless people in the world who love this holy poet. Including generations of Chinese, the one who remembers the name the most is probably this place.
Howrah's 12337th train to Polpur – The Peace Township Express.
In the spring of 1924, Tagore made a special visit to China, he said: "While my limbs in my twilight years have not been stiff, and my aging soul can still feel, I must not miss this last and only opportunity, this broad, calm, and courteous nation, I have been worshiping since I was a child, and instead of the sorrow of withering in the realm of twilight and silence in the future, I would rather take advantage of the unsightly light of this sunset, but the wish of my Jinxiang people." So, after trekking ten thousand miles by sea, we arrived in China.
Since his return from China, he has been planning to create a "Chinese Academy" at an international university. Since then, with the support of the government of the Republic of China, Chinese scholars have been invited to visit and teach. Tan Yunshan, the xiangren, was the first dean of the Chinese Academy when it was officially founded in 1937, and retired in 1968, while the poet Xu Zhimo, the philosopher Xu Fancheng, the painter Xu Beihong, the Buddhist master Taifu Shangren, the scholar Ji Xianlin, and Premier Zhou Enlai all visited this famous university.
"Santiniketan", the name taken from the blessing "Santi" (peace) in the ancient Indian Upanishads, has also been attacked by some people, called "Shanti", in fact, all originated from the ancient Indian forest dream. This kind of blessing and dream is the revelation of life that the ancients received from the nature of heaven and earth: man is not a foreign race that competes with each other, but a kind of mutual help. Coupled with the inherent fragility of the human individual, unable to be lonely like a beast, lonely as a god, in the isolation of relationships, strength, wisdom and compassion will all shrink, so Kaizhi seeks great harmony in the world of existence with this blessing. In his answer to the Nobel Prize in Literature, he said: "Man does not exist to fight with other races and other individuals, but through his work, to achieve reconciliation and peace in the realm of existence and to re-establish the bonds of friendship and love." ”
Two
We know that Robindranath Tagore was not only a poet, but also a social activist close to the sacred realm of the spirit. During the five days of Wandering, I met countless people, regardless of monks and laymen, who were full of respect for him, and Gandhi's praise as a "holy master" was not an exaggeration, and it was well deserved. In Indian culture, the most perfect person should devote his life to two missions: first, self-realization, and second, to serve society. Without the former, the latter is blind; without the latter, the former is crippled. Tagore, Swami Kanki, and Sri Aropindo are all the same, and interestingly, these three of the most remarkable and rare Indian masters in the modern world are actually Calcutta, and the first two live on the same street!
We visited the campus of the International University, from a small road in the middle, without turning a few turns, we arrived at Cheena Bhavana (China College), across the courtyard wall, you can also see the name of the college - "China College" four characters, written by the then Republican politician Lin Sen, Chinese Wei stele, inscribed in the twenty-sixth year of the Republic of China at the beginning of the founding.
Tagore International University China College
I was pleasantly surprised to see these Indian students walking around the academy, holding textbooks printed with Chinese and speaking fluent Mandarin. I met the Indian students here, Suman and Abu. After a brief Chinese conversation, I knew that Su Man was leaving for China in the second half of the year to visit Sichuan University, an important academic town in the southwest, to listen to his tone and have the intention of pursuing a doctorate. Abu, on the other hand, was a child from an Islamic family who also studied Chinese characters and culture here. This is tagore's great ambition, regardless of religious caste, nationality, men and women, to study here "in the wilderness, without stinginess", in tagore's spirit, that is, "the world meets in the same nest", sanskrit: Yatra Viśvam Bhavatyekanidai.
Successively the name and term of office of the president of the Chinese Academy, the first Xiangren Tan Yunshan.
Led by Indian student Suman, we soon met with Dean Avijit Banerjee. Since taking office in September 2011, Mr. Avejet has been The Dean for almost eight years. In his dean's office, I saw the "Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence" friendship award frame on the wall, presented by the Chinese government on September 19, 2014, and the Chinese mascot hanging below: a panda picture.
I gave several ancient books and calligraphy works that I had brought with me to the library of the Academy. Entrusted by Mr. Sun Zhishen, a well-known Scholar of Chinese American Origin, I also handed over to this college an important souvenir that he had just sent. This relic is very closely related to Tai Ong, which originated on August 7, 1941, when Tai Ong lived in his old home in Calcutta, Tarzan collapsed, the philosophers withered, and the news spread to China, and a generation of philosophers, Mr. Fang Dongmei, made a poem "Tianzhu Poetry Zhe Tagore's Elegy" on behalf of the "Chinese Philosophical Society":
The Eastern Tao cultivates wisdom and attains the Ilyin Sage.
On the new moon night of the gardener, the xuan lan net group has.
After returning to the gods and the heavens, after the great true man.
Brilliant death in life, heart lion roar.
The deceased is all in heaven, and his honor is immortal.
Born of love, eternal life.
Not long ago, Mr. Sun Zhishen translated the poem into English. What I am presenting to the Dean today is the original text and translation of this elegy commemorating the death of Tagore. I told him that the original author was Fang Dongmei, a famous philosopher in modern China, and also an outstanding poet, who was extremely famous and prestigious in old China. He is almost as broad and outstanding as Tayon. Therefore, the poem he drafted on behalf of the "Chinese Philosophical Society" in 1941 is of special significance, which is an important witness to the traditional friendship between China and India in the modern era, and I hope that you can preserve it!
The collection of Chinese speeches displayed in the museum of Tagore International University, Tai Weng's Chinese name is still given by Liang Qichao: Zhu Zhendan, which contains the sustenance of eternal peace and friendship
Later, Dean Avijet arranged for students to be tour guides, introduced us to visit the institutes, took us to the house where the poet lived, where the poet meditated, and the central library of the university, the museum and other places.
What impressed me most were some of the open-air classrooms where lower school children had natural contact with heaven and earth. These open-air classrooms vary in shape, square or round, or heart-shaped, but they all have a place in the middle, which is reserved for the teacher to sit on, and the students are seated in a circle, and then a little further away, they are all shady trees.
What a classroom! They also embody Tagore's dream of teaching nature. This idyllic secluded place was originally chosen by the poet's father, Devindranath Tagore, "as a suitable place for his life to communicate with God." As a permanent donation, the place was designated for use by those who sought tranquility and seclusion for contemplation and prayer.
Initially, in December 1901, the poet came here with five children (including his eldest son) and began to explore the true meaning of education without any experience, until it finally became a world-renowned international university, producing many first-class talents for India, such as the famous dancer Li Gotami, the Prime Minister of the Republic, Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister of the Republic, and the Nobel Prize-winning economics winner Amartya Kumar Sen.
Open-air classrooms inside the school
Through the guidance of Abbot Avijet, we also visited a famous local handicraft market, a Hindu temple, which is obviously related to the national self-help movement in modern India, especially with Gandhi, Tagore and others. With the help of a sudden driver, I visited the source of inspiration in Tagore's poem: the Kopai River.
At that time, I visited the river in the twilight of the lonely countryside, and along the way it was really paved with music, colors and rhythms in the poet's poetry, I saw the Banyan tree of the Root Whisker Ramp, met the quiet Lotus Lake, and met the cattle and sheep walking in the countryside, and rode all the way to the bridge of the Kubai River, "In the babbling flow of the Kubai River, there is a natural rhythm similar to my poetry." Tagore once fondly recalled. I also seem to be touched deeply by this endless poetry of lonely villages, like an eternal dream, teaching people to rejoice, and teaching people to be poor.
The Kubai River and countryside inspired Tagore
Three
Tagore's original intention in founding this school was inspired by the ancient Indian tradition that came from the formation of the holy scriptures of the Upanishads. The Indians once proudly called their great cloud of Bhagavad Gita, the supreme divine nectar, the Milk gushing from the body of a mysterious cow, the ancient Upanishads.
The Upanishads are spiritually advanced, far from the mundane truths of the world, and belong to the four Vedas. Vedic texts are the masterpieces of forest saints who lived in seclusion in deerskin and meditated on the universe. The Indians of classical times believed that this was the breath of God, the eternal truth, and the number of Upanishads was as high as one hundred and twenty, the core philosophical texts of Indian culture, which in the Indian tradition have always been cherished as the spiritual treasure house of the supreme knowledge.
The original Sanskrit meaning of the word Upanishad implies a classical picture: in the forest of boundless silence, the master and disciple who have a real desire for the supreme truth, or sit quietly and sink into meditation; or look at each other and speak with their ears, so that truth and new life will be born at the same time. In Indian culture, there is the saying that "he who knows the truth becomes the truth" (Brahmavid brahmaiva bhavati). Such a forest of truth and peace is called the Ashram (Sanskrit: Ashram). Tagore said: "In India, we still remember the tradition of those great teachers who lived in the forest. ...... This traditional master-apprentice relationship is not a fiction of Romanticism, it is confirmed by the relics. We have a native education system that has remained consistently independent for centuries and was presumably destroyed by foreign bureaucratic rule. So, what Tagore is trying to reconstruct in Shantideva is this ancient educational ideal of India, sitting between heaven and earth, valuing the tradition of meditation, and allowing students to practice the ideal education by sharing a noble life with teachers.
Indian banyan tree in Peace Village
According to Tagore, true education must be that it not only gives us knowledge and information, but also gives us the highest harmony and the highest unity between our lives and the existence of all things, so that the flesh of this dust will attain the immortal glory of the celestial realm. "I think, as part of education, to make my children fully aware that they are living in a system of existence where trees are physical, not just trees that produce chlorophyll and take carbon dioxide from the air, but trees that are alive," he said. ＂
When we were sent into this world by the forces of nature, we did not discuss the matter of growth with the government or the Ministry of Education on earth, and the voice of nature never stopped whispering for a moment. Tagore said that the biggest difference between the adult world and the child world is that the child is the creation of nature itself, and the adult has been shaped by human society, and it is likely that the face has been completely different. So, Tagore said in The Birds, "God is expecting everyone to regain childhood from wisdom." This may be the ultimate essence of Tagore's ideal of education.
Tagore did examine the process of life and civilization when it came to this ideal, arguing that civilization is only an intermediate thing, "it is neither the beginning nor the end." Its intricacies and ceremonial practices have their own uses. However, if they are taken as final, and if they are prescribed, leaving no green space for human life to be ruled away from smoke and noise, then the children will suffer, the youth will fall into world-weariness, and the old will forget to nurture in peace and beauty, and be ashamed of the ragged clothes of age, full of holes and patches. Therefore, in the child's educational growth, civilization, or knowledge, is only an intermediate stage, and must not be mistaken for the ultimate ideal: "First, they must gather knowledge by loving life, then they must abandon life to acquire knowledge, and finally, with mature wisdom, they will return to their more complete life." ”
Four
In the Tagore Museum in Lonely Township, there are also a large number of pictures related to his trip to China, indicating his attachment and blessing to China. Recently, the sino-Indian border issue in Donglang has made the sky over the two countries deeply locked. As a poet who diligently sought the spirit of peace, Tagore is especially worth remembering at this time. In February 1941, already bedridden, he still remembered his memory in China, and the last collection of poems in his life, the "Birthday Collection", was specially commemorated with poems, and now this poem is engraved on the wall of the "Chinese Branch" of the museum of his former residence, Rabindra Bharati, with the general meaning:
In the net bottle of my birthday
Filled with holy water collected from holy places on the way to the Hajj
I remember visiting Chinese land
Meet the host owner who never knew
He left this mark on the auspicious mole on my forehead: "You, you are one of us." ”
The veil of the living person fell unconsciously
Eternal people appeared in the Chamber of The Mind
We meet happily, unexpectedly intimately
I took the Chinese name and put on Chinese clothes.
This is clear in my heart:
Where I get friends, I get a new life
Friends bring the miracle of life
In a foreign land, flowers with different names bloom.
Old photo of Xu Beihong, Tan Yunshan and Tai Weng taking a group photo in Lonely Township
Shortly after the poem was written, the illness deteriorated. Finally, he bid farewell to Lonely Land and returned to Calcutta shortly thereafter, where he died in August of that year. Leaving behind this place, which best embodies his idea of world peace and human unity, he once said:
"In this ashram of lonely land, people gather in the tranquility of nature for the highest purpose of life. There life is awakened not only in contemplation but in activity; there where the hearts of the children are not forced to believe; there they are to realize the world of man into the kingdom of heaven which they aspire to be their inhabitants; where the sunrise, sunset and the silent, brilliant stars are valued daily by the children; there where people enjoy the joy of the feast of flowers and fruits; where young and old, teachers and students sit at the same table, Join them in the feast of worldliness and the feast of eternal life. ”
It is such an unattainable model, a purely educational ideal, which was actually generated in the hands of the poet Tagore, and gradually became a true reality on the land of India, which continues to this day and grows stronger.
We bid farewell to the holy land of peace in Lonely Village and embarked on Train 12338 back to Kolkata Howrah Station, which, like the train we came from, was called "Santiniktan Express". How I look forward to this train, it is a true metaphor for human history in the rush.