Two Beautiful Excerpts:

While reading Hinduism by Jeneane Fowler I found these two excerpts and they have left such an impression on me. Each time I read them I am rejuvenated and content again and again......

from the Chandoya Upanisad...... "A boy named Satyakama, a boy from the lower caste who is excepted by a guru. As a test the boy must watch over 400 cattle. This simple and natural life leads him to a deep understanding of Brahman."

"This urge to know Brahman made everything alive so that the whole of nature became his teacher. Then the trees and flowers, the sun, moon, and the stars, the rivers and the streams, the light of the day, and the darkness of night. All these spoke to him of the nature of Brahman. He felt that all was brahman. He heard of Brahman in the songs of him. He realized that the eye that sees and the ear that hears does so because of brahman. He felt that the pulsating life around him as also the mind that raises innumerable questions, all these are but aspects of Brahman. Satyakama tended the cows and the bulls but in the midst of this seemingly mundane work he communed with nature and in this communion realized that which filled him with joy indescribable"

A poem by Rabindrarath Tagore depicting communion of the soul with the divine when self is surrendered:

I feel that all the stars shine in me

The world breaks in my life like a flood

The flowers blossom in my body

All the youthfulness of land and water smokes like incense in my heart;

and the breath of all things plays on my thoughts as on a flute