That is the aromatic beauty of natural devotion. It is not a religion, but rather a motto to live by. A philosophy, a wisdom, a feeling, a sensation. It is an expression of inner colours applied with the brush of inspiration on a canvas of the outside world, the society, humanity, our time and space. When carefully stretched and prepared, the canvas (or paper, or board, or computer screen—if that is our medium of choice) can have any colourful image applied onto it. How will our disegno, or work of art, look like?
Natural devotion adapts to, applies, changes and transcends the very medium, or soil it grew from, similarly as work of art is not entangled to any particular technique or art medium. In words of Giorgio Vasari, late Renaissance Italian painter and architect (who is today famous for his biographies of great Italian artists), we observe disegno from sketching to disegno as a projective milieu. Latter one corresponds to aesthetic rapture, or art’s full bloom.
We can compare it to a flowering rose as well.
Rose seeds are scattered across different lands and soils. Thus the soil is very important, for rose will extend its roots there, deeply and widely and establish itself. If the soil is deficient in certain nutrients required for a healthy growth, we can easily add them accordingly. However, equally important are water and sunlight.
Whilst soil represents local adaptiveness, water represents universal, timeless values that can hydrate all types of soil and rose species, no matter what they are. Water is a universal principle, or a set of common, omnipresent values we can see in all religions and philosophies. To cherish them and hydrate our roots with them we must learn to recognise them first. To do that, we must become essential truth seekers, or what a 19th century visionary Bhaktivinode Thakur calls saragrahis.
Finally a sunlight is needed, and that is our devotion, an emotional and sincere expression of love for God-dess, Radha-Krishna, together with reception of Radha-Krishna’s love for us. Without a sun all is futile and both soil and water are useless and unable to sustain growth of a rose.
The sun provides strength to transform local and universal principles into divine and transcendental. From soil and water to a full bloom, which is a whole life of a rose. Or, from a stretched canvas and colourful brushwork to a true work of art.
As a life long seeker myself, open to both Eastern and Western religious ideas, I consider this book a portal to enlightenment. […] If more people read this book, the world will be a better place.
As a life long seeker myself, open to both Eastern and Western religious ideas, I consider this book a portal to enlightenment. […] If more people read this book, the world will be a better place. — Nori Muster, author
Subscribe to entries
Subscribe to comments
Content © 2012 by Universalist Radha-Krishnaism
[…] Natural devotion as a rose, as an art — Universalist Radha-Krishnaism […]
This is truly an amazing essay. It beautifully portrays the way of true natural devotion. One can be anywhere, yet practice it.I feel that only Rumi’s poem can capture the imagination of a natural devotee’s heart:
Lover’s nationality is separate from all others,
The lover’s religion and nationality is the Beloved.
The lover’s cause is separate from all other causes.
Love is the astrolabe of divine mysteries.”
“Come, come, whoever you are,
Wanderer, idolater, worshiper of fire,
Come even though you have
broken your vows a thousand times,
Come, and come yet again.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.”
—–Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī
(13th-century Persian Sufi Poet)