About a week ago, I was riding the subway here in Chicago- the rowdy Red Line. It was late, and I was almost at the end of my journey, I was three stops away from Sheridan. The doors opened at the Addison/Wrigley Field stop, and a bunch of long-suffering Cubs fans got on, along with a bunch of college students. Two young men also boarded the train- both clean cut, nicely dressed in plaid shirts and khakis, athletic looking and charming. They sat next to me. I greeted them with a universal “Wassup!” and they smiled and laughed.
They asked me where I was coming from. I told them I was coming from a wild party, and then confessed I was just coming from the gym. Their faces were a little flushed, maybe from refreshments. I asked if they were college students and they said they had recently graduated with degrees in finance and international business. They told me their names were Eli and Zach. When I told them my name was “Mahiruha,” their faces lit up. One of them said “Mahiruha” five or six times, and then asked me if it was an Indian name. I told him it was and that I meant fast-ascending tree. He was really inspired by that and he asked me if I meditate. I told him I did, and I also practice spiritual reading and mantras.
He asked me if he could clarify for him what the word “mantra” means and I just said that a mantra is simply any word whose very sound invokes the essence of the word. And I told him mantras can be written in any language.
He asked me if I could be more specific, and I said “Sure!” and I reached into my satchel and pulled out my transcript for “The Goal Is Won”. I told him these were 360 mantras written by my spiritual teacher, and I had recently recited them all from memory at a private conference in New York. I told him to turn to any page, to give me just the first couple of words, and I would recite the first four or five poems.
He turned to a particular page, and read out “Lord, take my heart…”
And I recited the following four poems:
“Lord, take my heart to be Your pleasure,
Lord, take my love to be Your treasure.
Lord, let my life be claimed
Entirely by You, only by You.”
“For three reasons God loves me:
I have given up my animal pride,
I have forgotten my human ignorance,
I treasure my life divine.”
“Fulfilment is man’s choice,
For fulfilment is man’s voice.
In fulfilment is earth’s noise.
Vision is God’s choice,
For vision is God’s Voice.
In Vision is Heaven’s Noise.”
“Death is hunger,
I am anger.
Life is query,
I am weary.
God is choice,
Man is voice.
Truth is soul,
Love is Goal.”
They were speechless! They knew that I wasn’t lying, and, more importantly, that I considered these poems to be significant and valuable enough that I would dedicate six months of my life to learning them all.
Eli told me that he thought these poems were extraordinary. He then told me, a little shyly, that he tries to do the same thing with the Bible, committing Christ’s utterances to memory. He told me that he and Zach are Christians.
I found that an interesting statement- he was so impressed with these poems that he consciously associated them with the sayings of Jesus.
I wrote down the name “Sri Chinmoy” on a piece of paper and also the title of the book “The Goal is Won”. I also wrote my name and contact information. They both thanked me and told me that meeting me and hearing these poems was the highlight of their day. They definitely made my day, too.
