Wisdom

We think that all the wisdom of the ages just came to be a few weeks ago, and man, is that ever wrong. It turns out that people have known what they were doing long before Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk came along.

How about that?  No, seriously, it shouldn't amaze us that the Aztecs invented a sword blade that modern man has yet to top for sharpness, the ancient Greeks came up with the idea for studded dog collars to save their dogs' necks in wolf attacks, Mayans cultured stingless bees for honey (and saw them live to be as old as 80 years of age, the Aztec built a capital city where over 200,000 lived on a man-made island with causeways, giant pyramids, floating gardens, aqueducts and canals for water delivery, and in ancient India, numbers were invented, the world's first university was established in 700 BC, and the Sanskit language became the basis for all European languages.

So please, let us not think of those who came thousands of years before us as just having ridden in on a head of cabbage! They knew stuff!

I had a message from a friend named Khyati over in India, the reason I bring all this up. We were talking about people and how we can arrange our words to each other in such a way as to bring about peace and understanding, or strife and conflict. All from the same dictionary! I mentioned something William Blake had said, and she replied:

There was a renowned poet called Kabir Das here. He had written a couplet that goes - Aisi baani boliye mann ka aapa khoye, auran ko sheetal kare, aap hu sheetal hoye

Which roughly translates to - Speak in a manner that the anger and ego inside you disappears. Moreover, Speak in a manner which not only makes the other people feel cool inside but also makes you feel good.

Pretty wise, eh? And get this - Kabir Das isn't a modern-day mystic poet with his own show on YouTube and books, calendars, and diet manuals for sale. 

He lived from 1440 -1518!  He has a firm place among the world's greatest poets. In India, he is perhaps the most quoted author, and he is regarded as a great poet and saint by Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs. 

You can Google his works and words. I'm happy that Khyati told me about Kabir. This one passage in particular cheered me right up:

“...But if a mirror ever makes you sad, you should know that it does not know you.”

Which works out great, because I get up at 0505 and my mirror does not even WANT to know me. 

Any time you can get three groups to like someone, you know that person has something special! And to think, Kabir did all this without a computer, without a GPS to help him find his way to appointments, and without even a phone to text on.

Maybe he had the right idea!