(84) It is the pang of separation that spreads throughout the world (from Gitanjali)

by Rabindranath Tagore

English version by Rabindranath Tagore
Original Language Bengali

It is the pang of separation that spreads throughout the world and gives birth to shapes innumerable in the infinite sky.
     It is this sorrow of separation that gazes in silence all night from star to star and becomes lyric among rustling leaves in rainy darkness of July.
     It is this overspreading pain that deepens into loves and desires, into sufferings and joys in human homes; and this it is that ever melts and flows in songs through my poet's heart.

-- from Gitanjali, by Rabindranath Tagore

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Commentary by Ivan M. Granger

It is the pang of separation that spreads throughout the world and gives birth to shapes innumerable in the infinite sky.

Tagore's poetry is the language of the soul, from its majestic heights to the most heartbreaking sense of separation.

We really get a sense of the void, the terrible gulf between everything that every soul quietly wrestles with...

It is this sorrow of separation that gazes in silence all night from star to star and becomes lyric among rustling leaves in rainy darkness of July.

So how then does he come to a sort of wholeness and universal empathy with his final line?

It is this overspreading pain that deepens into loves and desires, into sufferings and joys in human homes; and this it is that ever melts and flows in songs through my poet's heart.

That sense of separation -- separation from God, separation from Source, and separation from one another -- is the fundamental pain of the soul. Every life pain, when we really trace its tendrils, reaches down to that root pain, the basic belief of separation. Every hunger, every craving, is an attempt to spread a thin layer of pleasure over that pain. Every self-inflicted hurt is an attempt to overpower that great ache with the sharp intensity of the moment. Most actions, when carefully dissected, are an attempt to distract ourselves from that terrible emptiness.

You can see that so much of our life force is spent in avoidance of confrontation with that gulf between self and other, the individual and the Eternal.

Most people look away, spend all their life running from that canyon of separation. But the mystic sits on the cliff edge and, though frightened, stares endlessly into the great spaceā€¦ until suddenly an amazing thing happens -- in a flash the emptiness is seen to be not a distance but a connection, a joining. The gulf is itself the bridge spanning the distance, and we discover that we can walk upon it, that there was, in fact, never any separation or distance.

It is the very intensity of our yearning that is finally recognized as the point of connection with the Eternal. And then the pain flips, turning to such sweetness.

The next time you feel that pang of separation, just sit with it. Let your heart break. Let it break open. Feel the connection and life secretly spanning the gulf.



Recommended Books: Rabindranath Tagore

The Longing in Between: Sacred Poetry from Around the World (A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology) Gitanjali The Lover of God The Fugitive Lover's Gift and Crossing
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84) It is the pang