Happy Valentine’s Day from Ananda Village!
Friendship
from “Songs of the Soul” by Paramhansa Yogananda
Is friendship the weaving of the red strings of two hearts?
Is it the blending of two minds into a spacious one mind?
Is it the spouting of love founts together
To strengthen the rush of love on droughty souls?
Is it the one rose grown ‘twixt twin mind-branchlets
Of one compassionate stem?
Is it the one thinking in two bodies?
Or is friendship like two strong stallions,
Disparate in color and mien,
Pulling the chariot of life together
To the one Goal, with one mind-sight?
Is friendship founded on equalities or inequalities?
Is it built on diverse stones of differences?
Is friendship unthinking agreement -
The hand-in-hand blind walking of two souls,
Foolishly rejoicing in their united folly,
Falling at last into pits of disillusionment?
Friendship is noble, fruitful, holy -
When two separate souls march in difference
Yet in harmony; agreeing and disagreeing,
Glowingly improving diversely,
With a common longing to find solace in true pleasure.
When ne’er the lover seeks
Self-comfort at the cost of the one beloved,
Then, in that garden of selflessness,
Fragrant friendship perfectly flowers.
For friendship is a hybrid, born of two souls -
The blended fragrance of two unlike flowers
Blown together in love’s caressing breeze.
Friendship is born from the very core
Of secret inexplicable likings.
Friendship is the fountain of true feelings.
It grows in both likeness and difference.
Friendship sleeps or dies in familiarity,
And decays in lusts of narrow-eyed selves.
Friendship grows tall and sturdy
In the soil of oneness in body, mind, and soul.
Demands, deceptions, sordid sense of possession,
Courtesy’s lack, narrow self-love, suspicion,
Thoughtless, sharp-pointed, piercing words -
Cankers, these, which eat at the heart of friendship.
Ah, friendship – flowering, heaven-born plant!
Nurtured art thou in the soil of measureless love,
In the seeking of soul progress together
By two who would smooth the way, each for the other.
Watered art thou by attentions of affection
And the tender dews of inner and outer sweetness
Of the selfless heart’s inmost devotion.
Ah, friendship! Where thy soul-born flowers fall,
There, on that sacred shrine of fragrance,
the Friend of all friends craves to come,
and to remain.
