A Walk down the Ages- II

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Hi,The walk continues.........1400-1500India witnesses an astonishing explosion of enlightened mystics. In this period, including Kabir, Meera Nanak, Raidas, Chaitanya and Farid, many of who were contempories of each other.This period also saw the Renaissance period in Europe.Kabir (1440-1518)A weaver and a poet, Kabir's mystical songs attracted devotees from both Hindu and Muslim.Kabir was the fusion of the Bhakti movement within Hinduism and Sufi arising from the distillation of Islam.Meera (1450-1547)A Rajput princess, a devotee of Krishna becomes a disciple of Raidas and bursts into dance.Her ecstatic dancing and impassioned devotional verse indicates that for her, just being is festive and joyous.Her song, her dance is not a piece of art for her, it is an expression of Meera's bliss.Nanak (1469-1538)Born near Lahore, India (now Pakistan) Nanak travelled throughout the Middle east, Tibet and Southern Russia, eventually founding the Sikh Religion.Nanak only sang.Whatever he had to say was through the medium of song and during his time had only one disciple who would play a single string instrument called the Ektara.Europe:The RenaissanceSome of the world's finest art, architecture, culture was produced in this era.Leornardo de Vinci, Michael Angelo, Botticelli, Titan, Caravaggio, Tintoretto, were some of the "flowerings' of this age.1500-16001517Martin Luther, enraged by the decadence of the Roman Catholic faith, nails his protest to a church door in Wittenberg, thereby beginning the Reformation movement throughout Europe.Christianity splits into two.One of Martin Luther's famous statement was "pecca fortiter":- Sin boldly.1534Death of Chaitanya, an enlightened India mystic, known for his communing with the divine through singing and dancing, a contemporary of Meera.1575Birth of Jakob Bohme, a German mystic from the town of Goerlitz. A cobbler by profession, he was much influenced by Paracelus, the Kabbala, astrology, alchemy, and the Hermetic tradition.Clashed with the official Christian Church throughout his life.1591William Shakespeare of England writes 28 plays and 154 sonnets.Shakespeare was a great poet but not a mystic. He had an intuition in to the reality of Truth, but only as a glimpse, vague glimpses.Yet his works have influenced human consciousness of his time.1600-17001622Birth of Bankei, an enlightened Japanese Master.1629Shah Jahan, A Mogul emperor of India loses his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal. In tribute he creates a memorial- the Taj Mahal which got completed in 1653.The Taj Mahal was created by Sufi Masters.If one sits silently on a full moon night just looking at the Taj Mahal, slowly one will feel something which was never felt before.The Sufi's called it zikr, remembrance of godliness.The beauty of the Taj Mahal on a full moon night takes the "se-er" to realms from where all beauty, all benedictions comes.1633Galileo Galilei is brought to trail for heresy by the Vatican for supporting the Copernican theory that the earth orbits the sun.This is opposite to the Biblical view.Although Galileo recants, he comments "Nature is inexorable and immutable;she never transgresses the laws imposed on her, or cares a whit whether her abstruse reasons and methods of operations are understandable to men"1634-40During this decade Renee Descartes, the French philosopher, introduces the doctrine of Free will and creates a revolution in Western philosophy by placing the individual's conscious self as the centre of all enquiry.His famous statement " cogito ergo sum"- I think therefore I am."Descartes could not reach the realms where thoughts were absent and yet one was, but he revolutionised Western thinking.Contd...............

Sandeep