Recently a song was cooking within me.
This is a poem by Saadi, the great Persian mystic, poet and thinker of the 13th century, on the indivisibility of humanity. Raya, a neice of mine, who is Iranian, had put up the calligraphed Farsi lines on Facebook, together with a nice translation in English.
Human beings are members of a whole,
In creation of one essence and soul.
If one member is afflicted with pain,
Other members uneasy will remain.
If you have no sympathy for human pain,
The name of human you cannot retain.
Transcribing the Farsi in Roman:
bani aadam a'zaaye yekdigarand
keh dar aafarinesh ze' yek goharand
cho ozvi beh dard aavarad roozegaar
degar ozvhaa raa namaanad gharar
to keh az mehnat-e-digaraan bi ghami
nashaayad keh naamat nahand aadami
I was taken by this, especially that they said virtually exactly the same thing as another song I had composed with lines byShantideva, the great Buddhist monk and teacher, who lived several centuries before Saadi. I thought I should take this and add it to my small collection of songs and chants based on sacred texts.
