Dear Million-string Harp,

Each day the sun is born a new

Each soul has a new dawn upon waking from sleep

Each mind is born to new realities every moment

Each turning of the atom is an infinite span in which

your consciousness has taken births as many times as

your atoms have turned in all bodies of all your incarnations – and mine.

All this truth came bubbling, gurgling, spilling, streaming, flooding my heart and mind as I received your ‘happy birthday’ wishes for me.

Each time a Lily withers, drops, mingles with dust and is re-born, all the leaves of the forests all sing to her a ‘happy birthday’ ——–so have you, a beautiful phenomenon of Nature, sung to me.

And all the Ashramites gathered in my meditation room upstairs reciting ‘tryambakam…amrtaat’ ‘tryambakam…amrtaat’ ‘tryambakam…amrtaat’

and the fruits I shared around to all afterwards

were fruits that all my friends’ wishes have borne for me in the 77 years and nine months of the current body.

Would that I could remember here in my autumn the names of all those en-formed amities I have been loved by in these 28375 days, but I will remember yours fondly

because you have reminded me of Lilies’ recurrent re-births, adding beauty to my heart and mind and balm to whatever might ever ail me.

May each day, too, be a happy birthday to you in which ever new melodies of the music of wisdom are born again and again  —  in you who are one of the harps angels hold to their bosoms and play the Vedic hymns on into the rishi ears.

May you celebrate your own birthdays with you hearing you who are eternal and uncountable melody-lilies.

Swami Veda Bharati

Swami Rama Sadhaka Grama

Rishikesh

24th March 2010