My India– A Poem by Sri Sri Paramahansa Yogananda

Not where the musk of happiness blows,

Not where darkness and fears never tread;

Not in the homes of perpetual smiles,

Nor in the heaven of a land of prosperity

Would I be born

If I must put on mortal garb once more.

Dread famine may prowl and tear my flesh,

Yet would I love to be again

In my Hindustan.

A million thieves of disease

May try to steal the body’s fleeting health;

And clouds of fate

May shower scalding drops of searing sorrow –

Yet would I there, in India,

Love to reappear!

Is this love of mine blind sentiment

That sees not the pathways of reason?

Ah, no! I love India,

For there I learned first to love God

and all things beautiful.

Some teach to seize the fickle dewdrop, life,

Sliding down the lotus leaf of time;

Stubborn hopes are built

Around the gilded, brittle body-bubble.

But India taught me to love

The soul of deathless beauty in the dewdrop

and the bubble –

Not their fragile frames.

Her sages taught me to find my Self,

Buried beneath the ash heaps

Of incarnations of ignorance.

Though many a land of power, plenty, and science

My soul, garbed sometimes as an Oriental,

Sometimes as an Occidental,

Travelled far and wide,

Seeking Itself;

At last, in India, to find Itself.

Though mortal fires raze all her homes

and golden paddy fields,

Yet to sleep on her ashes and dream immortality,

O India, I will be there!

The guns of science and matter

Have boomed on her shores

Yet she is unconquered.

Her soul is free evermore!

Her soldier saints are away,

To rout with realization’s ray

The bandits of hate, prejudice, and patriotic selfishness;

And to burn the walls of separation dark

Between children of the One, One Father.

The Western brothers by matter’s might

have conquered my land;

Blow, blow aloud, her conch shells all!

India now invades with love,

To conquer their souls.

Better than Heaven or Arcadia

I love Thee, O my India!

And thy love I shall give

To every brother nation that lives.

God made the earth;

Man made confining countries

And their fancy-frozen boundaries.

But with newfound boundless love

I behold the borderland of my India

Expanding into the world.

Hail, mother of religions, lotus, scenic beauty,

And sages!

Thy wide doors are open,

Welcoming God’s true sons through all ages.

Where Ganges, woods, Himalayan caves, and men dream God –

I am hallowed; my body touched that sod.