“The Mundaka Upanishad says:
“Two birds, beautiful of wing, close companions, cling to one common tree: of the two one eats the sweet fruit of the tree, the other eats not but watches his fellow.”
Whilst one is at work, the other is the observing agent: he is often called the karmadhyksha (the supreme observer of things being done). The two birds, to whom the Upanishad refers, were perched on a tree of creation (Samsarvrichha). The leaves of this tree adopt two tracks for their growth and evolution. I cannot think of an imagery more expressive of my parents’ life-style than the imagery of the two birds on a tree, one busy at work, and the other just a detached onlooker, perhaps advising and inspiring the other whilst continuously evaluating what was being done. My mother and father, in their wedded life, constituted one creative agency. The leaves evolve in their inner universe acquiring gradual ascent to the Supreme; and also on the track of social growth and evolution achieving better social solidarity, inter-dependence, and public good. This inner evolution leads one to feel, what Swami Satyananda Saraswati expresses in his kirtan. I would translate two stanzas of that :
That which is the Supreme Soul of the entire Universe
That is the Soul of all the Creatures
That Immortal Soul Sachhidanand, I am
Eternal is the Soul and perishable is the body
The Soul which pervades through the selves of all
That Eternal Soul Sachhidanand, I am”
Shiva Kant Jha’s ON THE LOOM OF TIME The Portrait of My Life and Times Chapt. 4 at p. 66)
“It was a summer afternoon. When resting on my bed on the first floor of our ‘Veenapani Bhawan’, I saw a little bird fluttering its tiny scarlet plumes on a blade of a ceiling fan. It had come into the room, it stayed for a while, and then flew away through a widow, kept ajar, unto the azure sky. The few moments I gazed at it became a long time, and a rich experience. My mind went back to a shloka from the Bhagavad-Gita (Ch. II. 28), which tells us how we become manifest, again to become unmanifest. I was surprised how my wife caught my mental wavelength. I heard her singing, wholly withdrawn to herself, certain lines of a kirtan which we had heard from Swami Satyananda Saraswati, the great founder of the Munger School of Yoga. She sang that kirtan again at the ‘ Srimad Bhagavad Purana Gyana yagya. You can listen it on my website . Some of its stanzas (rendered in English) can be read in the Chapter 4 ;‘Portrait of my Mother’. We considered this as the quintessential presentation in simple words of the Bhagavad-Gita. This kirtan expresses our profound philosophical vision which has shaped our ethics and philosophy: in short, what we can call the Hindu view of life. It expresses our oneness with the whole creation: thus it stresses our love and obligations towards not only all humans but also towards all creations. All the teachings of the Bhagavad-Gita, and its worldview find most succinct expression in those lines.”
Shiva Kant Jha’s ON THE LOOM OF TIME The Portrait of My Life and Times Chapt. 20 at p. 263)
On The Loom Of Time 