Below is from, The Hindi Padavali of Sant Namdev, translated into English by Winand. M. Callewaert, published by Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi. This is a book I want to read but I am not sure if I can get it during the pandemic. Nice to have found this excerpt online: 

-- Sant Namdev

*Note: "Prayag": Prayag is the ancient name for the city of Allahabad. In Prayag the river Yamuna meets the Ganga. Another river, called the Sarasvati, is also said to meet the Ganga here, although it remains invisible and is believed to follow a subterranean path. The confluence (Triveni) of these three rivers is a very holy site, and millions go to bathe there. In Sant literature Prayag or Triveni is the name for the confluence of three mystic channels in the body, called ida, pingala and susumna. This was an important concept in Tantrik yoga and in Nath lore and it greatly influenced the Sants.

The difference between a poetry book and other books are that you are never done reading a poetry book. #OnPoetry

When I pick up a book to read

You are introduced to a character
you become his friend, alibi or his hater,
or you become

And then one day you are done
Shiv, the difference with poetry
is that the reading is circularly infinite.

So I read a couple of reviews ... 
The first one by Pico Iyer from the New York Times

Brooks begins with a sweeping overview of the non-intersecting worlds of moral logic and economic logic, as he has it, dividing us into an “Adam I,” who seeks success in the world, and an “Adam II,” more deeply committed to character and an inner life. He then gives us 10 or so portraits of enduring “heroes of renunciation,” easing us into the theme with such Greatest Generation stalwarts as George Marshall and Dwight D. Eisenhower, before alighting on such global Hall of Fame worthies, granitic-seeming but riven with inner terrors and flaws, as St. Augustine, Samuel Johnson and George Eliot. Within each brief life, he inserts an extended encomium to some useful virtue, be it humility or sacrifice or, in one case, passionate love.

And another one that talks about Resume Virtues versus Eulogy Virtues ... 
One from Rebecca Mead from the New Yorker

“The Road to Character” is an account of Brooks’s effort to find his way out of shallow punditry—or, as he puts it, to “cultivate character.” To make his case, Brooks—who likes to reach for the occasionally effortful neologism—has come up with a pair of clarifying terms: the “résumé virtues” and the “eulogy virtues.” Résumé virtues, he proposes, are those that are valued in the contemporary marketplace: the high test scores achieved by a student, the professional accomplishments pulled off by an adult. They are the skills that are met with bigger paychecks and public approbation. Eulogy virtues, on the other hand, are the aspects of character that others praise when a person isn’t around to hear it: humility, kindness, bravery. Our society exalts the résumé virtues, Brooks argues, but it overlooks the humbler eulogy virtues. Still, he writes, we know at our core that this second category of values is what matters more.

An interview with Arianna Huffington where she talks about the definition of success per her new book Thrive. 

In Thrive, Huffington recounts the impetus for her own personal journey inward to find balance, inner peace and a new definition for success she calls, “the Third Metric.” In her new book, Huffington lays out a road map to a new and sane definition of success, based on her learning that “life is shaped from the inside out.” Thrive includes the latest science and research on wellbeing, the wisdom and wonder of poets and ancient philosophers and the healing benefits of the gift that keeps on giving, namely giving.

 

In your new book Thrive, you address the current definition of success, which is based on money and power. You’ve introduced the Third Metric, which focuses on caring for your inner being. 

The first two metrics of success do not create a fulfilling life, and that’s why we need the Third Metric, which consists of four pillars. Well-being and health is the first pillar, because it’s a foundation, and yet so often through burnout, exhaustion and sleep deprivation — we sacrifice our well-being on the altar of the first two metrics of success — money and power. The second pillar is wisdom. How do we connect with our inner wisdom, how do we connect with our intuition, so that we are not at the mercy of external circumstances all the time?

It’s what Eckhart Tolle talks about when he says let go of defining yourself by external metrics, and don’t be concerned how others define you. When we connect with our own inner wisdom it’s much easier to do that. And, the third metric is wonder—being able to acknowledge the beauty around us in every moment. Seeing the beauty in everything ordinary, and not to be so buried in multi-tasking that we miss the moment.

That’s really at the heart of Eckhart Tolle’s teachings, when he says, “Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life.” That’s at the heart of wonder.

 

The fourth pillar is giving…
Giving, which completes the circle, because if we just lead a narcissistic existence, we can never be truly happy. In fact, there is new scientific evidence that I include in the book, which shows that our genes are wired for us to be giving, and when we are giving all the inflammatory markers that are the precursors of disease decrease. When our happiness is purely based on self-gratification, the inflammatory markers increase.

 

Being connected to yourself on a deeper level is really what Thrive is all about. What are your daily practices to infuse presence into your life to stay connected to your inner being?

It starts with something very simple, and this is getting enough sleep. After my wake-up call when I collapsed from exhaustion and burnout — I broke my cheekbone and got four stitches on my right eye — I went from four to five hours of sleep, to seven to eight hours of sleep a night. That was very important for me. Everybody needs a different amount of sleep, but getting the required amount of sleep is essential to our well-being and we now have science that proves it’s like a miracle drug.

The second thing is that I meditate every day. In the book, I have small tips, small daily practices, and at the end of the well-being section I recommend that people start with five minutes of meditation. Even the tiniest amount of time spent with ourselves can help us recognize that we are more than our daily activities, and help us acquaint ourselves with our essence.

The third thing is I try to do something physical: working out, walking now that the weather is getting better — I love having walking meetings, instead of sitting in my office having meetings. When I’m in LA I love to go hiking with my friends. Everyone who is in the better shape talks on the way up and the rest talk on the way down.

 

Dante was born in Florence, Italy in a family of low aristocracy (high stature but small wealth).   By his early fifties, he had been exiled from his hometown (for political reason), wrestled with the top authorities of the church, and taken up arms against his fellow countrymen. He had made plenty of enemies, and he was not pleased. So he did with his enemies what many have wished to do: he sent them all, even the pope, to hell—literarily, that is. But his damnatory writing was no screed; it is regarded as one of the finest poem of the Middle Ages, a summation of classical and medieval beliefs so profound that its critics labeled it "divine": The Divine Comedy.

After wandering from town to town, the exiled Dante had finally settled in Ravenna in about 1317, where he set about completing this masterpiece, La Commedia, begun a decade earlier. In essence, it is an epic poem chronicling an allegorical journey through the afterlife, divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. The purpose, Dante wrote, was to convert a corrupt society to righteousness, "to remove those living in this life from a state of misery and lead them to a state of felicity."

Here is the story of Dante's Inferno:


Inferno opens on the evening of Good Friday in the year 1300. Traveling through a dark wood, Dante Alighieri has lost his path and now wanders fearfully through the forest. The sun shines down on a mountain above him, and he attempts to climb up to it but finds his way blocked by three beasts—a leopard, a lion, and a she-wolf. Frightened and helpless, Dante returns to the dark wood. Here he encounters the ghost of Virgil, the great Roman poet, who has come to guide Dante back to his path, to the top of the mountain. Virgil says that their path will take them through Hell and that they will eventually reach Heaven, where Dante’s beloved Beatrice awaits. He adds that it was Beatrice, along with two other holy women, who, seeing Dante lost in the wood, sent Virgil to guide him.

Virgil leads Dante through the gates of Hell, marked by the haunting inscription “abandon all hope, you who enter here” (III.7). They enter the outlying region of Hell, the Ante-Inferno, where the souls who in life could not commit to either good or evil now must run in a futile chase after a blank banner, day after day, while hornets bite them and worms lap their blood. Dante witnesses their suffering with repugnance and pity. The ferryman Charon then takes him and his guide across the river Acheron, the real border of Hell. The First Circle of Hell, Limbo, houses pagans, including Virgil and many of the other great writers and poets of antiquity, who died without knowing of Christ. After meeting Horace, Ovid, and Lucan, Dante continues into the Second Circle of Hell, reserved for the sin of Lust. At the border of the Second Circle, the monster Minos lurks, assigning condemned souls to their punishments. He curls his tail around himself a certain number of times, indicating the number of the circle to which the soul must go. Inside the Second Circle, Dante watches as the souls of the Lustful swirl about in a terrible storm; Dante meets Francesca, who tells him the story of her doomed love affair with Paolo da Rimini, her husband’s brother; the relationship has landed both in Hell.

In the Third Circle of Hell, the Gluttonous must lie in mud and endure a rain of filth and excrement. In the Fourth Circle, the Avaricious and the Prodigal are made to charge at one another with giant boulders. The Fifth Circle of Hell contains the river Styx, a swampy, fetid cesspool in which the Wrathful spend eternity struggling with one another; the Sullen lie bound beneath the Styx’s waters, choking on the mud. Dante glimpses Filippo Argenti, a former political enemy of his, and watches in delight as other souls tear the man to pieces.

Virgil and Dante next proceed to the walls of the city of Dis, a city contained within the larger region of Hell. The demons who guard the gates refuse to open them for Virgil, and an angelic messenger arrives from Heaven to force the gates open before Dante. The Sixth Circle of Hell houses the Heretics, and there Dante encounters a rival political leader named Farinata. A deep valley leads into the First Ring of the Seventh Circle of Hell, where those who were violent toward others spend eternity in a river of boiling blood. Virgil and Dante meet a group of Centaurs, creatures who are half man, half horse. One of them, Nessus, takes them into the Second Ring of the Seventh Circle of Hell, where they encounter those who were violent toward themselves (the Suicides). These souls must endure eternity in the form of trees. Dante there speaks with Pier della Vigna. Going deeper into the Seventh Circle of Hell, the travelers find those who were violent toward God (the Blasphemers); Dante meets his old patron, Brunetto Latini, walking among the souls of those who were violent toward Nature (the Sodomites) on a desert of burning sand. They also encounter the Usurers, those who were violent toward Art.

The monster Geryon transports Virgil and Dante across a great abyss to the Eighth Circle of Hell, known as Malebolge, or “evil pockets” (or “pouches”); the term refers to the circle’s division into various pockets separated by great folds of earth. In the First Pouch, the Panderers and the Seducers receive lashings from whips; in the second, the Flatterers must lie in a river of human feces. The Simoniacs in the Third Pouch hang upside down in baptismal fonts while their feet burn with fire. In the Fourth Pouch are the Astrologists or Diviners, forced to walk with their heads on backward, a sight that moves Dante to great pity. In the Fifth Pouch, the Barrators (those who accepted bribes) steep in pitch while demons tear them apart. The Hypocrites in the Sixth Pouch must forever walk in circles, wearing heavy robes made of lead. Caiphas, the priest who confirmed Jesus’ death sentence, lies crucified on the ground; the other sinners tread on him as they walk. In the horrifying Seventh Pouch, the Thieves sit trapped in a pit of vipers, becoming vipers themselves when bitten; to regain their form, they must bite another thief in turn.

In the Eighth Pouch of the Eighth Circle of Hell, Dante speaks to Ulysses, the great hero of Homer’s epics, now doomed to an eternity among those guilty of Spiritual Theft (the False Counselors) for his role in executing the ruse of the Trojan Horse. In the Ninth Pouch, the souls of Sowers of Scandal and Schism walk in a circle, constantly afflicted by wounds that open and close repeatedly. In the Tenth Pouch, the Falsifiers suffer from horrible plagues and diseases.

Virgil and Dante proceed to the Ninth Circle of Hell through the Giants’ Well, which leads to a massive drop to Cocytus, a great frozen lake. The giant Antaeus picks Virgil and Dante up and sets them down at the bottom of the well, in the lowest region of Hell. In Caina, the First Ring of the Ninth Circle of Hell, those who betrayed their kin stand frozen up to their necks in the lake’s ice. In Antenora, the Second Ring, those who betrayed their country and party stand frozen up to their heads; here Dante meets Count Ugolino, who spends eternity gnawing on the head of the man who imprisoned him in life. In Ptolomea, the Third Ring, those who betrayed their guests spend eternity lying on their backs in the frozen lake, their tears making blocks of ice over their eyes. Dante next follows Virgil into Judecca, the Fourth Ring of the Ninth Circle of Hell and the lowest depth. Here, those who betrayed their benefactors spend eternity in complete icy submersion.

A huge, mist-shrouded form lurks ahead, and Dante approaches it. It is the three-headed giant Lucifer, plunged waist-deep into the ice. His body pierces the center of the Earth, where he fell when God hurled him down from Heaven. Each of Lucifer’s mouths chews one of history’s three greatest sinners: Judas, the betrayer of Christ, and Cassius and Brutus, the betrayers of Julius Caesar. Virgil leads Dante on a climb down Lucifer’s massive form, holding on to his frozen tufts of hair. Eventually, the poets reach the Lethe, the river of forgetfulness, and travel from there out of Hell and back onto Earth. They emerge from Hell on Easter morning, just before sunrise.

Forty-four percent of the American population is convinced that Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead sometime in the next fifty years. According to the most common interpretation of biblical prophecy, Jesus will return only after things have gone horribly awry here on earth. It is, therefore, not an exaggeration to say that if the city of New York were suddenly replaced by a ball of fire, some significant percentage of the American population would see a silver lining in the subsequent mushroom cloud, as it would suggest to them that the best thing that is ever going to happen was about to happen—the return of Christ. It should be blindingly obvious that beliefs of this sort will do little to help us create a durable future for ourselves—socially, economically, environmentally, or geopolitically. Imagine the consequences if any significant component of the U.S. government actually believed that the world was about to end and that its ending would be glorious. The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this, purely on the basis of religious dogma, should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency.The book you are about to read is my response to this emergency...

I found that while he makes some good points, he has made the debate of the presence of God the focal point of his life and career.  The question I am trying to answer is whether that is the way he sings?  I will be reading more and sharing my views on this page.