Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

We are called upon to leave houses and lands, fathers and mothers and wives to achieve an end which in our imperfect language we can only speak of as Non-existence. Many of us have great possessions, and the hardest of these to surrender are our own will and identity. What guarantee have we that the reward will be commensurate with the toil? Indian theory declares that in the ecstasies of love and art we already receive an intimation of that redemption… We are assured by the experience of aesthetic contemplation that Paradise is a reality.

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Originally published in The Musical Quarterly, vol. III, no. 2, April, 1917.