Rig Veda 1.89.1

In its original context

The Rig Veda is a collection of 1,028 hymns, composed by families of poets and passed down by memory, word for word, for well over three thousand years. Hymn 1.89 belongs to the first of its ten books and is credited to a poet of the Gotama family. It is addressed not to one god but to all of them together: a general prayer for a good life rather than a request for any one thing.

Its opening line asks that good thoughts come to us from every side, unhindered and unstoppable. The word we render as "thoughts" is richer than it looks in English: it also means resolve, wisdom and inspired insight, the kind of good idea that changes what you do next. The poet isn't asking to have good ideas; he is asking to be open enough to receive them, from wherever they come.

The rest of the hymn keeps widening the wish: may we hear what is good with our ears, see what is good with our eyes, and live out the full span of life we have been given. Several of its verses are still recited together today at the start of study, so the hymn has become a kind of opening: words said before you begin learning anything.