I, Lalla
Page 7
or
The road I came by wasn’t the road I took to go.
As I stood on my mind’s embankment, the day faded.
I looked in my purse and couldn’t find Shiva’s name
to give the ferryman.
7
Brother, what’s the point of twisting a rope of sand?
You couldn’t tow a boat with that line.
The course that Nārāyana has charted for you,
no one can turn that around.
8
They kept coming, they kept coming, now they’ve got to go.
They’ve got to keep moving, day or night,
and where they came from, there they’ve got to go.
From nothing to nothing to nothing and why?
9
From what direction did I come, and by what road?
In what direction am I going, how shall I find the road?
I hope they’ll send me a map before it’s too late
or it’s all over for me, my breath all gone to waste.
10
I’m carrying this sack of candy, its knot gone slack on
my shoulder.
I took a wrong turn and wasted my day, what’s to be done?
I’m lost, my teacher’s warning blisters me like a whiplash.
This flock has no shepherd, what’s to be done?
11
I, Lalla, wore myself down searching for Him
and found a strength after my strength had died.
I came to His threshold but found the door bolted.
I locked that door with my eyes and looked at Him.
12
My willow bow was bent to shoot, but my arrow was only grass.
A klutz of a carpenter botched the palace job I got him.
In the crowded marketplace, my shop stands unlocked.
Holy water hasn’t touched my skin. I’ve lost the plot.
13
Love-mad, I, Lalla, started out,
spent days and nights on the trail.
Circling back, I found the teacher in my own house.
What brilliant luck, I said, and hugged him.
14
I wore myself out, looking for myself.
No one could have worked harder to break the code.
I lost myself in myself and found a wine cellar. Nectar, I tell you.
There were jars and jars of the good stuff, and no one to drink it.
15
Wrapped up in Yourself, You hid from me.
All day I looked for You
and when I found You hiding inside me,
I ran wild, playing now me, now You.
16
I came out, looking for the moon,
came looking, light flying to light.
All is Nārāyana! All is Nārāyana!
All is Nārāyana! Lord, You make my head spin.
17
(17 & 18 are companion vākhs)
Drifter, on your feet, get moving!
You still have time, go look for the Friend.
Make yourself wings, take wing and fly.
You still have time, go look for the Friend.
18
Charge your bellows with breath
like the blacksmith taught you.
That’s how you turn your iron to gold.
You still have time, go look for the Friend.
19
(19 & 20 are companion vākhs)
Up, woman! Go make your offering.
Take wine, meat and a cake fit for the gods.
If you know the password to the Supreme Place,
you can reach wisdom by breaking the rules.
20
Fatten the five elements like they were rams meant for the sacrifice.
Feed them the grain of mind-light, and cakes fit for the gods.
Then kill them. But don’t rush.
You need the password to the Supreme Place
to reach wisdom by breaking the rules.
21
Royal swan, what happened to your beautiful voice?
Someone’s robbed you and you can’t even say who or what.
The mill’s stopped grinding, its mouth looks choked
and where’s the grain? The miller’s got clean away!
22
The mill goes round and round in slow circles
but the millstone guards its secret.
Sometimes, the wheel grinds closer to the grain,
sometimes, the grain rolls closer to the wheel.
23
What should I do with the five, the ten, the eleven
who scoured out this pot and ran away?
It’s a numbers game: if all the eleven had pulled on their rope,
their cow wouldn’t have gone astray.
24
You’ve got six and I’ve got six.
Now tell me, Blue-Throated One, what’s the difference?
Or don’t. I know. You keep your six on a leash and
my six have strung me along.
25
Lord! I’ve never known who I really am, or You.
I threw my love away on this lousy carcass
and never figured it out: You’re me, I’m You.
All I ever did was doubt: Who am I? Who are You?
26
(This vākh has a double meaning)
Poor me, all helpless, I had to make a noise:
‘I’ve got lotus stalks! Won’t you buy some?’
I came back again and cried out loud:
‘I’ve got onion and garlic! Two for the price of one!’
or
Poor me, all helpless, I had to make a noise:
‘I’ve got nothing! Won’t you buy some?’
I came back again and cried out loud:
‘I’ve got breath and soul! Two for the price of one!’
27
(This vākh has a double meaning)
Onion and garlic are one, I’ve learnt.
Fry some onion. It’s hardly a gourmet dish.
Fried onion, I wouldn’t touch a sliver of it.
But it gave me a taste for saying ‘I am He’.
or
Breath and soul, that’s all I’ve learnt.
Worship your body, it tastes like nothing.
A body in worship, that’s no way to bliss.
But it gave me a taste for saying ‘I am He’.
28
Remove from my heart’s dovecote, Father,
the ache for too-far skies.
My arms hurt from building other people’s houses.
My body, when they come to take you from your own house,
a thousand people will follow you, waving their arms.
They’ll lay you in a field, asleep on your right side,
head pointing south.
29
My soul is an elephant, an elephant that trumpets for food
every hour on the hour.
Out of a thousand, out of a hundred thousand, only one survives.
Thank God, or they’d have trampled all creation,
these hungry tuskers.
30
You dance above the abyss.
How do you manage it?
You can’t take these dishes with you when dinner’s over.
Are you sure the buffet’s tickling your palate?
31
I saw a sage starving to death, a leaf floating to earth
on a winter breeze. I saw a fool beating his cook.
And now I’m waiting for someone to cut
the love-cord that keeps me tied to this crazy world.
32
(32 & 33 are companion vākhs)
Now I see a flowing stream,
now a flood that’s drowned all bridges,
now I see a bush flaming with flowers,
now a skeleton of twigs.
33
Now I see a blazing hearth,
now neither smoke nor fire,
now I see the mother of five
princes,
now just the aunt of the potter’s wife.
34
Bitter can be sweet and sweet poison.
It’s a question of what your tongue wants.
It’s hard work to tell what it wants, but keep going:
the city you’re dreaming of, it’s at the end of this road.
35
Master, my Master, listen to me!
Do you remember what the world was like?
Children, how will you pass your days and nights?
This is going to be one tough life.
36
There’s bad news, and there’s worse.
Autumn’s pears and apples will ripen
with apricots in summer rain.
Mothers and daughters will step out,
hand in hand, in broad daylight, with strange men.
37
When day is snuffed out, the night glows.
The earth swells to touch the sky.
The new moon swallows the demon of eclipse.
Shiva is worshipped best when thought lights up the Self.
38
(38 & 39 are companion vākhs)
I, Lalla, set out to bloom like a cotton flower.
The cleaner tore me, the carder shredded me on his bow.
That gossamer: that was I
the spinning woman lifted from her wheel.
At the weaver’s, they hung me out on the loom.
39
First the washerman pounded me on his washing stone,
scrubbed me with clay and soap.
Then the tailor measured me, piece by piece,
with his scissors. Only then could I, Lalla,
find the road to heaven.
40
You’ve cut yourself a hide and measured it
but what seed have you sown that will bear you fruit?
Fool! Teaching you is like throwing a ball at a gatepost
or feeding jaggery to an ox, hoping for milk.
41
Fool, you won’t find your way out by praying from a book.
The perfume on your carcass won’t give you a clue.
Focus on the Self.
That’s the best advice you can get.
42
Don’t flail about like a man wearing a blindfold.
Believe me, He’s in here.
Come in and see for yourself.
You’ll stop hunting for Him all over.
43
If you’ve learned how to bridle your breath,
hunger and thirst can’t touch you.
Command your breath to the end
and you’ll come back to earth, blessed.
44
You won’t find the Truth
by crossing your legs and holding your breath.
Daydreams won’t take you through the gateway of release.
You can stir as much salt as you like in water,
it won’t become the sea.
45
I burnt the dirt from my mind,
twisted a knife in my heart,
spread my skirt to kneel at His door.
Only then did Lalla’s name travel from mouth to mouth.
46
When the dirt was wiped away from my mind’s mirror,
people knew me for a lover of God.
When I saw Him there, so close to me,
He was All, I was nothing.
47
As the moonlight faded, I called out to the madwoman,
eased her pain with the love of God.
‘It’s Lalla, it’s Lalla,’ I cried, waking up the Loved One.
I mixed with Him and drowned in a crystal lake.
48
I didn’t believe in it for a moment
but I gulped down the wine of my own voice.
And then I wrestled with the darkness inside me,
knocked it down, clawed at it, ripped it to shreds.
49
I hacked my way through six forests
until the moon woke up inside me.
The sky’s breath sang through me,
dried up my body’s substance.
I roasted my heart in passion’s fire
and found Shankara!
50
I pestled my heart in love’s mortar,
roasted it and ate it up.
I kept my cool but you can bet I wasn’t sure
whether I’d live or die.
51
My mind boomed with the sound of Om,
my body was a burning coal.
Six roads brought me to a seventh,
that’s how Lalla reached the Field of Light.
52
I trapped my breath in the bellows of my throat:
a lamp blazed up inside, showed me who I really was.
I crossed the darkness holding fast to that lamp,
scattering its light-seeds around me as I went.
53
(53 & 54 are companion vākhs)
My Guru, Supreme Lord,
tell me the secret:
when both rise from the sun beneath the navel,
why does the short breath, coming out, cool,
and the long breath, coming out, burn?
54
The sun beneath the navel was made to burn.
When the breath, rising there, flows through the throat,
it comes out long and burns.
But when it meets the moon river flowing from the crown,
It comes out short and cools.
55
I came into this world of births and deaths
and found the true Self by mind-light.
No one will die for me, nor I for anyone.
How wonderful to die! How wonderful to live!
56
(This vākh has a double meaning)
I locked the doors of my body,
trapped the onion-thief and paused for breath.
Chaining him in my heart’s dark cellar,
I stripped off his skin with the whip of Om.
or
I locked the doors of my body,
trapped the thief of life and held my breath.
Chaining him in my heart’s dark cellar,
I stripped off his skin with the whip of Om.
57
A thousand times at least I asked my Guru
to give Nothingness a name.
Then I gave up. What name can you give
to the source from which all names have sprung?
58
God is stone, the temple is stone,
head to foot, all stone.
Hey priest-man, what’s the object of your worship?
Get your act together, join mind with life-breath.
59
It covers your shame, keeps you from shivering.
Grass and water are all the food it asks.
Who taught you, priest-man,
to feed this breathing thing to your thing of stone?
60
Whoever chants Shiva’s name as he walks the Swan’s Way,
planting trees with no thought of the fruit,
even if the world keeps him busy night and day,
he’s won the grace of the Teacher
who is First among the Gods.
61
Kusha grass, flowers, sesame seed, lamp, water:
it’s just another list for someone who’s listened,
really listened, to his teacher. Every day he sinks deeper
into Shambhu, frees himself from the trap
of action and reaction. He will not suffer birth again.
62
You are sky and earth,
day, wind-breath, night.
You are grain, sandal paste, flowers, water.
Substance of my offering, You who are All,
what shall I offer You?
63
He knows the crown is the temple of Self.
His breath is deepened by the Unstruck Sound.
He has free
d himself from the prison of delusion.
He knows he is God, who shall He worship?
64
Whatever my hands did was worship,
whatever my tongue shaped was prayer.
That was Shiva’s secret teaching:
I wore it and it became my skin.
65
Knowledge is a garden. Hedge it with calm,
self-restraint, right effort. Let your past acts graze in it,
goats fattened for the altars of the Mother Goddess.
When the garden is bare, the goats killed, you can walk free.