Sunday, July 06, 2008
As the Man and the Woman in Me (poem)
Dear Friends: I am off to Colorado for a week or so to visit my beloved Rockies. Be well, be love, be all you are!
As the man and the woman in me
By Lalan(1775? - 1891?)
English version by Deben Bhattacharya
As the man and the woman in me
Unite in love,
The brilliance of beauty
Balanced on the bi-petalled
Lotus bloom in me
Dazzles my eyes.
The rays
Outshine the moon
And the jewels
Glowing on the hoods of snakes
My skin and bone
Are turned to gold.
I am the reservoir of love,
Alive as the waves.
A single drop of water
Has grown into a sea,
Unnavigable...
-- from The Mirror of the Sky: Songs of the Bauls of Bengal, Translated by Deben Bhattacharya (from Poetry-Chaikhana)
-- from The Mirror of the Sky: Songs of the Bauls of Bengal, Translated by Deben Bhattacharya (from Poetry-Chaikhana)
(Lalan was the most famous of the west Bengal poets/wandering minstrels known as Bauls. Some think that the word "Baul" was derived from the term for "madman" (as in "crazy saint"). The Bauls celebrated divine love in simple, ecstatic songs. which often used tantric terms to express the state of union with the supreme. In this poem, Lalan is alluding to the necessary union of female and male elements within the self to prepare for awakening. Sun and Moon, Shiva and Shakti--these must unite for the energies to rise and progress to occur. In classical yogic terms, the kundalini rises along the ida and pingala until it reaches the upper regions of the subtle body. The two-petaled lotus is the third eye. When kundalini reaches this chakra, the devotee experiences great inner bliss.)
