Lalla-Naked-Song

Cover photograph: Double exposure of dahlia and European hollyhock by
True Bennett.
Copyright 1992 Coleman Barks
All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 91-066805
ISBN 0-9618916-4-5
Maypop Books
196 Westview Drive
Athens, GA 30606
404-543-2148
This book is for the dance,
and the song.
* * *
Dance, Lalla, with nothing on
but air. Sing, Lalla,
wearing the sky.
Look at this glowing day! What clothes
could be so beautiful, or
more sacred?
* * *

I began as a bloom of cotton,
outdoors. Then they brought me to a room
where they washed me. Then the hard strokes
of the carder's wife. Then another woman
spun thin threads, twisting me
around her wheel. Then the kicks
of the weaver's loom made cloth,
and on the washing stone, washermen
wet and slung me about
to their satisfaction, whitened me
with earth and bone,
and cleaned me to my own
amazement. Then the scissors
of the tailor, piece by piece,
and his careful finishing work.
Now, at last, as clothes,
I find You and freedom.
This living is so difficult
before one takes your hand.
Whatever work I've done,
whatever I have thought,
was praise with my body
and praise hidden
inside my head.
* * *
In this state there is no Shiva,
nor any holy union.

Only a somewhat something moving
dreamlike on a fading road.
Loosen the load of sweetness I'm carrying.
The sling-knot is biting into my shoulder.
This day has been so meaningless.
I feel I can't go on.
When I was with my teacher, I heard a truth
that hurt my heart like a blister,
the tender pain of seeing
something I loved as an illusion.
The flocks I tended are gone.
I am a shepherd without even a memory
of what that means, climbing this mountain.
I feel so lost.
This was my inward way, until I came
into the presence of a Moon, this new knowledge
of how likenesses unite. Good Friend,
everything is You. I see only God.
Now the delightful forms and motions
are transparent. I look through them
and see myself as the Absolute. And here's
the answer to the riddle of this dream:
You leave, so that we two
can do One Dance.
That one is blessed and at peace
who doesn't hope, to whom
desire makes no more loans.
Nothing coming, nothing owed.
* * *
Just for a moment, flowers appear
on the empty, nearly-spring tree.

Just for a second, wind
through the wild thicket thorns.
Self inside self, You are nothing but me.
Self inside self, I am only You.
What we are together
will never die.
The why and how of this?
What does it matter?
* * *
You are the sky and the ground.
You alone the day, the night air.
You are all things born into being.
Also, these flower offerings
that someone brought.
Whatever your name, Shiva, Vishnu,
the genius who inspired Scherazade,
savior of the Jains, the pure Buddha,
lotus-born God, I am sick. The world
is my disease, and You are the cure,
You, you, you, you, you, you, you.
* * *
I saw a wise man dying of starvation.
Leaves fall in the slightest
wind in December.
And I saw a wealthy man beating his cook
for some mistake with the spices.
Since then, I, Lalla, have been waiting
for my love of this place to leave me.
You were once a swan singing
melodies, Lalla. Now you're quiet.
Someone, I don't know who, has run off
with what belonged to you.

The millstone stops, and the hole
where the grain is fed in fills
with grain. The channel leading
to the grinding work is covered over
and hidden, and the miller
himself has disappeared.
* * *
What has happened to me?
All these songs tell one story:
that of Lalla on a lake, not knowing
what sandbar I'll run aground on.
What kind of luck have I had?
I made harmony out of a man's clumsy
plastering job on the ceiling.
Still I wonder which
sandbank will strand me.
And how is it now with me?
Magnificent, this becoming
more and more awake.
Sir, have you forgotten the promise
you made in your mother's womb,
to die before you die?
When will you remember
what you intended?
Don't let your donkey wander loose!
It will stray into your neighbor's
saffron garden. Think of the damage
it might do, and the punishment!
Who then will carry you naked
to your own death?
* * *

Forgetful one, get up!
It's dawn, time to start searching.
Open your wings and lift.
Give like the blacksmith
even breath to the bellows.
Tend the fire that changes
the shape of metal.
Alchemical work begins at dawn,
as you walk out to meet the Friend.
There is a lake so tiny
that a mustard seed would cover it
easily, yet everyone drinks from this lake.
Deer, jackals, rhinocerouses, and sea elephants
keep falling into it, falling and dissolving
almost before they have time to be born.
* * *
I wearied myself searching for the Friend
with efforts beyond my strength.
I came to the door and saw how
powerfully the locks were bolted.
And the longing in me became that strong,
and then I saw that I was gazing
from within the presence.
With that waiting, and in giving up all trying,
only then did Lalla flow out
from where I knelt.
Your way of knowing is a private herb garden.
Enclose it with a hedge of meditation,
and self-discipline, and helpfulness to others.

Then everything you've done before
will be brought as a sacrifice
to the mother goddess.
And each day, as you eat the herbs,
the garden grows more bare and empty.
Beautifully full of juice they come from the mother,
causing many birth-pains.
Again and again, they wait at her door to enter.
Shiva is not often among them!
Meditate on that.
The pedestal rock can also serve as pavement,
or as a handsome millstone turning perfectly.
Each is just a hardened piece of the ground.
Shiva is so rarely found.
Sunlight shines everywhere equally.
Water flows into every house.
It's also true that Shiva
can scarcely be located.
The woman who nurses her child with milk
acts with a different love as your wife,
and talking secretly to other men,
she may be dangerous to you, the same woman.
Meditate on how seldom
Shiva appears.
If I could control the channels of my breath,
if I could perform precise surgery on myself,
I could create the substance that awareness is.
There's nothing more valuable than that!
God does not often come as a person.
Four questions:
Who is awake and who asleep?

What is this lake that is continually
oozing back into the earth?
What can a human being offer to God?
What do we most deeply want?
The answers:
The mind is what sleeps.
What recognizes itself
as God is awake.
This always-disappearing lake
is made of our appetites,
these movings-about,
this talking and listening.
The only offering you can make to God
is your increasing awareness.
And the last desire is
to be God in human form.
The soul, like the moon,
is new, and always new again.
And I have seen the ocean
continuously creating.
Since I scoured my mind
and my body, I too, Lalla,
am new, each moment new.
My teacher told me one thing,
Live in the soul.
When that was so,
I began to go naked,
and dance.
* * *
Meditate within eternity.
Don't stay in the mind.

Your thoughts are like a child fretting
near its mother's breast, restless
and afraid, who with a little guidance,
can find the path of courage.
Wear just enough clothes to keep warm.
Eat only enough to stop the hunger-pang.
And as for your mind, let it work
to recognize who you are,
and the Absolute, and that
this body will become food
for the forest crows.
* * *
Meditation and self-discipline
are not all that's needed, nor even
a deep longing to go through
the door of freedom.
You may dissolve in contemplation,
as salt does in water,
but there's something more
that must happen.
Enlighten your desires.
Meditate on who you are.
Quit imagining.
What you want is profoundly expensive,
and difficult to find,
yet closeby.
Don't search for it. It is nothing,
and a nothing within nothing.
* * *
Awareness is the ocean of existence.
Let it loose and your words will rage
and cause wounds like fishing spears.
But if you tend it like a fire
to discover the truth,
you'll find how much of that
there is in what you say. None.

Fame is water
carried in a basket.
Hold the wind in your fist,
or tie up an elephant
with one hair.
These are accomplishments
that will make you famous.
* * *
So ham in Sanskrit
means I am He.
Reversed, hamsa
means swan.
This way is the way of those
who remember I am He, He is me,
so ham, swan, and hamsa, all one
soaring beauty and freedom.
No matter that we're busy in business
night and day. We don't care
what profit comes.
We live alone
inside the Lord.
Flowers, sesame seed, bowls of fresh water,
a tuft of kusa-grass, all this altar
paraphernalia is not needed
by someone who takes the teacher's words in
and honestly lives them.
Full of longing in meditation,
one sinks into a joy that is free
of any impulse to act and will not
enter a human birth again.
* * *
It is God who yawns and sneezes
and coughs, and now laughs.
Look, it's God doing ablutions!

God deciding to fast, God going naked
from one New Year's Eve to the next.
Will you ever understand
how near God is
to you?
I exhausted myself, looking.
No one ever finds this by trying.
I melted in it and came home,
where every jar is full,
but no one drinks.
* * *
Your pride in yourself and your wanting,
these steal your energy along the road.
If you can kill these robbers
and become the servant of everyone,
you'll meet the Lord in meditation
and see what you used to protect
as just a pile of ashes.
* * *
Double Poems
There are at least two equally possible translations for these
poems because of the puns in Sanskrit. In this poem the words
for "me" and "you" may be read together, in which case they
become one word meaning "mud."
separate:
Absorbed in yourself, you hid from me.
I spent every day looking for you.
Then I saw you inside and gave myself
in a rapture of union.
together:
Covered with mud, I spend the entire day
looking for mud! Now I see
what's all over me

and give in to loving it.
According to Grierson and Barnett, there are a number of
double meanings in this poem, an "onion" and "breath" pun,
for example!
I tried to sell this breathing body
to the world. Then I came to know
that body and soul are one thing,
and that if you don't control them,
you won't have true joy,
so I added the flavor
of "I am That."
I called out in the market,
"Lotus-stalks for sale!
Onions and garlic!"
Then I saw how onions and garlic
come from the same family.
When you cook them together,
be aware that God-in-you
can give tastiness
to anything!
One of the puns here involves "cowry shell" and "the name
of God."
On a way that wasn't a way
I came to a makeshift bridge
of rotten planks.
I looked in my sack. There was not
even a cowry shell.
What shall I give to get across?
I went a way that was not a way.
On the dangerous embankment of my mind
I looked in the sack but could not find
the Name of God.
What do I give to get across?

Again, the chief pun in this pair is "onion" and "breath."
I locked the doors and windows.
I grabbed the onion-thief
and yelled for help.
I tied him up in an inside closet
and threatened him with Om. Om.
I shut the body openings
and found out what steals
the even-breath, the truth
of Who we are.
If you want a kingdom and get it,
you'll have no peace.
If you give it away,
still you won't be content.
Only a soul free of desire
can taste eternity.
Be living, yet dead!
Then knowing comes
to live in you.
* * *
Let them throw their curses.
If inside, I am connected
to what's true, my soul
stays quiet and clear.
Do you think Shiva worries
what people say!
If a few ashes fall on a mirror,
use them to polish it.
There are those sleeping who are awake,
and others awake who are sound asleep.
Some of those bathing in sacred pools
will never get clean.

And there are others
doing household chores
who are free of any action.
* * *
One in whom the syllable OM
rises steadily upward
from the sex through the navel,
and only OM, forms a bridge to God.
That one has no interest
in different kinds of magic.
That one is a spell.
So you've cut up your hide and stretched it,
pegged it down to dry with definite,
sharp-pointed desires,
but have you planted any fruit trees
for the next generation?
Wisdom offered you is like a ball
thrown at a boundary post,
useless as molasses fed to a tawny bull
to help it give more milk!
* * *
I keep weeping for you, my soul,
good sir, gently trying to let you
see the nature of what you love.
Not even the shadow
of an iron anchor
will last from here.
Remember the truth
that you are.
I, Lalla, entered the jasmine garden,
where Shiva and Shakti were making love.

I dissolved into them,
and what is this
to me, now?
I seem to be here,
but really I'm walking
in the jasmine garden.
* * *
Fearful, always-moving mind,
the One who has no beginning
is thinking of how hunger
may fall away from you.
No ritual,
no religion,
is needed.
Just cry out one
unobstructed cry.
The royal fan, sunshade, and chariot,
the throne itself, the happy feasting,
the theatre nights, your soft, down bed,
which of these can help your fear of death?
You've demolished the highbanked marsh road.
How is it now out in the swamp?
Death will come at one specific moment.
How does that make you feel?
There are two results and three causes.
Practice the breath. Rise
through the disc of the sun.
Your death panic will fade.
Let your body wear your knowing.
Let your heart sing songs.
Lalla has become a syllable
of soul-light. There is no death.
Enlightenment absorbs this universe of qualities.
When that merging occurs, there is nothing
but God. This is the only doctrine.

There is no word for it, no mind
to understand it with, no categories
of transcendence or non-transcendence,
no vow of silence, no mystical attitude.
There is no Shiva and no Shakti
in enlightenment, and if there is something
that remains, that whatever-it-is
is the only teaching.
* * *
They arrive and others arrive,
and then they go, and the others go.
Day and night, a constant traffic.
Where do they come from?
Where do they go?
Does it mean anything?
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
What is worship? Who are this man
and this woman bringing flowers?
What kinds of flowers should be brought,
and what streamwater poured over the images?
Real worship is done by the mind
(Let that be a man) and by the desire
(Let that be a woman). And let those two
choose what to sacrifice.
There is a liquid that can be released
from under the mask of the face,
a nectar which when it rushes down
gives discipline and strength.
Let that be your sacred pouring.
Let your worship song be silence.

Shiva is the horse.
Vishnu puts the saddle on.
Brahma adjusts the stirrup.
And there is that in you
that will recognize the rider
those are waiting on: the unobstructed
sound, the nothing without name,
or lineage, or form,
which is continually changing
into the Sound and the Dot
within a human being who is
That meditating inside That,
the Sound and the Dot,
which are one thing, alone,
and the rider who mounts to ride.
Three times I have seen the lake
of the universe overflowing.
Once, I remember seeing
the only existent place
as a whirling without form,
and once, as a bridge over this
that is now Kashmir,
and seven times, I saw the whole
as emptiness.
* * *
Men and women now, even the best,
can barely remember their past lives,
and as for the children, whose lives
are getting harder and harder,
what will they do?

A time is coming so deformed
and unnatural that pears and apples
will ripen with the apricots,
and a daughter and a mother
will leave the house every day
hand in hand to find new strangers
to lie down with.
For a moment I saw a beautiful moving river.
Then a vast water with no means of crossing it.
For a moment, I saw a bush full of opening buds.
Then no roses, no thorns, nothing.
For a moment I saw a busy cooking fire.
Then no hearth, no smoke, no flame.
I saw the great mother of kings, Kunti.
Then, the next moment, sitting here, is
the helpless old aunt of the potter's wife.
* * *
Whatever I do, the responsibility is mine,
but like one who plants an orchard,
what comes of what I do, the fruit,
will be for others.
I offer the actions of this life
to the God within,
and wherever I go, the way is blessed.
Some people abandon their homes.
Others abandon hermitages.
All this renunciation does nothing,
if you're not deeply conscious.
Day and night, be aware
with each breath,
and live there.
My teacher, you are God to me!
Tell me the inner meaning

of my two breathings,
the one warm, the other cool.
"In your pelvis near the navel is the source
of many motions called the sun,
the city of the bulb.
As your vitality rises from that sun,
it warms, and in your mouth it meets
the downward flow through the fontanelle
of your higher self, which is cool
and called the moon, or Shiva.
This rivering mixture feels,
by turns, warm and cool."
My body caught fire like an ember,
as I brought the syllable OM,
the one that says You are That,
into me. I moved through
the six chakra centers
that urge human beings to action
and out into the lightedness
where Lalla lives now.
* * *
Lalla, there's no birth or death.
You are one, but not with happiness
or difficulty, not with
desire or anger.
You do not walk with people
who only talk about truth.
The experience of God
is continuous amazement.
Dying and giving birth go on
inside the one consciousness,
but most people misunderstand
the pure play of creative energy,
how inside that, those
are one event.
* * *

Lalla, you've wandered so many places
trying to find your husband!
Now at last, inside the walls
of this body-house, in the heart-shrine,
you discover where he lives.
I made pilgrimages, looking for God.
Then I gave up, turned around,
there God was inside me!
Oh Lalla, why do you keep on
wandering, and begging?
Make just a little effort. Act!
And God will appear in the form
of a love that fills your heart.
* * *
I spent my days idly as a vine
growing slowly in some holy place.
Then compassion came,
and I saw the Absolute.
All the names are true,
but I kept repeating that
of my teacher, and OM.
And sometimes I sang Om
Namah Shivaya, the greeting
that gives peace to the world
as well as to the spirit.
As my love and my faith,
and my interest in the inner
grew, the darkness diminished,
within and without, and Lalla
lost herself in that light.
* * *
When you eat too much,
you forget your truth,

and fasting makes you conceited,
so eat with some discipline,
and consciously. Be
an ordinary human being.
Then the door will open,
and you'll recognize the way.
Lalla, be moderate!
Everything is new now for me.
My mind is new, the moon, the sun.
The whole world looks rinsed with water,
washed in the rain of I am That
Lalla leaps and dances inside the energy
that creates and sustains the universe.
* * *
My teacher put a lotion on my eyes
that dissolved the cataracts,
and now wherever I look I see
the self, God, inner life
everywhere. Lalla,
this is true!
If you live on the breath,
you won't be tortured
by hunger and thirst,
or the longing to touch.
The purpose of being born is fulfilled
in the state between "I am"
and "That."
* * *
On the way to God the difficulties
feel like being ground by a millstone,
like night coming at noon, like
lightning through the clouds.
But don't worry!
What must come, comes.
Face everything with love,
as your mind dissolves in God.

When the mirror of my consciousness became clear,
I saw that my family and others I
love are the same as me.
The "you" and "I" thought
does not occur.
The entire world is God.
* * *
Lord, you exist
as me. Your power moves,
and I start walking.
A prior impulse is the only difference
between us. Other than that,
everything I am is You.
Life is given.
Nothing is earned,
so learn to serve others,
not your own desire and greed
and ego. They steal your energies,
whereas devotion builds your strength
and protects the intelligent flame
that leads to the truth within.
* * *
Meditate, and grow humble.
Watch anger and wanting
turn to ashes.
Study the ground, Lalla,
as a sign of attainment.

Your face is beautiful,
but your loving is cold.
Your tongue is tired of saying
sacred words over and over,
and your fingers, you've worked them
to the nub copying texts,
but the rage stored inside you
has found no way to leave.
* * *
What understanding comes through reading?
I decided not to let books determine
my life, but only whatever helps dissolve
infatuation and sentimental longing.
The shrewdness of innate,
subtle intellect is a fox
who knows what I need.
The way is difficult and very intricate.
Lalla discarded her books that told
about it, and through meditation
saw the truth that never comes
to anyone from reading words.
* * *
Intense cold makes water ice.
Then the hard ice turns to slush
and back to water, so there are three
forms of consciousness: the individual,
the world, and God, which in the sun
of True Awareness melt to one flowing:
Lalla is that.
In meditation, I entered the love-furnace,
burned impurities away, and as the sun
of a new knowing rose, I realized
that the words "Lalla" and "God"
point to this peacefulness.
I came to this birth and rebirth universe
and found the self-lighting light.

If someone dies, it's nothing to me,
and if I die, it's nothing to anyone.
It's good to die,
and good to live long.
* * *
You are the sky and the ground.
You alone the day, the night air.
You are the meal that's being brought,
the sandal knot, flowers and their watering.
You are all this.
What could I possibly bring You!
There is no "You" or "I," no object
to contemplate, no contemplation!
Everything is That lost in That.
The blind theologians didn't understand.
Then they saw, and their seven levels
of attainment dissolved to nothing.
* * *
Where did I come from, and how?
Where am I going?
Will I know the road?
This life is empty breath.
If I can hear one clear truth,
I'll be fortunate.
Those with a knack for walking in air,
those who can cool a fire,
still a stream,
or get milk from a wooden cow,
they're street jugglers, nothing more.
* * *

Ascetics wander shrine to shrine,
looking for what can only come
from visiting the soul.
Study the mystery you embody.
When you look up from that,
the dub grass looks fresher
a little ways off, and even more
green farther on. Stay here.
If you've melted your desires
in the river of time, choose
to be a recluse, or choose
a family, the village job.
If you know the pure Lord within you,
you'll be That, wherever.
* * *
Don't be so quick to condemn my nakedness.
A man is one who trembles in the presence.
There are very few of those.
Why not go naked?
The ram of experience must be fed
and ripened for the sacrifice.
Then all these customs will disappear
like clothing. There's only the soul.
I went everywhere with longing
in my eyes, until here
in my own house
I felt truth
filling my sight.
* * *
I have not really known myself,
or anyone else.
I've tried to do good, and not
just what my appetites wanted,

ut that was all infatuation
with this precious, isolated, body.
That you and I were constantly joining,
I didn't know. I didn't know
that even to ask "Who are You?"
or "Who am I?" breaks the harmony.
The sun, the lowest chakra of action,
disappeared. Then the highest, the moon.
Absorbed in the infinite, my mind dissolved.
Where now have the earth and the sky gone?
Are they hiding in the nothing
like friends on a walk?
* * *
I have drunk many times
the wine of existence, and the water
of this Sindhu River.
I've played many roles, been lots
of different human beings.
Still, I'm Lalla, the same.
Why have I gone through this?
If you're wise, be foolish.
If you can see, squint.
Though you can hear, sit
dumb as an old rock.
Whatever anyone says,
listen and agree.
This is a friendly practice,
and it leads to some truth.
* * *
Day will be erased in night.

The ground's surface will extend outward.
The new moon will be swallowed
in eclipse, and the mind in meditation
will be completely absorbed
by the Void inside it.
Let him say
whatever he wants
against me.
Let whoever come
and say whatever.
Or let them worship me,
bringing their souls
here like flowers.
I'm not part of any of that.
So where's the exchange?
* * *
God of the dark blue throat,
who drank the poison to save us,
You have six powers, and so must I!
But I've grown separate from You,
and taken on another six.
They mislead me.
When you see yourself
and someone else
as one being,
when you know the most joyful day
and the most terrible night
as one moment, then
awareness is alone
with its Lord.
* * *
With repeated meditation practice
the expanse of the visible universe

with all its qualities dissolves
to nothing, to where there is
only health and a great joy.
All teaching comes to this.
If you ride the breath
and keep it under control,
hunger and thirst and other wantings
will not be dangerous to you.
Being skilled with that bridle
is a great blessing.
* * *
With passionate practices
I held the reins secure on my mind
and made the breath one column.
Then the new moon's clear
nectar descended into me,
nothing pouring into Nothing.
There are some demons dangerous
to your soul: lust, anger.
But there's a way to kill them.
Feed them meditation only,
and clear awareness, and you'll see
the illusion of what they control.
* * *
At the end of a crazy-moon night
the love of God rose.
I said, "It's me, Lalla."
The Beloved woke. We became That,
and the lake is crystal-clear.
I didn't trust it for a moment,

ut I drank it anyway,
the wine of my own poetry.
It gave me the daring to take hold
of the darkness and tear it down
and cut it into little pieces.
* * *
One who handles a sword well
gets power. Someone generous
and disciplined wins what
the public religions offer.
But knowledge of the deep self comes
only from a teacher who is That.
Everything we do mixes
in the ground of the self.
Slowly, slowly, I tended
the bellows of my throat,
and the light inside grew
and filtered out through
the dark, so that within
even it, I saw the truth.
* * *
I am towing my boat on the ocean
with a rope of untwisted yarn.
Whatever I do is a waste,
like water poured
on unbaked clay plates.
How will I ever make it home?
Gently I weep for my mind,
caught in its illusion of ownership.
Mind, you're not who you think you are.
You're dancing over a pit.

Soon you'll fall through,
and these things you've valued
and collected will be left behind.
My sweet dear, do you understand this,
and if you do, how does your food taste?
* * *
I am a wooden bow trying to shoot
arrows made of flimsy grasses.
I am an unskilled architect
who's been asked to build
a palace for the king.
In the middle of the marketplace
I am a shop with no lock on its door.
I have no guide
to show me the way.
Life sinks down. We leave.
We keep walking day and night,
and come back where we began.
There is some mysterious meaning
in this, but what is it?
* * *
When will my shame fall away?
When will I accept being mocked
and let my robe of dignity burn up?
When the wandering pony inside
comes calm to my hand.
My mouth got tired of saying words.
My thumb and my forefinger wore
smooth with telling beads,
and still, my dear, this love
feels the pull of another.

I haven't lost my sense
of being separated.
* * *
Unconscious people read the scriptures
like parrots saying Ram, Ram,
in their cages.
It's all pretend-knowledge.
Read rather, with me, every
living moment as prophecy.
Three things about grinding grain:
Once you start the mill turning,
it easily keeps its momentum.
Only the hub knows
the secret of milling.
When fine flour appears by the millstone,
grist will find its own way
into the millyard.
* * *
Don't talk of different religions.
The one reality is everywhere,
not just in a Hindu, or a Muslim,
or anywhere else! Realize:
your awareness is
the truth about God.
Awareness cleaned my mind
to a polished mirroring.
The presence came near, and I knew
that That was everything,
and I nothing.
* * *
Lost in the wilderness between
true awareness and the senses,

I suddenly woke inside myself
like a lotus opening
in waterweeds.
How did I get here?
Where am I going?
Only true initiation helps.
Is breath-awareness
all there is?
* * *
I do not know myself,
nor you, my Lord.
I mistook the body
for my identity.
I didn't know
that you are
me, and I you,
yet still I keep wondering
who you and I are.
* * *
Playfully, you hid from me.
All day I looked.
Then I discovered
I was you,
and the celebration
of That began.
Introduction
Lalla lived in Kashmir in the 14th century, when many doctrinal
streams were merging: Shaivism, sufism, Vedantic non-dualism,
and other -isms, but Lalla is beyond religious categories, a living
combination that cannot be described in those terms.

Sometimes she refers to the one reality as "Shiva." Sometimes
it's "Shiva and Shakti making love in the jasmine garden," Shakti
being the feminine creative aspect of Shiva. Sometimes it's the
presence of an indeterminate "You" or "That." Sometimes "my
Lord." Other times, "the Supreme Principle." And in one instance
it's "mud," a pun rising from the juxtaposition in Sanskrit of the
"you" and "I" pronouns. Always it's a dissolving of self into the
Absolute that she celebrates. She lives between the "I am" and the
"That" of the famous Upanishad sentence, Tat Tvam Asi, in a state
there are no words for, "a somewhat something moving dreamlike
on a fading road."
There are yogic references, and Shaivite and sufi terms in the
poetry, but the deepest, most constant truth is what she shares
with all the great mystics, "There is no reality but God," within
and without, "only God." This awareness is the essence of worship.
For Lalla, there is no difference between the individual self and the
universal self, and the purpose of human life is to realize this. The
names for the various elements — soul, God, enlightenment—do
not matter. The changeless (Shiva) and the constantly creating
(Shakti) are joined in the breath. Breathing out, sah, and breathing
in, ham, compose one realization, I am That (sah-ham), which
dissolves duality.
Lalla has little use for scriptures. Words about the way are
not the way. Action, compassion and moderation, and listening
to the innate intellect bring what's needed. Ecstasy is only one of
her moods, and not the primary one. Political disgust is another,
and a Hopi-like prophetic mode: "A time is coming so deformed
. . . ." There's knife-like attention to specific behavior. "Eat only
enough to stop the hunger-pang." And glistening affirmations,
"Wherever I look, I see the self." The balance of no and yes in her
poems has a remarkable grace. Along with the variety of her modes,
Lalla has other qualities that seem, to me, essentially feminine: her
firm location in the breath; her sense of being dissolved into the
lovemaking in the jasmine garden; and her attention to a truth
which is very much in motion, and which can include her doubt
and her lostness. There are some obviously feminine images. The
act of moving onto the path of courage is a baby struggling on the
mother's chest and then finding the nipple! And one other picture
of the surrendered life shows "someone doing household chores,
free of any action." Her most penetrating vision, though, is beyond
imagery. In it, she doesn't see the Beloved presence everywhere, or
anywhere. She becomes emptiness, "nothing pouring into Nothing."
She is most well known for wandering and dancing naked as
she sang her songs. In the ecstatic line of the hassids and the sufis
she joined the pure joy of existence, and so completely merged

with it that the bare form of "Lalla," whom she often addresses,
seemed clothing enough. Her awareness observes the body, but is
not identified with it.
We know very little about her, other than what comes through
the poetry. There are no official references until four hundred years
after her death, and no contemporary manuscripts. The legends
of her life and the poems were preserved in the oral tradition.
Lalla means "darling," and she is certainly beloved in Kashmir. It
is said that only two words mean anything in Kashmiri, Allah and
Lalla, the rest being just language. Hundreds of lines from the
Lalla- Vakyana are still actively a part of Kashmiri conversation.
Her diction is colloquial, tuned not to philosophy and organized
religion, but to the common people. The "text" has come down
with many variations, some of it in an old Kashmiri dialect, side
by side with Sanskrit transcriptions. Between one hundred and
two hundred songs, poems, and sayings seem to have survived.
Lalla-Vakyana means Lalla's Word.
She is also known as Lal Ded, Lai Didi, and Mai Lai Diddi,
all of which mean Granny Lal, Grandmother Lalla. And in Sanskrit
she is called Lalleshwari, Lalla the great yogini, prophetess
and practicioner of yoga. The poems reveal this double nature:
one eye a warm, grandmotherly glance. The other a more severe,
truth-telling vision into the Void. Her metaphors of oneness are
not majestic light-upon-light images. The shapes of melting ice
interest her. And she also notices how ashes merge with clay to
become soil. "Study the ground, Lalla," she reminds herself.
Born in Kashmir, probably in a village near Srinagar, maybe
in 1320, she died near there in 1391. All these facts are speculative.
There are stories of her being mistreated as a young wife living
with in-laws. Her mother-in-law would put a stone on her plate
and cover it thinly with rice, so that it would look like Lalla was
getting more food than she actually was. Lalla never complained.
And she loved to spend time meditating at the holy shrines. Sent to
fetch water, she would stop there. One day her husband, thinking
to punish her for dawdling on the way home, struck the jar she was
carrying. It broke, but the water remained in place as a jar-shaped
column on Lalla's head. That water became the sacred "Lalla's
Lake" in Kashmir.
Tradition has it that Lalla left home, and the marriage, at
twenty-four to become a student of the Hindu teacher, Sed Bayu.
It was then also that she began to ignore conventional standards
of dress and to wander in a state of ecstatic clarity. One morning
as children were making fun of her nakedness, a cloth merchant
scolded their disrespect. Lalla asked him for two strands of cloth

equal in weight. That day as she walked about, she wore a piece
of cloth over each shoulder, and as she met with respect or scorn,
she tied knots in one or the other. In the evening she came back to
the merchant and asked him to weigh the cloth again. The scales
swung in balance, of course, no matter how the cloth was knotted.
Praise and blame have no substance of their own.
Other parables and legends, many of them miraculous, are
associated with her meeting the sun master, Ali Hamadani. Wandering
naked, she saw him approaching. She ran into a baker's shop
and leaped into the blazing oven. Hamadani stopped and asked
if a woman had come into the shop. Lalla suddenly appeared out
of the oven wearing the shimmering green and gold of Paradise.
She said, "I had never seen a man until you." Lalla is also connected
with a Sheikh Nuruddin, and with Sed Bayu, mentioned
earlier. An interesting exchange between Lalla and this man has
come down to us.
Sed Bayu was sitting with his disciples, when these
questions were asked: Which is the greatest of all
lights? What is the greatest pilgrimage? Which
relationship is best? What is most comforting?
Lalla was the first to answer. "There is no light
like that of the sun, no pilgrimage like that to the
Ganges. There is no relationship closer than with a
brother, and no ease like a wife."
Sed Bayu did not agree. "There is no light like that
in the eyes, no pilgrimage like going down on your
knees, no relationship like that with one's own
pocket, and no comfort like a blanket."
Lalla raised the level yet again. "There is
no light like that of knowing God, no pilgrimage like
a deep longing, no relationship except the one with
God, and there is no peace that isn't gratitude for
that."
She was undoubtedly a challenge for her several teachers.
The scholar Richard Temple, with great pains, has untangled the
threads of the various religions woven into Lalla's Word. I recommend
his study to anyone interested in identifying the strands, but
I prefer the whole cloth, the skin, of the counter-culture mystic

who moves through this poetry. The clarity, and her dancer's simplicity:
amazement felt, stated, and then the moving on. Quick,
sure, un-fancy steps that aren't trying to convince or impress, but
to let you in her life. Her heart's cry is, Om Namah Shivaya, "I bow
to the Highest Consciousness."
I have come to Lalla after fifteen years of collaborative work on
Jelaluddin Rumi. The difference in the two is considerable. Where
Rumi is extravagant, Lalla is spare. Where Rumi is exuberant,
Lalla is cold-sober. Rumi is intricate; Lalla, simple. Rumi works
within a group; Lalla walks alone. Rumi is caressingly affectionate;
Lalla, severely clear. Other polarities could be set up. Rumi is the
imagination in full flower, always moving. Lalla is the condensed
code of the body, the rooted, breathing word.
Yunus Emre, the Turkish mystic, looked at the six volumes of
Rumi's Mathnawi and said, "All these words!" Rumi asked, "How
would you have done it?"
"I would just wrap some skin around some bones and call it
Yunus"
I am reminded of an Emily Dickinson poem,
The infinite a sudden guest
Has been assumed to be,
But how can that stupendous come,
Which never went away.
With Emily, Lalla stays home, like a lotus in the mud, whereas
Rumi plays in the ocean of longing, a restlessness. Which seems
oddly paradoxical to their actual lives: Rumi being located at the
center of a community, and Lalla the wanderer.
What I love about the poems is that they feel close to experience.
Not the daily specifics, but an inner attention. Here is her
statement about the use of poetry for the poet.
I didn't trust it for a moment,
but I drank it anyway,
the wine of my own poetry.

It gave me the daring to take hold
of the darkness and tear it down
and cut it into little pieces.
Reducing shadowcloth to shreds and patches is fine work for
poetry. Sometimes abstract, and other times wonderfully imaged,
her short-song scissor-bites cut free the conventional veils and
solaces, the light-blockers, that hide our own soul-nakedness. She
leaves us out in the open with nothing on, like the new moon.
---Coleman Barks
Bibliography
Grierson, Sir George and Barnett, Lionel D. Lalla-Vakyani, the
Wise Sayings of Lai Ded, A Mystic Poetess of Ancient Kashmir.
Royal Asiatic Society (London, 1920).
Lalleshwari, poems rendered by Muktananda and Gurumayi.
SYDA Foundation (South Fallsburg, N.Y., 1981). This is an
especially valuable work, as Gurumayi is the living inheritor
of this enlightened lineage.
Nisargadatta. I Am That, Acorn Press (Durham, N.C., 1973).
Kashmiri Lyrics, selected and translated by J. L. Kaul. Rinemisray
(Srinigar, 1945).
Kaul, Jayalal. Lai Ded. Sahitya Akademi (New Delhi, 1973).
Kotru, Nil Kanth. Lai Ded, Her Life and Sayings. Utpal Publications
(Srinigar, 1989).
Temple, Richard Carnac. The Word ofLalla the Prophetess. Cambridge
University Press (Cambridge, 1924).
Women Saints of the East and West, edited by Swami Ghanananda
and Sir John Stewart-Wallace. Vedanta Press (Hollywood,
Acknowledgements
I want to thank Miranda Shaw for introducing me to Lalla, and
the dancer Zuleikha and my sister Betsy (the novelist Elizabeth
Cox), for helping with various re-writings of these poems.