‘Sunrise Is Sunset’

Ecstasy

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.

(Lal Ded: Ranjit Hoskote)

I, Lalla, came through the gate of my soul’s jasmine garden
and found Shiva and Shakti there, locked in love!
Drunk with joy, I threw myself into the lake of nectar.
Who cares if I’m a dead woman walking!

(Lal Ded: Ranjit Hoskote)

Such happiness then, such happiness.
I could have sat there even to the end.
I bathed in the Indrayani and joy-soaked
I went to the temple. I looked upon
Panduranga. I felt his gaze on me.

The words began to flow.

I bowed to Tukoba and went home.

Bahini says: the ocean is within me,
In the sky of my heart, God spoke in thunder.

(Bahinabai: Jerry Pinto and Neela Bhagwat)

Blue is this sky blue is this space filled with love
Blue is this entire symmetry
Blue is Being-in-Itself blue is the colour of karma
Blue is one’s Guru and one’s Guru’s resort
I behave blue I feed on blue
I become blue I envision blue
Jnanadeva has come into the school of blue
In the loving and sensuous embrace of blue

(Jnaneshwar: Dilip Chitre)

When
like a hailstone crystal
like a waxwork image
the flesh melts in pleasure
how can I tell you?

The waters of joy
broke the banks
and ran out of my eyes.

I touched and joined
my lord of the meeting rivers.
How can I talk to anyone
of that?

(Basavanna: A. K. Ramanujan)

God of my clan,
I’ll not place my feet
But where your feet
Have stood before:
I’ve no feet
of my own.

How can the immoralists
of this world know
the miracle, that oneness
of your feet
and mine,

Ramanatha?

(Devara Dasimayya: A. K. Ramanujan)

Bliss soured to become the cream of bliss.
Blessed, I’ve begun to churn the cream.

My body rocks and sways in bliss.
My arms are lost, my eyes are lost.

Look! How Narayana gathers up Himself!
Look! How He transforms His properties!

Says Tuka, He is reaching the brim now!
In an instant, He is going to overflow!

(Tukaram: Dilip Chitre)

In a torrent of love, reason drowned.
Sami would not live without seeing Him.
What the sages spoke of,
I saw in an instant!

(Sami: Mohan Gehani and Menka Shivdasani)

The word ‘love’ taught me by my Sadguru
Has cleansed my heart.
Sami says, in a moment He set on fire all doubts,
Hoisted me aloft and I could see

Everything!

(Sami: Mohan Gehani and Menka Shivdasani)

Water has turned
Into the sky.
One has lapsed
Into all.

How to contain it now?
It ripples in itself.

What can spill out of it?
It has closed up itself.

Says Tuka,
This is
The end of the world
Sunrise is sunset.

(Tukaram: Dilip Chitre)

He grabbed me
lest I go astray.

Wax before an unspent fire
mind melted,
body trembled.

I bowed, I wept,
danced, and cried aloud,
I sang, and I praised him.

Unyielding, as they say,
as an elephant’s jaw
or a woman’s grasp
was love’s unrelenting
seizure.

Love pierced me
like a nail
driven into a green tree.

Overflowing, I tossed
like a sea,

heart growing tender,
body shivering,

while the world called me Demon!
and laughed at me,

I left shame behind,

took as an ornament
the mockery of local folk.
Unswerving, I lost my cleverness
In the bewilderment of ecstasy.

(Manikkavacakar: A. K. Ramanujan)