‘We Have Slain Each Other’

Liberation

I won’t come
I won’t go
I won’t live
I won’t die

I’ll keep uttering
The name
And lose myself
In it

I’m bowl
And I’m platter
I’m man
And I’m woman

I’m grapefruit
And I’m sweet lime
I’m Hindu
And I’m Muslim

I’m fish
And I’m net
I’m fisherman
And I’m time

I’m nothing
Says Kabir
I’m not among the living
Or the dead

(Kabir: A. K. Mehrotra)

I’m nothing
A nobody
Native
Of nowhere
I am alone
In my own place

I do not visit
Any place
I neither come
Nor go
I talk
To emptiness

Nobody
Belongs to me
I belong
To nobody
None of this
Is true

I do not
Have to live
I do not
Have to die
I am
Undivided

Says Tuka
I have no name
Or form
I am neither active
Nor passive

(Tukaram: Dilip Chitre)

He knows the crown is the temple of Self.
His breath is deepened by the Unstruck Sound.
He has freed himself from the prison of delusion.
He knows he is God, who shall he worship?

(Lal Ded: Ranjit Hoskote)

When the camphor hill catches fire
Does the charcoal remain?
Does the snow-built Shiva temple
Have a sunlight cupola?
When a hill of cinders is shot
With a wax arrow
Why look for the arrow again?
After seeing Gogeshwara
Why remember him again?

(Allama Prabhu: H. S. Shivaprakash)

One colour now, one colour, you and me.
I look at you, Panduranga, one look, no you, no me.

Those passions quieten.

The body is.

The body withers.

One now, no me, no you.

Soyara says: Who’s being seen?
Who’s doing the seeing?

(Soyarabai: Jerry Pinto and Neela Bhagwat)

Everybody understands
the single drop merging into the ocean.

One in a million comprehends
the ocean merging in a single drop.

(Kabir: Vinay Dharwadker)

He: neither line nor form,
Body: absent. Ground: groundless.

Behold the bodiless man, standing in the middle of
the circle of the sky.

(Kabir: Vinay Dharwadker)

For me God is dead.
Let him be for those who need him.

I shall speak of him no more.
I shall not name him again.

We have slain each other.

In his praise, I cursed him.
Lord, what an endless affair!

Says Tuka, I have squandered my whole life after him.
Now I would like to sit still.

(Tukaram: Dilip Chitre)