Here's your Daily Poem from the Poetry Chaikhana --
 | The waters of joy By Basava
(1134 - 1196) English version by A. K. Ramanujan 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? 
/ Photo by s-a-m /
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| ============ Thought for the Day: Deep spiritual unfolding
may feel unbearably slow,
at times painful or terrifying,
-- but what else is worth any effort? ============ | Here's your Daily Music selection -- 
Irfan
Seraphim
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Hi Omss -
Basava, sometimes referred to reverently as Basavanna or Basaveshwara, was a twelfth century devotee of Shiva in southern India.
Basavanna was orphaned at a young age but adopted by a wealthy family with political connections. He received a good education but rejected a life of comfort and prestige to become a wandering ascetic dedicated to Shiva.
Soon after receiving enlightenment, Basavanna was given a divine command to return to worldly life. Basavanna eventually returned to his adopted family. Before long he attained high political office while, simultaneously, forming the new populist mystical movement of Virasaivas into a coherent, egalitarian community. This community fostered many other great poet-saints, including Akka Mahadevi and Allama Prabhu.
This utopian community began to be seen as a threat to the orthodox religious and political forces, however, and they used the marriage between an outcaste man and a brahmin woman within the community as an excuse to kill several of its members. Basavanna urged a non-violent response, but the reflex for revenge was too strong among some of the community's members. In the tense aftermath, the community couldn't safely hold together and its members went in different directions.
Basavanna once again left politics and returned to his focus on the inner spiritual life.
==
That line in the first stanza, "the flesh melts in pleasure" -- it sounds erotic, doesn't it? It's an uncomfortable notion to many people, but there is an erotic element the the ecstatic energies unlocked by spiritual bliss. Yet, on an even deeper level, Basava is saying that the flesh, identification with the physical form softens and fades into nothingness amidst the overwhelming pleasure of spiritual bliss.
I love the esoteric water imagery of this poem. "The waters of joy / broke the banks..." For many mystics, spiritual ecstasy is described with water metaphors: blissful energy flows through the body and the awareness, it descends like dew, it drenches us, it fills us up, it pours out of us, it bursts through the boundaries of the little self.
Basava received enlightenment at a sacred meeting of rivers. This is why his poems include a reference to Shiva as "the lord of the meeting rivers." But there is also a deeper, esoteric meaning relating to the subtle energies awakened in the yogi's awareness. I like the broad understanding of this where the individual identity, having melted, its banks broken through, allows the sacred waters of awareness to flow uninhibited in all directions. The rivers of the transcendent and the personal meet, flowing into each other.
There words fail...
How can I talk to anyone
of that?
I guess you write a poem, then fall silent.
Ivan
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Ivan M. Granger's original poetry, stories and commentaries are Copyright © 2002 - 2011 by Ivan M. Granger.
All other material is copyrighted by the respective authors, translators and/or publishers.
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