Abstract
The problems that
currently plague the world are communalism, casteism, war, genocide, terrorism,
poverty and ecological crisis. It is trivial, or against the wisdom, to explore
only the aesthetic themes at a time when the world is bereft of the avenues of
healthy and sustainable human survival. The cause of suffering lies in the
conflict present both at individual as well as collective level, and particularly
in the personalities and their followers who are influencing the major affairs of
whole world. In order to take back the world on the path of peace and
human-harmony, there is a dire need to address the issue of conflict primarily at
individual level by fine tuning the human “self” with the Self or its Creator.
To a large extent among
the different genres of literature, mystical poetry, like that of Rumi (as seen
in the West), has got the remedial power to address these conflicts at both the
individual and collective level in human history. In the same context, it
has been found that an eminent and influential poetic voice Lal Ded from
Kashmir, through her poetry/mystic verses tries to eclipse the boundaries of
conflict prevailing both in the human self and life.
This paper upholds the
premise that revisiting the poetry of this great mystic is among the few
guiding lights, which can help us find solutions to the various and varied
conflicts we are facing today.
Keywords:
Lalla, Conflict, Peace, Self, Suffering, Love etc.
Revisiting Lal Ded in Times of Conflict:
Discovery of the Poetics of Peace.
It
is sufficient to introduce Lal Ded through a seminal book Great Ages of Man: A History of the World Cultures a 21-Volume historical encyclopedia. One of its volumes titled
Historic India edited by Lucille Schulberg and co-editors, documents the main
important events of Indian culture and civilization right from antiquity, and its
chapter discussing the 14th Century India titled “Thought and Culture” is based on a single event from whole of India; that
is “Kashmiri Female Poet Lal Ded”. It
reflects the greatness of our “Mother Lalla” and it is undoubtedly an honour
for every Kashmiri (Kaul 2005: 11). One may or may not agree with the content
of Lalla’s mystic thought, but the impact and quality of her mystical poetry is
widely acknowledged. The unique feature of these mystic verses is that they
mostly deal with the make-up of human self or soul. B K Behl writes that the
great Kashmiri saint and poetess Lalla, who deeply nourished the Kashmiri
thought, speaks repeatedly of the concept of the divine manifestations of the
Ultimate and the rapturous relationship of the soul with God. Her philosophy is
a synthesis of mystical Shaivism and Sufism, which penetrates the hearts of the
masses: that is why she becomes Lalla
Arifa for Muslims and Lalleshwari
for Hindus. Lalla’s poetic testimonies have become so influential that they are
part of today’s collective consciousness. They have entered the global
imagination through translations. That is why even those commentators who are
hostile to mysticism or mystical-poetic thought readily accept the central
importance Lalla has played as a pioneering Kashmiri poet in inspiring the sustainable
human harmony while renouncing the dividing line based on caste, creed, status
and religion. She always comes out as a spiritual
messiah for all and sundry, emanating peace and harmony with emphasis on
humanity rather than religiosity and universal brother-hood. She never
discriminates between a Hindu and a Muslim. Her poetry lays more stress on
recognizing one's own self, which is the true source of knowledge regarding God
and the world created by God. She says:
shiv chhuy thalyi thalyi rav zaan
mav zaan hyond ti musalmaan
trukh hay chhukh ti paani prazaan
sway chhay tas siity zeenyiy zaan
God abides in all that
is, everywhere;
Then do not discriminate
between
a Hindu or a Muslim.
If thou art wise, know thyself;
That is true knowledge of
the Lord. (Kaul 107)
Keeping in view the spiritual malaise of current
times, Charles Taylor a living Canadian philosopher and theologian in his book A Secular Age while writing the critique
of modern culture and faith asks a valid question, “why was it virtually
impossible not to believe in God around 15th century, while towards
the end of 20th century many of us find this not only easy, but even
inescapable (10).” One understands, after going through the writings of modern
and post-modern theologians like Soren Kierkegaard, Paul Tillich, Karl Barth,
Karl Jaspers, and Gabriel Marcel who have criticized modernity and
post-modernity and its value system from a religious-mystical point of view, that
this change is not due to a lack but abundance of religious and scientific
knowledge and the conditions of “belief” in our age. The modern world is a
pluralist one where many forms of belief and unbelief jostle, and due to lack
of proper social structures, one is prone to skepticism. As a result we are
settling into somewhat a state of comfortable disbelief, suffering from a
deep-seated psychological disorder, melancholy and angst. We have distanced
ourselves from the central unifying essence that is God and God-consciousness,
and our buffered self has reached to a stage, where our common situation mainly
shares three features: huge diversity, huge movement, and huge capability to be
shaken by other positions. We as modern men want to eliminate
the transcendent dimension of our life and yet not suffer from suffocation in
the two-dimensional world – mainly based on material progress – a self
proclaimed creation which we have crafted for ourselves. We want to kill God
and yet remain human, which is a contradiction precisely because man can remain
human only by being faithful to his theomorphic nature. Kierkegaard calls the so-called progress of modern man “blind progress” but at the same time sees glory of the human condition
primarily in our ability to choose. It is the ability to choose ourselves by
choosing God that fulfills the human telos
(an ultimate end). But this choosing only finds its fulfillment when we achieve
a synergy/communion with what God chooses, which is that we become who we truly
are.
Around 700 years back Lal Ded leaves the same message
for the coming generations that social emancipation can be achieved only
through self-realization.
For Lalla, in essence the human soul is one with God. He is the only reality
behind the changing phenomenon of the world. She understands that the secret of
attaining union with the Ultimate lies hidden in engagement of fathoming the human “self”. This attraction and
love within one’s self towards the Divine gives birth to the realization that
this life is very short and its pleasures are transient and that one is not
created only to eat, drink, clothe, marry, and build home or to boast of one’s
prestige and power among mankind. Lalla makes us realize that when one makes a
shift from the outer world to the inner world, all the veils of ignorance are
removed and one begins to comprehend the real purpose of life. She talks about
the same in her vaakh:
Gwaran voninam kunuy vatsun
Nyabri dopnam andar atsun
Suy gav lalyi mye vaakh ti
vatsun
Tavay mye hyotum nangay
natsun (Lal Ded 84)
My teacher taught me but one lesson,
Odyssey from the without to the within
This is what I say in my songs,
And I wander about without a guise.
In our times, we
have been prompted to believe that technological advancements and modernization
will produce for us physical comforts and through these comforts we can attain
inner peace and external harmony. Pursuing the same goal, we are selling our
souls in a Faustian manner to gain dominion over natural and human environment;
and we are creating a situation in which the very control of the environment is
turning into our own strangulation, bringing in its wake collective suicide
(Nasr 04). And Lalla in her mystic and creative seclusion makes the diagnosis
of the human malaise where intuition reveals to her that the self needs to be a
keen observant of the guile of distractions in the outer world. Instead, one
should focus on one’s own self with love and devotion to have guidance guiding
towards emancipation and eternity:
Lal bo draayas
loolaryey
TshaanDaan luusum
dyan kyoo raath
Vuchum pandyit
paninyi garyey
Suy mya roTmus
nyechtar ti saath
I Lalla set out with the fervor of love,
Spent days and nights in the search;
Finally I found the Pandit in my own house,
A good auguring moment it was for me (Shauq
61)
In another poem
like a true mystic, after unveiling the covers of ignorance, she accepts
herself as a nonentity before God which brings humility as a result of
self-effacement while resolving every kind of conflict in life. She says:
Mukras zan mal tsolum manas
Adi mya lebim zanas zaan
Su yelyi DyuuThum nyishyi paanas
Sooruy suy ti bo noo kyanh
As the rust of the
mirror of my mind is removed
Full recognition
of the self I attain;
I discover Him so
intimately near,
All is He, I am
nothing.
According to Jaya
Lal Kaul, Lalla does not observe the formalities of ceremonial piety as she is “vehemently
critical of orthodoxy, its dogma and ritual, its hypocrisy and exclusiveness (03).”
Through her poetic verses
Lalla tries to eclipse the boundaries of conflict prevailing both in the human
self and life. Her verses
continue to guide those who are in search of a way out of the darkness within
which modernism and post-modernism has confined us, and to grapple with the
corrosive forces which threaten the very existence of global peace. For her
peace is not to attain the quietest state in one’s life, but true peace is that
emerges from inner poise and silence and leads to action for the promotion of
an egalitarian society. Her poetic utterances, pondered over seriously to speak
to herself, mostly maintain a dialogue with herself. This contemplative act of
her poetry makes it penetrate deep into the soul, and evoke contemplative
states in its hearers and readers to bring about a transformative change. She propagates in her vaakhs the message of love
while saying:
myithyaa kapaTh asath troovum
manas korum suy
vwapdyiesh
zwanas andar kyiaval
zoonum
anas khyanas kus chum
dwe-ysh
I renounced fraud, untruth, deceit;
I taught my mind to see the One
in all my fellow-men.
How could I then discriminate
between man and man,
And not accept the food offered to me
by brother man? (Kaul,
p. 107)
What prevents one
person from welcoming one’s fellow brethren without making any kind of inhuman
discriminations? Lalla identifies the monstrous instincts present within every
man and guides us how to exterminate them permanently through meditation. The beasts
like lust, anger, desire and pride thwart the possibility of mutual love at
both local and global level as she says:
maarukh mari buuth kaam kruud luub
nati kaan beryith maarnay paan
manay khyan dyikh swa vyatsaari sham
vyishay tyihund kyah kyuth druuv zaan
Slay the monsters
of evil – lust, anger and greed,
Before they slay
you with their deadly darts;
Feed your mind
with the silent meditation,
Know thoroughly
the meaning of these forces. (Shauq
81)
The main thrust of
Lalla is on the individual self wherefrom both vice and virtue, good and bad, envy
and content, love and hate emerge. The individual needs to keep vigil over the
satanic forces by keeping them in control otherwise he will turn inhuman:
hye gwaraa
parmyeshwara
baavtam tsye chhuy
antar vyod
dwashvay vwapdaan
kandyi puraa
huu kavi turun ti
hah kvi tot
O
my preceptor, O my Lord,
Tell
me for you know the hidden secrets;
If
both emerge from the same body,
Why is “hoo” cold and “haa” so warm? (Shauq 105)
Lalla understands
well that both vice and virtue are embedded in human-self, and virtue dominates
only when man remains conscious of the divine imprint on his soul. She is aware
that this earthly life is ephemeral and temporary, then for what earthly things,
man should become egoistic and proud. Once man realizes this, the vicious
instinct of conceit or ego as a matter of course vanishes and the feeling of
pride in “I” dies forever. The renunciation of ego becomes the directive of
truth for the seeker to achieve an existence filled with peace, purity and
bliss. As Lalla puts it:
azipa gaayatri
hamsi-hamsi zepyith
aham treevith suy
adi raTh
yemy troov aham
suy ruud paanay
boh no aasun chhuy
vwapidyesh
In
mantra of silence restrain the breath,
Renounce
your pride, be absorbed in Him;
One
who gives up conceit, is sure to be oneself,
Say
no to ‘I’, that is the advice.
(Shauq 99)
The counsel given here
does not imply that one should reduce one’s self to nonentity, but saying no to
‘I’ means weighing oneself ‘nothing’ before God. This kind of realization
commences from ‘within’ to allow the individual’s spiritual growth. And in the
words of Shafi Shauq:
All her probing into the boundless depths
of the self led Lalla to the conviction that, in spite of the earthliness of
the corporal life, man’s being in the world is to be respected as it is the
only and the inevitable stage in man’s finite existence that makes possible a
leap toward the infinite. (21)
In the words of
Nasr every mystic “dies to the world inwardly while outwardly he still
participates in the life of society and bears the responsibilities of the station
of life in which destiny has placed him (88).” Lalla realizes the same and
shoulders the responsibility by propagating the message of social involvement
for uplifting the humanitarian values. She rises far above the plane of formal
worship and rejects adherence to the ceremonial practices if they are bereft of
creating fellow-feeling and universal brotherhood:
tryieshi
bwachhyi moo kryieshyinaavun
yaan
tshyeyiy taan san-daarun dih
phraTh
choon daarun ti paarun
kar
vwapikaarun sway chhay kray
Do not let it crave for water and
food,
Replenish your body when it feels
wearied;
A delusion is fasting and opening the
fasts,
Keep
helping others that is your noble deed.
The
problem of modern man lies in his Machiavellian belief that ‘this world is the
be all and end all of things’. This belief categorically blinds his vision in
seeing the whole of mankind as creation of one God. This gives rise to the
unethical behaviour, where man compartmentalizes humanity into haves and have
not’s, developed and un-developed, civilized and un-civilized, black and white,
Hindu and Muslim, elite and outcaste. Lalla makes us realize that it is only
the service offered unto humanity that counts and opens the way to create an inclusive
composite culture that includes all and excludes none. The life we live just to
hoard things of earthly comfort for ourselves counts nowhere, as nothing from
these things is able to postpone or avoid the scythe of death for the
individual who runs after them throughout his life. Agreeing with Nasr mystics,
“have always taught that man is in quest of the Infinite and that even his
endless effort toward the gaining of material possessions and his
dissatisfaction with what he has is an echo of this thirst, which cannot be
quenched by the finite (80).” And Lalla
reminds the same when she says:
tsaama,r che'tir
rath simhaaasan
ahalaad naaTye-ras tuli paryienkh,
kyah meenith yeti sothiri aasun
kavi zan kaasi marniny shienkh
A royal fly-whisk,
canopy, chariot and throne,
Merry revels, pleasures
of the theater, a cushioned bed –
Which of these, you
think, will go with you
when you are dead?
How then can you dispel
the fear of death?
To conclude we can say that the mystical poetry of Lalla has got
the power to regenerate the blessed mood in which mundane interests are shelved
and forgotten. It has over the centuries helped us to produce and nourish a
spirit of understanding, tolerance, fellow-feeling and an acute sense of
religious humanism. In order to bring back the world on the path of peace and
human-harmony, there is a dire need to address the issue of conflict at
individual level by harmonizing human “self” or creature with the Self or its
Creator. By revisiting Lalla’s verses we can discover the poetics of peace and
find solutions to the various and varied conflicts we are facing today. Time
and again she makes one realize that one’s achievement is not in seeking
earthly comforts but in seeking the right path to join back eternal life after
death, as no one is able to escape it. Further she opines that one should
always focus on how to return successfully while earning currency by serving
humanity, to pay wages in spiritual terms to the ferryman to carry one across
the river of existence, so that one accomplishes the ultimate goal of merging
the individual soul with the Soul that is God, when she says
aayas vatyey geyas ni
vatyey
suman swathyi manz
luusum dwah
chandas vuchum te haar
ni athyey
naavi taaras dyimi kyah
boo
The right path I came, the right path I did not go,
My day ends as I reach the shore;
I fumble my pockets and find no money,
What shall I pay the boatman to take me across? (Shauq 64)
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