There comes a time when researching content for a book, where the author slowly transitions from finding new information to include, and instead finds information that simply confirms what has already been written. This happened for me in the writing of Chapter 5 in my upcoming book, Love and Suffering, as I dove into the world’s mystical traditions.
One of the main themes of the book is that love leads us to suffering, suffering leads us to love, and both lead us to God. This is most certainly confirmed by the Mystics. St. John of the Cross was jailed and tortured in the monastery, before he went on to compose some of the best Spanish literature ever written. Julian of Norwich was gravely ill most of her life, and her near-death experience resulted in incredible cosmic visions of the divine, leading her to write the first book to ever be written in English by a woman.
While the culture and religious background of the mystics might be vastly different, the awakening experiences described are all startling similar. While theologians quarrel, the mystics agree. Meister Eckhart and Mansour Al-Hallaj and Rumi all spoke different dialects, but their language is the same.
While she didn’t make it into the book, I would like to talk about another incredible mystic who spoke the same language and wrote of the same experience, as all other mystics throughout time. And that would be the 14th-century nondual Kashmiri Śaiva yogini Lalla, also known as Lalleshwari or Lal Dĕd.
Lalla’s short, four-line poems, known as vakhs, are rich in visceral imagery of the mystical experience. Her writings are eloquent and vivid, succinct and profound. Any lover of poetry should have her on the bookshelf next to Hafez and Rumi, and anyone who calls themselves a yogi should read how she often references the seven chakras, sacred syllable OM, and pranayama practices. For example, this vakh:
My mind boomed with the sound of OM,
my body was a burning coal.
Six roads brought me to a seventh,
that’s how Lalla reached the Field of Light.
points to the fire of purification that takes us to the light of wisdom. This vakh:
I trapped my breath in the bellows of my throat;
a lamp blazed up inside, showed me who I really was.
I crossed the darkness holding fast to that lamp,
scattering its light-seeds around me as I went.
speaks to the role that our inner light plays in dispelling and conquering the darkness.
Like other mystical writings, Lalla emphasizes that God or the Divine is not to be found or sought after outside of us, but inside. Like in these two vakhs:
Love-mad, I, Lalla, started out,
spent days and nights on the trail.
Circling back, I found the teacher in my own house.
What brilliant luck, I said, and hugged him.Wrapped up in Yourself, You hid from me.
All day I looked for You
and when I found You hiding inside me,
I ran wild, playing now me, now You.
She also mirrors the idea of the nuptial mystics, who see themselves as lovers of God. In this powerful vakh, she uses the common imagery of removing the veils covering our mind and perceptions:
When the dirt was wiped away from my mind’s mirror,
people knew me for a lover of God.
When I saw Him there, so close to me,
He was All, I was nothing.
A long time ago, I wrote a blog post about how we can turn our pain into medicine, which is another common theme in Love and Suffering. Lalla also uses powerful imagery to describe the discipline and suffering we bring to the spiritual path of mystical awakening:
If only I’d trained my mind to gather my breath-streams,
played surgeon, cut and bound them,
ground pain into an antidote,
I’d have known how to churn the Elixir of Life!
I love her use of the word “churn” here. It speaks to the transformation that happens in zazen or sitting meditation, as we churn the milk of our human experience into the spiritual butter.
Another theme of Love and Suffering is that we don’t have to purposefully add suffering to our lives. There is enough suffering already in life to awaken the heart of compassion. This is why the Buddha rejected the life of fierce asceticism and focused on the Middle Way.
Once we free ourselves of suffering, our next task is to commit ourselves to alleviating the suffering of others. Lalla writes:
Don’t torture this body with thirst and hunger,
give it a hand when it stumbles and falls.
To hell with all your vows and prayers:
just help others through life, there’s no truer worship.
The above vakh speaks to another theme in Love and Suffering: that mystics rarely toe the line. The profound truth the mystics discover upon union with God often goes directly against the religious dogma of the time. Mystics must be ready to face fierce criticism from other believers, and sometimes banishment from the entire religious order.
As a female wanderer, Lalla no doubt would have experienced what we modern readers would refer to as “haters.” However, in touch with the endless and infinite love of the divine, Lalla is “untouched” by her critics:
They lash me with insults, serenade me with curses.
Their barking means nothing to me.
Even if they came with soul-flowers to offer, I couldn’t care less.
Untouched, I move on.
Such writings speak to the capability of the human spirit to rise above the sufferings of the world. We, too, can be inspired by mystics throughout history who have repeated the same message. The divine is right here, shining through everyone like the sun. The suffering in life and our spiritual practice can be a purificatory fire that burns away all impurities to reveal the one timeless, endless love within and without.
(Poetry translation by Ranjit Hoskote. Love and Suffering is published by O-Books.)
