TWO OLD-BENGALI MYSTIC POEMS

[From the collection of fifty poems known as Charyapadavali. These poems that are valued more as mantras are from the Siddhacharyas who form a school of Tantrik Buddhists and flourished in the centuries between the eighth and the twelfth A.C. The poems carry a commentary in Sanskrit giving the esoteric meaning; they have also a version in the Tibetan language.]

I

My house is on the top of the mound

and I have no neighbour,

I have no food in my bowl

and every day there comes a lover.

The worldly life grows on apace:

But does the milk that is drawn go back to the udder?

A barren cow has given birth to a bullock:

Pailful of milk has been milked these three evenings.

One who understands this has a sharp understanding;

It is the thief who is the guard.

Always there is a fight–an equal fight–

between the lion and the jackal.

The song of Dhendhanpa is comprehensible only to a few.

(Number 33)

Note: The poem expresses the relation of the ascetic to the world. He lives aloof and alone and empty of all ration. Yet the hungers from the world below mount up and try to tempt him. That is the way of the world. But one above the world cannot retrace his steps backward, even as the milk once out does not go back to the udder. If at all it is another cow, another milk-yielder, another milk. It is not ignorant nature’s phenomenon; it is the consciousness of Super-Nature pouring out the great delight. Nirvana is the barren cow, the bullock is its energy or tapas and the milk is the supreme joy. The three evenings must be the close or end or setting of the three domains of worldly existence–body, life and mind. The thief is the higher consciousness guarding at the top and who has stolen away the world and the worldly objects. Similarly the lion is the power of the higher consciousness and the jackal the prowling creature of the dark world. But the fight between the two is hard and equal, neither wanting to give up.

II

When the void unites with the void,

Then all the worlds are revealed.

At all the four moments I am with the true consciousness:

Within all is stopped, the supreme awakening is there.

Even the vibration of the last point did not enter my heart:

I gazed at one and the other vanished.

Know from where you came,

Dwell within there whence are all laws:

The Voice of Truth scattered all else.

(Number 44)

Note: When the individual becomes a zero and is one with the supreme zero, then there is the true consciousness, the world and the worlds are seen as they truly are. The four moments are the four worlds or domains of consciousness–they are points or moments in eternity. The experience is the experience of concentrated stillness of the source, the void, nirvana.

Translated by–NOLINI KANTA GUPTA

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