Topic: Saints and Mystics

[Nichi]

Forget the world, and so command the world.

Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder.
Help someone' s soul heal.
Walk out of your house like a shepherd.

Stay in the spiritual fire. Let it cook you.
Be a well-baked loaf and lord of the table.
Come and be served to your brothers.

You have been a source of pain.
Now you'll be the delight.

You have been an unsafe house. Now you'll
be the One who sees into the Invisible.

I said this, and a Voice came to my ear,
"If you become this, you will be That! "

Then Silence,
and now more Silence.

A mouth is not for talking.
A mouth is for tasting this Sweetness.


-- Version by Coleman Barks
from a translation by A.J. Arberry
"Like This"
Maypop, 1990

[Nichi]

Day will be erased in night.
The ground's surface will extend outward.

The new moon will be swallowed
in eclipse, and the mind in meditation

will be completely absorbed
by the Void inside it.

Lalleswari

[Nichi]

Dance when you're broken open.
Dance when you've torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance when you're perfectly free.
Struck, the dancer hears a tambourine inside her,
like a wave that crests into foam at the very top,
Begins.
Maybe you don't hear that tambourine,
or the tree leaves clapping time.
Close the ears on your head,
that listen mostly to lies and cynical jokes.
There are other things to see, and hear.
Music. Dance.
A brilliant city inside your soul!

- Rumi

[Nichi]

Sir, have you forgotten the promise
you made in your mother's womb,
to die before you die?

When will you remember
what you intended?

Don't let your donkey wander loose!
It will stray into your neighbor' s
saffron garden. Think of the damage
it might do, and the punishment!

Who then will carry you naked
to your own death?

- Lalla
14th Century North Indian mystic

[Nichi]

The path consists of neither words nor deeds
by Hakim Sanai
11th Century

English version by D.L. Pendlebury
Original Language Persian/Farsi

The path consists of neither words nor deeds:
only desolation can come from these,
and never any lasting edifice.
Sweetness and life are the words
of the man who treads this road in silence;
when he speaks it is not from ignorance,
and when he is silent it is not from sloth.

[Nichi]

The Dream Boat

"Who was it that came to me in a boat made of dream-fire,
With his flame brow and his sun-gold body?
Melted was the silence into a sweet secret murmur,
“Do you come now? is the heart’s fire ready?”

Sri Aurobindo

[runningstream]

"Rapture"  Blondie .

Toe to toe
Dancing very close
Barely breathing
Almost comatose
Wall to wall
People hypnotised
And they're stepping lightly
Hang each night in Rapture

Back to back
Sacrailiac
Spineless movement
And a wild attack

Face to face
Sadly solitude
And it's finger popping
Twenty-four hour shopping in Rapture

Fab Five Freddie told me everybody's fly
DJ's spinning I said my, my
Flash is fast, Flash is cool
Francois sais pas, Flashe no deux
And you don't stop, sure shot
Go out to the parking lot
And you get in your car and you drive real far
And you drive all night and then you see a light
And it comes right down and lands on the ground
And out comes a man from Mars
And you try to run but he's got a gun
And he shoots you dead and he eats your head
And then you're in the man from Mars
You go out at night, eatin' cars
You eat Cadillacs, Lincolns too
Mercuries and Subarus
And you don't stop, you keep on eatin' cars
Then, when there's no more cars
You go out at night and eat up bars where the people meet
Face to face, dance cheek to cheek
One to one, man to man
Dance toe to toe
Don't move too slow, 'cause the man from Mars
Is through with cars, he's eatin' bars
Yeah, wall to wall, door to door, hall to hall
He's gonna eat 'em all
Rapture, be pure
Take a tour, through the sewer
Don't strain your brain, paint a train
You'll be singin' in the rain
I said don't stop, do punk rock

Well now you see what you wanna be
Just have your party on TV
'Cause the man from Mars won't eat up bars when the TV's on
And now he's gone back up to space
Where he won't have a hassle with the human race
And you hip-hop, and you don't stop
Just blast off, sure shot
'Cause the man from Mars stopped eatin' cars and eatin' bars
And now he only eats guitars, get up!

[Nichi]

You were once a swan singing
melodies, Lalla. Now you're quiet.

Someone, I don't know who, has run off
with what belonged to you.

The millstone stops, and the hole
where the grain is fed in fills

with grain. The channel leading
to the grinding work is covered over

and hidden, and the miller
himself has disappeared.

- Lalla
14th Century North Indian mystic




From "Naked Song"
Versions by Coleman Barks
Maypop, 1992

[Nichi]

Becoming sky & earth

Becoming sky & earth
Wind & light
Becoming flesh & spirit
All that truly is
& all that which is not
Becoming the Lord,
He makes those who say,
"I" & "mine"
Dance in the show
Becoming sky
& standing there...
How can my words
praise Him?


Manikkavacakar
9th Century India
Shaivite

Original Language Tamil

[Nichi]

While unperishing love melted my bones,
     I cried
I shouted again and again,
     louder than the waves of the
     billowing sea,
I became confused,
     I fell,
     I rolled,
     I wailed,
Bewildered like a madman,
Intoxicated like a crazy drunk,
     so that people were puzzled
     and those who heard wondered.
Wild as a rutting elephant which cannot
     be mounted,
     I could not contain myself.


Manikkavacakar
9th Century India
Shaivite
English version by G. E. Yocum
Original Language Tamil

[Nichi]

People,
male and female,
blush when a cloth covering their shame
comes loose
               When the lord of lives
lives drowned without a face
in the world, how can you be modest?

When all the world is the eye of the lord,
onlooking everywhere, what can you
cover and conceal?


Akka Mahadevi
12th Century India
Shaivite
English version by A. K. Ramanujan
Original Language Kannada

[Nichi]

Fair mothers, my sweet ambrosia
Of Srirangam
With his lovely hair, his lovely mouth
His lovely eyes
And the lovely lotus from his belly button —
My husband —
Has my loose bangle
Made me loose indeed!

My Lord of Srirangam,
Rich and righteous,
Who owns this sea-swept earth entire
And the sky
Has made his possessions
Now complete
With the bangle which I wore
On my hand!

Andal

English version by Paula Marvelly
Original Language Tamil
India 9th Century
Hindu : Vaishnava

From Nacciyar Tirumoli

"The Tiruppavai and Nacciyar Tirumoli, composed by the ninth century Tamil mystic and poet Antal, were two of the most significant compositions by a female Hindu mystic, these works give expression to her powerful experiences through the use of vibrant and bold sensuality, in which Vishnu is her awesome, mesmerizing, and sometimes cruel lover. " https://www.aarweb.org/publications/secret-garland-antals-tiruppavai-and-nacciyar-tirumoli

[Nichi]

Something has reached out and taken in the beams of my eyes.
There is a longing, it is for his body, for every hair of that dark body.
All I was doing was being, and the Dancing Energy came by my house.
His face looks curiously like the moon, I saw it from the side, smiling.
My family says: "Don't ever see him again!" And they imply things in a low voice.
But my eyes have their own life; they laugh at rules, and know whose they are.
I believe I can bear on my shoulders whatever you want to say of me.
Mira says: Without the energy that lifts mountains, how am I to live?

~Mirabai
16th Century India
Krishna

Mirabai: Ecstatic Poems
Translated by Robert Bly

[Nichi]

I am that supreme and fiery force that sends forth all living sparks. Death hath no part in me, yet I bestow death, wherefore I am girt about with Wisdom as with wings. I am that living and fiery essence of the divine substance that glows in the beauty of the fields, and in the shining water, and in the burning sun and the moon and the stars, and in the force of the invisible wind, the breath of all living things, I breathe in the green grass and the flowers, and in the living waters...

~Hildegarde of Bingen
12th Century Germany
Catholic/Gnostic

(Book of Divine Works, circa 1167, in Partnow, The Quotable Woman, 48)

[Nichi]

Wiki:
Aretalogy

Aretalogy is a form of sacred biography where a deity's attributes are listed, in the form of poem or text, in the first person.

Usage

Often each line starts with the standard "I am …". Usually, aretalogies are self praising. They are found in the sacred texts of later Egypt, Mesopotamia and in Greco-Roman times. Aretalogies of Isis would be recited everyday by an Aretologist who would have to memorise a huge list of attributes which he/she would have to recite.(Priests and priestesses of Isis had equal rank in the temple.) The aretalogies of ancient Egypt provide some the most complete information extant about their deities.[1] Aretalogies are found as early as the Coffin Texts. In a Ptolemeic aretalogy, Aset (Isis) says about herself:

    I am Isis, ruler of every land.
    I was taught by Hermes (Thoth) and with Hermes devised letters, both hieroglyphic and demotic, that all might not be written with the same.
    I gave laws to mankind and ordained what no one can change.