Sunday, December 31, 2017

I Belong to Shiva

"I didn’t believe in it for a moment but I gulped down the wine of my own voice. And then I wrestled with the darkness inside me, knocked it down, clawed at it, ripped it to shreds.

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.

Let them hurl a thousand curses at me,
pain finds no purchase in my heart. I belong to Shiva. Can a scatter of ashes ruin a mirror? it gleams."

~ Lalleshwari, locally known mostly as Lal Ded, was a Kashmiri mystic of the Kashmir Shaivism school of philosophy. She was a creator of the mystic poetry called vatsun or Vakhs, literally "speech".

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