I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Dĕd

by Lalla, Ranjit Hoskote (Translation)

The poems of the fourteenth-century Kashmiri mystic Lal Ded, popularly known as Lalla, strike us like brief and blinding bursts of light. Emotionally rich yet philosophically precise, sumptuously enigmatic yet crisply structured, these poems are as sensuously evocative as they are charged with an ecstatic devotion. stripping away a century of Victorian-inflected translations and paraphrases, and restoring the jagged, colloquial power of Lalla's voice, in Ranjit Hoskote's new translation these poems are glorious manifestos of illumination

Genres: Poetry, India, Classics, Hinduism, Spirituality, Religion, Philosophy

328 pages, Paperback

First published April 24, 2012

About the author

Lalla, also affectionately called Lalli, Lal Ded, Lal Diddi ("Granny Lal"), or Lalleshwari, was born near Srinagar in Kashmir in northern India.

Little is known with certainty about her life, other than hints that come to us through her poetry and songs.

She was a young bride, married, tradition says, at the age of twelve. After moving into her husband's family home, she was abused by her mother-in-law and ignored by her husband.

A story is told about "Lalla's Lake" -- one day when returning from the well with a clay water jug on her head, her husband lost his temper over her delay and struck the jug in his anger. The clay vessel broke but, miraculously, the water held its shape above her head. This becomes an important symbol of the heavenly nectar that rains down from the crown.

Finally, Lalla could endure no more mistreatment and, in her early 20s, she left. She became a disciple of a respected saint in the Kashmir Shaivism tradition of yoga and she took up the life of a holy woman dedicated God in the form of Shiva. Lalla began wandering about, village to village, going naked or nearly naked, and singing songs of enlightenment.

Lalla's songs are short, using the simple, direct language of the common people, yet she touches on complex yogic techniques and the most elevated states of awareness.

The name Lalla can be translated as either "seeker" or "darling."

Lalla is deeply loved by both Hindus and Muslims in Kashmir today, even amidst the terrible fighting ravaging the land. There is a saying that in Kashmir only two words have any meaning: Allah and Lalla.

Reviews

[Proustitute (on hiatus) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Going on a pilgrimage is like falling in love
with the greenness of faraway grass.

*

Holy water hasn’t touched my skin. I’ve lost the plot.

*

It’s a question of what your tongue wants.
It’s hard work to tell what it wants, but keep going:
the city you’re dreaming of, it’s at the end of this road.

*

Fool, you won’t find your way out by praying from a book.
The perfume on your carcass won’t give you a clue.
Focus on the Self.
That’s the best advice you can get.

[Edita · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m towing my boat across the ocean with a thread.
Will He hear me and help me across?
Or am I seeping away like water from a half-baked cup?
Wander, my poor soul, you’re not going home anytime soon.
*
The truth of all my dreams hit me in one line:
I, Lalla, find myself on a lake, no shore in sight.

[Sabelka · Rating 5 out of 5]

"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." (48)


"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." (52)


"Knowledge is a garden. Hedge it with calm,
self-restraint, right effort. Let your past acts graze in it,
goats fattened for the altar of the Mother Goddess.
When the garden is bare, the goats killed,
you can walk free. (65)


"Whatever my hands did was worship,
whatever my tongue shaped was prayer.
That was Shiva's secret teaching:
I wore it and it became my skin." (64)


"My mind-horse straddles the sky,
crossing a hundred thousand miles in a
blink.
It takes wisdom to bridle that horse,
he can break the wheels of breath's chariot." (77)


"You're not happy ruling a kingdom,
you're not happy giving it away." (87)


“If only I’d trained my mind to gather my
breath-streams,
played surgeon, cut and bound them,
ground pain into
an antidote.” (102)


“[I] became a bell that the clear note of Him
rang through.” (112)


“Master, leave these palm leaves and birch barks
to parrots who recite the name of God in a cage.
Good luck, I say, to those who think they’ve read
the scriptures.
The greatest scripture is the one that’s playing in
my head.” (128)


“(…) Losing the scriptures in the thick fog of my practice,
I stumbled on second sight.” (129)


“(…) if you break in the mustang of your mind.” (137)

[Magdalena · Rating 4 out of 5]

I absolutely loved the poems, the translations/interpretations of them. Stunningly beautiful and fully enjoyable, I adore them to bits! I'm having very mixed feelings about the comments, though... To me it seems that the comments for the most part are coming from a perspective of "textual learning and abstraction" (to use Hoskote's own words), so although it all comes across as really well researched and I'm sure Hoskote is very well-read, there's -- in my personal opinion -- quite a bit of vital depth, freedom and heartfulness missing... To interpret someone else's direct personal experience of divine relativity and the transcendental like this, from a mostly (completely?) theoretical or philosophical point of view,... it simply doesn't do it for me. I'd say this is an excellent read from a perspective of literary studies, but as a form of contemplative meditation I'll keep rereading only the poems, skipping the comments. I'd definitely recommend this book to others, especially those who enjoy the likes of Rumi, Hafiz, Kabir, Tagore etc.

[Joseph Schreiber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of course this book's not finished with me yet. I need to spend some more time with Lal Ded. At the moment, one of the most striking features is that, in light of the current state of affairs in Kashmir, her voice (and those of the others who, in devotion, contributed to and transmitted her teachings down through the years) is especially vital and important.

Ranjit Hoskote spent 20 years translating these short pieces for a twenty-first century reader. His care, attention to detail, and his background as a poet and cultural critic, make this a valuable addition to the work on this revered mystic, and an inspiring volume for contemporary readers from all backgrounds.

A longer review can be found here: https://roughghosts.com/2019/08/29/sh...

[Ivan Granger · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are several translations of the poetry of Lalla available in English now, good ones too, but Ranjit Hoskote's versions are my favorite. They seem to marry a love of the original language with a poet's sense of English, without ever losing the mystic's fire at the center of each poem. Recommended.

[Andy Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poems to read slowly, deeply, many times. Ranjit Hoskote's translations and background notes are meticulous yet vernacular, informed yet deeply felt, intelligent and spiritual.

[Scriptor Ignotus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lalla (aka Lal Ded, “Grandmother Lal,” or “Lal the Womb”) was an itinerant fourteenth-century mystic, poet, and mendicant in the syncretistic (though still classifiably Hindu) spiritual tradition of Kashmir Shaivism. Revered for centuries by Kashmiri Hindus and Muslims alike for the rapturous, experiential intensity of her poetry—conveying as it does the realization of her personal identity with the divine—Lalla’s legend and corpus were equally at home in Sufi and Shaiva circles, constituting a loosely-defined, variegated tradition whose various local and sectarian permutations were able to coexist free from any exclusivist proprietary claims on the part of any one community.

This harmonious state of affairs was tragically undermined in the twentieth century: first by the committal of Lalla’s heretofore oral canon to print—a move that inadvertently posited an “authoritative” Lalla, inevitably favoring some strands of her tradition over others—and second by the sharpening of national and sectarian divisions since the late 1980s, which has transformed the most venerated icons of Kashmir’s cultural heritage—Lalla foremost among them—into objects of tribal competition. The exodus of Kashmir’s Hindu minority in the 1990s, coupled with the gradual replacement of the region’s traditional syncretic Sufism by a more hard-line “arabocentric” Islam, have contributed to the ossification of the melting-pot world in which the Lalla corpus took shape.

While there is little reason to doubt Lalla’s historicity, the collection of vakhs attributed to her has received the work of many other poets—of both genders and multiple religious persuasions—over the centuries. Though anachronisms give some of the vakhs away as later additions, they all at least speak to a particular spiritual tenor that the historical Lalla must have embodied: intent on personal illumination, fiercely critical of clerical authority and empty ritualism, proudly alienated from the mocking herd, demotic in expression, and punctuated by exuberant flashes of the mystical oneness of all things in the Supreme Self—identified by Lalla interchangeably as Shiva or Vishnu.

Though the poems themselves make little reference to Lalla’s personal background, a rough hagiography has become widely disseminated. According to this legendary account, Lalla was born to a Brahmin family. Married at the age of twelve, her husband either abused or ignored her, distrusting of her spiritual proclivities, while her mother-in-law starved her, giving rise to a Kashmiri saying: “Whether they kill a ram or a sheep, Lalla will get a stone to eat.” Leaving home and renouncing her domestic life at the age of twenty-six, she became a disciple of a Shaiva saint named Sed Boyu, accepting initiation into his order before heading out into the world for a largely solitary life as a wandering mendicant: an exceptionally rare move for a fourteenth-century Kashmiri woman to make, even among renunciates. If there is any trace of the historical Lalla in vakhs 92 and 93, her eccentricity may have made her an object of scorn and ridicule among “polite” society; perhaps reflecting an insecurity at the sight of a high-born woman “de-classing” herself and abstaining from traditional expectations. If so, Lalla embraced her social alienation, allowing it to cement her closeness to Shiva:

“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.” (92)

“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.” (93)

The Kashmiri Shaivism that informs Lalla’s devotional context is a non-dualist system of thought that emerged in the eighth century and enjoyed fruitful cross-pollination with tantra, yoga, and Yogācāra Buddhism. It was based primarily around the worship of Shiva and Shakti (often personified as Parvati); the former being the supreme Lord and the latter representing the primordial cosmic energy through which all things are created and sustained. Beyond this dyad is an all-unitive essence called Parama-shiva, or the Shiva-principle. Shiva, through his union with Shakti, creates the world as a necessary yet playful expression of himself, constantly renewing it through emanations from the Shiva-principle called spanda: the cosmic “vibrations” whose rhythm of expansion and contraction comprises the cosmic cycle by which all things emerge from Shiva and dissolve back into him:

“To the yogi, the whole wide world ripples into Nothingness:
it splashes like water on the water of Infinity.
When that Void melts, Perfection remains.
Hey priest-man, that’s the only lesson you need!” (114)

The Shiva-principle descends to the phenomenal world through the progressively lower energies of knowledge, will, and action. Like non-dualist Vedantins, Kashmiri Shaivites hold that all dualities are illusory, a product of deficient self-knowledge, and that the true Self is one with the Divine. Realizing one’s ultimate non-difference from Shiva allows one to freely and blissfully partake of the lila, or “play” of Shiva.

This realization of her own identity in Shiva—the internality of the divine, transcending and encompassing all dualities—is the most consistent theme of Lalla’s poetry:

“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.” (15)

"Lord! I’ve never known who I really am, or You.
I threw my love away on this lousy carcass
and never figured it out: You’re me, I’m You.
All I ever did was doubt: Who am I? Who are You?” (25)

“He laughs when you laugh, sneezes in your sleep,
yawns for you, coughs for you.
He bathes every day in the river of your thoughts.
He’s naked, all year round, and walks where you walk.
Just go up and introduce yourself.” (72)

“The Lord has spread the subtle net of Himself across the world.
See how He gets under your skin, inside your bones.
If you can’t see Him while you’re alive,
don’t expect a special vision once you’re dead.” (105)

“Who sees Self as Other, Other as Self,
who sees day as night, night as day,
whose mind does not dance between opposites,
he alone has seen the Teacher
who is First among the Gods.” (109)

“Neither You nor I, neither object nor meditation,
just the All-Creator, lost in His dreams.
Some don’t get it, but those who do
are carried away on the wave of Him.” (116)

She wars fiercely with her false ego-self; analogous to what the Pauline writings of the New Testament refer to as the “outer man” or the “old man”:

“I locked the doors of my body,
trapped the thief of life and held my breath.
Chaining him in my heart’s dark cellar,
I stripped off his skin with the whip of Om.” (56)

She holds fast to the light kindled within her, aiming to manifest it to the world:

“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.” (52)

While the Lalla corpus is not entirely devoid of devotional language, perhaps anticipating to some degree the emergence of the bhakti movement, her poems correlate primarily with jñāna mārga: the path of liberation through knowledge, rather than through devotion or karmic action; in keeping with the descending hierarchy of cosmic energies articulated by Kashmir Shaivism.

“When day is snuffed out, the night
glows. The earth swells to touch the
sky. The new moon swallows the
demon of eclipse. Shiva is worshiped
best when thought lights up the Self.” (37)

Another notable feature is the level of vitriol directed at all forms of ritualism, which places obstacles in the way of one’s direct, transformative encounter with the divine:

“Fool, you won’t find your way out by praying from a book.
The perfume on your carcass won’t give you a clue.
Focus on the Self.
That’s the best advice you can get.” (41)

“Don’t flail about like a man wearing a blindfold.
Believe me, He’s [God] in here.
Come in and see for yourself.
You’ll stop hunting for Him all over.” (42)

“It covers your shame, keeps you from shivering.
Grass and water are all the food it asks.
Who taught you, priest-man,
to feed this breathing thing to your thing of stone?” (59)

“Master, leave these palm leaves and birch barks
To parrots who recite the name of God in a cage.
Good luck, I say, to those who think they’ve read the scriptures.
The greatest scripture is the one that’s playing in my head.” (128)

With the Yogācārins, Lalla holds that all phenomena are reducible to perception, carrying no essential weight or substance of their own:

“Your mind is the ocean of life.
It can throw up an angry tide
of fire-harpoons that stick in the flesh.
But weigh them, and they weigh nothing.” (86)

No spiritual elitist, Lalla proclaims the availability of liberation for all, regardless of station or lifestyle:

“Hermit or householder: same difference.
If you’ve dissolved your desires in the river of time,
you will see that the Lord is everywhere and is perfect.
As you know, so shall you be.” (123)

Lalla is legit.

[Amrendra · Rating 4 out of 5]

The poems of the 14th century Kashmiri mystic Lal Ded are brilliantly epiphanic and provocative at the same time. These poems are as likely to demand that the Divine reveal Itself, as to complain of Its bewildering and protean ubiquity.

They prize clarity of self knowledge above both the ritualist’s mastery of observances and the ascetic’s professional athleticism. If they scoff at the scholar who substitutes experience with scripture and the priest who cages his God in a routine of prayers, they also reject the renouncer’s austere mortification of the body. Across the expanse of her poetry, the author evolves from a wanderer, uncertain of herself and looking for anchorage in a potentially hostile landscape, into a questor who has found belonging beneath a sky that is continuous with her mind.

Lalla’s profound solitude as well as the gift of her poems, stir a unique transcendental medley which has crossed great distances in space and time, to enter many hearts.

Wear just enough to keep the cold out,
eat just enough to keep hunger from your door.
Mind, dream yourself beyond Self and Other.
Remember, this body is just pickings for jungle crows.

[Esther · Rating 4 out of 5]

A king's flywhisk, baldachin, chariot, throne,
pageants, evenings at the theatre, a downy bed.
Which of these will endure
or blot out the fear of death?
.
Delusion's captive, you threw yourself away like flotsam on the ocean of life.
You broke the embarkment
and fell into the marsh of shadows.
When Yama's warders come to drag you away bleeding,
who can blot out the fear of death?

[Callum D · Rating 5 out of 5]

“You won’t find the Truth by crossing your legs and holding your breath. Daydreams won’t take you through the gateway of release. You can stir as much salt as you like in water, it won’t become the sea.”

Beautiful soul, beautifully translated!

[Saadullah]

In translation, among other 'mystic' translated poets, this still stands out -- chiefly because of the curious biography of the author. The translator's end-notes and introducing essay give great context.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lal Ded was a fourteenth-century Kashmiri mystic.

Her poems are short philosophical/emotional meditations. Ranjit Hoskote's translation is great but he also writes a brilliant introduction, which really helps contextualize her writing. There's also a note on every poem, which helps with that too. Especially some of the more contemporary references. Not sure this would be for everyone, but I think if you're of a contemplative mind and you like having things to meditate upon then it might be perfect.

I fear that someone might also try and take them and turn them into some bite-sized self-help book that left them dangling in the air free of context and religion. Westerners, in particular, have a habit of doing this - see Rumi - the Penguin translation - as an egregious example, which manages to de-Islam a lot of Rumi's poetry.

There's a lot to learn from this book.

[Margot Bigg · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lot of old Indian poetry has already been translated by loquacious Victorians, and much of Laleshwari's work is out there already. There also seems to be a trend in India of retranslating many of these old works into modern English, and that's what Hoskote does with I, Lala. Her vakhs are moving and profound, and in simple enough English that the reader is able to focus on the deeper meaning of the poems, rather than get caught up in the words. He also provides alternative translations when Kashmiri double-entendres pop up.

[Naomi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Each of Lal Ded's vakhs is a classic spiritual poem demanding reflection and consideration over and over again. An engaging collection to challenge the spirit.

[Gnome Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incomparable verses, with copious intro and commentary.

[Sri Harsha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poems that express the journey of a Yogi

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

They kept coming, they kept coming, now they've got to go.
They've got to keep moving, day or night,
and where they came from, there they've got to go.
From nothing to nothing to nothing and why?

*

[chroniclesofvish · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not very religious but the way Lal Děd is devoted to Shiva makes me know more about him.

Lalleshwari pens beautiful poems and I wish I'd read them in the native language rather than the translated version.
Even when translated in English, the language does justice to her vakhs.

It is difficult to name my favorite poems for each one praises Shiva with Lalla's tongue.

But if I got to name just one, this would be-
"Alone, I crossed the Field of Emptiness,
dropping my reason and my senses.
I stumbled on my own secret there
and flowered, a lotus rising from a marsh."

[Lluis · Rating 5 out of 5]

La edición de Penguin digitalizada.

Se unen tradiciones en la teología negativa, dando con lo mismo que el Lao Tse y el areopagita, la forma clásica es poesía. Y es una voz firme y apasionada, llena de reflexión y sentir en lo real.

"So many times I've drunk the wine of the Sindhu river.
So many roles I've played on this stage.
So many pieces of human flesh I've eaten.
But I'm still the same Lalla, nothing's changed."

[Anshul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wear the robe of wisdom,
brand Lalla's words on your heart,
lose yourself in the soul's light,
you too shall be free.

A collection of vakhs of the 14th century Kashmiri mystic Lal Ded, meticulously reworked and translated with great sensitivity by Ranjit Hoskote. With this new translation these poems were brought to light with a new soul carrying this sense of manifestation that with a doubt reflects Lalla's own devotion.

[Brenda Azucena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Muy bellos aforismos para la espiritualidad cotidiana. Mi favorito:
Train your thoughts on the path of immortality. Leave them unguided and they’ll grow into monsters. But take heart, most of the time, they’re like children crying for milk.

[Rosetta Whyte · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved the poetry

[Pri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read and re-read it a million times. Can’t get over it. Only love for Lalla and respect for Mr.Ranjit for translating it.

[Levi]

"The mill goes round and round in slow circles
but the millstone guards its secret.
Sometimes, the wheel grinds closer to the grain,
sometimes, the grain rolls closer to the wheel."

[miss world · Rating 5 out of 5]

would be perfect to go back and re read some of the poems :) so beautiful

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely collection that doesn’t try to hide the religiously specific nature of this mystical poetry.

[Mikita J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful beautiful heartfelt poems.

“I hacked my way through six forests
until the moon woke up inside me.
The sky’s breath sang through me,
dried up my body’s substance.
I roasted my heart in passion’s fire
and found Shankara!”

“You are sky and earth,
day, wind-breath, night.
You are grain, sandal paste, flowers, water.
Substance of my offering, You who are All,
what shall I offer You?”