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Looking for your light

Allama Prabhu, Allama Prabhu poetry, Yoga / Hindu, Yoga / Hindu poetry, Shaivite (Shiva) poetry, [TRADITION SUB2] poetry,  poetry by Allama Prabhu
(12th Century) Timeline

English version by
A. K. Ramanujan

Original Language
Kannada

Yoga / Hindu : Shaivite (Shiva)
12th Century

Looking for your light,
I went out:

     it was like the sudden dawn
     of a million million suns,

     a ganglion of lightnings
     for my wonder.

     O Lord of Caves,
     if you are light,
     there can be no metaphor.

 

 

-- from Speaking of Siva, by A K Ramanujan

Amazon.com

 


/ Photo by Aah-Yeah /

Themes

  Awakening
  Dawn
  Light
  Sun
 


Recommended Books


Speaking of Siva, by A K Ramanujan

 

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Commentary by Ivan M. Granger

Light is a central image in sacred poetry, suggesting the Divine not framed within a mental concept. But for genuine mystics, this light is no mere concept; it is directly experienced...

This sense of light is more than a brightness one might experience on a sunny afternoon. This light is perceived as being a living radiance that permeates everything, everywhere, always. It is a radiance that outshines everything--

like the sudden dawn
of a million million suns.

This light is immediately understood to be the true source of all things, the foundation on which the physicality of the material world is built.

The sense of boundaries and separation, long taken for granted by the mind as the fundamental nature of existence, suddenly seems illusory, for this light shines through all people and things. It has no edges, and the light of one is the light of another.

Looking for your light,
I went out.

Seeing yourself and the entire world radiant with this light, the old notion of a separate self is lost. Only the light truly exists. Everything else is a shifting game of light.

Seeing this light, "there can be no metaphor." Nothing can be compared to anything else, for everything is recognized as being that light. In this divine light, it is all one already.

 

 


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