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Yoga / Hindu : Shakta (Goddess-oriented)
18th Century

About Kamalakanta

Timeline (1769? - 1821?)

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English version by
Rachel Fell McDermott

Original Language
Bengali

Is my black Mother Syama really black?

Commentary by
Ivan M. Granger

Themes
  Heart
  Light
  Womb
 
 

 

Recommended Books

Kali: The Black Goddess of Dakshineswar, by Elizabeth U. Harding
Singing to the Goddess: Poems to Kali and Uma from Bengal, Translated by Rachel Fell McDermott

Is my black Mother Syama really black?
People say Kali is black,
but my heart doesn't agree.
If She's black,
how can She light up the world?
Sometimes my Mother is white,
sometimes yellow, blue, and red.
I cannot fathom Her.
My whole life has passed
               trying.

She is Matter,
then Spirit,
then complete Void.

It's easy to see
how Kamalakanta
     thinking these things
went crazy.

 

 

-- from Singing to the Goddess: Poems to Kali and Uma from Bengal, Translated by Rachel Fell McDermott

Amazon.com

 

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Commentary by Ivan M. Granger

Kamalakanta, like Ramprasad, was a saint who addressed his songs to the Bengali goddess Kali. Kali is both loving mother and terrible destroyer, the beginning as well as the end -- she is all of creation.

The lines, "She is Matter, / then Spirit, / then complete Void," almost sound like a Buddhist formulation. But, of course, such observations don't belong to any one sacred tradition alone; they are simply the result of direct mystical experience, whatever the religious framework. Matter reveals itself to be an unreal experience of surfaces and appearance. The so-called tangible reality perceived by the senses emerges from a divine and living radiance that "lights up the world." And at the heart of it all is a profound stillness, an emptiness that swallows everything so completely that all form and separation disappear. Yet, at the same time, that Void is also alive and pregnant with the whole unmanifest universe. This is Kali in her essential (formless) form: the Void that consumes everything and the Womb that gives birth to all of creation -- both at once.


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Ivan M. Granger's original poetry, stories and commentaries are Copyright © 2002 - 2008 by Ivan M. Granger.
All other material is copyrighted by the respective authors, translators and/or publishers.