Tell me, what are you doing now, Mind

by Mahendranath Battacharya

English version by Rachel Fell McDermott
Original Language Bengali

Tell me, what are you doing now, Mind,
sitting there with a blind eye?
There's someone in your own house
but you're so oblivious
you've never noticed!
There's a secret path
with a small room at the end --
and what an amazing sight inside:
caskets filled with jewels
that you never even knew about.
There's a lot of coming and going along that path.
Go, upstairs, to the highest room,
and you'll see the moon rising.

Premik says excitedly,
Keep your eyes open;
if you want to be awake in yoga
you must travel this secret way.

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

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Commentary by Ivan M. Granger

Autumn has begun to settle in where I live in Colorado. Crisp days offer new colors to the eye. The weather makes you want to wrap up warm and step outside to go in search of secret places where forgotten stories can be found amidst dappled golds and shadows. Returning home, you sip warm tea and read a favorite book.

Autumn has always seemed like the perfect season for poetry...

--

It is the final day of Navaratri, India's nine day celebration of the goddess, so I thought a poem by a goddess devotee would be appropriate for today...


I love the way Mahendranath Battacharya addresses this poem to his own mind in the third person -- a rather dim-witted third person, at that.

The poem becomes a sort of self-instruction while, at the same time, it gets its audience laughing. The Mind is commonly imagined to be in charge, the source of knowledge but, instead, Battacharya (like his fellow Bengali poet, Ramprasad) sees it as the fool messing everything up with its obliviousness and inability to notice what is in its "own house." The "someone" who has crept into his house is the thieving ego.

This poem reflects the Tantric practices of Mahendranath Battacharya which emphasize a very precise knowledge of subtle energetic pathways that must be traversed by the Kundalini energy when it is awakened. With most people the Kundalini force is said to sit dormant at the base of the spine. Through spiritual practice and devotion, it is awakened as a fiery, energetic charge that rises up "the secret way" of the subtle channel along the spine, leading "upstairs" to the skull.

The "small room at the end," the "highest room" is the mystical chamber (in some traditions referred to as the Bridal Chamber) contained in the bowl of the skull. It is here, amidst a flood of light, that the Kundalini (the Goddess Energy) joins in union with Siva (the Divine Masculine Energy), producing enlightenment and spiritual ecstasy. This is the real treasure of life, the radiant wealth each of us carries hidden within us, "caskets filled with jewels." Find this room and "you'll see the moon [of enlightenment] rising!"



Recommended Books: Mahendranath Battacharya

Singing to the Goddess: Poems to Kali and Uma from Bengal



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