Akka Mahadevi - You are the forest
Ivan M. Granger February 29th, 2008
You are the forest
by Akka Mahadevi
English version by A. K. Ramanujan
You are the forest
you are all the great trees
in the forest
you are bird and beast
playing in and out
of all the trees
O lord white as jasmine
filling and filled by all
why don’t you
show me your face?
— from Speaking of Siva, by A K Ramanujan
/ Photo by Hamed Masoumi /
I really like the image of God (in this case, Shiva) as a forest, as every tree in the forest, and simultaneously as the myriad of animals “playing in and out / of all the trees”.
Contemplate this image for a moment.
First, God is the forest — the place, the region. You might call this the field of being.
But then God is also seen as “all the great trees” — the green and living pillars that collectively embody that field of being. This is like stepping in awareness from the unmanifest to the manifest.
And then we have this living, moving, “playing” circulation of beings — “bird and beast” — that constantly flows “in and out” of the trees. Akka Mahadevi is evoking an image of individual points of consciousness playfully, naturally moving between the unmanifest and the manifest, between the interior and the exterior. And God is also every one of those points of awareness, circling relatively in and out of manifestation.
An image of God as all life and all things. Not merely being all things, but at the same time permeating and flowing through all things… “filling and filled by all.”
It inspires the mystic’s plea: “why don’t you / show me your face?” This vision of unified being within such swirling multiplicity awakens the fundamental hunger to witness the Singularity — for that is our true Beloved and our true home!
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Akka Mahadevi
India (12th Century) Timeline |
Mahadevi or Akka Mahadevi, sometimes called simply Akka, was born in Udutadi in the Karnataka region of India. At age 10, she was initiated as a devotee of Shiva, the pale-skinned god of destruction and rebirth, lord of yogis and ascetics. She worshiped Shiva in the form of Chennamallikarjuna, which means literally “Mallika’s beautiful Arjuna.”
It is said that Mahadevi was married by arrangement to Kausika, a local king. There were immediate tensions, however, as Kausika was a Jain, a group that tended to be wealthy and was, as a result, much resented by the rest of the population. Much of Akka’s poetry explores the themes of rejecting mortal love in favor of the everlasting, “illicit” love of God, and this seems to be the path she chose as well.
She ran away from her life of luxury to live as a wandering poet-saint, traveling throughout the region and singing praises to her Lord Shiva. A true ascetic, Mahadevi is said to have refused to wear any clothing — a common practice among male ascetics, but shocking for a woman.
In Kalyana, she met the famous Shaivite saints Basava and Allama Prabhu.
Akka spent the last of her days in the Srisailam area. Tradition says she died in her twenties, entering mahasamadhi (final divine union) with a flash of light.
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