Poetry Chaikhana Blog

Ivan M. Granger November 18th, 2009

In bricks and in granite
by Civivakkiyar

English version by Kamil V. Zvelebil

In bricks and in granite,
in the red-rubbed lingam,
in copper and brass
is Siva’s abode –
      that’s what you tell us,
      and you’re wrong.
Stay where you are
and study your own selves.
Then you will BECOME
the Temple of God,
      full of His dance and spell
            and song.

— from The Poets of the Powers: Freedom, Magic, and Renewal, Translated by Kamil V. Zvelebil

/ Photo by paalia /

This poem exhibits the Tamil Siddha opposition to orthodoxy and mindless ritualism — which tend to externalize God, separating the individual from the presence of the Divine. Civivakkiyar is proclaiming that God (Siva) is not (only) found in temples and objects of worship, places and things that have been separated out and defined as sacred. Not “in bricks and in granite,” not in the “lingam” (a common representation of Siva), not in the ritual objects of “copper and brass.”

To say that God is in the temple or the altar or the icon and not elsewhere impoverishes us spiritually. That perspective makes us strangers to the presence of the sacred, which is everywhere, always.

The truth is that God is not ‘out there’ (wherever we imagine ‘there’ to be). The Divine is right here, right now, within us:

Stay where you are
and study your own selves.
Then you will BECOME
the Temple of God…

It is only within ourselves that we find the proper ground to worship and ultimately encounter God, whether we stand in the temple precinct, or the marketplace, the forest grove, or the office space.

When we stop running from ’sacred’ place to ’sacred’ place and, instead, finally recognize the living sacred presence everywhere — and most especially within ourselves — then we experience such an uninhibited flow of life and delight that we become filled with the eternal “dance and spell / and song.”

Civivakkiyar is one of the most revered of the Tamil Siddha poet-saints in southern India.

Scholars guess that Civivakkiyar lived perhaps in the 9th century. Some of his poetry makes use of relatively modern words borrowed from Sanskrit, meaning he can’t be placed in earlier centuries, yet he is mentioned by the earliest of Pattinattar’s poetry, meaning he must have lived before the 10th century.

Like many other Tamil Siddhas, he denounced orthodoxy, mindless ritualism, and the strict caste system, all the while being a genuinely realized mystic.

His Tamil poems are gathered together in a collection called simply the Patal (Songs)

More poetry by Civivakkiyar

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