Apr 30 2012
Mirabai – The Beloved Comes Home
The Beloved Comes Home
by Mirabai
English version by V. K. Sethi
The one I longed for has come home;
The raging fire of separation is quenched.
Now I rejoice with Him, I sing in bliss.
The peacocks at the cloud’s roar
Dance with unbound joy;
I rejoice in ecstasy
At the sight of my Beloved.
I am absorbed in His love;
My misery of wandering
In the world has ended.
The lily bursts into bloom
At the sight of the full moon;
Seeing Him, my heart blossoms in joy.
Peace permeates this body of mine;
His arrival has filled my home with bliss.
That very Lord has become my own
Who is ever the redeemer of His devotees.
Mira’s heart, scorched by the blaze of separation,
Has become cool and refreshed;
The pain of duality has vanished.
— from Mira: The Divine Lover (Mystics of the East Series), Translated by V. K. Sethi
/ Photo by Koshyk /
The one I longed for has come home;
The raging fire of separation is quenched.
Now I rejoice with Him, I sing in bliss.
Mirabai, the great lover devotee of God, sings to us of the joy of union, communion…
The lily bursts into bloom
At the sight of the full moon
In Indian metaphysics, the masculine aspect of the Divine is often compared to the beauty of the moon, which the (feminine) soul instinctively yearns for. And mystics the world over compare the experience of spiritual illumination with the gently descending light of the full moon.
The lily that bursts into bloom is the crown chakra, the energetic seat of enlightenment, often described as a brilliant thousand petaled lotus flower (water lily). When awakened, it unfolds, and the lover experiences mystical union while bathed in light.
Seeing Him, my heart blossoms in joy.
Peace permeates this body of mine;
His arrival has filled my home with bliss.
The body and mind come to rest, tensions fall away. The awareness is filled with peace and immense bliss. The heart too opens. When the attention is drawn inward, the wide open heart experiences this great bliss as joy; when the attention turns outward, the heart feels an all-embracing love.
In this bliss, in this wholeness, the fundamental pain of separation is lost. Amidst the larger, blissful sense of Self that emerges, separation is perceived to have been an illusion, phantom-like, dispelled along with that collection of psychic tensions carried since early childhood.
This is how Mirabai can sing–
Mira’s heart, scorched by the blaze of separation,
Has become cool and refreshed;
The pain of duality has vanished.
I look outside: such a lovely spring day in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. A perfect day to sit at the doorsill, awaiting the Beloved’s arrival.
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Mirabai
India (1498 – 1565?) Timeline |
Mirabai is one of India’s most beloved poet-saints. Her devotional poetry — directed toward Giridhara, a form of the great God-man Krishna — is so intensely personal that it borders on the erotic while, at the same time, it remains transcendentally spiritual.
Mirabai was born into a noble Rajput family in Northern India. She was married to the crown prince of Mewar, but she made it clear that her love was for Giridhara alone.
Many of the tales of Mirabai’s life focus on her struggles with her husband’s royal family. They apparently did not approve of her constant devotion to God to the neglect of her husband and family. And her preference for the company of wandering holy men was not considered proper for a princess. These conflicts grew to such a point that it is said they attempted to kill her, once with a deadly snake, another time by poison, but she was miraculously saved both times.
When her husband died, Mirabai refused to throw herself on his funeral pyre and eventually took up the life of a wandering mendicant and poet, immersing herself in her love for God alone.
‘The misery of wandering in the world ended’, what more can one say? Not wandering in the sense that which we are used to–physically searching–but rather the inner search for what we want to feel is really our own image of truth. So often not communicated because of differences of desires and understandings and desperately sought without reserve or surrender to opposition or frustration.
This beautiful poem is simple, yielding to any person’s reading. A pleasure at the end of a long day’s work looking for the same.
Such wonder can touch the heart with silent tears.
Thanks Mirabai & thanks Ivan for sending her .
that is a really nice poem. i really liked it.
Oh, what a beauty! Thank you!
Pure unadulterated heaven on earth.
Such radiant beauty
My heart is with you. Welcome home to one and all.
I want to share my own poem with poetry lovers everywhere,
Bless you all.
Finally, after 7 patence years the last line has come home to this poem… and brough life anew..
Blessings my friends.
The Home Coming
In coming home to Thy Self
We can uncover incredible wealth
From the cards that life has dealt.
It’s a wealth that’s not so easy to see
With eyes trained in fantasy
And for those who only deal in certainty.
From deep within what do we find?
A person who is gentle and kind
With a very curious mind!
That’s desperate to unwind
Caught up in mental columbine!
But the task is not so dire
If we use the element of fire
Burning through to the wire
Spurred on by our hearts desire.
Lying beneath a benign face
Is a tapestry of life carved in lace
With not a single stitch out of place
For this sentient being to the human race.
For those who have the heart to see
They live a life of wonder and glee
And spend time to seek the little me.
Little me, has a story so bold
Hidden in a heart ‘On Hold’
With the lillies breath it open and unfolds…….
The moon is hidden from me. I no longer feel the poetry. Something has happened in my brain, and now my longing is no longer the same.