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Beautiful non-dual poem: The Royal Song of Saraha

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Dear Robert,

 

Thanks for sending us this beautiful work of art.

 

Warm regards and best wishes,

 

Alan

 

 

> From Poetry Chaikhana

> Sacred Poetry from Around the World

> http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/S/Saraha/RoyalSongofS.htm

>

>

> THE ROYAL SONG OF SARAHA (DOHAKOSA)

>

> HOMAGE TO ARYAMANJUSRI!

> Homage to the destroyer of demonic power!

>

> The wind lashes calm waters into rollers and breakers;

> The king makes multifarious forms out of unity,

> Seeing many faces of this one Archer, Saraha.

>

> The cross-eyed fool sees one lamp as two;

> The vision and the viewer are one,

> You broken, brittle mind!

>

> Many lamps are lit in the house,

> But the blind are still in darkness;

> Sahaja is all-pervasive

> But the fool cannot see what is under his nose.

>

> Just as many rivers are one in the ocean

> All half-truths are swallowed by the one truth;

> The effulgence of the sun illuminates all dark corners.

>

> Clouds draw water from the ocean to fall as rain on the

> earth

> And there is neither increase nor decrease;

> Just so, reality remains unaltered like the pure sky.

>

> Replete with the Buddha's perfections

> Sahaja is the one essential nature;

> Beings are born into it and pass into it,

> Yet there is neither existence nor non-existence in it.

>

> Forsaking bliss the fool roams abroad,

> Hoping for mundane pleasure;

> Your mouth is full of honey now,

> Swallow it while you may!

>

> Fools attempt to avoid their suffering,

> The wise enact their pain.

> Drink the cup of sky-nectar

> While others hunger for outward appearances.

>

> Flies eat filth, spurning the fragrance of sandalwood;

> Man lost to nirvana furthers his own confusion,

> Thirsting for the coarse and vulgar.

>

> The rain water filling an ox's hoof-print

> Evaporates when the sun shines;

> The imperfections of a perfect mind,

> All are dissolved in perfection.

>

> Salt sea water absorbed by clouds turns sweet;

> The venom of passionate reaction

> In a strong and selfless mind becomes elixir.

>

> The unutterable is free of pain;

> Non-meditation gives true pleasure.

> Though we fear the dragon's roar

> Rain falls from the clouds to ripen the harvest.

>

> The nature of beginning and end is here and now,

> And the first does not exist without the last;

> The rational fool conceptualising the inconceivable

> Separates emptiness from compassion.

>

> The bee knows from birth

> That flowers are the source of honey;

> How can the fool know

> That samsara and nirvana are one?

>

> Facing himself in a mirror

> The fool sees an alien form;

> The mind with truth forgotten

> Serves untruth's outward sham.

>

> Flowers' fragrance is intangible

> Yet its reality pervades the air,

> Just as mandala circles are informed

> By a formless presence.

>

> Still water stung by an icy wind

> Freezes hard in starched and jagged shapes;

> In an emotional mind agitated by critical concepts

> The unformed becomes hard and intractable.

>

> Mind immaculate by nature is untouched

> By samsara and nirvana's mud;

> But just like a jewel lost in a swamp

> Though it retains its lustre it does not shine.

>

> As mental sloth increases pure awareness diminishes;

> As mental sloth increases suffering also grows.

> Shoots sprout from the seed and leaves from the branches.

>

> Separating unity from multiplicity in the mind

> The light grows dim and we wander in the lower realms;

> Who is more deserving of pity than he

> Who walks into fire with his eyes wide open?

>

> Obsessed with the joys of sexual embrace

> The fool believes he knows ultimate truth;

> He is like someone who stands at his door

> And, flirting, talks about sex.

>

> The wind stirs in the House of Emptiness

> Exciting delusions of emotional pleasure;

> Fallen from celestial space, stung,

> The tormented yogin faints away.

>

> Like a brahmin taking rice and butter

> Offering sacrifice to the flame,

> He who visualises material things as celestial ambrosia

> Deludes himself that a dream is ultimate reality.

>

> Enlightening the House of Brahma in the fontanelle

> Stroking the uvala in wanton delight,

> Confused, believing binding pleasure to be spiritual

> release,

> The vain fools calls himself a yogin.

>

> Teaching that virtue is irrelevant to intrinsic awareness,

> He mistakes the lock for the key;

> Ignorant of the true nature of the gem

> The fool calls green glass emerald.

>

> His mind takes brass for gold,

> Momentary peak experience for reality accomplished;

> Clinging to the joy of ephemeral dreams

> He calls his short-thrift life Eternal Bliss.

>

> With a discursive understanding of the symbol EVAM,

> Creating four seals through an analysis of the moment,

> He labels his peak experience sahaja:

> He is clinging to a reflection mistaken for the mirror.

>

> Like befuddled deer leaping into a mirage of water

> Deluded fools in their ignorance cling to outer forms

> And with their thirst unslaked, bound and confined,

> They idealise their prison, pretending happiness.

>

> The relatively real is free of intellectual constructs,

> And ultimately real mind, active or quiescent, is no-mind,

> And this is the supreme,the highest of the high,

> immaculate;

> Friends, know this sacred high!

>

> In mind absorbed in samadhi that is concept-free,

> Passion is immaculately pure;

> Like a lotus rooted in the slime of a lake bottom,

> This sublime reality is untouched by the pollution of

> existence.

>

> Make solid your vision of all things as visionary dream

> And you attain transcendence,

> Instantaneous realisation and equanimity;

> A strong mind binding the demons of darkness

> Beyond thought your own spontaneous nature is

> accomplished.

>

> Appearances have never ceased to be their original

> radiance,

> And unformed, form never had a substantial nature to be

> grasped;

> It is a continuum of unique meditation,

> In an inactive, stainless, meditative mind that is

> no-mind.

>

> Thus the I is intellect, mind and mind-forms,

> I the world, all seemingly alien show,

> I the infinite variety of vision-viewer,

> I the desire, the anger, the mental sloth -

> And bodhicitta.

>

> Now there is a lamp lit in spiritual darkness

> Healing the splits riven by the intellect

> So that all mental defilements are erased.

> Who can define the nature of detachment?

>

> It cannot be denied nor yet affirmed,

> And ungraspable it is inconceivable.

> Through conceptualisation fools are bound,

> While concept-free there is immaculate sahaja.

>

> The concepts of unity and multiplicity do not bring

> integration;

> Only through awareness do sentient beings reach freedom.

> Cognition of radiance is strong meditation;

> Abide in a calm, quiescent mind.

>

> Reaching the joy swollen land

> Powers of seeing expand,

> And there is joy and laughter;

> Even chasing objects there is no separation.

>

> From joy, buds of pure pleasure emerge,

> Bursting into blooms of supreme pleasure,

> And so long as outflow is contained

> Unutterable bliss will surely mature.

>

> What, where and by whom are nothing,

> Yet the entire event is imperative.

> Whether love and attachment or desirelessness

> The form of the event is emptiness.

>

> Like pigs we wallow in this sensual mire

> But what can stain our pearly mind?

> Nothing can ever contaminate it,

> And by nothing can we ever be bound.

>

>          

>    --------------------------

>

> Buddhist 8th century poem,

> translated by Kunzang Tenzin

>

>            

> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

>

>

>

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