The original lyrics go thus, अवधूता गगन घटा गहरानी रे पश्चिम दिशा से उलटी बादल, रुम झूम बरसे मेहा उठो ग्यानी खेत संभारो, बिगै निसरेगा पानी ||१|| निरत सुरत के बेल बनावो, बीजा बोवो निज धानी दुबध्या धूप जमन नहि पावे, बोवो नामकी धानी ||२|| चारो कोने चार रखवाले, चुग ना जावे मृग धानी काट्या खेत भींडा घरल्यावे, जाकी पुरान किसानी ||३|| पाच सखी मिल करे रसोई, जिहमे मुनी और ग्यानी कहे कबीर सुनो भाई साधो, बोवो नामकी धानी ||४||
[Lyrics source- https://badgujarmahesh.wordpress.com/ The English translation is given below in Italics]
"Oh Avadhoota! The sky has turned pitch dark. The night is approaching."
Avadhoota is the wise one, he/she who has embarked on the spiritual journey and advanced a lot on the path. Kabir is sounding an alarm of caution. The premonition is that bad times are yet to come and life's trials and tribulations, true raw pain and suffering, are yet to hit you hard. "Alas, look thitherward! They have almost come. Beware!" The sky turning dark is a very significant metaphor for duh+kha (literally - bad sky! ) It could also mean there is a sense of gloomy hopelessness that is soon going to set in.
"From the west, return thunderstorm clouds, drops of rain have begun to pour"
West is the direction of decay and South is the direction of death. Southwestern monsoons are prevalent in India, which bring hailstorms and cause havoc annually.
This is a metaphor for the frequent tears and fears which occupy the mind, born out of the helplessness and uncertainty of the path. Only those advanced (Avadhoota) are sensitive enough to feel the helplessness of not finding any real milestones despite their determined efforts to keep walking along. They walk alone hence tread the least trodden path and are their own guides and route map. This puts an enormous burden of uncertainty on them.
"Wake up Jnani! Tend to your fields. Otherwise the rain floods will wash it away all clean!"
Kabir is arousing the wisdom within the Avadhoota. He is , almost hurriedly, instructing him to look at his well nurtured field, verily his sweat and toil. The field here is the field of the mind. And the crops are the fruition of good sadhana, the well cultivated thoughts, intelligence, compassion, maturity, powers and experience.
Extreme desperation and depression could truly undo all the efforts and fruits of hard labour thereby wiping them clean.
"Grow creepers of void focus"
Kabir is instructing to take quick refuge into objectless absorption (samadhi - void focus) as a means to bind the spiritual crops to the ground. Here creeper could mean the Nadi-s. To ground the crops, creepers are grown. Going into quietude within from time to time, helps ground the understanding.
Why void? An absorption without an object is the void. To focus one needs an object. But Kabir is perplexingly and purposefully using paradoxical language to hint at such an absorption which is the emptying of the mind of all objects.
"Sow the seeds of yourself"
In such a state of void, he is advising to plant seeds of authenticity in the mind.
It could also mean the seeds of the self- the subject. Psychologically too, only when the true self(the shadow and ego) is allowed expression does one become happy in the long run. Trying to repress anything will not be beneficial. All aspects, good or bad, polite or rude, lust or greed, love or contempt, must come out in one final purging. Those inhibitions must be necessarily removed for the state of madness to set in.
"Beware of weeds of doubts growing rampant"
Self doubt is common in those who are sensitive, especially if spiritual too. Philosophy is all about looking at everything very attentively, barring no one or no authority, not even oneself. It is essential to analyse our own biases and own conduct. A healthy amount of introspection is beneficial. But sometimes we go on long journeys of self doubt and overthinking, thus weakening the fertile mind, and as parasites consumes the mental energy.
How do we overcome this?
"Sow the seeds of the Name"
Repetition of God's name. Essentially devotedly submitting to the chosen deity, and hence just leaving all up to him. Once love smitten, anyone will naturally keep thinking of her beloved, imagining the future with him, recollecting her sweet and bitter experiences with him. She then has no time or space for other thoughts, her family, her job , her friends or her health. Similarly, Kabir suggests the forceful repetition of deity's name( or mantra and visualise the form) in hopes of being love struck soon, and as means to avoid overthinking.
"Keep your guards up with scouts in four directions. Do not let the deer munch away the crops"
The deer here is the trap of wealth, beauty and fame. (Alludes to the incident of Seeta being attracted to the golden deer in Ramayana.) Sometimes, an Irresistible urge for accumulating, reproducing or acknowledging takes over us. These are "animal" instincts. If given into these, one loses much of the hard earned maturity and strength and falls back to square one.To keep them away, he commands keeping scouts in all directions. Keep a close watch out for these urges that can originate from any trigger. Scout is symbol of discipline. 'Shun those triggers away with confidence and masculine detachment.'
"The entire endeavour of farming is not complete until the harvest is brought back home."
The spiritual journey is not to be assumed complete until the fruits of labor are taken home, i.e. back to our original state. Hence, regardless of absence of milestones, keep walking and progressing until we regain our 'originally' lost-and-found state(of godhood?) Do not let our guards drop till then and keep striving!
"The five friends, come together and con you. Worry not for not even the wisest sages and saints were spared from their frauds."
Five friends could be thought of as the five elements or five senses. The elements come together to make this illusion of a real solid obvious world and entice you deep into its hollow crevices. 'Fret not for you are not the only or first one to be duped.' They have played tricks on even some of the greatest and wisest of sages and seekers. Be assured also that they were able to see through it finally. But how!?
"Kabira speaks now, please listen intently, O Sadhu! Sow seeds of the Name. "
Kabira, address the listener as Sadhu, the good one! For he too knows the 'bad' ones do not listen to him anyway. Though Kabira pours out the song of advice for the world, only those with good ears hear him, and of those, only a few truly listen.
Soon after drawing our attention he drops his final bomb frantically commanding us to just keep taking God's name.
But why does he repeat the same advice? For emphasis, possibly.
But he is also known for his nirguni tones. Naama could also mean the word of God- Om - the primordial vibration. Repeated recital and contemplation on Om is advised to even the highest sannyasins, as a means to declutter and disillusion the apparent reality of wake, dreams and sleep. He ends this with a powerful punch, a well renowned simple yet profound method to escape the five friends' swindle.
A short story of naive, intense longing for that which is silent
She was born into a very poor family of tribal origins. The family thus lived on the outskirts, as was the case with all tribal families in those times. The family was so poor that surviving on one meal a day, or no meal at all, was second nature to her. As if poverty were not enough as a cause for grief, she lost her mother at a very young age. Her father was her entire family — father, mother, brother, and sister. Her father tried to provide for both of them by selling timber and other resources that he collected from the forest area surrounding the Malai Mahadeshwara hills.
Malai Mahadeshwara Hills Photo by- Tumukurmeen, Creative Common License
However, that being insufficient, she would, at that young age, supplement this meagre income by doing domestic chores in the houses of the villagers. On many occasions they had to borrow money for food. In spite of their dire poverty and her young age, she was never tempted to steal from the houses where she did domestic chores. It did not matter to her that people did not praise her integrity or, in the least, respect her. On occasions when she could have secretly slipped a good coin here or there into her saree blouse, she upheld her integrity and shunned stooping low. She would rather go hungry. The saving grace in all this was her father, who loved her dearly. Upon returning home, he would look after her with much care, put her on his lap, sing her to sleep, and put the rags that he owned on her to protect her from the cold — both external and that which emanated from within, out of frustration arising from their circumstances. He had become old, cold, and bitter. Time passed with no respite from poverty, and when she turned sixteen, he passed away.
She, as good as, lost her mind upon losing her beloved father. It was as though his passing gave her no reason to live. She took to the streets, to the dungeons, to the drug houses, to nightly duties, to the dens. People treated her badly, like an animal — nay, in fact, like an inanimate object. She completely lost all her former dignity. And then there was what seemed to be a ray of hope. In spite of all this, she was very beautiful. One of her lustful clients decided to marry her. He anticipated that he could have her to himself every single night without having to make any payment. The marriage went about unnoticed by his family, and they soon came back to the outskirts of the village.
She bore two children — twins, one girl and one boy. To her husband she was always a wife, and never the mother of his children. And now, with two more mouths to feed, it was as though she had jumped out of the frying pan into the fire.
The father of these two children was least bothered and had absolutely no affection toward either his children or his wife, except for the daily "affection" he had for his nightly wife. Her husband was callous, and he would abusively beat her black and blue for no fault of hers. He was a drug addict and an alcoholic. The arrival of her children had returned to her a reason to live. She had also heard stories about gods, about the personified forces of nature, about saints and sages who were rumoured to live by the foothills, by the seven peaks. Because of her children, she had become a devoted wife who would greet her husband cheerfully despite his behaviour. She met his every demand — even the carnal ones.
All she wanted was to be a loving mother to her children. She would collect the little coins that were thrown at her by those whose houses she worked in, and she felt happy for at least that. She wondered how she could change her circumstances. She had come to believe strongly in her heart that the mysterious Mahadeva, the "living saint," whose stories she had heard from the villagers, would be the panacea to her problems. Regardless of her circumstances, she wanted to send her children to a good school — a gurukula — an education she could ill afford.
In the meanwhile, her husband, because of his habits, had died. In spite of the way he was, she felt orphaned. She was more than ever afraid, disappointed, depressed, rejected by society, and spat at by her employers, and yet she somehow managed to wipe herself clean and begin each day afresh. She clung to life in the hope that her children would grow to become something more than she was. She wanted to see her children become educated scholars who would be respected in the village where she was born. She wanted people to look up to her children. She wanted them to live happily, content with food and clothes. She dreamt that her son would become an undisputed master of the Vedas, the Puranas, economics, and philosophy. She imagined how her daughter would be the apple of everyone's eye — that she would earn respect, would become so famous with her knowledge, and would have such character that she would reside forever in the hearts of the villagers. To protect the innocence of her children, she would narrate the stories she had heard about the sages, especially the one she had grown to love — the story of her 'Maadeva.' Time passed. Her daughter grew up to be extremely beautiful.
The annual religious Jatre [Image source- https://www.explorebees.com/Mysuru/attraction/Male-Mahadeshwara-Hills/1961]
One day, one of her employers told her that a Jatre (fair) was about to take place, a fair to which Mahadeva would come. Her excitement grew by leaps and bounds. She wanted, at any cost, to meet this Mahadeva who would erase her grief. She was told that Maadeva would come only to people who arrived with offerings of fruits, delicious food, flowers, and incense. He would, in return, help them out of their misery, elevate them to better living conditions, give them prasada that would satisfy their hunger, and bless their children. She gathered every piece of information she could — on what to do, when to do it, how to do it, where to find this saint; every minute detail.
She went about begging at people's doors for milk, for fruits and vegetables, for flowers and other such ingredients that would be needed to please him. With this in mind, she slowly amassed all these items, little by little, in the hut where they lived — a hut that was nothing more than a few dried coconut leaves laid over each other and the cold, rocky earth beneath. Her possessions consisted of a pot of water and a few charred utensils. In this festive mood, with the Jatre fast approaching, she exerted herself and washed the utensils she would need. She then arranged all the collected items as beautifully as she could, recalling the price she had paid — being spat at — while doing so.
In spite of this, she was quite happy about the dream that was about to materialise. On a fine morning, she told her dear children to take care of themselves and that she would return with the blessings of Maadeva, a very powerful yogi who would eliminate the cause of all suffering. Leaving them alone in the hut, she started the ascent, climbing the still hills, which were known to be so deadly that very few who ventured there returned alive. The canopy of the forest was also known to hide ferocious cannibals. But that was the least of her concerns.
It was nothing compared to the horrors she had faced all her sad, long life. Even with the mental trauma she had undergone as a girl, time and again, her heart had not grown cold. She still felt the warmth that came with hope — the hope that meeting Maadeva would dissolve her problems. She walked and trotted, barefoot, stamping on sharp thorns, trying to climb these towering, steep boulders. She would fall; she would get injured. One might think that would deter her resolve.
Lord Mahadeshwara statue Image source- https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/karnataka/new-tourist-attraction-awaits-devotees-atop-mm-hills-in-chamarajanagar-district/article66619209.ece
Yet nothing could stand against the towering courage and hope of finding a better life. The initial ascent cost her a great deal of time. Only a few kilometres into the forest, she looked up and knew that dusk was not far behind. She could hear the rustling of leaves and the hissing of snakes, and the occasional yawns and roars of lions and tigers, and of course the frequent screeching of bats — the kings of the nocturnal world.
She was not ready to turn back and miss this one day that she believed would be the turning point in her life. She had paid a heavy price to get here, and in her mind there was no turning back. The piercing cries of creatures around her were frightening. The eerie screams from the nearby villages sometimes tempted her to go back — but she had to find Maadeva, to find him at any cost, to bring back prosperity to her humble hut, to bring him there to bless her children, so that they might forever be happy and live in joy. Suddenly, in the silent night, she heard a voice behind her, chasing her at a pace she could not keep up with. And run is all she could do! She barged through the bushes, pierced and pricked by numerous cruel thorns. As the voice closed in on her, it resolved into a human voice — one that seemed to have a humane touch, someone calling for her from a little distance behind.
It called out, "Nillu Sankamma, naan bandakka" (Wait, Sankamma, it is I who has come). Then she felt a hand on her shoulder. This terrified her. She was certain she would not survive, that she was at death's door. Gradually, twisting her head some thirty degrees, she took broken, hesitant glances at it. She looked at the hand and was relieved to find it human, then followed the hand up to the face, straining her eyes to make out this dark figure standing before her, intimidating, in the middle of the dark night.
She could not make out the blurry face through the enveloping darkness. Then it slowly became clear that it was a friend of hers from her workplace. She said, "Oh, Maarakka! What are you doing here?"
With tears streaming down her face, Maarakka trembled and held her hands. Sensing that something was wrong, Sankamma asked compassionately, "Don't worry, my child. Tell me, tell me. What's wrong? Is everything all right with your family? Are your employers troubling you? What happened? Come now, tell me. Have you had your dinner? Are you hungry? Would you like some food? Shall I offer you this orange?"
Maarakka, refusing and crying profusely, said, "Ah, Sankamma! How innocent and naïve you are! How childlike! How I wish I were not the messenger of death. Take care. Remember that you are not alone. I must do this — it is my duty.
"Let me gather my courage and say it. After you left, at eight in the evening, a violent, licentious predator attacked your house, where your two children lay. They were too weak to fight back. It did its worst. It then tore and fed upon their flesh, relishing every torn piece. Having torn them to bits, it invited the god of fire into your house as a sacrificial offering. It fled and vanished into thin air; it was nowhere to be found. I could do nothing but look upon the charred bodies after the hut had all but turned to dust. I came running to tell you, to bring you back quickly, and so I followed you here with this unholy, disheartening, heart-rending, horrendous news."
Maarakka had done her part.
Sankamma stood there, her eyes wide open, her jaw dropped, her eyes as red as the setting sun she had witnessed some hours before. She stood still on the mountain, but in her mind she watched scenes of imagined cruelty passing in fast forward. She was still there, outwardly, though her mind had gone elsewhere. If only people could see what was passing through it! From this revelation came a rush of emotions competing for space within her — rage, fury, helplessness, fear, depression, and the pointlessness of everything. They came clad in the negativity she had absorbed, in instalments, all her life. They simply swallowed this poor girl whole. Their force paralysed her. She stood at a standstill, and then thoughts arose that devastated her completely. Wild, violent surges and cascades of emotion drowned her sense of self. She stood there, bewildered, watching waves crash against trembling coasts.
She stood amazed at the intensity of the tempests blowing within her, at the whirlpools and maelstroms that swept her along. Like the terrible, ferocious storms on planets such as Venus and Jupiter, these thoughts could no longer stay contained. They penetrated new depths within her. Slowly but steadily, it engulfed her, like a wildfire — a fire that had tasted the flesh of her children and now desired more. She was hurt. She was maddened. With the two now an oblation to this fire, there was nothing left for her. There was no point, and yet, without any functioning of the intellect, she continued her ascent to the top of the mountain. There was no more free will — only instinct. She was drawn to the temple atop the hill as an iron filing is drawn to a magnet; her hands pulled her body onward. She soon lost all sense of her own body.
It was as though she dragged her body along the mountain, while her companion, believing she had done her duty in conveying the terrible news, made her retreat. Maarakka, afraid of the dense forest buzzing with eerie sounds, made a dash for it, but Sankamma pressed on through the thickets and bamboo shoots, pulling herself along, her fear of the wild wholly annihilated. Atop the hill she saw a small, damp, dingy, dilapidated brick temple, with a rusty iron ghanta — a large hanging bell — in front of it, and the cold marble statue of Nandi facing north. Stepping closer, she found the temple locked, from within and without. There was no sign of human presence, no evidence of any pooja worship done for ages, no sign of preparation for any festivities! It was then that she realised she had been tricked. She had been misled and misinformed. She had been deceived by her employers, who, knowing her weakness for this Mahadeva, had used it against her.
They might have wanted to be rid of her by persuading her to willingly become prey to the wild predators of the forest. The ground beneath her shivered in the freezing cold, from both the foggy wind and the fear of what this human figure might do next. But there were no tears in her eyes, no apparent wailing. One could tell that her eyes had not blinked in the past two hours. She had apparently become a ghost, moved from place to place by some instinct alone. She had become the undead — as good as a corpse, perhaps a zombie. She simply sat beside Nandi. The ground beneath trembled, as did her entire body. She let out a blood-curdling roar of despair — that infamous, demonic, sorrow-laden, high-pitched cry that terrified villagers and beasts alike. This scream was heard in the outermost parts of the village. It was a testament to a deeply rooted disgust for life, to the sorrow of the human mind, to the fear of death and the unknown, to a depression that had until then existed only as a seed, and to the devil's work within the innermost layers of the psyche.
Illustration of a lonely forest Image source- https://www.dreamstime.com/photos-images/lonely-forest-night.html
All of this surfaced at once, expressed in the only possible way: a cry. It was a terrible night. The sky lay bare, nude, without clouds. There was no sign of any human trace, only the howling of creatures from hell, wild bugs and worms delighting in the savoury sight of a soon-to-be-dead body.
The forest, too, echoed with silence, but for the occasional howling of packs of wild dogs. At midnight, in the black sheet that enveloped the earth, she noticed a sliver of silver, and she knew at once it was Amavasya, the new moon day. Though she knew that nothing new had happened, and that nothing could be more frightful, for she had reached the deepest depths of hell, there could be no more painful torture than what she had already undergone. This desperate mind, which had all this while been consuming her, suddenly began to empty. And then, like the thunder that finally bids farewell to the storm, she was instantly frozen. Every part of her being grew still, stiller than the water in the Mariana Trench. She became as if petrified; had anyone been present, they could not have distinguished her body from the rocks she sat upon.
Suddenly, a smile appeared on her face, as though she had glimpsed something of the metaphysical realm. Her eyes, which had not blinked for hours, slowly closed. There was a sign of some definite conscious experience that could have brought about that smile. She gazed deeply into the empty sky. She watched the crescent moon above. There was no sense of time. She remained there so still — still as the unflickering flame of a lamp placed in a vacuum, stiller than the mountain on which Shiva resides. When she came back to her senses, it was already dawn, and the signs of the Creator painting the sky had begun to show. She sat up, facing the temple, thinking that the murti (idol) inside must be facing her, toward the south.
She wanted to let go of everything. Her tears burst forth. The volcano erupted. Verses gushed out of her. Crying profusely, capturing her fleeting thoughts in perfectly metred verse, she poured forth songs. From this uneducated woman, who knew no grammar and did not even know how to write the word "grammar," spurted pearls of wisdom, learning, submission, and devotion. They came straight from her heart. She put into words what she could see. She sang. She cried.
She sang and cried,
"Maadeva, Maadeva, Maadeva, Maadeva!
I see, upon your head,
the mesmerising twin flowers of Sooju and Dundu jasmine.
The pleasing lily, the lotus, garlands of Ekka, Bilva, and Tulsi leaves —
as prescribed, all have been brought for your puja!
I have washed my utensils; I have brought you fresh ghee; I have brought juicy oranges,
anticipating your festival, Maadeva, to which even sages are said to come.
Of what use are houses and hopes to those
who set out to climb your mountain,
believing you to be their only refuge?
Your fame has grown wild, like the wild sesame weed,
and spread across every hamlet, village, and town.
Oh you, the Seven-Peaked One! You have nurtured
our devotion toward you!
Maadeva, Maadeva, Maadeva!"
All the scenes of her life flashed before her. Tears rolled down her cheeks. At last she surrendered herself to the ultimate divine will. There was no more room left for her to think of herself. All she cared for now was to have a dialogue with Maadeva and ask, 'Why?' One might describe her as being in a state that yogis would approximately call savikalpa samadhi. There was, uniquely, only the single thought of her beloved Maadeva, whom she had never met. And so there was no definite form to her thoughts — just the name.
It was, evidently, not accompanied by the bliss usually inherent to that state. It was, rather, a deeply unsettling, uprooting, all-dissolving, single-pointed flame of thought. This thought of Maadeva was the one anchor that held her fleeting, aimless ship of a life steady. Unfortunately, there was no response from anyone or anything to her longing calls, no answer to her cry of utmost devotion and submission. Now even her Maadeva seemed to refuse to answer her. She was shaken. It could not be that she had failed to call with devotion, for hers was the most supreme bhakti possible! The only other conclusion was that Maadeva, if such a being existed at all, did not care for her. She could bear no more.
She lost all will to live. Her life felt more directionless than ever. Now she had lost all hope in humanity, all hope in the gods, all hope in nature, all hope in scripture. She had lost all faith in beliefs, all faith in faiths. All was lost. Only the One remained. There was, for her, only the quietude of the woods to accompany her. There was an absolute silence, more frightening than the silence of the grave. There, in that silence, she lived. What had happened? How had such a drastic change come about? Had she found something in the end — something within herself? Had Maadeva suddenly appeared? Perhaps what transpired will remain forever hidden, 'behind the scenes.'
She stood up. She was, somehow, smiling beautifully. She looked renewed. It was her tears that had washed away her stress and her wrinkles. They had washed her face clean, and it now shone bright with brilliance. The day had begun early, with the rising sun. She undressed and stood stark naked, facing south. She took the milk and emptied the little pot's contents over her dishevelled hair. She took the gloomy, nearly withered flowers and placed them over herself. She smeared the ghee all over her dry, wounded body. She swallowed the fruits whole. She lit the camphor in her hand and held it up to herself. Through all this, her face remained unperturbed. She strutted about, dancing wildly and laughing loudly, muttering sounds, kicking the temple's bricks and walls. She kicked Nandi. She flung away the pots and threw herself onto the ground. She seemed to mutter, in Kannada, "Madike odito" (The pot is finally broken!).
She walked to the edge, where a small stream trickled out. She bathed herself in it. She exclaimed, with a spark in her eyes, "Maadeva, yaavlo aa gange! Nod nannalle haritaavlo" ("Maadeva! Who is that Ganga there? See how she flows within me!") She finally flung herself from a cliff and plummeted to her death. She struck the ground from a height of some three thousand feet, her body rolling down the steep slopes.
A few of her former employers came looking for her a week later, to teach her a lesson for having taken leave from work without permission. They found a naked, wounded body with broken, dangling shoulders. Astonishingly, there were no scavengers nearby. There was no cadaverine — no stench of a corpse. Instead there was the sweet, faint fragrance of jasmine. Fearing accusations of rape or domestic violence, they decided to reduce the body to ashes, not knowing that it had already turned to ash even as she breathed her last. She was dead before she died. They poured kerosene over her and set her ablaze. The smoke and flames that rose seemed to take the shape of a trident. The body burned continuously for three days. They were perplexed.
A cliff of a forest Image source- https://www.istockphoto.com/photos/mountain-cliff
Luckily for them, no one caught them as they ran back to their houses. On the third day — which happened to be the actual day of the Jatre festival — the fire subsided. A mysterious sound emanated from the ashes throughout the day. And ever since, the Malai Mahadeshwara mountains have resounded with soul-wrenching cries of "Maadeva, Maadeva."
