Chapter Eight: Literature of the Rasika Tradition in Hindi

Ramcharan says: other sorrow disappears when the separated lover becomes supremely resolute;
but when the arrow of separation from Rama enters the heart, pain aches through the entire body.

Ramcharan says: the intoxication of wine and other substances lasts an hour or two watches,
but the fire of separation does not subside until Rama is met.

Ramcharan says: for one whose memory and eyes behold every material object as inert,
separation makes body, home, and wealth alien; nothing of value is seen in them.

Ramcharan says: a steadfast person may listen to all the world’s entangling voices,
but separation from Rama hears nothing of ritual action, religious duty, or the Veda’s call.

Knowledge, meditation, repetition, yoga, austerity, and whatever excellent essence the scriptures teach—
Ramcharan says: without separation from the Lord, they are like ornaments upon a widow.

Ramcharan says: the separated lovers are of three kinds—the peacock, the cakora, and the excellent fish.
One is absorbed through hearing, one through seeing, and one through immersion; each drinks deeply according to its own love.

Ramcharan says: the sunstone melts when it encounters the sun, and the separated woman when she beholds her lover.
As clarified butter melts at the sight of fire, so the soul melts on seeing Rama’s form.

Praise the fish’s love: separated from its beloved water,
it writhes and dies. Ramcharan says: so does the heart without Raghubir.

When will such a union come, O Lord whose form is a lamp?
Ramcharan says: may my mind become a moth that dies while gazing upon you.

When will the mind restrain itself and contemplate your virtues?
Ramcharan says: like a woman absorbed inwardly in her lover, abandoning both this world and the next.

Just as the mind attaches itself without effort to wife, child, body, wealth, and home,
Ramcharan asks: when will it attach itself in that same way to Rama’s feet?

Know the understanding to have become firm, Ramcharan says,
when, like a devoted wife who joins her husband in death, it casts away every worldly affection.

Only when you attach it will my awareness cling to you, Raghunath.
Ramcharan says: the wooden puppet dances only while the string remains in the puppeteer’s hand.

When will my eyes fill themselves by beholding every limb of Rama’s form?
Ramcharan says: like a moth that sees the lamp’s radiance and dies within it.

When will my tongue repeat Rama as the kurarī bird cries?
Ramcharan says: the cātaka calls in anguish through all twelve months.