Chapter Eight: Literature of the Rasika Tradition in Hindi

Sri Lavkushsharan “Lila Bihari” Ji

This collection contains the fever of separation, longing for the Form, loving recreation, the relish of līlā-rasa, eight-period contemplation, comparisons for divine beauty, and finally—as in Sufi style—the pain of separation and petitions of love. Its language flows freely.

Sufi vocabulary deserves notice throughout Sri Yugalananyasharan’s works. Sufi style appears in most of the saint-practitioners of this tradition, but emerges with particular force in Yugalananyasharan’s compositions. His early education may have been in Urdu and Persian; alternatively, he may simply have tasted and experienced love in the manner encountered among Sufis. Whatever the explanation, his language is exceptionally clear, flowing, well-formed, and powerful. The magnificent strength, grace, and suggestive force of feeling and language found in Yugalananya’s songs are rare elsewhere.

Examples:

The fever of separation

The person whose inner being has been wounded by separation from Sita-Rama
finds no protective enclosure of worldly happiness, Sri Yugalananyasharan says.

The Beloved’s hard sword has struck deep within mind and heart.
Wherever remembrance of that dear one touches the flower-like heart, its blade cuts through.

Alas, who can be told why my nights and days cause such pain?
Without Sita’s excellent Lord, nothing can extinguish the heart’s suffering.

The separated woman passes each moment remembering dark Shyama:
“By what means shall I meet the Beloved, unfortunate woman that I am?”

Remain forever intoxicated by that wine; grasp the guru’s great knowledge.
Repeat every day the Name that gives life to the world, with the whole loving heart.

Know the Name in the heart to be as powerful as a hundred million Garudas.
It is a blazing sun that destroys the multitude of serpent-like desires.

My eyes have grown shadowed from watching and watching the road.
My very life has climbed into my throat from calling and calling the Name.

Eyes are saturated with Love’s arrows and rasa; the bed itself becomes the dwelling of Rasaraja.
Coming and going, intoxicated by vision, they overflow today with lovely radiance.

Without love of the Name, every path and tradition is useless, friend—
like a body without life, a lake without water, or beauty bereft of its guiding principle.