Many of us know and love the poetry of Rumi, Hafez, and Kabir, medieval mystics whose passions and insights have been translated into modern language as a gift intended to help us cultivate our own love for God.
I’ve been working on a project that has allowed me to see this kind of work from an interesting angle: translating the song-poems of a twentieth-century Indian mystic named Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar. This man wrote over 5,000 songs, mostly in the Bengali language, which likewise express a vision of divine energy radiating through all things, a theology of intense love between human and God. In these songs, the divine is often depicted as embodied, and human and divine Beloved express their emotions and at times wrangle like lovers having a spat. At other times, sheer joy, awe and wonder penetrate the human heart.
I studied the Bengali language many years ago in order to be able to do this work, and have been translating some of these songs over the years. The result is a book that came out in August, entitled Songs of the New Dawn.
Sarkar’s metaphors for the spiritual life are rich and wide-ranging, his depictions of the natural world beautiful, and his vision of social justice stirring. The best way to experience this work is to sing or listen to the melodies. However, the literary beauty of the lyrics deserves our attention as well. These words have been injected with a powerful insight, clarity, sense of purpose, and love-energy. They are intended to be used as tools, as devotional and spiritual levers for opening one’s heart and expressing the infinite desires within.
Sarkar begins with an acknowledgment of the beauty of the changing seasons, the earth’s bounty, and our intimate connection and responsibility to each other and the planet:
Spring arrives, brimming with tender leaves,
And the earth goes delirious with color.Don’t stay inside, come out of your houses!
It’s no prison out here, it’s an open garden.Forget your grudges, abandon your spite.
It’s a new day; speak with new intention.
The divine moves in mysterious ways, moves with rhythm, moves into our hearts when we open them, and sometimes, seems to have moved away and abandoned us. But this is only a phase, for the divine Beloved always returns:
After what seemed like ages
The mysterious wayfarer touched down,
Shimmering with graceful vibrato,
And suddenly, life brims with music.I may have lost everything.
I may be destitute, living in oblivion.But even within this emptiness,
Rhythm reaches out.A rhythm that calls me to be fulfilled,
Invokes that which is always beautiful,
Fills my life with song.
The entire universe dances in communion, in joy, in longing, with the Beloved:
From out of the night a star declares,
“You are my only friend.”Whirling earth-dust proclaims,
“I desire You, day and night.”Why should this not be so
When every particle of the universeMeasures out Your love?
The fragrant pollen carries Your messageAnd every atom of the human mind
Sings of the guest who is to come.
In this vision, the divine’s wish is that we use our human potential to work for the welfare of others, for the planet, for our own full unfolding. Our time here is short; let’s use it to full effect:
There’s so much to do today, You told me.
You can sleep when your work is done.The day’s span is fixed, each instant measured.
Once a moment is gone it will never return.So don’t forget:
This travelers’ inn is meant only for light rest.
And finally, God’s constancy shines through the lyrics, even when we seem to forget:
We might be oblivious,
But You’re always there,A light floating in the darkness,
A constant love.At the end of the day
When evening fallsAnd all my friends have headed for home,
Only You remain with me.Even if no one listens to Your call,
You still speak so sweetly.
Grounded in the devotional tradition of bhakti yoga, these song-poems reflect the recognition of an intimate interconnected web of being and the cultivation of a relationship, one that satisfies with the embodied realization of the intense and personal love God has for creation.
If you’d like more information about these songs, or to acquire a copy of the book, contact me at andy.c.douglas@gmail.com.
—Andy Douglas
image by Jessica Lien