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Lalleshwari Quotes

1320–1392 India

Lalleshwari (1320–1392), locally known mostly as Lal Ded, was a Kashmiri mystic of the Kashmir Shaivism school of philosophy in the Indian subcontinent. She was one of the first poets of early modern Kashmiri language, and she developed a new style of spontaneous poetic composition known as "Vaakh" (literally, oral style).

India
Philosophers

Random Lalleshwari quote

6 quotes

It covers your shame, keeps you from shivering.
Grass and water are the food it asks.
Who taught you, priest-man,
to feed this breathing thing to your thing of stone?

Whatever work I've done,
whatever I have though,
was praise with my body
and praise hidden
inside my head.

I can dispel the clouds, drain the sea, or cure someone hopelessly ill. But to change the mind of a fool is beyond me.

I didn't believe in it for a moment
but I gulped down the wine of my own voice.
And then I wrestled with the darkness inside me,
knocked it down, clawed at it, ripped it to shreds.

I trapped my breath in the bellows of my throat, and a lamp blazed up inside, showing me who I really was. I crossed the darkness holding fast to that lamp.

They lash me with insults, serenade me with curses.
Their barking means nothing to me.
Even if they came with soul-flowers to offer,
I couldn’t care less. Untouched, I move on.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Lalleshwari (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.