LOOKING WITHIN LIFE LESSONS FROM LAL DED (HB)

India has produced some of the
world?s greatest religious leaders, sages, saints, philosophers and spiritual
thinkers. They were monks, nuns and renunciates, nationalists and reformers.
No one religion had a monopoly on them. They range from Mahavira and Buddha,
who lived over 2,500 years ago, to medieval saints like Chishti, Avvaiyar and
Guru Nanak, to more recent philosophers and religious icons such as
Vivekananda, Ramakrishna, Saint Teresa and many others. The spiritual and
philosophical heritage they left behind is India?s gift to all Indians and
the world. In the ?Life Lessons? series we publish the essential teachings of
some of India?s best-known spiritual teachers, along with commentaries and
biographical notes. Each book will be a handy companion to help the reader
along the difficult pathways of life. *** Lal Ded (Granny Lal), as
Lalleshwari was known, was a Shaiva mystic saint who lived in Kashmir,
probably in the fourteenth century. Born into a Brahmin family of Pandrethan
(near Srinagar), she is said to have had an early bad marriage and faced many
domestic hardships, prompting a turn to spirituality. She renounced her
marriage and material life and became a wandering mystic. She shared her
wisdom in the form of vaakhs (sayings or utterances). These vaakhs
(originally in the Kashmiri language) have seeped far and wide into popular
usage and are part of the collective memory?through songs, proverbs and
hymns?of Kashmiris of all stripes, through the generations. In these vaakhs,
Lal Ded talked about the woes of the human condition, her disillusionment
with the world, her anguished search for God, and, ultimately, her
realization of God as pure consciousness. She rejected outward rituals,
ostentation and extreme asceticism as paths to reach the truth. Her
observations on the transience and futility of material pursuits and the
emotions they generate, like greed, anger, pride and fear, apply to us all.
While her sayings are deeply profound, her humanism makes it easy to relate
to Lal and her teachings. Translated and edited by Shonaleeka Kaul, the
aphorisms in ?Looking Within? represent Lal Ded?s core teachings.