*BT Song 1357*
As I continue to enjoy my quiet time with the Lord, writing poems, I felt like teasing Him again. The best genre for this is writing a song in viraha-bhava (love in separation), my favorite. The result is this poem. In bhakti tradition, it is understood that just as a bhakta needs the Lord, He also needs her. Though this song is not written in viraha-bhava, Annamacharya’s following song endorses my view.
‘You Need Me!’
If I were not there, what other suitable vessel
Could you find for bestowing your grace?
Because of me you are able to earn a good name!
Come to think of it, if someone so lowly can be saved
How highly the world should admire your saving grace!
I am the king of the ignorant, a fool without any equal,
Rich only in sensual pleasures. But can you afford
To forsake and abandon me, oh merciful Lord?
I rule the empire of worldly life, I’m in my element
In samsara, the ocean of birth and death. And my
Acts of self-indulgence have brought me fame.
Lust rules me. So where else could you find someone
So able to highlight so extravagantly
Your power and your grace?29—p. 183
29. Annamacharya, Ne nokkadu lekundite….The sentiment is something like Rabindranath Tagore’s in poem number 56 of Gitanjali: ‘Thus it is that thy joy in me is so full. Thus it is that thou has come down to me. O thou Lord of all heavens, where would be thy love if I were not?’ Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali (Song Offerings), London: The India Society, 1912, p. 32.— William J. Jackson, Vijayanagara Visions: Religious Experience and Cultural Creativity in a South Indian Empire, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 196
Such view of God depends the bhakti of His bhakta is not a strange idea in Hinduism. I have quoted several times Nammalvar’s poems about this. Endorsing this view Clooney says:
…The emphasis on compassion as the motivation for Bhagavan’s presence is matched by the devotee’s correlative emphasis on love of the divine, producing a symbiotic relationship between lord and devotee, so much so that some later poets speak of a lord who cannot live without his followers, a divinity whose very existence is dependent on their love….— VAISNAVA. Francis X. Clooney and Tony K. Stewart, Pp. 162-184, in Sushil Mittal & and Gene Thursby, The Hindu World, New York, [2004] Reprint 2018, p. 165
See: https://dayanandbharati.in/the-lord-alone-sings/
BT Songs 1163, 1250, 1282
*BT Song 1357*
As I continue to enjoy my quiet time with the Lord, writing poems, I felt like teasing Him again. The best genre for this is writing a song in viraha-bhava (love in separation), my favorite. The result is this poem. In bhakti tradition, it is understood that just as a bhakta needs the Lord, He also needs her. Though this song is not written in viraha-bhava, Annamacharya’s following song endorses my view.
‘You Need Me!’
If I were not there, what other suitable vessel
Could you find for bestowing your grace?
Because of me you are able to earn a good name!
Come to think of it, if someone so lowly can be saved
How highly the world should admire your saving grace!
I am the king of the ignorant, a fool without any equal,
Rich only in sensual pleasures. But can you afford
To forsake and abandon me, oh merciful Lord?
I rule the empire of worldly life, I’m in my element
In samsara, the ocean of birth and death. And my
Acts of self-indulgence have brought me fame.
Lust rules me. So where else could you find someone
So able to highlight so extravagantly
Your power and your grace?29—p. 183
29. Annamacharya, Ne nokkadu lekundite….The sentiment is something like Rabindranath Tagore’s in poem number 56 of Gitanjali: ‘Thus it is that thy joy in me is so full. Thus it is that thou has come down to me. O thou Lord of all heavens, where would be thy love if I were not?’ Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali (Song Offerings), London: The India Society, 1912, p. 32.— William J. Jackson, Vijayanagara Visions: Religious Experience and Cultural Creativity in a South Indian Empire, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 196
Such view of God depends the bhakti of His bhakta is not a strange idea in Hinduism. I have quoted several times Nammalvar’s poems about this. Endorsing this view Clooney says:
…The emphasis on compassion as the motivation for Bhagavan’s presence is matched by the devotee’s correlative emphasis on love of the divine, producing a symbiotic relationship between lord and devotee, so much so that some later poets speak of a lord who cannot live without his followers, a divinity whose very existence is dependent on their love….— VAISNAVA. Francis X. Clooney and Tony K. Stewart, Pp. 162-184, in Sushil Mittal & and Gene Thursby, The Hindu World, New York, [2004] Reprint 2018, p. 165
See: https://dayanandbharati.in/the-lord-alone-sings/
BT Songs 1163, 1250, 1282
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