Lotus Land: By Madathil Rajendran Nair

India is a lotus land,
In full bloom, all white and red.
We begin our days
Saluting the Lord of the Day,
Who rises holding a white lotus
On a chariot of seven horses.

Our Goddesses of Word and Wealth
Are seated on lotuses,
One white and the other red
Oh, ours is land of lotuses.

We beat our chest
And say “I, I, I am the best”,
Our Sage says:
“That “I” is not you,
Look underneath
What you beat,
There is a lotus,
Lotus of the heart,*
Your sacred retreat,
The divine habitat.”.

India is a lotus land,
In full bloom, all white and red.
I was a boy in teens
In my native Kerala,
A land full of ponds,Who once swam a silver pool
In the early morning sun
To pluck a lotus
For his blushful girlfriend.

His feet got caught
In the mesh underneath,
In the netty knottiness
Of intricate roots.
He struggled hard to extricate
Himself in anguish and panic.

For the first time in life
Fear of death he tasted.
Lotuses all around
Looked and smiled,
They gave him hope
And enthused him to fight.

When at last the Lord
Helped him back to land
To hand the flower to the anxious lass,
He saw bees in her lashes
Hovering over red lotuses –
Her blushful cheeks,
And forgot all about
The struggle just bygone

Swinging to and fro,Between pain and smile,
He grew up to learn
About the six circles
Of the Kundalini.
Each one was a lotus again
Of different number of petals,
The last one on the crown
In full bloom with thousand leaves

Where his Ma resides
As his resplendent Self.
And when he slept
He knew he was a pond
Of countless lotuses,
In full bloom, all white and red –
A body of shining water

With blossoms smiling all over.
Oh India is a lotus land,
In full bloom, all white and red,
Listening to the lullaby of the stars.

brahmany adhaya karmani
sangam tyaktva karoti yah
lipyate na sa papena
padma-patram ivambhasa

One who performs his duty without attachment,
surrendering the results unto the Supreme Lord,
is unaffected by sinful action, as the lotus leaf is untouched by water.

Bhagavad Gita, 5.10

*Sometime in December of 2008, I had posted a request to the Advaitin elist, seeking clarification of the meaning of the phrase “lotus of my heart” as translated from the sanskrit text of Adi Shankaracharya’s Nirguna Manasa Puja quoted below. Nairji was inspired to produce the poem Lotus Land in response to my request. Smt. Vinathaji Kumar was kind enough to send me the quote from the Bhagavad Gita above. The photographs of Alan Larus lay in waiting for yet another chance to grace our senses with their inimitable beauty. Special thanks to all of you for your contributions to this post.
In His Service, Radhe

Aaradhayami mani sannibham athma lingam,
Maayapuri hrudaya pankaja sannivishtam,
Sradha nadhi vimala chitha jalabishegai,
Nithyam samadhi kusmaira punarbhavai.

I worship that Linga,
Which is in me as my soul,
Residing in the illusory lotus of my heart,
Getting bathed by the clear water,
Of the river of my devotion,
And worshipped daily by the Lotus,
Of my meditation for avoiding another birth.
(From Nirguna Manasa Puja by Sankaracharya)
Translated by P. R. Ramachander

The link below is to a “home video” of the Manasa Puja with the verse from Nirguna Manasa Puja as its invocation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xt_Rhnl1J08