Lal Ded
Fourteenth-century Kashmiri Shaiva mystic and poet, the most beloved spiritual figure of Kashmir. Born around 1320 to a Brahmin family in Pampore and married into another by twelve, she fled an unhappy marriage to wander the valley as a renunciate, naked and singing — and her short verse-sayings, called vakhs, became the founding texts of Kashmiri vernacular literature. Equally claimed by Hindus, Muslims, and Sufis, her teachings blend the radical non-dualism of Kashmir Shaivism with the ecstatic devotional fervor of the Bhakti movement. Her vakhs are still recited daily by ordinary Kashmiris, six centuries later.
104
quotes in library
Quotes by Lal Ded
104 quotes“What is shame? The illusion that I am other than the Self.”
shameI, Lalla
“I bore the cloak of my body lightly. The Self does not need clothing.”
bodyI, Lalla
“Whoever has tasted the wine of the Self has tasted enough.”
sufficiencyI, Lalla
“Outside, the rivers and forests. Inside, the same rivers, the same forests.”
unityNaked Song
“My teacher was the wind. My teacher was the river. My teacher was my own mind.”
teachersNaked Song
“In the void where I have nothing, He fills me.”
emptinessI, Lalla
“What use was my body to me? It got me to Him. That was enough.”
bodyI, Lalla
“In the absence of all support, I find my support in the Self.”
refugeNaked Song
“To find Him, I had to forget everything I had been told about Him.”
unlearningI, Lalla
“The Self does not move. Everything moves through it.”
witnessNaked Song
“Lalla, my soul, you have lit a lamp in your own house. Why do you go searching outside?”
interiorI, Lalla
“What I sought outside, I found inside. What I had inside, I gave away outside.”
reciprocityI, Lalla
“In the dark night, the Self is the only lamp.”
lampNaked Song
“Wherever you go, you go in the Self. There is nowhere outside.”
omnipresenceI, Lalla
“My body is a wave. The ocean is the Self. Both are the same water.”
unityNaked Song
“Lalla's lamp is lit. The wick is the Self. The oil is breath.”
lampNaked Song
“What I have, the Lord gave. What I gave, the Lord took. We have not parted.”
reciprocityNaked Song
“In the marketplace, in the temple, in the cave: He is the same.”
omnipresenceI, Lalla
“I, Lalla, went out searching far and wide. I came back finding the Self at home.”
selfI, Lalla
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