Poetry as a Container for the Creative Force of Kundalini: The Poems of Lal Ded

Born in 1320, Kashmiri Poetess and Yogini Lal Ded, renounced her social status to follow the left-hand tantric Shaivic path. According to the translator of her works, Ranjit Hoskote, Ded experienced a Kundalini awakening. Despite the social scrutiny faced over her naked wonderings through the Kashmiri forests, whilst reciting her devotion to Shiva, Lalla held the container for the creative energy, described as ‘Rasa’[1] within the Hindu epistemological framework. Channelling the power of Kundalini through Vatsun poetry (word-speech), Ded combines  her existentialism and inner ascension process through her writings, practising Laya Yoga and self-experimentation. In the passage below, Lalla emphasises the importance of experiential knowledge, the ‘felt-sense’[2], as a guiding force to her ascetic path.

​Verse 111:
What the books taught me, I’ve practised.
What they didn’t teach me, I’ve taught myself.
I’ve gone into the forest and wrestled with the lion.
I didn’t get this far by teaching one thing and doing another.
Page 113, in ‘I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded’, translated by Ranjit Hoskote, 2011.​

There is much debate over Ded’s spiritual influences. Some argue she was a Sufi mystic, others say—a Yogini. What particularly interests me about Lalla, is her journey through ascension, upholding such a powerful energy and letting it move through her subtle energy body. Grounding herself in that wisdom, her inner world is masked with metaphors and emotive landscapes that take the reader on a journey to her own spiritual path and its intense temporalities. Hoskote talks about the “poetics of shock”[3], which wonderfully describes the abrupt clamour of spiritual awakening; how it sits in the body dormant, waiting to be turned on like a switch. And once activated, it erupts through different parts of the body. The surge of Kriyas and intense, energetic waves provide both Samadhi (liberation) and existential dread. Ded highlights this paradox as a continuous balancing act between death and rebirth. When everything you know is completely turned to dust. Just like your former self—and the one about to be rebuilt from the very soil you shed.
 
[1] Kapila Vatsayayan discusses the creative flow of ‘Rasa’ and Art in ‘Indian Aesthetics’, 1968.
[2] Dian Million discusses ‘Felt Scholarship’ and the ‘Felt Sense’ within the discourse of Indigenous knowledge-making. See essay: Felt Theory: An Indigenous Feminist Approach to Affect and History, 2009.
[3] Hoskote discusses the poetics of shock concerning the Zen, Satori. Page 192.