The Lalita Sahasranama · Part 8: Consonance with the Vedanta Vision

Names 701 to 800

The opening itself sets out from the boundless. The first names declare that the Devi is held by no region and gauged by no time, which takes away the two handles a mind reaches for whenever it wants to locate something, and even so she pervades all things, keeping every living being wrapped in delusion by her maya. She is Saraswati, the form of discernment and clear insight; she is the one whose very body is scripture, holding all of Agama and Nigama; she is the mother of Skanda; and she is the secret one seated in the cave of the heart, whose nature no easy glance can ever seize. Seven names in, and she has been called the whole of scripture and a secret that will not be looked at directly.

Now comes the introduction of the supreme reality that carries no attribute. The Devi stands untouched by any limit of name or form; her devotion rests in Sadashiva alone; and as sovereign of the sacred guru lineages she guards the knowledge of the tradition. Evenness and peace are her nature. Then the hidden layer of mantra opens. A single letter is set down among the thousand names, small enough to slip past a reader who is hurrying: she appears as the seed-syllable ‘i’ (the long vowel) of the Srividya mantra, the syllable that holds the kamakala within it, and she becomes the form that contains the entire circle of gurus.

The names that follow carry you past the senses. The Devi is beyond the kula, the assembly of the senses; she is worshiped in secret within the orb of the sun; and she is maya itself, through which the one Brahman comes to look like many. Her nature is sweet as honey, and she is also ‘Madhumati’, that honeyed stage of samadhi, where the word for the taste and the word for the state turn out to be the same word. Then she becomes the earth and bears all beings, she is the mother of Shiva’s ganas, and she stands as the one the Guhyaka deities adore.

Tenderness and freedom move together here. The Devi’s limbs are delicate; the gurus are dear to her and she is dear to the gurus; and still she leans on no one, the independent one who creates all things by her own will alone. As sovereign of every tantra she appears in the form of Dakshinamurti, who imparts self-knowledge through silence alone, without one syllable of instruction, and as the ever-celibate rishis like Sanaka and Sanandana worship her, she is Brahmavidya embodied, whom only the wise can truly worship.

Here the heart of the part beats, the consciousness that speaks in the language of Vedanta. The Devi is the one who grants the knowledge of Shiva; she is the chit-kala, the ray of awareness set in Brahman, by which even inert matter lights up; and she is the bud of bliss ready to open, bursting forth as the bliss of Brahman. She is the form of pure love, the giver of what her devotees long for, pleased by the mere recitation of her names, which is to say, pleased by exactly what you are doing at this moment.

Now the rhythm of dance and liberation is set, and at its center shines the Advaita name on which the whole part rests. The Devi presides over the Nandi mantra; she is Natesvari, wife of the dancing Shiva; and she is ‘Mithyajagadadhishthana’, the one truth on which this entire visible world rises like a mere appearance. She grants liberation, and she is the very form of liberation, two names in a row, and between them the gift and the giver stop being separate things. The lasya dance is dear to her; she is the one who, at the dissolution, gathers all creation back into herself; and she dwells in living beings as modesty too, which is an unlikely place to come upon the power that ends the worlds.

After this comes the famous garland of metaphors, where every name turns into a picture, and most of the pictures arrive in pairs: a calamity, and the one force that ends it. Worshiped by Rambha and the other apsaras, the Devi is a rain of nectar on the wildfire of worldly existence, the fire that burns down the forest of sin, and the fierce wind that carries off the cotton-wisp of misfortune. She is the ray of sun that clears away the darkness of old age, and the light of the full moon that swells the ocean of good fortune.

The garland of metaphors deepens. The Devi is the dense monsoon cloud that comes up black over the fields and sets the peacocks of her devotees’ minds dancing, the thunderbolt that shatters the mountain of disease, and the axe that cuts the tree of death out by its root. Then the pitch rises, and from the supreme sovereign Mahesvari she becomes Mahakali, appearing as the destroying power of Mahakala, the one who at the dissolution swallows even the great elements, taking in all that is great as her food.

Turning from the note of destruction toward story, the names touch the austerity of Parvati and the valor of Chandi. She is Aparna, who gave up even leaves as food, which was the last thing there was left to give up; she is Chandika, who breaks out in fierce wrath against the wicked; and she is the slayer of the asuras Chanda and Munda and their kind. Then the gaze returns to first principles, where she holds within herself both the perishable world and the imperishable Purusha, the self of the mutable and the immutable alike, sovereign of all the worlds, and bearer of the entire universe.

Now a line of names that grant boons and turn on threes, and the number keeps landing: three aims, three eyes, three gunas. The Devi bestows dharma, artha, and kama, the three human aims; she is the resting place of all good fortune; she is Tryambaka, three-eyed, her eyes the sun, the moon, and fire; and she is the essence of the three gunas, sattva, rajas, and tamas. Heaven and moksha are both in her hands; she herself is supremely pure; and her body glows with a red radiance like the hibiscus flower.

Names of vigor, of yajna (fire-rite), and of vows arrive. The Devi is full of vital force and blazing strength; she carries brilliance and luster; she is the ground of every yajna, the form of the fire-rite itself; and she is the one who delights in steadfast vows. Her worship is not easy: she is won only by rites performed exactly as prescribed, not a syllable out of its place, and she is the unassailable one whom none can overpower.

Among flowers, mountains, and sound, the cosmic form rises. The Devi loves the pale red blossoms of the patali; she is the great one, appearing as the sound of Narada’s veena ‘Mahati’, which the sage carries wherever he goes; she dwells on Mount Meru; she loves the divine flowers of the mandara; and she is worshiped by the heroic seekers. Then she becomes the vast form that makes the whole cosmos her gross body, free of rajas, the consciousness that faces every direction at once.

From the vast the gaze narrows to the indwelling self. The Devi is the pratyagatman seated within everyone, and at the same time the supreme space of consciousness that is the material cause of both the body and the cosmos. She gives prana, and she is the very form of prana pulsing in every breath; she is worshiped by Martanda-Bhairava in the form of the sun; and she is the untroubled empress who has handed the burden of the realm to her minister Shyamala, the same Mantrini who rode out with her against Bhandasura.

Now the part climbs toward its summit, where royal splendor and the attributeless Brahman are spoken in a single breath. The Devi is sovereign of Tripura, whose army knows only victory, and even so she is beyond the three gunas, the one who transcends every quality, both para and apara, present in form and formless alike. Here the declaration that the Upanishads repeat rings out, in their words and not in softer ones: the Devi is the form of truth, knowledge, and bliss, resting in that equipoise where the difference between the higher and the lower dissolves and Shiva and Shakti become a single rasa.

The part closes on art and on rasa. Kapardini, wife of the matted-haired Shiva, wears the sixty-four arts the way another woman wears a garland; like the wish-cow Kamadhenu she fulfills every desire; and she is Kamarupini, who takes on any lovely form she wishes. She is the treasury of all the arts, the very art of poetry, the connoisseur of every rasa, and at the last the inexhaustible storehouse of rasa that holds both the rasa of poetry and that supreme bliss-rasa of the Vedantic ‘raso vai sah’, for he alone is rasa. On this treasure-house of rasa the eighth part comes to rest.