Lal Ded: Untitled ["To learn the scriptures is easy"]

                            To learn the scriptures is easy,
                            to live them, hard.
                            The search for the Real
                            is no simple matter.

                            Deep in my looking,
                            the last words vanished.
                            Joyous and silent,
                            the waking that met me there.



Untitled ["To learn the scriptures is easy"] by Lal Ded, translated from the original Kashmiri by Coleman Barks. Text as published in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women, edited by Jane Hirshfield (Harper Perennial, 1995).

Art credit: "Beach Read," oil painting on canvas by Karen Hollingsworth.