Sri Sandarya Lahari – The Waves of Bliss Translated by Swami Satya Sangananda Saraswati Section 1 Meditation on Shiva and Shakti Shiva,
The Divine One,
When united with Shakti,
Is endowed with the power to create,
Protect,
And destroy the universe.
Otherwise,
He is unable even to stir.
How can one who has not acquired great merit be capable of worshipping you,
Who are praised and worshipped by Vishnu,
Shiva,
Brahma,
And even by the eternal Vedas?
Collecting the small specks of dust from your lotus feet,
Brahma creates the universe.
Vishnu holds this entire universe on his thousand heads,
Thus sustaining it with great difficulty.
And Shiva reduces it to ashes and besmears his body with it.
For the ignorant,
The dust of your feet is the island of shelter,
Where the luminous sunrise of spiritual illumination dawns,
Driving away the overcast darkness of ignorance.
For the dull-witted,
It becomes clusters of flowers from which the nectar of awareness gushes forth.
For the destitute,
It is a necklace of wish-yielding gems.
And for those immersed in the ocean of samsara,
It becomes their uplifter,
Like the tusk of Vishnu which raised the earth from submergence when he incarnated as Varaha,
The cosmic boar.
All other deities except for you grant protection and gifts by hand gestures.
You alone are not given to such demonstrations of bestowing boons and shelter.
Instead,
Your two feet alone are capable of providing protection from fear,
The shelter of the universe,
And granting more than could ever be desired.
Long ago,
Adoring you who bestows prosperity on all your devotees,
Vishnu could become an enticing woman and stir passion even in Shiva,
The great yogi.
Even Kamadeva,
The god of love,
Having bowed before you in devotion,
Has become such an attractive personality to his consort Rati and is thus capable of inciting great passion even in the minds of sages.
O daughter of the snow-clad mountain,
Having obtained even some little favor by your sideways glance,
Kamadeva,
Even though bodiless,
Is able to conquer the world with a bow of flowers,
A bowstring made of honeybees,
Only five arrows in his sheath,
The southern breeze as his war chariot,
And the spring season as his assistant.
In the midst of the ocean of nectar,
Surrounded by gardens of kalpaka trees,
On an island of precious gems encircled by groves of nipa or karamba trees,
In a mansion made of cintamani gems,
Reclining on a mattress that is the supreme Shiva placed on a couch that is Shiva,
Fortunate are the few who worship you like this,
For they experience ripples of bliss in their consciousness.
As earth and also water in muladhara,
You are established in swadhisthana,
As fire in manipura,
As air in the heart,
And above as ether and also mind in prumatya,
Between the eyebrows also the entire path of kundalini,
Piercing which you play with your consort in the solitude of sahasrara padma,
The thousand-petaled lotus.
With streams of nectar gushing forth from your feet,
Irrigating the five elements again from the region of illumination,
You return to your home via the six chakras,
Converting yourself to the individual self or jivatman.
You sleep in the deep pit of your own home,
Like a serpent of three and a half coils.
O daughter of the snow-clad mountain,
Brahma and other greatest of poets,
Even after taking great pains,
Are not capable of comparing your beauty,
Which being eager to glimpse,
They mentally try through penance to attain that most difficult state of absorption in Shiva.
With the hope that they will behold your effulgent and undying youth and beauty.
