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Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

http:// www.egroups.com/group/Sitaram

http://www.sitaram.0catch.com

http://sulekha.com/chpost.asp?for...ilosophy&show=0&cid=76676

Hindu_in_Kuwait: There is a beautiful course conducted my Sai Samathi
US in kuwait. The path of Bhakthi when the two essential tool yjayan
and viragya comes to a stand still also it enabled me to derive a
meaning to Mother Bharta. Bharatha stand for Bhavam Ragam and Thalam
isn't it wonderful

Sitaram: Do you ever feel threatened or at risk living in an Islamic
society?

Hindu_in_Kuwait: Wow!!! What a wonderfull Question!

Sitaram: Really.... it seems like a very natural question for one
such as myself to ask, living in America as I do, and only knowing
what I see in the news.

Hindu_in_Kuwait: No Sir Not at all ; but with no offense I am really
worried about a Christian Invasion

Hindu_in_Kuwait: The rate at which the conversion is happening; poor
Hindus will losse their identity with in a span of Time

Sitaram: So, tell me... you say you do not feel threatened, but... as
an example... would you feel free and at ease to publically discuss
some of my anti islamic writings, and publically state that you agree
with my views.... I rather think you would not feel free, I suspect
you would be quite fearful to do so... am I correct in my assumption?

Hindu_in_Kuwait: Fear is something that emerges in your mind when
your action; poses a danger to a whole community. Well I had enough
discussions with people here regarding their religion; what I see in
them is what ever they say it confines to Holy Koran and they don't
intend to talk anything other than their religion. There is no space
for people like you and me to talk about Holy Koran

Sitaram: Yes, indeed.... I should imagine so

Hindu_in_Kuwait: Their pre-conceived notion is; the Ultimate Truth is
Koran and allha the most benavolent is the only one to be praised so
they really don't care of things like self-realization; they wait for
their fruits for action after death. But our ways are totally
different; we need to understand and know one self of their
actions. The Hindu Community in this land; Remain the same :
following the laws and regulations of this very land; : We are
allowed to pray and conduct our puja's etc etc In house and not
publically.

They do really interfere in our work but there are specimens who
really pokes their nose in such things there are non other than
Indian Muslims and Chritians. The Christian Community in this land
never supports and Hindu functions to be held were as they stand by
for social activities this is a grave error that I seen in this
country

Sitaram: Interesting

Hindu_in_Kuwait: a new group in Christanity : coupled with the Roman
Chatholic Church. Born Again: is luring the whole place

Sitaram: Really! Interesting

Hindu_in_Kuwait: All the Hindu Converts are turning fanatic. Better
we term them as Fanatic Christians. You tell me: when they are not
secular how can they expect the seeds vedic Religion to be secular
but Hindus are Secular clutters (jandus - animals) they don't value
for their own culture. None else to be blamed but themselves. But
mind you sir, I am not generalizing things

Sitaram: What a sad situation

Hindu_in_Kuwait: There are very beautiful people with beautiful mind
amoung the Christians

Sitaram: If you could live in India with the same economic benefits
as your job in Kuwait, would you prefer to live in India, and which
part of India, and why that part...?

Hindu_in_Kuwait: Well you are interesting

Hindu_in_Kuwait: Economic benefits : to some extent yes but; I don't
expect the same in India; in the lap of my own mother I would really
work for lesser wages. The practical problem with me is my
qualification is bit low compared to other so its difficult for me
to find a good job there

Hindu_in_Kuwait: In a city. I would love to be in Mangalore where I
was born ; so I can go back to my childhood days

Sitaram: I recently watched a documentary on educational tv about the
lives of children in various countries.... (and of course, children
by nature tend to be happy and playful)... I saw happiness in the
children, even in the poorest of circumstances... WITH ONE EXCEPTION

Sitaram: A child in Japan, aged 6, who was pressured to study and
achieve at a pace which would be grueling and difficult for american
teenagers...

Hindu_in_Kuwait: India is a land of spirtiual bounty

Sitaram: That child lived in a land with money, food, medical care...
yet he seemed miserable compared to the poor children in india and
south america

Hindu_in_Kuwait: Poor child losing the orginality of child hood

Hindu_in_Kuwait: Now-a-days parents are just intolerable

Hindu_in_Kuwait: But why curse them; all the parents in this world
wants to see his or her child to climb the ladder of success. In this
bargain the child messes his life;

Hindu_in_Kuwait: Shravanam -Smaranam - Keertanam - Dasatha - Arathi -
Archana - Snakethanam - Naivedyam -Atma Nivedanam : are the nine
points that has to be taught to every child in this world. But to the
bane of Hindu culture the parents are prompting their children to
have a war mind with their friends

Hindu_in_Kuwait: Competition is killing the individualtiy of every
human

Sitaram: A society which values winning must of necessity be
populated by a majority of loosers. Since only a few may win and
dominate... in an ironic fashion, success (of a few) is founded upon
the failure (of many)... wealth (of the few) is erected upon the
poverty (of many), saintliness is a temple constructed atop a
mountain of sin, wisdom is a fortress guarding a city of ignorance.

Hindu_in_Kuwait: Very Philosophical

Sitaram: A bee, a cow and a viper all drink the same water from the
same pond, yet the bee makes honey, the cow makes milk and the viper
makes venom. Some see me as bee, some see me as cow, others see me as
viper. In the court of Kamsa, each saw Krishna differently, Kamsa saw
him as death, his mother saw an infant, the sadhus saw a saint, his
playmates saw their good friend, the young women saw someone
attractive...

Hindu_in_Kuwait: Very true but there is a small alteration towards
the end. The young women ( the Gopies) were attracted to the divine
leelas not the the mass; in Bhagvatam its said;

Sitaram: Only the minority seeks, and only a minority of the minority
finds... "out of lac and cores of people, hardly one seeks Me, and
out of lacs and crores of those who do seek Me, hardly one comes to
understand My true nature." It is not in the lawful marriage with
Rukmini, but in the clandistine affair with Radha that union is
accomplished... when we seek God lawfully, in that which society
sanctions, it is a dry and passionless arranged marriage, but when we
burn with desire, and sneak to hidden places, and court with baited
breath, as a persecuted, hunted, lawless heretic, it is then and
there that we meet God with a flame of passion. God wants us to be
unfaithful to the world... Whoever is faithful to one thing is by
definition unfaithful to a host of other things... so faith is
founded upon unfaithfulness. Hence, the secret, forbidden affair
between Radha and Krishna. But, we may see something of this same
theology in the Old Testament of the Bible, in Solomon's Song of Songs

http://www.gardenenclosed.com/S%20of%20S%20page%204.htm

When we turn to modern visual portrayals of the Song of Songs, what
is most striking about them is their complete abandonment of the
allegorical method. Instead of connecting the Song of Songs to
external theological doctrines, painters of the 19th century began to
bring their own psychological concerns to the representation of the
text. Edward Burne-Jones, the well-known artist of the Pre-Raphaelite
movement, designed a stained glass window for an English church
illustrating the Song of Songs. In this complex 12-panel work, he
stressed his favorite theme of romantic yearning for an impossible
and unrequited love. In a different vein, a Jewish member of the Pre-
Raphaelite movement, Simeon Solomon, produced paintings of the Song
of Songs characterized by a lush and overripe sensuality. More
recently, a series of five paintings on the theme by Marc Chagall in
the 1950s combined a Blake-like angelic intensity and playfulness
with strong hints of sensuality, enhanced by a glowing rosy
background.

- from "Interpreting the Song of Songs", by Carl W. Ernst

In seeking a specific visual genre to give form to this divine
longing, Judith Ernst seized upon the tradition of the "twelve month"
(barahmasa) paintings, which are strongly associated with the cult of
Krishna but are also found in other Indian religions. These paintings
typically portray a woman in the various moods of love and longing,
depicted with all of the seasonal details of each successive month of
the year. In India, the most intense of these periods is the
overpowering heat that occurs just before the rainy season. Then, as
countless poets and painters showed (including Hindus, Sikhs, Jains,
and Sufis), the woman is overwhelmed by raw passion as she feels the
loss of her absent lover, who may be God. This theme turns out to be
quite appropriate for portraying the mood of the Song of Songs. The
focus of the Indian poems, and their accompanying paintings, is on
the emotions of the woman, and the interpretive tradition for the
most part has channeled this imagery into spiritual love. In the
artistic realization of this book, the seasonal cycle of twelve
months and the Indian environment have no further relevance. Instead,
the setting is a timeless Palestine where women's costumes, like
their passions, could be from any century.

- from "Interpreting the Song of Songs", by Carl W. Ernst

Musical settings of the Song of Songs were fairly common in the
Middle Ages, mostly perpetuating religious allegory. Compositions of
the 15th and 16th centuries were frequently performed in Catholic
liturgical ceremonies dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Composers of this
music included King Henry VIII of England and the Italian composer
Monteverdi. Protestant composers then employed the text in wedding
songs, like the church cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach, which
depict Christ as the king searching for the individual believer.
There have also been modern musical compositions on themes from the
Song of Songs, by composers such as Ralph Vaughan Williams and Virgil
Thompson. Among Jews, the Hebrew text is included in the liturgy of
Passover, and it is recited by Sephardic Jews during regular Friday
evening services. In modern Israel, folk songs for couples have been
created using verses from the Song of Songs.

- from "Interpreting the Song of Songs", by Carl W. Ernst

Countless Christian writers expanded on the spiritual significance of
the Song of Songs. Bernard of Clairvaux compiled an extensive series
of sermons on the text. The English mystic Richard Rolle (d. 1349)
wrote an intensely lyrical commentary on the three first verses of
the Song. The Spiritual Canticle of St. John of the Cross is directly
inspired by the Song of Songs.

The love relationship described in the Song of Songs is of such
intensity that it also led to controversy. It is not surprising that
the erotic power of the text brought about patriarchal anxiety,
particularly when women dared to interpret the text. About 1573, St.
Teresa of Avila wrote a little book on "Concepts of the Love of God"
based upon the Song of Songs, which was fortunately saved from the
flames to which it had been condemned. In it she criticizes the
cowardice of those souls who are afraid to read the text because they
don't understand it. Likewise the French mystic Madame Guyon
published an important interpretation of the text in 1685. In her
autobiography, she states that she completed this in a day and a
half, writing so fast that she injured her arm. This was one of the
books condemned by the archbishop of Paris in 1694, as one of the
chief examples of the mystical heresy of Quietism. As a result of
this condemnation, there was little written about the Song of Songs
in the eighteenth century.

- from "Interpreting the Song of Songs", by Carl W. Ernst

There is a timeless tension between physical and spiritual love, and
the sheer exuberance and passion of the Song of Songs carry it beyond
the limits of ordinary sensual enjoyment without dispensing with the
body. Overwhelming longing for God overlaps with the shock of
physical eroticism. The Spanish monk Fray Luis de Leon was imprisoned
in 1562 by the Inquisition for composing an original translation of
the Song of Songs directly from Hebrew, and for treating the text as
if it were a non-allegorical pastoral poem. But as he observed in the
introduction to his translation, "Nothing is more proper to God than
love, and there is nothing more natural for love than to turn the
lover to the conditions and character of the beloved." The Song of
Songs accomplishes this task. Here, there is no fixed line separating
sensual from spiritual love.

- from "Interpreting the Song of Songs", by Carl W. Ernst

Rumi (Song of the Reed)

What are we to make of the Song of Songs which, in spite of its
antiquity and its archaic images, still carries with it such charm
and power, is still so touching to those who fall under its spell?
The subject of love, even physical, erotic love, when it is conveyed
with such beauty strikes a chord deep within us all. We have a
profound longing to be whole, to be united with another, but this
longing carries with it something more than just physical desire. The
Sufi poet, Rumi, in the first part of his Masnavi, describes that
longing as the plaintive song of the reed flute, lamenting its abrupt
removal when it was cut from the reed bed, longing to be back again
from where it came. It is the primordial longing of the created to be
back, united with our origins, at one with the Creator.

- from Song of Songs: Erotic Love Poetry, by Judith Ernst

Mystical Romances: Sassi/ Punnu, Sohni/ Mahiwal, Majnun/Layla,
Shirin/Khosrow, and Yusuf/Zuleikha

Many traditional stories from the Indian subcontinent (Sassi/Punnu;
Sohni/Mahiwal), as well as the famous Persian stories of Majnun and
Leila, Shirin and Khosrow, and the various versions of the romance of
Joseph and Zuleikha (Potiphar's wife) feature the motif of separated
lovers who find a deeper spiritual longing and fulfillment through
their intense yearning for one another. The story of Joseph from the
Old Testament was reworked by many mostly Muslim writers to become a
romantic tale of separation and longing. In the Persian poet Jami's
version, after years of pining for Yusuf, even to the point of trying
to seduce him and tearing his shirt from behind as he tries to escape
from her seduction, finally Zuleikha comes to this state:

Thus Joseph so she in her heart enshrined,
That life or world she never bore in mind.
In her deep thought of him herself she lost;
Out of mind's tablet good and bad she crossed.

Jami continues:

Jami, from self, too, do thou pass away:
To the eternal mansion find thy way.

- poetry from translation of Joseph and Zuleikha by Alexander Rogers
(1892)

Gita Govinda

. . . love poetry for me came to be epitomized by the Gita Govinda,
the wonderful medieval Indian poem chronicling the love play between
Radha and Krishna. The lovers experience all the delights of love, as
well as its tribulations, but their interaction becomes more than
just that of lovers. It becomes in the Indian context a
personification of our underlying longing for union with God, the
divine beloved, a longing that mystically drives all of creation. The
Indian paintings that typically illustrate this poetry are exquisite,
delicately capturing the sensuality of both Radha and Krishna. Yet
the tone which is set by the breathtaking beauty of these paintings
makes the spiritual content implicit to the viewer.
- from Song of Songs: Erotic Love Poetry, "Artist's Notes", by Judith
Ernst

Pre-Islamic Arabic Poetry

It is astonishing, to say the least, that no one has undertaken
comparison between the Song of Songs and the great odes of pre-
Islamic Arabia. These sophisticated and complex poems have been
neglected in part because of the extraordinarily bad translations
committed by disdainful Orientalists of the colonial period. To be
sure, one occasionally finds mention of the bodily description (wasf)
of the beloved as a standard category derived from Arabic literature.
Where else should one look for parallels to verses such as "How much
better is your love than wine, and the smell of your ointment than
all spices! Your lips, my bride, drop as the honeycomb; honey and
milk are under your tongue, and the scent of your garment is like the
fragrance of Lebanon"? There are wonderful examples of this sensuous
exaggeration in the Arabic tradition, as in the ode of `Alqama in
Michael Sells' translation (Desert Tracings: Six Classic Arabian
Odes):

Before the senses even now
----her fragrance lingers,
The folds of her hair
----redolent of musk when the pod is open.
Reaching out to touch it
----even the stuff-nosed is overcome.

Or consider the rich sensuality of the opening lines of the Song of
Songs: "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth - for your love
is better than wine. Because of the sweet fragrance of your ointment
your name is as ointment poured forth." The intense evocation of the
smell and taste of a kiss finds its equal in the Sells' translation
of the poem of `Antara:

She takes your heart
----with the flash edge of her smile,
her mouth sweet to the kiss,
----sweet to the taste,
As if a draft of musk
----from a spiceman's pouch
announced the wet gleam
----of her inner teeth.

These comparisons are not made to suggest any kind of historical
correlation, but they do suggest that there are aesthetic
continuities that are not limited to the category of literary
influence.

- from "Interpreting the Song of Songs", by Carl W. Ernst

Initiation in a Mayan Village

In the second book of his remarkable memoir, Long Life, Honey in the
Heart: A Story of Initiation and Eloquence From the Shores of a Mayan
Lake, Martín Prechtel describes courtship in a traditional Mayan
village. It is a description which parallels much of what is implied
in the Song of Songs:

"A village youth could not be eligible for intiation into adulthood
until he or she was seen courting on the village streets, because
that adolescent courting signaled the approach of the time when a
young man and woman could begin to see and feel the physical presence
of the divine in their longing for each other. . .It was this longing
of the heart that motivated youth away from their families and clans
toward their lovers and eventually to the spirit."

Prechtel continues by describing what he calls "an ancient tradition
of anti- traditionalism sanctioned by the traditionalist adults and
parents who fully expected to be disobeyed and subverted". It is an
embrace by all in the village of an exuberant courtship behavior by
its adolescents in spite of the natural unease felt by elders about
these inherantly dangerous and volatile situations involving love and
longing. This courtship itself propels the young people toward
initiation, which ultimately leads them to the full understanding of
and integration into the spiritual life of the community. This
ambiguity between the recognition of the place of courtship in the
community on one hand, and its dangerous volatility on the other, is
reminiscent of passages in the Song of Songs.

http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/love-in-the-arts/mysticism.html

The notion of fusing sexuality with religious devotion strikes many
readers as surprising, but it is in fact an ancient theme, common in
a wide variety of mystical traditions. In all of them the union of
human and divine is expressed through metaphors of lovemaking.

Mirabai

Source: From For Love of the Dark One: Songs of Mirabai, tr. Andrew
Schelling (Boston: Shambhala, 1993), pp. 51, 89, 39, 48.

The Hindu tradition contains many traditions of mystical eroticism.
The world is created through a sexual act, Kali/Durga embodies the
combined activities of death and procreation, Kama is a famous god
(the Sanskrit sex manual Kama Sutra is named after him), but perhaps
the most widely-known figure connected with such images is Krishna,
renowned for his love of the gopis.
The 16th-century mystical poet Mirabai is famous for her life-long
devotion to Krishna. She identified herself poetically with his
consort, Radha, rejected the husbands who were forced on her, and
wandered the land with a band of like-minded women, singing their
songs of praise for their god/lover. One tradition says that she
spent some time at the court of Akbar the Great, the Mogul ruler of
North India who lavishly supported the arts. Although Muslim by
background, he was interested in all religious traditions, and tried
to create a synthesis from Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, and
Buddhism. However her fame developed, it has lasted to this day. Her
songs are performed devotionally, but also as entertainment, live and
in popular films.

Dancing Before Him

This poem relates to the tradition of Bharata Natayam which was
carried on by temple dancers throughout India at temples devoted to
the worship of Krishna until they were banned by the British on the
grounds that they commonly also served as prostitutes. In fact most
did support themselves by sleeping with customers at the temples, but
this was considered a traditional and legitimate part of their
function, explicitly endorsed by the god. Their dancing, however, was
performed for the god himself. The dancer would often sleep overnight
beneath Krishna's image, and elaborate dances were performed ritually
in which the dancer communed directly with the god without any other
audience being permitted. After a long hiatus, this form of dancing
has been revived as an art form, with respectable young women
reviving the tradition in concert halls and on television; but
dancing in temples has not been resumed. Like the temple dancers,
Mirabai here identifies with Radha and the Gopis who danced together
with Krishna during his life on earth. The blue-skinned Krishna is
often referred to as the "Dark One." What is Mirabai's attitude
toward conventional social reputation? What religious significance
would her attitude have? How does she express the intimacy of her
identification with Krishna?

Let them gossip

How is the belief in reincarnation reflected in this poem? What do
you thinking "awaking" consists in? The miracle in which Krishna
protected his home village from an angry god by sheltering it beneath
a mountain is referred to in the next to last line.

Come to my bedroom

This invitation to bed is reminiscent of some passages in the Song of
Songs. fs20 In what way does Mirabai's relationship with Krishna go
beyond a human marriage?P> Yogin, don't go
"Yogin" is one of Krishna's many titles. Here Mirabai offers to
immolate herself on a funeral pyre, committing an act of sati to
unite herself with Krishna as if she were his widow. Rubbing ashes
over the body is a common symbolic gesture recognizing the unity of
life and death. In what way do the final lines express Mirabai's
yearning for complete union with the god?

Persian Sufi Poetry

The majority tradition of Islam generally rejects mysticism. It is
considered very presumptuous to aspire to unite with God. He is to be
revered, praised and obeyed, not embraced. Islam's rejection of any
notion of divine incarnation underlines the distance between mortal
believer and immortal object of worship. Yet within Islam mystical
traditions proliferated, including many varieties of sufism. Some
concentrate on meditative dancing designed to induce a trance
(carried out by the "whirling dervishes"). Whereas many Muslims are
deeply suspicious of music as a frivolous diversion (the call to
prayer is never called a "song"), Sufis ecstatically sing ghazels for
hours at a time in praise of God. Sufi poets are among the most
famous and influential throughout the Islamic world, the most
prominent writing in Persian.

Hafiz: If that Tartar, that fair-skinned Turk of Shiraz

From Peter Avery & John Heath-Stubbs, trans. Hafiz of Shiraz: Thirty
Poems London: John Murray, 1952, pp. 22-23.

Hafiz' poems strike Westerners as extremely secular in their
enthusiastic praise of wine, music, and lovemaking; and yet they have
been understood from the earliest times to be religious allegories of
ecstatic union of God. Although wine is forbidden to Muslims by the
Qur'an, intoxication is the favorite spiritual metaphor of the Sufi
poets. Supremely delicious but nonintoxicating wines will flow freely
in paradise, according to Islamic belief. Mysticism provides a
foretaste of such wine. Here Hafiz daringly expresses his love for
God through the vehicle of desire for a handsome young man.
Homosexuality is generally rejected by Islam, but it is a commonplace
subject for literature. Hafiz begins by expressing his willingness to
trade two rich Islamic cities just for the mole on the cheek of his
beloved. He then asks for the wine, and daringly implies that this
earthly vintage surpasses that which awaits the faithful in Paradise.
The Turks are evidently troops stationed in his city: their pillaging
of the shops is compared to the stealing of hearts. What religious
meaning might be extracted from the lines: "Such beauty has no need
of our clumsy love:/No more than a lovely face needs pen cil or make-
up"? How does the rejection of reason fit in with mystical religious
views? Joseph [Arabic "Iusuf"] was a handsome young Hebrew who worked
for the high Egyptian official Potiphar. Potiphar's wife fell in love
with him and tried to seduce him. When he rejected her, she accused
him of rape and had him put in jail. The story is told in Genesis 39
of the Bible and in Sura 12 ("Joseph") of the Qur'an, but later
Muslim writers developed the story much further. The wife is named
Zuleika, and her relationship to Joseph is developed into a complex
romance with many episodes. The young man's beauty is especially
emphasized. The next stanza makes clear that the them here is
rejection returned by love. The mystical lessons conveyed by God are
to be prized more than the worshipper's own soul. Finally, Hafiz asks
for his poem, compared to a pearl necklace, to be accepted by God by
asking for it to be showered with the stars of heaven.

Rumi: They say that Paradise will be perfect

From John Moyne & Coleman Barks, trans. Open Secret: Versions of
Rumi. Putney, Vermont: Threshold Books, 1984, no. 802, p. 43.

Rumi is one of the best-loved of all Sufi poets. According to the
Qur'an, Paradise will provide delicious wine and beautiful young
women and men to delight the saved. Given that we know Rumi was
devout, what is he implying about the relationship between pleasure
in this world and pleasure in the next? Why do you suppose he
neglects (like most writers) to mention the beautiful young men in
Paradise?

Hildegard of Bingen: O Ecclesia

From A Feather on the Breath of God, Hyperion CDA66039, Track 8.

Hildegard of Bingen was an altogether remarkable woman in many ways.
One of the few avenues to prominence for a woman in Medieval Europe
was through church office. Hildegard reached the highest office open
to a woman as Abbess of the Abbey of Bingen in Germany. She was made
a saint because of her intense spiritual visions of union with God
which she described in rapturous Latin poetry. She described these
visions to the nuns in her care, who rendered them in striking
paintings illuminating her works. Modern German nuns created faithful
replicas of these paintings which were preserved when the originals
were destroyed in the bombing of World War I. It is these replicas
which are the source of all modern illustrations often misleadingly
labelled as "the art of Hildegard."

Though she may not have been a painter, she was accomplished in other
fields. She wrote a treatise on medicinal herbs which displayed
profound learning. But she is remembered today chiefly as a composer.
Bingen was far from such centers of Church composition as Paris, and
she developed a highly-original style of chant involving
extraordinarily wide leaps and soaring lines which clearly echo her
mystical leanings. Much of this music has been recorded and it is
becoming more and more widely known each year. Recently a hit
recording was created by blending authentic performances of her songs
with world beat/new age backgrounds. Like other Christian mystics,
she frequently uses erotic imagery, often from the Song of Songs, to
convey her sense of spiritual exaltation.

In the introductory stanza, Ecclesia is the Church, personified as a
beautiful woman. The opening stanza clearly echoes the language of
the Song of Songs. Note the emphasis on sound, appropriate for a
poet/composer. Despite being referred to, like most plainchant, by
its first line, a more appropriate title for this work would be "Hymn
to St. Ursula," an early Christian martyr whose story is exceedingly
obscure and confused. In all versions, however, it is clear that
like , she clung to her virginity, wed only to Christ (that is, to
God in the person of the Son). Nuns go through a marriage ceremony in
which they don rings signifying their spiritual marriage to the Lord.
Those pressuring her to marry (according to some stories, a pagan
tribe trying to force her to wed one of their princes), mock her in a
way which she interestingly reacts to as a kind of harsh music.
Hildegard's version of her story seems to imply that when force was
attempted, she burst into a sweet-smelling flame and died, taken up
by God to join him as his bride in Heaven. In the third stanza, she
is addressing Christ. What is the phrase "the world" seem to be used
in this poem? Can you compare the imagery of her union with Christ
with any specific Mirabai poem? Ursula is traditionally said to have
been accompanied in her martyrdom by many other virgins: as many as
10,000 of them.

St. John of the Cross: On a dark night

From Antonio T. de Nicol´s: St. John of the Cross (San Juan de la
Cruz): Alchemist of the Soul. New York: Paragon House, 1989, pp. 103-
105.

This 16th-Century Spanish monk was so enthusiastic a reformer that he
was imprisoned for antagonizing the Church hierarchy. In jail, he
began writing the poems recounting his mystical visions which are
among the finest poems in Spanish literature. It was this poem which
gave rise to the concept of the "dark night of the soul," when
spiritual despair gives way to enlightement and spiritual exaltation.
Like other Christian mystics, he borrows images from the Song of
Songs in describing his relationship with God.

St. Teresa of Avila: I gave myself to Love Divine

From E. Allison Peers: The Complete Works of St. Teresa of Jesus,
vol. III London: Sheed and Ward, 1972, p. 282

Teresa was a younger companion and friend of John of the Cross
heavily influenced by his erotically-tinged style in her own mystical
poetry. The pivotal experience of her life consisted of repeated
encounters with a smiling angel which plunged a spear repeatedly
through her heart, penetrating into her bowels and arousing a divine
ecstasy. This is one of several poems in which she retells this
encounter, which was memorably depicted by 17th-Century sculptor
Gianlorenzo Bernini in the little church of Santa Maria della
Vittoria in Rome.

Hroswitha: In Praise of Virginity

This extraordinary 10th-Century nun wrote comedies based on the
ancient Latin plays of Terence as well as more serious works. This is
a hymn to the Virgin Mary, figured as the bride of Christ, who is
God. In the book of Revelation, Christ is presented as the Lamb of
God, the sacrificial Passover lamb who died for humanity's sins. The
saints and martyrs are invited to gather around his throne.

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