![]() The Kashmiris have passed on the poems from generation to generation, together with the mystical stories surrounding her. She speaks in the local Kashmiri dialect, which had descended from corrupted Sanskrit and Prakrit languages. Lalla expresses the state of her deep realization through proverbs or short poems. She sheds her clothes to wear the sky-just like the Shiva, or digambara (a Sanskrit term meaning sky-clad)-and rejoices in her true inner self. For the yogi she was, all customs and costumes were but unnecessary details: they had no utility on her path to liberation. She is one of the few mystics to have attained enlightenment in a female body. Lalla practiced Shaiva Tantra that flourished in the sacred valleys of Kashmir around the turn of the second millennium. ![]() She was following the advice of her teacher when she sang:įorget the outside, get to the inside of things. Deeply delved in self-realization, everything of the outside world was just out-worldly for her. To Lalla, all outer fabrications bore no meaning-including the fabric that you clad around your body. Imagine a 14 th century Indian woman becoming a wandering ascetic, much less going around naked and dancing in freezing mountains and orthodox villages! But with mystics, 'ordinary' or 'normal' is not the way-at least in the sense that we so-called ordinary or normal people understand it. ![]() ![]() Thus danced the rare female yogi, Lalla of Kashmir. What clothes could be so beautiful, or more sacred? ![]()
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