000			02733nam a22002057a 4500
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008			250325b |||||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
020			_a9789388292702 _qhbk
041			_aeng
082			_a294.5924 _bKAU
100			_aKaul, Shonaleeka
245			_aLooking within : life lessons from Lal Ded _c/ edited by Shonaleeka Kaul
250			_a1st ed.
260			_aNew Delhi _bAleph _c2019
300			_ax, 124 p. _b: ill. _c; 12 cm.
490			_aLife lessons
520			_aIndia has produced some of the world’s greatest religious leaders, sages, saints, philosophers and spiritual thinkers. They were monks, nuns and renunciates, nationalists and reformers. No one religion had a monopoly on them. They range from Mahavira and Buddha, who lived over 2,500 years ago, to medieval saints like Chishti, Avvaiyar and Guru Nanak, to more recent philosophers and religious icons such as Vivekananda, Ramakrishna, Saint Teresa and many others. The spiritual and philosophical heritage they left behind is India’s gift to all Indians and the world. In the ‘Life Lessons’ series we publish the essential teachings of some of India’s best-known spiritual teachers, along with commentaries and biographical notes. Each book will be a handy companion to help the reader along the difficult pathways of life. *** Lal Ded (Granny Lal), as Lalleshwari was known, was a Shaiva mystic saint who lived in Kashmir, probably in the fourteenth century. Born into a Brahmin family of Pandrethan (near Srinagar), she is said to have had an early bad marriage and faced many domestic hardships, prompting a turn to spirituality. She renounced her marriage and material life and became a wandering mystic. She shared her wisdom in the form of vaakhs (sayings or utterances). These vaakhs (originally in the Kashmiri language) have seeped far and wide into popular usage and are part of the collective memory—through songs, proverbs and hymns—of Kashmiris of all stripes, through the generations. In these vaakhs, Lal Ded talked about the woes of the human condition, her disillusionment with the world, her anguished search for God, and, ultimately, her realization of God as pure consciousness. She rejected outward rituals, ostentation and extreme asceticism as paths to reach the truth. Her observations on the transience and futility of material pursuits and the emotions they generate, like greed, anger, pride and fear, apply to us all. While her sayings are deeply profound, her humanism makes it easy to relate to Lal and her teachings. Translated and edited by Shonaleeka Kaul, the aphorisms in ‘Looking Within’ represent Lal Ded’s core teachings.
650			_aHindu Religion
942			_cENGLISH
999			_c568915 _d568915