Saint Namdev

If you were to experience the supreme Lord, You would transcend all desire. If with devotion you would constantly remember the Lord You would be free from all care.

How will you ever cross the ocean of the world- If filled with poison. Seeing this world of lies and illusion, You have gone astray.

Regardless of my birth in a cloth printer's house, I have been blessed with the Guru's instruction, Through the grace of the saints, Nama has been granted the gift of union with the Lord.

Preface

This small book was published in 1977 as the first in a series on the lives and teachings of various Eastern mystics. The idea of the series originated with Maharaj Charan Singh. The overall purpose was to present in a simple way the salient features of the saints' teachings with selections from their poetry as a way of introducing them to English-speaking readers.

As one comes to know the teachings of these great saints, it will be realized that their basic tenets and philosophies are the same. All emphasize the there is one supreme God, a power that is al-positive all all-love; that God will be realized within one's own self through the practice of inner meditation and not through the practice of inner meditation and not through ritual and outer forms of worship; that experience of God comes only with the guidance of a living adept; spiritual wisdom comes through devotion and surrender and not through intellectual deliberation, argument or analysis, though these can help clear superstitions and errors of thinking that are often present in religious minds.

The present monograph on Saint Namdev includes poems from the Marathi, Punjabi and Hindi collections of his writing published in Shri Namdev Gatha, Adi Granth and Sant Namdev ki Hindi Padavali. The English translations made from the vernacular by the authors of the book have been modernized for this new edition. It may also be noted that the poems have been arranged thematically. The path of God-realization, the practice of discovering Truth and of realizing Truth within oneself, falls naturally into stages for this edition the poems have been arranged accordingly and a brief introduction to each section has been given, rather than introducing each poem separately as was done in the earlier editions

For the person who can read namdev's work in the original as well as in translation, an index of first lines in the vernacular in Roman script is appended. This will facilitate cross-referencing form one language to the other. Apart from these changes, some minor stylistic modifications have been made in the first part of the book.

Namdev's poems, tough composed almost eight centuries ago, are as fresh and relevant as though written today. Arising from his love for God, they concern themselves with timeless aspects of human experience. Namdev overflows with love for the divine. His poetry, imbued with his experience, is ecstatic and immediate. Essentially, Namdev had only one concern in his message: that those he consummation with might share the wonder and ultimate consummation of love that he had so clearly experienced himself