Sri Sathya Sai—The Supreme Poet

Sri Sathya Sai Baba, the sage of Puttaparthi in Andhra Pradesh, is well known in India and abroad as the great Indian preceptor preaching the sermon of following the fourfold path of satya [truth], dharma  [righteousness], prema [love], and shanti  [peace]. Those who have come into contact with Him also know that He is the very embodiment of love and affection.

However, it is not many, except those who have heard Him speak in Telugu, who realize that Sai is a poet, whose compositions in Telugu rate very highly in literature. He sings the poems He has composed at the beginning of a religious discourse or during the discourse itself to bring home His message. These poems are real gems of Telugu literature, and the style in the poetry recalls to our mind two other great poets of the Telugu motherland, Potana and Vemana. The sweetness of Potana’s Bhagavata Kavitva as well as the simple but telling poetry of the Yogi Vemana are both, to my mind, combined in the poetry of Sri Sathya Sai.

Here are a few examples of the poetic genius of this great guru.

Sai’s first well-known composition relates to the time when, as a boy of 16, He announced that His disciples were waiting for Him and He left His home to sit under a sprawling tree to announce the coming of the guru with the words: “Manasa Bhajare Guru Charanam, Dustara Bhava sagara taranam.”

The composition calls the devotees to the guru and says:

Concentrate with mind
And sing the glory of
The twin feet of the Guru;
That will release thee
From the formidable ocean of bondage.

The poem regarding the Paramatma [Supreme Lord] and the illogicality of ignorance is compressed in a single telling, beautiful Telugu poem that is translated below:

Just as stars are invisible in daylight,
The blessing-bestowing Paramatma
O Man, may not be visible to thee!
On this count should you proclaim
He does not exist?

A few other selected examples are given below:

Cultivate the soil of thy heart.
The mind is the plough, goodness the bullocks,
Discrimination is the driving whip;
Cultivate the expanse of the heart,
Man’s courage is the manure
Drops of love the seeds
Bhakti [devotion] is the shower of rain
Thoughts be the weeds
Brahma‑ananda, the reaped harvest.

The importance and efficacy of namasmarana, that is the chanting of the Lord’s name, is stressed in several telling verses.

Namasmarana is the essential path,
Hence worship by this method.
Brush aside other vidyas [education]
Seeing that they be all spurious.

Waking up from bed and
Until bed time again,
To feed thy tummy
Without discrimination or limits
Thou spendeth thy life,
Wasting away thy skills,
Forgetting the lotus‑leaf‑eyed one
To what effect—what great pleasures
Have you attained?
Pour over this O Man!

And lastly, advice to `working eves’:

If all the eves leave home
For taking up employment,
Who are the housewives to be
In charge of the homely chores?
When husband and wife both attend office
Who will tend the home?
To teach others’ children,
If mothers work in schools,
Which mother will teach her children?

Sporting books like men
If women leave home
Who will tend the hearth?
The problem of income gets solved
But what of the short measure at home?

The importance of satsang or good company is described in a poem:

Combining with mud
Iron gets rusted
Combining with fire
Rusted iron is cleansed
It’s company alone
That is responsible for this
This is the path of truth
That is the word of Sai

~P. Sitapati
Source: Sanathana Sarathi, April 1980