POETRY OF MAHATMA KRISHEN JOO RAZDAN AND SHIV SUTRAS

                                                

                    ( Mahatma Krishen Joi Razdan by artist Ravi Dhar )

The Bhakti Poetry of Mahatma  Krishen Joo Razdan: A Sprinkling of Shiv Sutras

There is  a sprinkling of core message of the Shiv Sutras in the Kashmiri Bhakti poetry of Mahatma Krishen Joo Razdan of Kashmir. It is not a scholarly borrowing or a forced interpretation. It is a living breath. The same awareness that Vasugupta received on the slopes of Mahadeva mountain in the 9th century flows, centuries later, through the verses of a saint-poet from Vanpoh, Anantnag. 

According to the Shiv Sutras, want of awareness is Maya and deep sleep. The very first sutra, caitanyam atma, declares: “Consciousness is the Self”. To forget this is to fall into Maya. To remember it is liberation. Awareness alone dispels Maya. A real Sadhaka therefore desires nothing but awareness, for it is awareness alone that lifts the veil of illusion and reveals the Self as Shiva. This is not a doctrine for debate. It is a truth to be lived. Mahatma Krishen Joo Razdan, whom many rightly call the Sant Tukaram of Kashmir, understood this. He wove this very truth into his Kashmiri verses with the simplicity and fervour of true devotion. Mahatama  Razdan did not write commentaries. In his verses , the austere, diamond-hard aphorisms of Kashmir Shaivism became tender, tear-filled pleas at the Lord’s feet. 

Born in 1850, Mahatma Razdan was a householder, a “Farzana” saint who lived the four Ashramas yet remained absorbed in the silence of stillness. He is revered as “Sant Mahatma” in the Kashmiri ethos of the Bhakti tradition. His monumental work, ,'Shiv Pranae' or 'Shiva Parinaya', is a Kashmiri Leela-kavya, modelled on the Shiva Mahapuran. But to call it a retelling would be to miss its essence. Mahatma Razdan’s genius was to take the non-dual metaphysics of Trika and clothe it in the intimate language of love. His God is not a distant philosophical absolute. He is the “breath within the devotee, the rhythm of consciousness itself”. This is pure Spanda,  the vibration, the pulsation that the Shiv Sutras place at the heart of reality. For Kashmir Shaivism, the universe is not created out of nothing. It is Shiva’s  Leela . His free, spontaneous, joyful play of consciousness. Mahatma  Razdan’s very choice of the Leela-kavya form is itself a theological statement. He told us that the highest truth is not grim. It is a divine play, and we are invited to participate.

The direct links between Mahatma  Razdan’s poetry and the Shiv Sutras are unmistakable. When the Sutras say caitanyam atama, he sings of a “merger with the Shiva-consciousness” and addresses Shiva as “Guru-Paramatman”. When the Sutras teach the non-dualism of Shiva and Shakti, Razdan declares that “Shiva and Shakti  the masculine and feminine  are one, inseparable, and ever-present”. When the Sutras speak of Pratyabhijna, the recognition of one’s true nature as Shiva, Mahatma Razdan’s entire Sadhana becomes “self-analysis and human perfection” to see the world as the “Pradhanik Rahasya”, the secret of Primal creation. Even the paths align. The Shiv Sutras outline three Upayas: Sambhavopaya of will,  Saktopaya of knowledge, and Aṇavopaya of effort. Mahatma Razdan’s work “displays the deep effect of Puranas, agam shastras, Kashmir Shaivism and Bhakti tradition”, mixing Jnana and Bhakti marg ( knowledge and devotion) into a single path accessible to all. 

This is why his comparison with Sant Tukaram is so apt. Tukaram carried Vithoba of Pandharpur in his Abhangas. He took Vedanta out of the monasteries and into the fields, into the language of farmers and traders. Mahatama Razdan did the same for Kashmir. He carried the non-dual Shiva of Vasugupta in his Kashmiri verses. He proved that the Divine listens to the language of the heart, not of the scholar. His verses are “steeped in non-dual wisdom” yet remain “tender, profound, and steeped in the cadence of prayer”. He opens ,"Shiv Pranae" not with a ritual invocation, but with a heartfelt surrender to Ganesha as the remover of inner obstacles. From there, he paints a vision of divinity that is at once transcendental and intimate. 

Nowhere is the Shiv Sutra spirit clearer than in his famous line: “Hosh dim lagayo Pamposh Paadan”or  "Grant me awareness. This life at your lotus feet, my Lord" . Here, hosh is the same Bodha of the Sutras  that luminous self-awareness which alone is liberation. He does not ask for wealth, or heaven, or powers. He asks for awareness. Because the Sadhaka knows that with awareness, Maya dissolves on its own. With awareness, the lotus feet are not far away. They are here, now, as one’s own being. This is the core of Kashmir Shaivism. This is the cry of Mahatma  Razdan’s Bhakti. The philosophy breathes. It weeps. It surrenders. 

Mahatma Razdan’s “Achhe Posh Gav Lachhi Novuy Hyath”presents the core ideas of the  Shiva Sūtrasthrough a Kashmiri wedding song of Shiva and Uma . The countless flowers  reflect spanda,, the vibration of Shiva’s consciousness becoming the universe. Uma’s marriage to Ishana  portrays the key Trika teaching that Shiva and Śhakti are one ;  their union is not two deities joining, but one reality knowing itself. By describing cosmic truth as a familiar Kashmiri   Vanvun song, Mahatma  Razdan follows , "Yathā tatra tatha anyatra" (ŚS 3.9)  the same reality is found in the home and in the cosmos. The song’s beauty of scent, colour and music becomes Saktopaya,  a way to realise Pratyabhijina, that all is Shiva. Thus the prevailing mood is " Jagadananda"  (ŚS 1.12) , the joy of seeing the world as Shiva’s own wedding celebration.

Mahatma Razdan wrote , "Bhaav pamposh pheil ananad sarasiy shiv shankarasiy chhe posha pooza ." or “Lotuses of rapt Bhaava have erupted in the boundless lake of Ānanda; Shiva, fused with Śakti as Śaṅkara, receives the worship of gods who rain down flowers upon their indivisible union.”

Mahatma Razdan’s line resonates with Trika intensity: the “Pamposh” are not passive blooms but  Spanda,  the explosive pulsation of Vimarsha-Shakti, tearing through the heart-lotus, shattering  Maala as "Udyamo Bhairavaḥ" (SS 1.5), the sudden upsurge of the Absolute. The “Anand-sar” is no tranquil pool but the fathomless ocean of "Cit-ananda wherein "Jagadānanda" (ŚS 1.12) erupts  the cosmos revealed as Shiva’s orgiastic bliss-play. “Shiv Shankara-siy chhe posha pooza” enacts "Shakti-chakra-sandhāne viśva-saṁhāraḥ ( SS 3.31) with ferocious immediacy: Shiva-Śakti  Smarasya annihilates subject-object duality, whilst the "Posha-pooza" is anugraha unleashed ; grace as a violent downpour of flowers that obliterates finitude. Here "Chaitanyam Atma ( SS 1.1) stands unveiled: worship, worshipper, and worshipped collapse into the single, self-luminous fire of  Pratyabhijñā, rendering Mahatma  Razdan’s verse a mantra of awakening rather than mere devotion.

So the lineage is clear. From Lord Shiva to sage Vasugupta in the 9th century, to the Shiv Sutras, to the great commentators Kshemaraja and Abhinavagupta, to the living Trika tradition, and finally to Mahatma Krishen Joo Razdan in the 19th century. His "Shiv Pranae" and Leela poetry are the Shiv Sutras sung as Bhakti. They teach the same truth: the individual self is Shiva, the universe is His playful expression  or Leela /Spanda, and liberation is Pratyabhijñā or  recognising this truth, not by ritual but by awareness. Razdan wanted to “seek the very existence of Shiva” for “self-analysis and human perfection”. The Sutras guide us to “set aside the illusion and experience ultimate reality”. The goal is one. The language is different. One is in Sanskrit aphorisms for ascetics. The other is in Kashmiri song for every home. 

To read Mahatma Razdan is to see how a tradition stays alive. It does not survive by being locked in books. It survives by being sung in households . The Shiv Sutras were revealed near Harwan, by Mahadeva mountain, whether inscribed on the Sankaropala rock or whispered to Vasugupta in a dream. A thousand years later, they were still being revealed  this time in the heat and dust of the plains of the country where the exiled natives live at present .The mystic from Vanpoh  asked for nothing but Hosh_at the Lord’s Pamposh Paada or Lotus feet . That is the sprinkling. That is the continuity. That is the grace of Kashmir Shaivism: it never stopped speaking. It only changed its tongue, so that the heart could understand.

( Avtar Mota)

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