The Game of the Name

The pain of lost love is life's greatest curse;
The loss of a bhakta is a thousand times worse.
This is the price: by loving we invited the pain.
Now it has come, how can we complain?
Find the vestige of life left within Love's corpse
And offer the pain to its Divine Source.

The mundane heart knows not prema’s way,
it sees but the glitter of lila and play.
But the Sahaja path is a two-edged blade,
that is both of union and of madness made.

For nirvana, just keep away from thirst,
A mukti-vadi is by desire cursed.
Pleasure is desire’s fruit and so is pain,
Renounce the thirst for love or go insane.

But if you accept madness as the price of prem
Then love, for that is the game of the Name.