A section from the journey

Manikkavacakar and the Song That Melts a Stone

One Shaiva saint stands a little apart: Manikkavacakar, whose very name means "he whose words are rubies." His long poem, the Tiruvacakam, is the most loved of all the Tamil Shaiva songs. The people say of it that a heart it cannot melt must be harder than stone. In him the Tamil hymn-treasure reaches its tenderest voice — love and surrender, all in the mother tongue.

We have heard the three voices of the Tevaram, the great Tamil song to Shiva. There is one more Shaiva poet we must meet, for he is dearest of all to many hearts, though the tradition often counts him a little apart from the sixty-three Nayanars.

His name is . It is a title, really, and a beautiful one. It means "he whose words are rubies." Picture that: a man whose every word falls like a small jewel. His great poem is called the , the "sacred utterance."

Of all the Tamil hymns to Shiva, the Tiruvacakam is the most loved. The Tamils have a saying about it that tells you everything. The heart that the Tiruvacakam cannot melt, they say, must be harder than stone. It is a poem made to soften you.

Its mood is surrender, plain and total. The saint does not bargain with God or boast of what he has done. He comes with empty hands. Again and again he cries the same simple thing: I am yours, save me. Place your sacred feet upon my head. There is nothing left of pride in it, only trust.

And he sees clearly how most of us live, busy and lost in our own small thoughts. In one famous image he watches ordinary people, caught up in their notions of "I" and "mine," and sees them dancing like puppets, while God quietly holds the strings.

"...Thou king, who see'st how / Men dance like puppets with their foolish thoughts / of 'I' and 'Mine,' / While Thou the cords dost pull."

It is a gentle scolding and a comfort at once. We think we move ourselves; the saint smiles and says the strings are in kinder hands than we knew. To let go of "I" and "mine" is not to be made small. It is to rest in the one who holds the cords.

Let this one poem stand for a whole ocean. Behind it lie the Alvars' four thousand verses to Vishnu and the Nayanars' great canon to Shiva: a vast treasure of song, all in Tamil, the speech of the home. Two long centuries before the north began to sing this way, the south was already flooded with it. The mother tongue had been made holy. Remember that. It is the south's gift to the whole long story.

Manikkavacakar pictured us as puppets who think we pull our own strings, until we learn whose hands hold them. Where in your life have you held on tightly to "I" and "mine"? How might it feel to loosen that grip, just a little?