A section from the journey

The Northern Tide

Long after the Tamil saints sang, the same tide of devotion rose in the north of the land. A teacher named Ramananda is remembered for opening the path to all who came. From his circle, and others like it, came a new kind of singer: the Sant, who sang to a God beyond all form, in plain everyday words.

We have walked through the south, where the tide of love first rose. We met the Alvars and the Nayanars, and the three great teachers who each read one sentence in their own way. Now the road turns north.

For many centuries, across the wide northern plains, the same warm tide rose again and again. It was the tide of , of loving devotion to God. It did not come as one great wave at one moment. It came like the sea coming in, again and again, in place after place, in tongue after tongue.

The tradition remembers a teacher who stands near the start of this northern flowering. His name was Ramananda. He is held in memory as a who threw the door wide. To him, it is told, the love of God was for everyone who came, whatever their birth or their trade. Around such teachers, the singing began.

From these circles came a new kind of voice. We call them the Sants. Hold this small word, for we will meet it often. It comes from an old root, , which means the true, the real, that which truly is. So a is not simply a holy person. A Sant is one who has tasted the real.

Many of the Sants sang in a way we should notice. They did not sing to a God with a face and a name and a story. They sang to a God beyond all form, beyond all image, the One who cannot be carved or pictured. The word for that, which you have met before, is , the formless. Others, as we will see, loved God dearly as a child or as a beloved. The northern tide held both kinds of love.

And they sang in the mother tongue. Not in the old learned language of the priests, but in the plain speech of the street and the field. This was a quiet revolution. It meant a weaver or a farmer could stand and sing of God, and need no scholar to speak for them. Listen to the tailor-saint Namdev, whose words were later treasured among the Sikhs.

“When I sing of God, then I behold Him; then I, His slave, obtain contentment.”

One more honest word before we meet them. The lives of these singers come to us as the tradition lovingly remembers them, woven with wonders. Historians can fix very little of it for certain, and the years of their living are not firmly known. So we hold the songs more surely than the dates. The voice is sure. We will meet it now, one beloved singer at a time.

The Sants sang to God in the plain words they used every day, not in any special holy language. Is there a place where you feel closest to what matters most, using only ordinary words of your own? Sit a moment with that thought.