My desire is not satisfied.
My hopes are unfulfilled.
O mother! O Kali!
Now my life is ending.
I am calling to you, mother,
for the last time: take me
in your arms, rock me
like a mother rocks a child.
This is a loveless world.
No one here loves as you do.
My one desire, mother, is to go
to you and be completely loved.
~Indian Poet Ramprasad
The great mystical poets of India were passionate in their expressions of love for Kali, the great mother of death who dances in the cemeteries wearing her garlands of skulls. In this season of harvest and death, Kali is an especially appropriate object foe meditation. What, Ramprasad asks us, differentiates the goddess of death from a mother? Nothing, he answers.
Nothing? How can death be our mother? This is the great mystery of Kali's worship, a mystery that cannot be explained, only experienced. To truly accept the mortality of our bodies, Ramprasad tells us, is not to become depressed and demoralized. Rather, we become completely alive in the awareness of our eventual death. As the leaves and another year's cycle turns around, Kali is an appropriate goddess to invoke.