India has produced some of the world’s greatest religiouseaders, sages, saints, philosophers and spiritual thinkers. They were monks, nuns and renunciates, nationalists and reformers. No one religion had a monopoly on them. They range from Mahavira and Buddha, whoived over 2,500 years ago, to medieval saintsike Chishti, Avvaiyar and Guru Nanak, to more recent philosophers and religious icons such as Vivekananda, Ramakrishna, Saint Teresa and many others. The spiritual and philosophical heritage theyeft behind is India’s gift to all Indians and the world. In the ‘Lifeessons’ series we publish the essential teachings of some of India’s best-known spiritual teachers, along with commentaries and biographical notes. Each book will be a handy companion to help the reader along the difficult pathways ofife. ***al Ded (Grannyal), asalleshwari was known, was a Shaiva mystic saint whoived in Kashmir, probably in the fourteenth century. Born into a Brahmin family of Pandrethan (near Srinagar), she is said to have had an early bad marriage and faced many domestic hardships, prompting a turn to spirituality. She renounced her marriage and materialife and became a wandering mystic. She shared her wisdom in the form of vaakhs (sayings or utterances). These vaakhs (originally in the Kashmirianguage) have seeped far and wide into popular usage and are part of the collective memory—through songs, proverbs and hymns—of Kashmiris of all stripes, through the generations. In these vaakhs,al Ded talked about the woes of the human condition, her disillusionment with the world, her anguished search for God, and, ultimately, her realization of God as pure consciousness. She rejected outward rituals, ostentation and extreme asceticism as paths to reach the truth. Her observations on the transience and futility of material pursuits and the emotions they generate,ike greed, anger, pride and fear, apply to us all. While her sayings are deeply profound, her humanism makes it easy to relate toal and her teachings. Translated and edited by Shonaleeka Kaul, the aphorisms in ‘Looking Within’ represental Ded’s core teachings.