āratī bhagavāna śrīśaṃkara

An aarti to Shankara in the Awadhi devotional register, and its opening line is a run of negations set to a tune, which is a combination this tradition manages more easily than most: unageing, undying, unborn, formless, of the nature of being and consciousness and bliss, pervading, whose form is brahman — Bhava, remover of the fear of becoming. What follows brings that abstraction down to the things the singer can see, the ash and the moon and the serpents and the hide, and returns each time to the refrain. Sung standing with the lamp, and the pull of it is exactly this movement between the formless one the first line names and the very particular figure the rest of the verses describe.