Hanuman Chalisa

With the dust off my teacher's feet — feet that are lotuses to me — I polish my own mind, the way you rub a mirror until you can see something in it.

Then I tell the spotless fame of Ram, best of the Raghu family: the telling that hands a person all four of the things a life can be for.

Knowing this body of mine has no wit in it, I call on the son of the wind.

Give me strength. Give me judgement. Give me learning. Take away what hurts me, and take away what is crooked in me.

Hail, Hanuman — you are an ocean of knowing, and an ocean of every good quality there is.

Hail, chief of the monkeys, who lights up all three worlds at once.

You are Ram's messenger, and you are the house that strength beyond all measuring lives in.

And these are your names: Anjani's son, and the son of the wind.

Great hero, full of daring, your body hard as the thunderbolt —

drive the crooked thinking out of me. You are the one who keeps company with clear thinking.

Your colour is gold. You shine, and you are beautifully dressed.

There are rings in your ears, and your hair falls in curls.

In your hand the thunderbolt shines, and the flag shines beside it.

Across your shoulder lies your sacred thread, twisted out of munja grass.

Shankar's son. Kesari's boy.

Your brightness and your power are enormous, and the whole world bows to you.

You are full of learning. You are good all the way through. You are very quick at working things out.

And you cannot rest until Ram's work is done.

Hearing what your lord has done — you drink it in, and you never get tired of it.

Ram and Lakshman and Sita live inside your mind.

You made yourself tiny, and let Sita see you.

You made yourself terrible, and burned Lanka, the island city, to the ground.

You made yourself huge and dreadful, and you destroyed the demons.

Everything Ramchandra had to get done, you put straight.

You fetched the herb that gives life back, and Lakshman lived again.

And Ram — the hero of the Raghus — was so glad that he pulled you against his chest.

Ram praised you out loud, and he went on praising you.

"You are dear to me," he said, "the way my own brother Bharat is dear to me."

"The thousand-mouthed serpent sings your fame, and does not stop" —

and saying that, Shripati — the lord of Lakshmi — folds you into his arms.

Sanaka and his three brothers, who were born from Brahma's mind and stayed children forever; Brahma himself, who was there at the start, and the great gods after him; the chief among the sages —

Narada with his lute, who goes everywhere and carries everything he hears; Sarada, who is speech itself; and with them Shesha, the serpent the earth is resting on —

— Yama, who meets every living thing at the end; Kubera, who keeps the treasure of the world; the guardians who stand at each of its edges: where would even they begin?

So where would a poet begin, or a scholar who has read everything there is?

You did Sugriva a good turn that he could never have done for himself.

You brought him to Ram and made the two of them known to each other, and you gave him back a king's place to stand.

Vibhishan listened to what you advised him, and he took it.

He became the lord of Lanka. There is nobody in the world who has not heard how that turned out.

The sun is a thousand ages of leagues away.

You swallowed it whole, because you took it for a sweet ripe fruit.

You put your Lord's ring inside your mouth — the ring that would tell Sita who had sent you —

and you went straight over the sea. And there is nothing to be astonished at in that.

However many jobs there are in this world that nobody can get near —

exactly that many turn easy to walk into, once your kindness has reached them.

You are the one who keeps the door at Ram's house.

Nobody gets inside without your leave.

Everything that makes a person comfortable is found in your shelter.

You are the one who guards. There is nobody left to be afraid of.

Your own burning strength is yours to hold, and you are the one holding it.

When you call out, all three worlds shake.

Ghosts do not come close, and neither do the spirits that feed on flesh —

not when the name of the great hero is spoken out where it can be heard.

Illness is destroyed, and every pain carried off,

for the one who keeps saying it over and over without a stop — Hanuman, the brave one.

Hanuman gets a person loose from the tight place they are caught in —

whoever turns their whole attention on him: what they think, and what they do, and what they say.

Above everyone stands Ram, a king who lived like a hermit — matted hair, bark for clothes, nothing of his own.

And every piece of his work was put in order by your hands.

And whoever brings you some other wish — anything else at all they have set their mind on —

that person gets the fruit of it, and there is no measuring how much.

Your blazing strength runs right through all four ages of the world.

Everyone has heard of it, and it lights the whole world up.

You are the watchman over good and holy people.

You tear the demons up by the roots. And Ram loves you dearly.

You are the one who hands out the eight great powers and the nine treasure-stores.

Mother Janaki — Sita — gave you that as a gift, so that you would have it to give.

The medicine that is Ram's own name is with you — right there, close, in your keeping.

Stay Raghupati's servant for ever.

Whoever worships you reaches Ram.

And the sorrow piled up over birth after birth — all of it gets forgotten.

When the end comes, you go to Ram's own city.

And whoever is born there is called one of Hari's own people.

No other god is held in mind at all.

Whoever serves Hanuman is given every comfort there is.

Trouble is cut clean through, and every ache is rubbed right out,

for whoever calls Hanuman to mind — Hanuman the strong, Hanuman the brave.

Hail, hail, hail to Hanuman, master of himself.

Be kind to me the way a teacher is kind.

Whoever recites it a hundred times over

is let out of their chains, and great gladness comes.

Whoever reads this Hanuman Chalisa comes into siddhi — the thing achieved, the thing brought off.

And Gaurisha, Gauri's own lord, stands there as the witness to it.

Tulsidas is Hari's servant, always and for good.

Lord, pitch your camp inside my heart and stay there.

Son of the wind, you who carry trouble away, you whose whole shape is good fortune —

come and live in my heart, and bring Ram and Lakshman and Sita with you, king of the gods.