Curated collection of the poems of Mari of Magadha who walked with Jesus

by: Kaori Mizuki

Paperback book ISBN: 978-1-998478-59-0
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-998478-60-6
Amazon ASIN : B0DSBK87MZ
When a young slave girl in a Srinagar brothel first met the wandering teacher Iesous, neither karma nor society suggested she would become one of humanity’s greatest spiritual guides. Yet Mari of Magadha’s journey from exploitation to enlightenment offers profound insights into how divine wisdom flows through our most human experiences.
In this intimate collection, Japanese fish vendor and Wayist teacher Kaori Mizuki presents Mari’s most transformative poems with deeply personal commentary. Through verses that find sacred truth in brothel cells and fishing boats alike, Mari shows us how light enters through our broken places, how wisdom grows in unlikely soil, and how divine love transforms everything it touches.
These poems, written across Mari’s journey from India to Jerusalem, reveal how authentic spirituality embraces rather than transcends our complete human experience. They remind us that heaven often speaks most clearly through unwashed hands and unexpected teachers.
See also:
Mystic Mother of theWAY : Curated collection of the poems of Mari of Magadha who walked with Jesus.
Jesus the Wayist : The Teaching of Lord Jesus Before Christians made it a Jewish Religion
From Indian Brothels to Divine Guide : The true story of Mari who worked with Jesus from India to Jerusalem and became the foremost Wayist teacher
SAMPLES
Who is Mother Mari to us?
The morning market still smells of fish guts and seaweed when memories of Mari surface – how she too would wake before dawn to sort through the day’s catch of fry from a pond or river to cook breakfast for the Lord and her, finding wisdom in the simple act of telling fresh from spoiled. Some call her Magdalene now, though they don’t understand that Magadha was the kingdom of her birth, where Gautama Buddha’s feet once walked and ancient wisdom still whispers through banyan trees.
The Lord met her in Kashmir when she was still a teen enslaved in a brothel in Srinagar. Her early childhood, before her father sold her to a slave trader, was spent carefree as a rich man’s daughter, but life dealt her some hard cards to play – and she played them so well.
Having read her story early in my Wayist training, I often think of how she first met the Lord in that brothel cell, her fingers bleeding from a nervous habit of picking at her cuticles, her back tooth aching, her soul tucked away where clients couldn’t reach it. Yet even then, something in her remained unbroken – that fierce intelligence that questioned everything, that hunger for truth that no amount of degradation could satisfy.

Younger Mari (courtesy Wayist.Life community)
The Mari I came to know through her work walked like someone who had found her center of gravity – equally steady in palace or slum, with scholar or street sweeper. Her hands, strong from years of hard work, could heal with a touch or gesture with precise grace when teaching. When she laughed, which was often, her whole body participated in the joy, as if she had learned that wisdom comes through flesh, not despite it.
She taught us how light enters through our broken places. In my visions from her story I’ve watched her wash the Lord’s feet with her tears, seen her stand unflinching at his crucifixion when others fled, witnessed how she transformed the wounds of her past into medicine for others’ souls. Her poems carry this same profound authenticity – never hiding the raw humanity of experience, yet always revealing the divine light that shines through it.
Even now, nearly two millennia later, sorting through these verses brings her presence close – that particular mix of earthiness and illumination, of unflinching honesty and boundless compassion. This collection carries her essence: how she wove together wisdom from East and West, how she found sacred truth in the most ordinary moments, how she showed us that every experience, even the most painful, can become a gateway to awakening.
Her teaching flows like a clear stream, wearing away our delusions not through force but through persistent truth. These poems are not just words on paper but windows into a way of seeing that transforms everything it touches. Through them, Mari continues to show us how to find divine light in the temple of our own experience, in the sacred text of our own hearts.
A sparrow lands on my windowsill as I write this, tilting its head as if asking why humans need so many words to say what nature demonstrates in a single gesture. Mari would have smiled at that.
Mari’s Poetic Style
This spring morning as I sort these precious verses, watching cherry petals drift past my window, I find myself contemplating how Mari’s words flow like water – finding their way through any vessel while maintaining their essential nature, somehow finding their way into every crack and crevice of a wounder soul. Her poems carry the scent of both East and West, like the morning breeze that brings both mountain snow and sea salt to my garden.
When Mari spoke or wrote, she naturally blended the languages she had gathered on her journey – Prakrit flowing into Koine Greek, Sanskrit emerging through Aramaic tones. Like watching a master weaver at work, I’ve seen how she would catch a word’s gleam in one tongue and let it cast new light through another. A single verse might carry the precision of Sanskrit philosophical terms alongside the emotional directness of Greek lyrical forms, yet somehow remain as clear as temple bells at dawn.
Her poetry style is unique, like her. Her poems often come in threes, like waves approaching shore – each one carrying the thought a little deeper. First the physical reality that anchors us in our humanity, then the heart’s response to that reality, and finally the spiritual truth that emerges when we have the courage to embrace both. I’ve noticed how she rarely speaks of the divine without first grounding us in the earthly, as if to remind us that transcendence grows from, not despite, our human nature.
The images she chooses are simple – lotus flowers pushing through mud, water finding its level, light catching in dewdrops. Yet through these ordinary things, she shows us the extraordinary. A butterfly emerging from its chrysalis becomes a teaching about transformation. Market vendors calling their wares become a lesson in the nature of impermanence. Even a child’s skinned knee can open into a discourse on compassion.
What moves me most is how she transforms suffering into wisdom and experience the divine in the ordinary. Having walked through the darkest places a human can go, she emerged carrying light for others. Her poems don’t hide the pain – they acknowledge it fully, yet show how even our deepest wounds can become windows through which divine love and wisdom enters the world.
The Lord once told her that truth needs no ornamentation, and you can see this in her style – clean as a freshly swept temple floor, clear as morning light. Yet within that simplicity, she manages to bridge worlds. Eastern wisdom and Western spirituality flow together in her verses like tributary streams joining to form a mighty river.
When I read these poems now, years after first reading them as a child, I still catch new layers of meaning, like finding deeper pools in a familiar stream. Perhaps that too is part of their nature – to reveal themselves gradually, teaching us patience even as they illuminate truth.
Lotus Rising
From mud-depths rising,
through waters ascending,
To light transforming—
This is the Way.
In darkness binding,
Through love transcending,
To wisdom flowing—
This is the Path.
From death emerging,
Through gates ascending,
To heaven returning—
This is our Truth.
~ Mother Mari of Magadha
***
This poem captures the essence of Mari’s understanding of transformation. In my own work at the fish market, I often think of these verses while watching the morning sun touch the water – how light penetrates the depths gradually, just as wisdom emerges through layers of experience. Mari uses the lotus, a symbol familiar to her Indian roots, but transforms it into something universal.
Notice how she builds each stanza in three movements – from the physical reality (mud, darkness, death) through the process of transformation, to the emergence of spiritual truth. This three-part structure appears throughout her work, like waves that gradually carry us deeper into understanding.
The simplicity of her language masks profound theological insight – how the divine is found not by escaping our earthly nature but by moving through it mindfully. Every morning when I clean fish, my hands remembering ancient skills, I understand better what she meant about wisdom emerging from the most ordinary acts.
A dragonfly just landed on my manuscript, its wings catching the light like living stained glass. Mari would have seen in that moment a teaching about how beauty emerges naturally when we stop trying to force it.
Through brothel shadows walking
Through brothel shadows walking,
Past temple curtains speaking,
In wisdom’s light awakening—
I found the Way.
Not priests’ words hollow,
Not merchants’ coins clinking,
But love’s voice calling—
I heard the Truth.
From chains unwinding,
Through grace ascending,
To freedom dancing—
I learned to fly.
~ Mother Mari of Magadha
***
Mari’s transformation begins
Through brothel shadows walking, Past temple curtains speaking, In wisdom’s light awakening — I found the Way…
Here Mari captures the moment everything changed – her first meeting with Lord Iesous in that Srinagar brothel cell. The physical details she told in her book are unflinching: her monthly bleeding had started early, the room smelled of stale wine and cheap incense, her cuticles were bleeding from nervous picking, monks and business people and lonely old men would come and go – use what they paid for to keep their souls – and come back next week. Yet through these very human details, divine light entered her life.
The progression through the three stanzas shows how transformation often begins in our most wounded places. Every morning when I prepare my stall, handling and gutting fish with careful attention, I think of how Mari found her path not by escaping her circumstances in her mind but by discovering wisdom within them.

Mari learning energy management skills from Lord Iesous

Mari at the cross with the Lord. This picture was loaned from the excellent historical novel “From Indian Brothels to Divine Tara” by Jean and Adele du Plessis
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