Kabir Read online

  you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death.

  If you make love with the divine now, in the next life you will have the face of satisfied desire.

  So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is, believe in the Great Sound!

  Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for, it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all the work.

  Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.

  I know the sound of the ecstatic flute, but I don’t know whose flute it is.

  A lamp burns and has neither wick nor oil.

  A lily pad blossoms and is not attached to the bottom!

  When one flower opens, ordinarily dozens open.

  The moon bird’s head is filled with nothing but thoughts of the moon,

  and when the next rain will come is all that the rain bird thinks of.

  Who is it we spend our entire life loving?

  The buds are shouting:

  “The Gardener is coming!

  Today he picks the flowers,

  tomorrow us!”

  My inside, listen to me, the greatest spirit, the Teacher, is near,

  wake up, wake up!

  Run to his feet—

  he is standing close to your head right now.

  You have slept for millions and millions of years.

  Why not wake up this morning?

  Vast herds of lions are unheard of.

  So are long columns of swans.

  Rubies do not come in heaps.

  The ascetic walks along the road alone.

  Forests do not exist composed solely of sandalwood.

  Some oceans contain no pearls.

  A spiritual person is rare in this world.

  Why should we two ever want to part?

  Just as the leaf of the water rhubarb lives floating on the water,

  we live as the great one and little one.

  As the owl opens his eyes all night to the moon,

  we live as the great one and little one.

  This love between us goes back to the first humans;

  it cannot be annihilated.

  Here is Kabir’s idea: as the river gives itself into the ocean,

  what is inside me moves inside you.

  The bhakti path winds in a delicate way.

  On this path there is no asking and no not asking.

  The ego simply disappears the moment you touch him.

  The joy of looking for him is so immense that you just dive in,

  and coast around like a fish in the water.

  If anyone needs a head, the lover leaps up to offer his.

  Kabir’s poems touch on the secrets of this bhakti.

  Let’s leave for the country where the Guest lives!

  There the water jar is filling with water

  even though there is no rope to lower it.

  There the skies are always blue,

  and yet rain falls on the earth.

  Do you have a body? Don’t sit on the porch!

  Go out and walk in the rain!

  The fall moon rides the sky all month there,

  and it would sound silly to mention only one sun—

  the light there comes from a number of them.

  Between the conscious and the unconscious, the mind has put up a swing:

  all earth creatures, even the supernovas, sway between these two trees,

  and it never winds down.

  Angels, animals, humans, insects by the million, also the wheeling sun and moon;

  ages go by, and it goes on.

  Everything is swinging: heaven, earth, water, fire,

  and the secret one slowly growing a body.

  Kabir saw that for fifteen seconds, and it made him a servant for life.

  The Wanting Creature

  The flute of interior time is played whether we hear it or not.

  What we mean by “love” is its sound coming in.

  When love hits the farthest edge of excess, it reaches wisdom.

  And the fragrance of that knowledge!

  It penetrates our thick bodies,

  it goes through walls.

  Its network of notes has a structure as if a million suns were arranged inside.

  This tune has truth in it.

  Where else have you heard a sound like this?

  When my friend is away from me, I am depressed;

  nothing in the daylight delights me,

  sleep at night gives no rest;

  who can I tell about this?

  The night is dark, and long … hours go by …

  because I am alone, I sit up suddenly,

  fear goes through me….

  Kabir says: Listen, my friend,

  there is one thing in the world that satisfies,

  and that is a meeting with the Guest.

  Go and do good things for your god, who has unexpectedly entered the temple of day and night.

  Don’t be the lunatic in the second act; this day will not last forever.

  The one I love has waited for millions and millions of years for me. It was for love of me that he lost his self-sufficiency.

  But I know nothing of that delight which was three inches from me, because my love was still asleep.

  Now my darling has made clear to me the meaning of that note I heard.

  Now my good time has come!

  Kabir says: See how great my luck is. Imagine some-one you love stroking you, and that tenderness never ends!

  My body gives out a cry because I want my lover’s house.

  Whether she is out in the open or under a good roof is all one to the woman who has lost her beloved’s house.

  I feel no joy in anything I see; my body and mind are completely mad.

  I know all the gates of his palace, it has a million gates but between that palace and me there is an ocean.

  Tell me how I can cross that ocean, dear friend;

  I have the sense that this path will never have an end.

  Don’t you admire this two-stringed instrument? When the strings are well-tuned, the heart leaps up.

  When the pegs are loose and the strings flapping, who cares for it then?

  I told my parents—I was laughing—that I must go to my Lord now.

  They became angry; they didn’t want me to leave.

  They said: “She runs her husband; he gives in to every-thing she says; that’s why she is wild to start toward him.”

  Dear friend, gently lift up my veil; this is the night of love.

  Kabir says: Listen to me! My inside is eager to meet my lover.

  I can’t sleep even on my own bed.

  Remember me as the dawn begins to break!

  I said to the wanting-creature inside me:

  What is this river you want to cross?

  There are no travelers on the river-road, and no road.

  Do you see anyone moving about on that bank, or resting?

  There is no river at all, and no boat, and no boatman.

  There is no towrope either, and no one to pull it.

  There is no ground, no sky, no time, no bank, no ford!

  And there is no body, and no mind!

  Do you believe there is some place that will make the soul less thirsty?

  In that great absence you will find nothing.

  Be strong then, and enter into your own body;

  there you have a solid place for your feet.

  Think about it carefully!

  Don’t go off somewhere else!

  Kabir says this: just throw away all thoughts of imaginary things,

  and stand firm in that which you are.

  Knowing nothing shuts the iron gates; the new love opens them.

  The sound of the gates opening wakes the beautiful woman asleep.

  Kabir says: Fantastic! Don’t let a chance like this go by!

  Friend, wake up! Why do you go on sleeping?

  The night is over—do you want to lose the day the same way?


  Other women who managed to get up early have already found an elephant or a jewel….

  So much was lost already while you slept….

  and that was so unnecessary!

  The one who loves you understood, but you did not.

  You forgot to make a place in your bed next to you.

  Instead you spent your life playing.

  In your twenties you did not grow

  because you did not know who your Lord was.

  Wake up! Wake up! There’s no one in your bed—

  He left you during the long night.

  Kabir says: The only woman awake is the woman who has heard the flute!

  The bearers came to take me away to my new husband’s house, and I felt a joy all through my body.

  Instead the bearers have carried me into a deep forest.

  No one I know is here.

  Please, you walkers and bearers, don’t keep walking.

  Let me go back even for a moment to my relatives and my dear friends,

  so I can say goodbye to them!

  Kabir says: My dear student, forget your getting and spending.

  It’s all over with good bargains and bad ones.

  Where you are going, there are no markets and nothing to buy or sell.

  What has death and a thick body dances before what has no thick body and no death.

  The trumpet says: “I am you.”

  The spiritual master arrives and bows down to the beginning student.

  Try to live to see this!

  Listen friend, this body is his dulcimer.

  He draws the strings tight, and out of it comes the music of the inner universe.

  If the strings break and the bridge falls,

  then this dulcimer of dust goes back to dust.

  Kabir says: The Holy One is the only one who can draw music from it.

  Clouds grow heavy; thunder goes.

  Rain drives in from the east, its patter falls on the sides of houses.

  Rain can be destructive, wiping out boundary marks.

  But the soil needs care—ecstatic love has sprouts, now, and renunciation.

  Let the rain feed both.

  Only the farmer with intelligence actually brings his harvest back to this farmyard.

  He will fill the granary bins, and feed both the wise men and the saints.

  How hard it is to meet the Guest!

  The rain bird is thirsty; she cries and whistles,

  “Where is the rain?”

  But she refuses all water but the rain.…

  The deer comes out of her kind thickets when she hears music.…

  she does, she loves music,

  and somehow knows she will die.…

  The widow sits alone by her husband’s body.

  Soon the fire will be around her, and she is not afraid.

  Don’t have fears about his unimaginative body.

  Swan, I’d like you to tell me your whole story!

  Where you first appeared, and what dark sand you are going toward,

  and where you sleep at night, and what you are looking for.…

  It’s morning, swan, wake up, climb in the air, follow me!

  I know of a country that spiritual flatness does not control, nor constant depression,

  and those alive are not afraid to die.

  There wildflowers come up through the leafy floor,

  and the fragrance of “I am he” floats on the wind.

  There the bee of the heart stays deep inside the flower,

  and cares for no other thing.

  The Bride Wants Her Lover

  My body and my mind are in depression because you are not with me.

  How much I love you and want you in my house!

  When I hear people describe me as your bride I look sideways ashamed,

  because I know that far inside us we have never met.

  Then what is this love of mine?

  I don’t really care about food, I don’t really care about sleep,

  I am restless indoors and outdoors.

  The bride wants her lover as much as a thirsty man wants water.

  And how will I find someone who will take a message to the Guest from me?

  How restless Kabir is all the time!

  How much he wants to see the Guest!

  To whom shall I go to learn about the one I love?

  Kabir says: “When you’re trying to find a hardwood forest, it seems wise to know what a tree is.

  If you want to find the Lord, please forget about abstract nouns.”

  I played for ten years with the girls my own age, but now I am suddenly in fear.

  I am on the way up some stairs—they are high.

  Yet I have to give up my fears

  if I want to take part in this love.

  I have to let go the protective clothes

  and meet him with the whole length of my body.

  My eyes will have to be the love-candles this time.

  Kabir says: Men and women in love will understand this poem.

  If what you feel for the Holy One is not desire,

  then what’s the use of dressing with such care,

  and spending so much time making your eyelids dark?

  I married my Lord, and meant to live with him.

  But I did not live with him, I turned away,

  and all at once my twenties were gone.

  The night I was married all my friends sang for me,

  and the rice of pleasure and the rice of pain fell on me.

  Yet when all those ceremonies were over, I left, I did not go home with him,

  and my relatives all the way home said, “It’s all right.”

  Kabir says: Now my love energy is actually mine.

  This time I will take it with me when I go,

  and outside his house I will blow the horn of triumph!

  There’s a moon in my body, but I can’t see it!

  A moon and a sun.

  A drum never touched by hands, beating, and I can’t hear it!

  As long as a human being worries about when he will die, and what he has that is his,

  all of his works are zero.

  When affection for the I-creature and what it owns is dead,

  then the work of the Teacher is over.

  The purpose of labor is to learn;

  when you know it, the labor is over.

  The apple blossom exists to create fruit; when that comes, the petals fall.

  The musk is inside the deer, but the deer does not look for it:

  it wanders around looking for grass.

  There is nothing but water in the holy pools.

  I know, I have been swimming in them.

  All the gods sculpted of wood or ivory can’t say a word.

  I know, I have been crying out to them.

  The Sacred Books of the East are nothing but words.

  I looked through their covers one day sideways.

  What Kabir talks of is only what he has lived through.

  If you have not lived through something, it is not true.

  Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat.

  My shoulder is against yours.

  You will not find me in stupas, not in Indian shrine rooms, nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals:

  not in masses, nor kirtans, not in legs winding around your own neck, nor in eating nothing but vegetables.

  When you really look for me, you will see me instantly—

  you will find me in the tiniest house of time.

  Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?

  He is the breath inside the breath.

  I know of a strange tree—it climbs into air even though it lacks roots.

  It never blossoms but it bears fruit.

  It has neither branches nor leaves; it is lotus through and through.

  Two birds sit on that tree singing. One is the Teacher; the other is the Student.

  The Student chooses all the mangos of life and tastes e
ach one.

  His Teacher is glad as he sees that.

  Kabir will tell you a difficult thing: “The bird cannot be found, but is perfectly visible.

  The divine energy is right in the midst of creatures.

  I am here to praise all creatures.”

  The small ruby everyone wants has fallen out on the road.

  Some think it is east of us, others west of us.

  Some say, “among the primitive earth rocks,” others, “in the deep waters.”

  Kabir’s instinct told him it was inside, and what it was worth,