Written Messages

 

                Suzdal, Vladimir Region (Russia)

                12 May 2015

 

 

Kabir belonged to Varanasi (India) and lived in the 15th century. His poems revealed a tremendous energy of understanding in his being. Scholars, of course, run into many stupid mental undertakings while ‘trying’ to understand and interpret his wonderful poems.

 

Poems of Kabir

 

I

I went looking for Him

And lost myself;

The drop merged

With the Sea –

Who can find it now?

 

II

O servant, where do you seek Me?

Lo! I am inside you.

I am neither in temple nor in mosque: I’m neither in Kaaba nor in Kailash:

Neither am I in rites and rhetoric, nor in any acquisition and abnegation.

If one is a true seeker, you shall at once see Me: you will instantly meet Me

In the moment of no-time.

God is the breath of all breath, Life is the throb of all beings.

 

III

Kabir says: “Hindus and Moslems alike have arrived at THAT, where remains no mark of distinction and division”.

 

IV

Kabir says: “It is the Spirit of the Quest which does the miracle;

‘I-less-ness’ is this Spirit of the Quest”.

 

V

Tell me, Brother, how can I renounce Maya?

When I gave up the tying of ribbons, still I tied my garment about me:

When I gave up tying my garments, still I covered my body in its folds.

So, when I give up passion, I see that anger remains;

And when I renounce anger, greed is with me still;

And when greed is vanquished, pride and vainglory remain;

When the mind is detached, still it clings to detachment.

Kabir says: “Listen to me, dear Sadhu!  The true path can not be found,

As there is no path to truth out there;

Truth is within your Be-ing

Without the slightest movement of becoming 

 

VI

The moon is within being of mine, and so is the sun.

The un-struck drum of Eternity is sounded within.

So long as one clamours for the ‘I’ and ‘mine’

His/her works are worthless:

When all ‘love’ of the ‘I’ and the ‘Mine’ is dead, then

The wisdom of Lord dawns

 

VII

Kabir says: “The musk is in the deer, but it seeks it not within itself:

It wanders in quest of mere grass.

Life is within the human body

But he is preoccupied with the garbage of the mind”

 

VIII

The creature is in Brahma, and Brahma too is in the creature:

They are ever distinct, yet ever dissolved in each other.

He Himself is the tree, the seed, and the germ.

He Himself is the flower, the fruit and the shade.

He Himself is the sun, the light and the lighted.

He Himself is Brahma, creature and Maya.

He Himself is the manifold form, the infinite space;

He is the breath, the word, and wisdom beyond the word.

He himself is the limit as also the limitless: and

Beyond both the limited and the limitless is THAT, the Pure Being.                

 

IX

O How may I ever express that secret word?

O how can I say He is not like this, and He is like that?

If I say that He is within me, the universe is ashamed:

If I say that He is without me, it is falsehood.

He makes the inner and the outer worlds to be indivisibly one;

The conscious and the unconscious, both are His footstools.

He is neither manifest nor hidden,

He is neither revealed nor unrevealed:

There are no words to tell that which He is

 

X

There is a land where neither doubt nor sorrow have rule;

Where the terror of Death is no more

There the woods of spring are a-bloom,

And the fragrant scent “He is I” is born on the wind:

There the bee of the heart is deeply immersed in the ecstasy and euphoria of joy.

 

XI

The Supreme One is Unnamable, Immeasurable, Un-knowable.

The Yogi, the Sanyasi, the Ascetics, are disputing one with another:

Kabir says: “O brother! He, who has seen that radiance of Love, he is saved”

 

XII

Kabir asks: “Because it has been named as wave,

Shall it no longer be considered as ocean?”

 

XIII

Where millions of Indras dwell in the sky,

Where the demi-gods and the munis are unnumbered,

Where thousands of Saraswatis play on the Veena–

There is my Lord revealed in Self!

 

XIV

The profound devotion mingles the double currents of love and detachment, like the Mingling of the streams of Ganga and Jumna,

Flowing towards Kashi.

In devotion, the sacred water flows day and night; and thus the cycle of births and deaths is Brought to an end at Kashi!

 

XV

Kabir says: “Dive thou into that Ocean of None-ness and

Let all errors of life and of death flee away”

 

XVI

Look upon life and death; there is no separation between them!

The right hand and left hand are one and the same.

Kabir says: “There the wise man is speechless;

For this truth may never be found in Vedas, Koran and Bible”

 

XVII

Travelling by no track, I have come to the Sorrowless Land:

Very easily has the mercy of the great Lord come upon me.

They have sung of Him as infinite and unattainable:

But 'No-I' in meditations have seen Him without the seer!

 

XVIII

Kabir says: Knowing THAT, the ignorant man becomes wise, and the wise man becomes speechless and only SILENCE then speaks!

He then drinks from the cup of the

Inbreathings and the outbreathings (Pranayam)

Kabir says: “When the myth of the mind is merged in the Ocean of Life, one is reborn in Life, in the Supreme Land of Bliss”

 

 

Jai Kabir