Written Messages

 

                Suzdal, Vladimir Region (Russia)

                13 May 2015

 

Poems of Kabir (continued)

 

I

The middle region of the sky, wherein the spirit dwells,

Is radiant with the music of light;

There, where the pure and white music blossoms,

My Lord takes His delight.

In the wondrous effulgence of each hair of His body,

The brightness of millions of suns and of moons is lost.

On that shore there is a city,

Where the rain of nectar pours and pours, and never ceases.

Kabir says: “Come, O Dharmadas! And see my great Lord’s Durbar”.

 

(This is a clarion call from Kabir to the slaves of organized religions, with their rigid and bogus beliefs – disbeliefs; insanity of their ideologies, interpretations &intricacies; investments in their stinking scriptures and humbug ‘holy books’ –to come out in the open SKY and be overwhelmed by the Life and Divinity).

 

II

To what shore would you cross? There is no road:

Where is the movement?

There is no water; no boat, no boatman is there;

There is not even a rope to tow the boat, nor a man to draw it.

No earth, no sky, no time, no thing, no shore!

In that emptiness, be strong, and enter within your own Being!

O my heart! Go not elsewhere.

Kabir says: “Put all imaginations away, and

Stand fast in THAT which you are”.

 

III

Lamps burn in every human, O blind one! And you cannot see them.

One day your eyes shall suddenly be open and you shall see,

And the fetters of death will fall from you.

There is nothing to say or to hear, there is nothing to do:

It is he who is living, yet dying from moment to moment to the myth ‘I’

Shall never die for Life is!

Kabir says: “I may never express how sweet my Lord is. But the running of beads, the Books, The virtue and vice, these are naught to Him”.

 

IV

Kabir says: “Verily he has no fear, who has encountered a Guru-Process to take him to the shelter of safety!”

(That is, freedom from false fragmentation in the inner being)

 

V

The shadows of the evening fall thick and deep, and

The divinity of love envelopes the body and the mind

Drink the sweet honey that steeps the petals of the lotus of Life;

Receive the waves in your body: what splendor is in the region of the sea!

Kabir says: “O brother, behold! The Lord is in this vessel of thy body”.

 

VI

More than all else do I cherish that love which

Makes me to live a limitless life in this world

It is like the lotus, which lives in the water and blooms in the water:

Yet the water cannot touch its petals, they open beyond its reach

It is like a wife, who enters the fire at the bidding of love

She burns, yet never dishonors love

Kabir says: “O my dear one, be available to the Ocean of Omnipresence!”

 

VII

All things are created by the Om;

The love-form is His body

He is without form, without quality, without decay

But the formless God takes a thousand forms in the eyes of his creatures:

He is pure and indestructible,

His form is infinite and fathomless,

He dances in rapture, and waves of form arise from His dance

The body and the mind cannot contain themselves,

When they are touched by His great joy

He is immersed in all consciousness, all joys, and all sorrows;

He has no beginning and no end;

He holds all within His bliss. 

VIII

Kabir says: “The Guru-process is great beyond words, and great is the good fortune of the discipleship process”.

 

IX

Dance, my heart! Dance to-day with joy

The strains of love fill the days and the nights with music, and

The world is listening to its melodies:

Mad with joy, life and death dance to the rhythm of this music

The hill and the sea and the earth dance

The world of man dances in laughter and tears

Why put the robe of the monk, and

Live aloof from the world in lonely pride?

 

X

The lock of error shuts the gate; open it with the key of love

Thus, by opening the door, you shall wake the Beloved 

 

XI

Kabir says: “The home is the abiding place;

In the home is reality; the home helps to attain Him who is real

So stay where you are, and all things shall come to you in time”.

 

XII

There is nothing but water at the holy bathing places;

And I know that they are useless, for I have bathed in them

The images are all lifeless. They cannot speak;

I know, for I have cried aloud to them

The Purana and the Koran are mere words;

Lifting up the curtain I have seen

Kabir gives utterances to the words of perception;

And he knows very well that all other things are untrue.

 

XIII

I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty:

You do not see that the Real is in your home, and

You wander from forest to forest listlessly!

Here is the truth! Go where you will, to Varanasi or to Mathura;

If you do not see fasle as the false, Truth never is!

 

XIV

The Hidden Banner is planted in the temple of the sky;

There the blue canopy decked with the moon and

Set with bright jewels is spread.

There the light of the sun and the moon is shining:

Comprehend your agitation, convert it to awareness.

Kabir says: He who has drunk of this nectar of division-free Awareness

Wanders and wanders in euphoria everywhere!

 

XV

Who are you, and whence do you come?

Where dwells that Supreme Spirit, and

How does He have his sport with all created things?

The fire is in the wood; but who awakens it suddenly?

Then it turns to ashes, and where goes the force of the fire?

The true guru teaches that He has neither limit nor infinitude

Kabir says: Divinity speaks language for the perception of humans in wholeness of Attention!

 

XVI

O sadhu! Purify your body in the simple way, simple food, simple drink,

As the seed is within the banyan tree, and

Within the seed are the flowers, the fruits, and the shade:

So the germ is within the body, and within that germ is the body again

The fire, the air, the water, the earth, and the ether;

You cannot have these outside of Him

The water-filled pitcher is placed upon water,

It has water within and without

It should not be given a name, otherwise it calls forth the error of dualism

Kabir says: Listen to the Truth of Emptiness, which is your Essence!.

 

XVII

There is a strange tree, which stands without roots and

Bears fruits without blossoming;

It has no branches and no leaves, it is lotus all over

Two birds sing there; one is the Guru, and the other is disciple

The disciple chooses the manifold fruits of life and tastes them, and

The Guru beholds him in joy

What Kabir says is hard to understand: “The birds are beyond seeking, yet seeking naturally Formless is in the midst of all forms. Kabir sings the glory of all forms”

 

XVIII

I have stilled my restless mind, and my heart is radiant:

For in Thatness I have seen beyond That-ness.

In Company I have seen the Comrade Himself

Living in bondage, I have set myself free:

I have broken away from the clutch of all narrowness

Kabir says: I have attained the unattainable, and

My heart is coloured with the colour of love.

He who has found love as well as renunciation

Never descends to death”.

 

Jai Sant Kabir