Kabir

“ All is soaked in love: that love which he described in almost Johannine language as the “Form of God.” The whole of creation is the Play of the Eternal Lover; the living, changing, growing expression of Brahma’s love and joy. ”

“ Mine eyes must perform the ceremony of the lamps of love.
Kabir says: “Listen to me, friend: he understands who loves. If you feel not love’s longing for your Beloved One, it is vain to adorn your body, vain to put unguent on your eyelids.” ”

“ Kabīr finds them governing the creative acts of God. His manifestation is love; His activity is joy. Creation springs from one glad act of affirmation: the Everlasting Yea, perpetually uttered within the depths of the Divine Nature. [9] In accordance with this concept of the universe as a Love-Game which eternally goes forward, a progressive manifestation of Brahma--one of the many notions which he adopted from the common stock of Hindu religious ideas, and illuminated by his poetic genius--movement, rhythm, perpetual change, forms an integral part of Kabīr’s vision of Reality. ”

“ There is a land where no 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 borne on the wind:
There the bee of the heart is deeply immersed, and desires no other joy. ”

“ The poetry of mysticism might be defined on the one hand as a temperamental reaction to the vision of Reality: on the other, as a form of prophecy. As it is the special vocation of the mystical consciousness to mediate between two orders, going out in loving adoration towards God and coming home to tell the secrets of Eternity to other men ”

“ As the seed is in the plant, as the shade is in the tree, as the void is in the sky, as infinite forms are in the void—
So from beyond the Infinite, the Infinite comes; and from the Infinite the finite extends. ”

“ Though the Eternal and Absolute is ever present to his consciousness, yet his concept of the Divine Nature is essentially dynamic. It is by the symbols of motion that he most often tries to convey it to us: as in his constant reference to dancing, or the strangely modem picture of that Eternal Swing of the Universe which is “held by the cords of love.” ”

“ Hence their constant declaration that they see the uncreated light, they hear the celestial melody, they taste the sweetness of the Lord, they know an ineffable fragrance, they feel the very contact of love. ”

“ It is needless to ask of a saint the caste to which he belongs;
For the priest, the warrior, the tradesman, and all the thirty-six castes, alike are seeking for God.
It is but folly to ask what the caste of a saint may be;
The barber has sought God, the washerwoman, and the carpenter—
Even Raidas was a seeker after God. ”

“ Yet in this wide and rapturous vision of the universe Kabīr never loses touch with diurnal existence, never forgets the common life. His feet are firmly planted upon earth; his lofty and passionate apprehensions are perpetually controlled by the activity of a sane and vigorous intellect, by the alert common sense so often found in persons of real mystical genius. ”

“ For work has no other aim than the getting of knowledge :
When that comes, then work is put away.
The flower blooms for the fruit: when the fruit comes, the flower withers.
The musk is in the deer, but it seeks it not within itself: it wanders in quest of grass. ”

“ Last, the warmly human and direct apprehension of God as the supreme Object of love, the soul’s comrade, teacher, and bridegroom, which is so passionately and frequently expressed in Kabīr’s poems, balances and controls those abstract tendencies which are inherent in the metaphysical side of his vision of Reality: and prevents it from degenerating into that sterile worship of intellectual formulae which became the curse of the Vedāntist school. For the mere intellectualist, as for the mere pietist, lie has little approbation. ”

“ O friend ! hope for Him whilst you live, know whilst you live, understand whilst you live: for in life deliverance abides.
If your bonds be not broken whilst living, what hope of deliverance in death ? ”

“ II. 57. jānh khelat vasant ṛiturāj
Where Spring, the lord of the seasons, reigneth, there the Unstruck Music sounds of itself,
There the streams of light flow in all directions ;
Few are the men who can cross to that shore ! ”

“ It is a marked characteristic of mystical literature that the great contemplatives, in their effort to convey to us the nature of their communion with the supersensuous, are inevitably driven to employ some form of sensuous imagery: coarse and inaccurate as they know such imagery to be, even at the best. Our normal human consciousness is -so completely committed to dependence on the senses, that the fruits of intuition itself are instinctively referred to them. In that intuition it seems to the mystics that all the dim cravings and partial apprehensions of sense find perfect fulfilment. ”

“ For them, when they have achieved at last the true theopathetic state, all aspects of the universe possess equal authority as sacramental declarations of the Presence of God; and their fearless employment of homely and physical symbols--often startling and even revolting to the unaccustomed taste--is in direct proportion to the exaltation of their spiritual life. ”

“ They will pour their wine into almost any vessel that comes to hand: generally using by preference--and lifting to new levels of beauty and significance--the religious or philosophic formulae current in their own day. Thus we find that some of Kabīr’s finest poems have as their subjects the commonplaces of Hindu philosophy and religion: the Līlā, or Sport, of God, the Ocean of Bliss, the Bird of the Soul, Māyā, the Hundred-petalled Lotus, and the “Formless Form.” Many, again, are soaked in Sūfī imagery and feeling. ”

“ Hindus and Moslems alike have achieved that End, where remains no mark of distinction. ”

“ The poet Kabīr, a selection from whose songs is here for the first time offered to English readers, is one of the most interesting personalities in the history of Indian mysticism. Born in or near Benares, of Mohammedan parents, and probably about the year 1440, he became in early life a disciple of the celebrated Hindu ascetic Rāmānanda. Rāmānanda had brought to Northern India the religious revival which Rāmānuja, the great twelfth - century reformer of Brāhmanism, had initiated in the South. ”

“ And when greed is vanquished, pride and vainglory remain;
When the mind is detached and. casts Maya away, still it clings to the letter.
Kabir says, “ Listen to me, dear Sadhu ! the true path is rarely found.” ”