Kabir

“ A great religious reformer, the founder of a sect to which nearly a million northern Hindus still belong, it is yet supremely as a mystical poet that Kabīr lives for us. His fate has been that of many revealers of Reality. A hater of religious exclusivism, and seeking above all things to initiate men into the liberty of the children of God, his followers have honoured his memory by re-erecting in a new place the barriers which he laboured to cast down. But his wonderful songs survive, the spontaneous expressions of his vision and his love ”

“ Once and again Kabir overlooked the scene. Then, tired of standing, and undesirous of spending the whole morning inactively, he turned and looked around him, up the rocky height of the temple-crowned acropolis. An ascent into the city seemed the most feasible method of amusement. Therefore he proceeded leisurely towards the nearest upward path, when, somewhat to his amazement, he perceived the figure of Charmides coming rapidly towards him along the beach. The moment his eyes met those of the youth the shepherd's pace grew perceptibly slower. ”

“ Few men, perhaps, would have considered this freedom as a reason for actually taking no part in the affair of the moment. But Kabir was one of these few. He was by nature a true Phœnician, and by cultivation a true merchant: thoroughly indolent where his immediate advantage was not concerned; good-natured because good-nature made men more pliable to his secret will; keen as a knife-blade, and quite indefatigable in any matter that concerned his or his employer's profit; indifferent to the weal or woe of his nearest friend, so long as by that woe or weal his own comfort was unconcerned. ”

“ The pure man is the image of God, and after death attains community with God. The commandments of Kabir are few: Not to injure anything that has life, for life is of God; to speak the truth; to keep aloof from the world; to obey the teacher. His poetry is most beautiful, hardly surpassed in any other language.
Still more important in the history of India was the reform of Nânak, the founder of the Sikh religion. He, too, worked entirely in the spirit of Kabir. ”

“ O bearers, I entreat you by your feet, wait but a moment longer: let me go back to my kinsmen and friends, and take my leave of them.
The servant Kabir sings: "O Sadhu! finish your buying and selling, have done with your good and your bad: for there are no markets and no shops in the land to which you go." ”

“ KABIR'S POEMS I I. 13. mo ko kahân dhûnro bande
O servant, where dost thou seek Me?
Lo! I am beside thee.
I am neither in temple nor in mosque: I am neither in Kaaba nor
in Kailash:
Neither am I in rites and ceremonies, nor in Yoga and
renunciation.
If thou art a true seeker, thou shalt at once see Me: thou shalt
meet Me in a moment of time.
Kabîr says, "O Sadhu! God is the breath of all breath."
II I. 16. Santan jât na pûcho nirguniyân
It is needless to ask of a saint the caste to which he belongs ”

“ Kabîr says: "Come, O Dharmadas! and see my great Lord's Durbar."
XIX II. 20. paramâtam guru nikat virâjatn
O my heart! the Supreme Spirit, the great Master, is near you:
wake, oh wake!
Run to the feet of your Beloved: for your Lord stands near to your
head.
You have slept for unnumbered ages; this morning will you not
wake?
XX II. 22. man tu pâr utar kânh jaiho
To what shore would you cross, O my heart? there is no traveller
before you, there is no road:
Where is the movement, where is the rest, on that shore?
There is no water; no boat, no boatman, is there;
There is not so much as a rope to tow the boat, nor a man to draw ”

“ Do you know how the moments perform their adoration?
Waving its row of lamps, the universe sings in worship day and
night,
There are the hidden banner and the secret canopy:
There the sound of the unseen bells is heard.
Kabîr says: "There adoration never ceases; there the Lord of the
Universe sitteth on His throne."
The whole world does its works and commits its errors: but few
are the lovers who know the Beloved.
The devout seeker is he who mingles in his heart the double
currents of love and detachment, like the mingling of the
streams of Ganges and Jumna ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now Kabīr, as we might expect in one whose reactions to the spiritual order were so wide and various, uses by turn all the symbols of sense. He tells us that he has “seen without sight” the effulgence of Brahma, tasted the divine nectar, felt the ecstatic contact of Reality, smelt, the fragrance of the heavenly flowers. But he was essentially a poet and musician: rhythm and harmony were to him the garments of beauty and truth. Hence in his lyrics he shows himself to be, like Richard Rolle, above all things a musical mystic. Creation, he says again and again, is full of music: it is music. ”

“ Nothing unusual was to be seen in the temple room. Half-way down, between the frescoed columns, burned the two torches before the empty altar. Yes, and there, in the shadow of the wall, stood Kabir, the Phœnician, watching quietly the movements of the shepherd. Charmides perceived him, but failed to wonder at his presence. It was natural that any one should wish to be here to-night. Yet how could any living man stand unmoved in the midst of such a glory of sound as whirled about him now? The lyre music rose anew to a great fortissimo, high above the deeply resonant chords of the sky-organ. ”

“ When I gave up the tying of ribbons, still I tied my garment
about me:
When I gave up tying my garment, 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 and casts Maya away, still it clings to
the letter.
Kabîr says, "Listen to me, dear Sadhu! the true path is rarely
found." ”

“ I am wandering yet in the alleys of knowledge without purpose, but I have received His news in these alleys of knowledge.
I have a letter from my Beloved: in this letter is an unutterable message, and now my fear of death is done away.
Kabir says: "O my loving friend! I have got for my gift the Deathless One." ”

“ Kabīr’s fame as a preacher of bhakti, or enthusiastic devotion to a personal God, whom he preferred to call by the Hindu names of Rāma and Hari, is greater than that of any other of the Vaishnava spiritual leaders. His fervent conviction of the truth and power of his doctrine, and the homely and searching expression given to it in his utterances, in the tongue of the people and not in a learned language remote from their understanding, won for him multitudes of adherents; and his sect, the Kabīrpanthīs, is still one of the most numerous in northern India, its numbers exceeding a million. ”

“ In most quaint language Kabir thus expresses a very deep truth:—
"By the saints the butter is eaten, the world drinks the buttermilk."
A Christian might have written the following verse:—
"The saints have died; why should weeping be made
that they go to their home
The stars at dawn pass away, so the world passes away."
Like Goru Nanak, in his writings the gifted weaver expresses deep humility:—
"Every one says (I am) good, good: no one considers
(himself) bad.
Kabir says, I am the worst of all; every one is good
except me. ”

“ His followers, the Kabir Panthis (“those following Kabir’s path”) , though neither worshipping the gods of the pantheon, nor observing the rites and ceremonial of the Hindus, are nevertheless in close touch with the Vaishnava sects, especially the Ramavats, and generally worship Rama as the supreme deity, when they do not rather address their homage, in hymns and otherwise, to the founder of their creed himself. Whilst very numerous, particularly amongst the low-caste population, in western, central and northern India, resident adherents of Kabir’s doctrine are rare in Bengal and the south ”

“ Kabir says: "It is the sport of the Unattainable One: look within, and behold how the moonbeams of that Hidden One shine in you"
There falls the rhythmic beat of life and death:
Rapture wells forth, and all space is radiant with light. ”

“ Bring the tearful streams of the rainy clouds to your eyes, and cover your heart with the shadow of darkness:
Bring your face nearer to His ear, and speak of the deepest longings of your heart. Kabir says: "Listen to me, brother! bring the vision of the Beloved in your heart." ”

“ The most remarkable man of that time was a weaver, the pupil of Râmânanda, known by the name of Kabir. He indeed deserved the name which the members of the reformed sect claimed for themselves, Avadhûta, which means one who has shaken off the dust of superstition. He broke entirely with the popular mythology and the customs of the ceremonial law, and addressed himself alike to Hindu and Mohammedan. According to him, there is but one God, the creator of the world, without beginning and end, of inconceivable purity, and irresistible strength. ”

“ The sal and the kikar must guard him from heat;
His home is the camp, and the waste, and the crowd--
He is seeking the Way as bairagi avowed!
He has looked upon Man, and his eyeballs are clear
(There was One; there is One, and but One, saith Kabir) ”

“ In his private life Kabir was a married man and had several children. By trade he was a weaver. Weaving's like knitting: it allows you to make a living and think of something else at the same time. It was the very thing for Kabir, of course. Gave him practically the whole day to make songs in, and think of religion. He seems to have been a happy fellow—far more so than Sanine. [57]
Sanine's comment would have been that Kabir was living in an imaginary world, not a real one, and that he was autointoxicating himself with his dreamings. ”

“ Kabir belongs to that small group of supreme mystics - amongst whom St. Augustine, Ruysbroeck, and the Sufi poet Jalalu'ddln Rumi are perhaps the chief - who have achieved that which we might call the synthetic vision of God. These have resolved the perpetual opposition between the personal and impersonal, the transcendent and immanent, static and dynamic aspects of the Divine Nature; between the Absolute of philosophy and the "sure true Friend" of devotional religion. They have done this, not by taking these apparently incompatible concepts one after the other; ”

“ Though there is not much that is original in the doctrines of Kabir, he is a considerable figure in Hindi literature and may justly be called epoch-making as marking the first fusion of Hinduism and Islam which culminates and attains political importance in the Sikhs. Other offshoots of his teaching are the Satnâmîs, Râdhâ-swâmis and Dâdupanthis. The first were founded or reorganized in 1750 by a certain Jag-jivan-das. They do not observe caste and in theory adore only the True Name of God but in practice admit ordinary Hindu worship. ”

“ It is neither coloured nor colourless: it has neither form nor outline:
It sits in the shadow of love.
It dwells within the Unattainable, the Infinite, and the Eternal; and no one marks when it comes and goes.
Kabir says: "O brother Sadhu! deep is the mystery. ”

“ He is dear to me who knows Brahma, and can dwell on His supreme truth in meditation; and who can play the melody of the Infinite by uniting love and renunciation in life.
Kabir says: "The home is the abiding place; in the home is reality; the home helps to attain Him Who is real. ”

“ I have learned the Sanskrit language, so let all men call me wise:
But where is the use of this, when I am floating adrift, and parched with thirst, and burning with the heat of desire?
To no purpose do you bear on your head this load of pride and vanity.
Kabir says: "Lay it down in the dust and go forth to meet the Beloved. ”

“ Millions of beings are there: the sun and the moon in their
courses are there:
Millions of ages pass, and the swing goes on.
All swing! the sky and the earth and the air and the water; and
the Lord Himself taking form:
And the sight of this has made Kabîr a servant.
XVII II. 61. grah candra tapan jot varat hai
The light of the sun, the moon, and the stars shines bright:
The melody of love swells forth, and the rhythm of love's
detachment beats the time.
Day and night, the chorus of music fills the heavens; and Kabîr
says
"My Beloved One gleams like the lightning flash in the sky." ”

“ 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." ”

“ In fifteenth-century Benares the syncretistic tendencies of Bhakti religion had reached full development. Sûfîs and Brâhmans appear to have met in disputation: the most spiritual members of both creeds frequenting the teachings of Râmânanda, whose reputation was then at its height. The boy Kabîr, in whom the religious passion was innate, saw in Râmânanda his destined teacher; but knew how slight were the chances that a Hindu guru would accept a Mohammedan as disciple. He therefore hid upon the steps of the river Ganges, where Râmânanda was accustomed to bathe ”