Kabir Didn't Stand For Fakirs
O scholars, you are mistaken;
there's no creator or creation there
There's no radiant form, no time, no word, no flesh, or faith;
no cause or effect, or even a thought of the Vedas.
There's no Hari or Brahma, no Shiva or Shakti,
no pilgrimages or rituals;
There is no mother, no father, no Guru; think!
Is it two or is It One?
Kabir says:
If you understand this, you are the teacher and I am the disciple.
Kabir Das was a 15th-century Indian mystic poet and saint, whose writings influenced Hinduism's Bhakti movement and his verses are found in Sikhism's scripture Guru Granth Sahib.
His early life was in a Muslim family, but he was strongly influenced by his teacher, the Hindu bhakti leader Ramananda
Plucking your eyebrows
BY KABIR
TRANSLATED FROM THE HINDI BY ARVIND KRISHNA MEHROTRA
Plucking your eyebrows,
Putting on mascara,
But will that help you
To see things anew?
The one who sees
Is changed into
The one who’s seen
Only if one is
Salt and the other
Water. But you, says Kabir,
Are a dead
Lump of quartz.
According to Kabir, every life has relationship with three spiritual principles, soul, self and God. (Jīvātmā, Ātmā and Paramātmā).
Jīvātmā is the individual, and Ātmā and Paramātmā are Universal.
- PARAMĀTMĀ is the Supreme Principle, whatever we call it: God, Supreme Self, Divine Self, Love, Truth or Reality.
- ĀTMĀ may be described as God’s ray of light, which exists as the “light of life” in every living being. It is part of PARAMĀTMĀ and is therefore identical in nature with it. Just as the seed of a tree contains all the qualities of the tree, the Ātmā also carries the qualities of the Supreme Self.
- JĪVĀTMĀ, the individual soul, is the reflection of the Ātmā within an individual; a “wave” that emerges from the ocean of existence and wanders from embodiment to embodiment, and after a long process of development and experience again returns to the unity of the Ātmā.
- The soul that has manifested itself in a form, however, does not identify with its divine essence but rather with its attributes, the physical body, the mind, the thoughts. The aim of the path of Yoga is to dispel this illusion.
Are you the body? The mind? Your qualities, thoughts or feelings? Or are you something else?
As you continue to search more deeply you realise the more subtle aspects of your being, right up to the level of the elements.
SAT – truth CHIT – consciousness ĀNANDA – bliss
Sat-Chit-Ānanda is the essence of the divine Self that lives within all of us, the eternal, infinite and immutable Ātmā.
The only true reality within us is the Ātmā. Everything else is unreality.
Ātmā is TRIKĀLADARSHI , the knower of past, present and future, and also CHAITANYA, the conscious witness of everything that happens.
Kabir's great writing Bijak is a huge a collection of poems which makes clear his view of spirituality. His view about moksha (liberation) is that it is the process of uniting Soul with God as one principle.
Kabir’s teachings are a simple and natural dialect much like his philosophies.
He simply followed the oneness in the God.
Kabir's poetry and teachings directly invite the student to reflect on their own values, choices and life paths. He rejected the murti pujan in Hinduism and instead shows a clear confidence in the devotional love of bhakti and the heart centred passions of Sufism.
"If bathing in the Ganges brought salvation, then every fish is in heaven." – Kabir
KABIR was the great poet saint and weaver of medieval India; a God-realizer and iconoclast.
Kabir was critical of the caste system and like many other saints, talked of the quality of a man or woman, not his or her birth lineage, as the expression and indicator of their worth.
He praised true saints, spiritual practice and love while criticizing the hypocritical, hateful and divisive people and fundamentalist aspects of the religious traditions that surrounded him, those of the Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs . . . yet even today, each of these traditions revere him as a saint.
