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The Kabir Book: Forty-Four of the Ecstatic Poems of Kabir
Forty-four of the Ecstatic Poems of Kabir
"Kabir's poems give off a marvelous radiant intensity. . . . Bly's versions . . . have exactly the luminous depth that permits and invites many rereadings, many studyings-even then they remain as fresh as ever."
-The New York Times Book Review
"Kabir's poems give off a marvelous radiant intensity. . . . Bly's versions . . . have exactly the luminous depth that permits and invites many rereadings, many studyings-even then they remain as fresh as ever."
-The New York Times Book Review
71 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
63 people are currently reading
3069 people want to read
About the author
Kabir
125 books274 followersKabīr was a mystic poet and saint of India, whose writings have greatly influenced the Bhakti movement. The name Kabir comes from Arabic al-Kabīr which means "The Great" – the 37th name of God in Islam. Kabir's legacy is today carried forward by the Kabir panth ("Path of Kabir"), a religious community that recognises him as its founder and is one of the Sant Mat sects. Its members, known as Kabir panthis, are estimated to be around 9.6 million. They are spread over north and central India, as well as dispersed with the Indian diaspora across the world, up from 843,171 in the 1901 census.[5] His writings include Bijak, Sakhi Granth, Kabir Granthawali and Anurag Sagar.
Kabir's early life is not firmly established. In Indian tradition, he is commonly supposed to have lived for 120 years from 1398 to 1518, which "permits him to be associated with other famous figures such as Guru Nanak and Sikander Lodi" Historians are uncertain about his dates of birth and death. Some state 1398 as a date of birth,5 whereas others favour later dates, such as 1440Some assign his death date to the middle of the 15th century – for example, 1440 or 1448whereas others place it in 1518Lifespans commonly suggested by scholars include from 1398 to 1448, and from 1440 to 1518.
According to one traditional version of his parentage, Kabir was born to a Brahmin widow at Lahartara near Kashi (modern day Varanasi). The widow abandoned Kabir to escape dishonour associated with births outside marriage. He was brought up in a family of poor Muslim weavers Niru and Nima. They could not afford formal education for Kabir and initiated him into their trade of weaving.According to American Indologist Wendy Doniger, Kabir was born into a Muslim family and "all these stories attempt to drag Kabir back over the line from Muslim to Hindu".[Kabir's family is believed to have lived in the locality of Kabir Chaura in Varanasi. Kabīr maṭha (कबीरमठ), a maṭha located in the back alleys of Kabir Chaura, celebrates his life and times.
Kabir's early life is not firmly established. In Indian tradition, he is commonly supposed to have lived for 120 years from 1398 to 1518, which "permits him to be associated with other famous figures such as Guru Nanak and Sikander Lodi" Historians are uncertain about his dates of birth and death. Some state 1398 as a date of birth,5 whereas others favour later dates, such as 1440Some assign his death date to the middle of the 15th century – for example, 1440 or 1448whereas others place it in 1518Lifespans commonly suggested by scholars include from 1398 to 1448, and from 1440 to 1518.
According to one traditional version of his parentage, Kabir was born to a Brahmin widow at Lahartara near Kashi (modern day Varanasi). The widow abandoned Kabir to escape dishonour associated with births outside marriage. He was brought up in a family of poor Muslim weavers Niru and Nima. They could not afford formal education for Kabir and initiated him into their trade of weaving.According to American Indologist Wendy Doniger, Kabir was born into a Muslim family and "all these stories attempt to drag Kabir back over the line from Muslim to Hindu".[Kabir's family is believed to have lived in the locality of Kabir Chaura in Varanasi. Kabīr maṭha (कबीरमठ), a maṭha located in the back alleys of Kabir Chaura, celebrates his life and times.
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September 9, 2023Not all that long ago, in another review, I wrote that I preferred the Rabindranath Tagore translation to this one. I take it back. I was a fool to say so. Revisiting Bly’s translation recently, after more than two decades, I was struck by its clarity, its passion, its vivid and compelling voice.
I chose Tagore because—in philosophical seriousness and biblical gravity—I imagine his translation more closely reflects the original. But, knowing nothing of the language, who am I to say? Besides, two of my favorite translations are Edward Fitzgerald’s Rubaiyat and Ezra Pound’s Sextus Propertius, and from what everyone tells me, they aren’t close to the originals at all.
No, the inescapable responsibility of the translator of poetry is to use his materials to create real poetry in his own language. Here—and elsewhere, too, in his translations from the Spanish—Bly does this as well as any translator ever has. In addition, he creates a Kabir who speaks with an intense and immediate voice that transforms these spiritual insights into something both urgent and essential.
But perhaps I should let Kabir—that is, the poet Robert Bly’s persona Kabir—speak of what is—and is not—essential:
2.
I don’t know what sort of God we have been talking about.
The caller calls in a loud voice to the Holy One at dusk.
Why? Surely the Holy One is not deaf.
He hears the delicate anklets that ring on the feet of an insect as it walks.
Go over and over your beads, paint werid designs on your forehead,
wear your hair matted, long and ostentatious,
but when deep inside you there is a loaded gun, how can you have God?
5.
Inside this clay jug there are canyons and pine mountains, and the maker of canyons and pine mountains!
All seven oceans are inside, and hundreds and millions of stars.
The acid that tests gold is here, and the one who judges jewels.
And the music from the strings no one touches, and the source of all water.
If you want the truth, I will tell you the truth:
Friend, listen: the God whom I love is inside.
9.
Knowing nothing shuts the iron gates; the new love opens them.
The sound of the gates opening wakens the beautiful woman asleep.
Kabir says: Fantastic! Don’t let a chance like this go by!
December 1, 2012
What is it about ecstatic poetry by poets like Rumi that invites "translation" by people with no knowledge of the language in which the poetry was actually written? Why would a poet, who as a poet must be acutely aware of the need for precision in language, think that paraphrasing a translation of a translation of someone else's poem produces something worthy of publication? I've seen this done by at least three different poets, all quite serious about their efforts. I guess this is the best one so far, but still, I find it annoying.
Robert Bly offers his "versions" of poems by Kabir, a 14th-century Sufi mystic and poet of Benares, India. These "versions" are paraphrases of a Victorian English translation of a Bengali translation of poems written down at least a century after their composition, preserved by an oral tradition. The best part of this book is the afterward by John Stratton Hawley in which he discusses the difficulty of identifying Kabir's voice at all when the different extant written collections of his orally preserved compositions may not even contain more than one shared poem!
How does the poetry sound? Well, it sounds like Robert Bly (of Iron John fame) speaking in the voice of his idea of a 14th-century Indian mystic, and that's about what it is. It's like a Disneyland castle of spiritual insight. You know what, though? I've always had a soft spot for Robert Bly, and I kind of liked his Kabir. So sue me. At least this book, between its forward by Bly himself and the more scholarly afterward, is more or less honest about its origins and limitations. That's in contrast to the last "translation" of Rumi I read, which was practically a hoax on a gullible public hungry for spirituality.
Robert Bly offers his "versions" of poems by Kabir, a 14th-century Sufi mystic and poet of Benares, India. These "versions" are paraphrases of a Victorian English translation of a Bengali translation of poems written down at least a century after their composition, preserved by an oral tradition. The best part of this book is the afterward by John Stratton Hawley in which he discusses the difficulty of identifying Kabir's voice at all when the different extant written collections of his orally preserved compositions may not even contain more than one shared poem!
How does the poetry sound? Well, it sounds like Robert Bly (of Iron John fame) speaking in the voice of his idea of a 14th-century Indian mystic, and that's about what it is. It's like a Disneyland castle of spiritual insight. You know what, though? I've always had a soft spot for Robert Bly, and I kind of liked his Kabir. So sue me. At least this book, between its forward by Bly himself and the more scholarly afterward, is more or less honest about its origins and limitations. That's in contrast to the last "translation" of Rumi I read, which was practically a hoax on a gullible public hungry for spirituality.
September 7, 2012
Painfully, awfully, cripplingly awesome. I've been a fan of Bly for years, and of course he turns all of his translations into Robert Bly poems, but damn...this is good. This book shames me and my own approach to writing---everything I try to say in 1000 words this book does in 70. Sometimes I find a book I know I'll read about 30 times, and this is one of those books---it has given me so much joy, I am angry at it.
May 8, 2008
Picked this up at random at a used book store that specializes in the occult and other such flim-flammery following my policy of occasionally doing this.
Kabir insists on a present, erotic divinity. We're, like, always getting f*cked by God (in the good way). This is a challenging conception of things, and the book is best when moving between this vital recognition and acknowledging the difficulty of following the path that such a recognition outlines--invitation and warning.
Bly's translation, I suspect, is a little too functional/lucid. It's not that it's too "plain" but that there's no music to it--it's rhythmically flat. It'd be interesting to read a translation of this that's more idiomatic and draws on a fuller range of language.
Either way, at 44 poems it's a quick read and an engaging (though as I understand it, idiosyncratic) entry point to Sufi thought. And, you know, reading Rumi is beat.
Kabir insists on a present, erotic divinity. We're, like, always getting f*cked by God (in the good way). This is a challenging conception of things, and the book is best when moving between this vital recognition and acknowledging the difficulty of following the path that such a recognition outlines--invitation and warning.
Bly's translation, I suspect, is a little too functional/lucid. It's not that it's too "plain" but that there's no music to it--it's rhythmically flat. It'd be interesting to read a translation of this that's more idiomatic and draws on a fuller range of language.
Either way, at 44 poems it's a quick read and an engaging (though as I understand it, idiosyncratic) entry point to Sufi thought. And, you know, reading Rumi is beat.
September 24, 2016
Kabir! Kabir! Kabir!
I asked myself, after reading this book. Did I miss anything special in my life?
Answer is Yes and No.
Yes. I didn't read the 14th century heart-melting soulful words. And that "No" is just a lie.
Kabir gives a mundane question with a complication in an air, but the answers were coloured with an essence of soul.
What is god?
He is the breath inside the breath
P.S. Why you should read this book?
What is inside me moves inside you.
This.
I asked myself, after reading this book. Did I miss anything special in my life?
Answer is Yes and No.
Yes. I didn't read the 14th century heart-melting soulful words. And that "No" is just a lie.
Kabir gives a mundane question with a complication in an air, but the answers were coloured with an essence of soul.
What is god?
He is the breath inside the breath
P.S. Why you should read this book?
What is inside me moves inside you.
This.
February 13, 2009
Knowing nothing shuts the iron gates; the new love opens them
The sound of the gates opening wakes the beautiful woman asleep.
Kabir says: Fantastic! Don't let a chance like this go by!
The sound of the gates opening wakes the beautiful woman asleep.
Kabir says: Fantastic! Don't let a chance like this go by!
June 29, 2013
Hiss poems are very androgynous yet full of passion. Aside from J. Rumi, he is my other favorite sufi poet.
Read
November 7, 2022What simple things or acts make you happy?
Do you ever examine your thoughts and feelings?
Sometimes I like my moments of quietude. I tried to meditate, not that I tried hard but went for a single class and gave up. I find good music meditative. While searching for good music I come across so many hidden gems. I listen to various genres of music depending on my mood. While listening to Abida Parveen’s rendition of KABIR DAS poems, I was mesmerised not only by her soul-stirring voice but also by the poems. Though I have studied Kabir’s Dohe at school, I wanted to know more about his life and the in-depth meanings of the Dohe. I went book hunting and I came across this book by Robert Bly, when I went looking for Kabir by Rabindranath Tagore.
When we were children, we would have so many golden thoughts and insights bestowed upon us by our elders but we would take them for granted. As an adult now, I try to recollect so many things my father used to say.
बुरा जो देखन मैं चला, बुरा न मिलिया कोय ।
जो दिल खोजा आपना, मुझसे बुरा न कोय ।।
This couplet was my dad’s favourite. The gist of these lines is that when I went looking for evil in the world, I couldn't find any. When I searched within, I found that there wasn't anything/anybody worse than me.
पोथी पढ़ि पढ़ि जग मुआ, पंडित भया न कोय ।
ढाई आखर प्रेम का, पढ़े सो पंडित होय ।।
I love these couplets. It means that humans do not become scholars by reading many books, on the other hand they become learned by spreading and showering love.
The best part about the poems of Kabir is that he wrote in the local dialects, which could be easily understood, unlike hymns, and poems, in Sanskrit.
The poems of Kabir depicted his unorthodox views, and he had a very secular outlook. The book has beautiful poems, all in English. My only contention was that I wanted to read the original verses of Kabir, side-by-side so that I could relate to them, but the book only has the translations.There are some stories of Kabir that are very interesting, some that I have heard and some that I havent.
If you like to read motivational and meaningful poems then I definitely would recommend this book to you.
Do you ever examine your thoughts and feelings?
Sometimes I like my moments of quietude. I tried to meditate, not that I tried hard but went for a single class and gave up. I find good music meditative. While searching for good music I come across so many hidden gems. I listen to various genres of music depending on my mood. While listening to Abida Parveen’s rendition of KABIR DAS poems, I was mesmerised not only by her soul-stirring voice but also by the poems. Though I have studied Kabir’s Dohe at school, I wanted to know more about his life and the in-depth meanings of the Dohe. I went book hunting and I came across this book by Robert Bly, when I went looking for Kabir by Rabindranath Tagore.
When we were children, we would have so many golden thoughts and insights bestowed upon us by our elders but we would take them for granted. As an adult now, I try to recollect so many things my father used to say.
बुरा जो देखन मैं चला, बुरा न मिलिया कोय ।
जो दिल खोजा आपना, मुझसे बुरा न कोय ।।
This couplet was my dad’s favourite. The gist of these lines is that when I went looking for evil in the world, I couldn't find any. When I searched within, I found that there wasn't anything/anybody worse than me.
पोथी पढ़ि पढ़ि जग मुआ, पंडित भया न कोय ।
ढाई आखर प्रेम का, पढ़े सो पंडित होय ।।
I love these couplets. It means that humans do not become scholars by reading many books, on the other hand they become learned by spreading and showering love.
The best part about the poems of Kabir is that he wrote in the local dialects, which could be easily understood, unlike hymns, and poems, in Sanskrit.
The poems of Kabir depicted his unorthodox views, and he had a very secular outlook. The book has beautiful poems, all in English. My only contention was that I wanted to read the original verses of Kabir, side-by-side so that I could relate to them, but the book only has the translations.There are some stories of Kabir that are very interesting, some that I have heard and some that I havent.
If you like to read motivational and meaningful poems then I definitely would recommend this book to you.
March 3, 2024
My snookah wookums got me this for Valentines Day, perfect timing as I am concretely moving into Kabir as one of my primary names. Really really really cool read, I have never engaged with a South Asian philosopher? Religious figure? Prophet?
The translators notes were pretty cool, i had never given much thought to the ethics, accuracy, and varying goals of translation. I wish I were able to understand this directly from the source though because from what I understand this is a translation twice removed.
Love how dramatic it is (hence ecstatic poems/Sufism ig?). My favorite poem is the one about the Swan (none of them have titles). Again, touched on several themes at the forefront of my life, having faith in yourself, recognizing God in yourself, speaking from and trusting your experience, LOVEEE. It is so cool to see how the same thoughts are echoed throughout human history, alot of these sentiments I’ve seen repeated in the work of Akwaeke Emezi, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and most recently Martin Luther King (specifically his sermon “A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart”). Super cool, excited to engage more with Kabir.
The translators notes were pretty cool, i had never given much thought to the ethics, accuracy, and varying goals of translation. I wish I were able to understand this directly from the source though because from what I understand this is a translation twice removed.
Love how dramatic it is (hence ecstatic poems/Sufism ig?). My favorite poem is the one about the Swan (none of them have titles). Again, touched on several themes at the forefront of my life, having faith in yourself, recognizing God in yourself, speaking from and trusting your experience, LOVEEE. It is so cool to see how the same thoughts are echoed throughout human history, alot of these sentiments I’ve seen repeated in the work of Akwaeke Emezi, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and most recently Martin Luther King (specifically his sermon “A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart”). Super cool, excited to engage more with Kabir.
March 6, 2023
this shit rules
April 13, 2022
Kabir: Ecstatic Poems, translated by Robert Bly. Bly’s translations of the 15th-century Indian mystic poet and saint Kabir are simple, crystal clear and beautiful. I first became familiar with Kabir from Rabindranath Tagore's translation (
Songs of Kabir: One Hundred Poems of Kabir
). Bly modernizes Tagore's translation (published in the early 20th century) and makes him sound very modern, more like a contemporary poet. Kabir influenced both the Bhakti movement/Vaishnava tradition of Hinduism and the Sufi tradition of Islam; and later the philosophy of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism.
Kabir's poetry is designed to wake you up. In the heart of Kabir, there is no place for superficial and false religiosity. He wants to guide humanity towards a higher consciousness, the bliss and ecstasy of Divine Love, the realization of our full human potential. Kabir's poetry is poetry in the deepest and truest sense of the word: a taste of the joy and beauty of heaven on earth. He communicates the secret of Bhakti, the unitive state of enlightened awareness, “true gnosis,” the vision of real union with God. What's more poetic than that?
A few jewels of Kabir's poetry:
My inside, listen to me, the greatest spirit, the Teacher,
is near,
wake up, wake up!
Run to his feet—
he is standing close to your head right now.
You have slept for millions and millions of years.
Why not wake up this morning?
***
Vast herds of lions are unheard of.
So are long columns of swans.
Rubies do not come in heaps.
The ascetic walks along the road alone.
Forests do not exist composed solely of sandalwood.
Some oceans contain no pearls.
A spiritual person is rare in this world.
***
I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is
thirsty.
You don’t grasp the fact that what is most alive of all
is inside your own house;
and so you walk from one holy city to the next with a
confused look!
Kabir will tell you the truth: go wherever you like, to
Calcutta or Tibet;
if you can’t find where your soul is hidden,
for you the world will never be real!
***
Oh friend, I love you, think this over
carefully! If you are in love,
then why are you asleep?
***
I know the sound of the ecstatic flute, but I don’t know
whose flute it is.
A lamp burns and has neither wick nor oil.
A lily pad blossoms and is not attached to the bottom!
When one flower opens, ordinarily dozens open.
The moon bird’s head is filled with nothing but
thoughts of the moon,
and when the next rain will come is all that the rain
bird thinks of.
Who is it we spend our entire life loving?
***
Why should we two ever want to part?
Just as the leaf of the water rhubarb lives floating on
the water,
we live as the great one and little one.
As the owl opens his eyes all night to the moon,
we live as the great one and little one.
This love between us goes back to the first humans;
it cannot be annihilated.
Here is Kabir’s idea: as the river gives itself into the
ocean,
what is inside me moves inside you.
***
The bhakti path winds in a delicate way.
On this path there is no asking and no not asking.
The ego simply disappears the moment you touch him.
The joy of looking for him is so immense that you just
dive in,
and coast around like a fish in the water.
If anyone needs a head, the lover leaps up to offer his.
Kabir’s poems touch on the secrets of this bhakti.
***
Go and do good things for your god, who has
unexpectedly entered the temple of day and night.
Don’t be the lunatic in the second act; this day will not
last forever.
The one I love has waited for millions and millions of
years for me. It was for love of me that he lost his
self-sufficiency.
But I know nothing of that delight which was three
inches from me, because my love was still asleep.
Now my darling has made clear to me the meaning of
that note I heard.
Now my good time has come!
Kabir says: See how great my luck is. Imagine someone
you love stroking you, and that tenderness
never ends!
***
There is nothing but water in the holy pools.
I know, I have been swimming in them.
All the gods sculpted of wood or ivory can’t say a
word.
I know, I have been crying out to them.
The Sacred Books of the East are nothing but words.
I looked through their covers one day sideways.
What Kabir talks of is only what he has lived through.
If you have not lived through something, it is not true.
***
Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat.
My shoulder is against yours.
You will not find me in stupas, not in Indian shrine
rooms, nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals:
not in masses, nor kirtans, not in legs winding around
your own neck, nor in eating nothing but
vegetables.
When you really look for me, you will see me instantly
you will find me in the tiniest house of time.
Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?
He is the breath inside the breath.
***
I know of a strange tree—it climbs into air even
though it lacks roots.
It never blossoms but it bears fruit.
It has neither branches nor leaves; it is lotus through
and through.
Two birds sit on that tree singing. One is the Teacher;
the other is the Student.
The Student chooses all the mangos of life and tastes
each one.
His Teacher is glad as he sees that.
Kabir will tell you a difficult thing: “The bird cannot
be found, but is perfectly visible.
The divine energy is right in the midst of creatures.
I am here to praise all creatures.”
***
It is time to put up a love-swing!
Tie the body and then tie the mind so that they swing
between the arms of the Secret One you love.
Bring the water that falls from the clouds to your eyes,
and cover yourself inside entirely with the shadow of
night.
Bring your face up close to his ear,
and then talk only about what you want deeply to
happen.
Kabir says: Listen to me, brother, bring the shape, face,
and odor of the Holy One inside you.
***
Friend, if you’ve never really met the Secret One,
what is the source of your self-confidence?
Stop all this flirtation using words.
Love does not happen with words.
Don’t lie to yourself about the holy books and what
they say.
The love I talk of is not in the books.
Who has wanted it has it.
***
Breathe in that word out of which the whole Milky
Way has come!
That word is your Teacher; I heard that sound, and I
am its disciple.
How many are there alive who have taken in its
meaning?
Listen, student, hold to that word! Do it!
All the old texts and holy poems shout about it.
The world has its deep roots in that word.
The Rishas and the devotees babble about it,
but no one grasps how mysterious the word is!
The father gets up from supper and walks out when he
hears it.
The ascetic returns to love when he hears it.
The Six Great Systems keep laying it all out.
The animal of renunciation drives toward that word.
The world with all its elephants and microbes has
jumped out of that word.
Inside the word everything is full of light.
Kabir says: True. But who knows where the word came
from in the first place?
***
I have been thinking of the difference between water
and the waves on it. Rising,
water’s still water, falling back,
it is water, will you give me a hint
how to tell them apart?
Because someone has made up the word
“wave,” do I have to distinguish it
from water?
There is a Secret One inside us;
the planets in all the galaxies
pass through his hands like beads.
That is a string of beads one should look at with
luminous eyes.
***
Inside this clay jug there are canyons and pine
mountains, and the maker of canyons and pine
mountains!
All seven oceans are inside, and hundreds of millions
of stars.
The acid that tests gold is there, and the one who
judges jewels.
And the music from the strings no one touches, and
the source of all water.
If you want the truth, I will tell you the truth:
Friend, listen: the God whom I love is inside
***
A certain bird sits in this tree. The delight of life is
where it dances.
Nobody knows where the bird is, nor what all this
music means.
It makes a nest where the branches make the most
darkness.
It appears at dusk and disappears at dawn, and it
never gives one hint of what all this means.
Nobody talks to me about this singing bird.
It has no color, nor is it free of color. It has no shape,
no form, no boundaries.
It sits in the shadow thrown by love.
It lives in what cannot be reached, where time doesn’t
end, where dying things don’t exist. And no one
pays any attention to its coming or going.
Kabir says: You brother, you seeker, this whole thing is
a great mystery.
Tell all the wise men it would be a good thing to know
where this bird spends the night.
***
Have you heard the music that no fingers enter into?
Far inside the house
entangled music—
What is the sense of leaving your house?
Suppose you scrub your ethical skin until it shines,
but inside there is no music,
then what?
Mohammed’s son pores over words, and points out this
and that,
but if his chest is not soaked dark with love,
then what?
The Yogi comes along in his famous orange.
But if inside he is colorless, then what?
Kabir says: Every instant that the sun is risen, if I stand
in the temple, or on a balcony, in the hot fields, or
in a walled garden, my own Lord is making love
with me
***
Don’t go outside your house to see flowers.
My friend, don’t bother with that excursion.
Inside your body there are flowers.
One flower has a thousand petals.
That will do for a place to sit.
Sitting there you will have a glimpse of beauty
inside the body and out of it,
before gardens and after gardens.
***
The Guest is inside you, and also inside me; you know
the sprout is hidden inside the seed.
We are all struggling; none of us has gone far.
Let your arrogance go, and look around inside.
The blue sky opens out farther and farther,
the daily sense of failure goes away,
the damage I have done to myself fades,
a million suns come forward with light,
when I sit firmly in that world.
I hear bells ringing that no one has shaken,
inside “love” there is more joy than we know of,
rain pours down, although the sky is clear of clouds,
there are whole rivers of light.
The universe is shot through in all parts by a single
sort of love.
How hard it is to feel that joy in all our four bodies!
Those who hope to be reasonable about it fail.
The arrogance of reason has separated us from that
love.
With the word “reason” you already feel miles away
How lucky Kabir is, that surrounded by all this joy
he sings inside his own little boat.
His poems amount to one soul meeting another.
These songs are about forgetting dying and loss.
They rise above both coming in and going out.
Kabir's poetry is designed to wake you up. In the heart of Kabir, there is no place for superficial and false religiosity. He wants to guide humanity towards a higher consciousness, the bliss and ecstasy of Divine Love, the realization of our full human potential. Kabir's poetry is poetry in the deepest and truest sense of the word: a taste of the joy and beauty of heaven on earth. He communicates the secret of Bhakti, the unitive state of enlightened awareness, “true gnosis,” the vision of real union with God. What's more poetic than that?
A few jewels of Kabir's poetry:
My inside, listen to me, the greatest spirit, the Teacher,
is near,
wake up, wake up!
Run to his feet—
he is standing close to your head right now.
You have slept for millions and millions of years.
Why not wake up this morning?
***
Vast herds of lions are unheard of.
So are long columns of swans.
Rubies do not come in heaps.
The ascetic walks along the road alone.
Forests do not exist composed solely of sandalwood.
Some oceans contain no pearls.
A spiritual person is rare in this world.
***
I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is
thirsty.
You don’t grasp the fact that what is most alive of all
is inside your own house;
and so you walk from one holy city to the next with a
confused look!
Kabir will tell you the truth: go wherever you like, to
Calcutta or Tibet;
if you can’t find where your soul is hidden,
for you the world will never be real!
***
Oh friend, I love you, think this over
carefully! If you are in love,
then why are you asleep?
***
I know the sound of the ecstatic flute, but I don’t know
whose flute it is.
A lamp burns and has neither wick nor oil.
A lily pad blossoms and is not attached to the bottom!
When one flower opens, ordinarily dozens open.
The moon bird’s head is filled with nothing but
thoughts of the moon,
and when the next rain will come is all that the rain
bird thinks of.
Who is it we spend our entire life loving?
***
Why should we two ever want to part?
Just as the leaf of the water rhubarb lives floating on
the water,
we live as the great one and little one.
As the owl opens his eyes all night to the moon,
we live as the great one and little one.
This love between us goes back to the first humans;
it cannot be annihilated.
Here is Kabir’s idea: as the river gives itself into the
ocean,
what is inside me moves inside you.
***
The bhakti path winds in a delicate way.
On this path there is no asking and no not asking.
The ego simply disappears the moment you touch him.
The joy of looking for him is so immense that you just
dive in,
and coast around like a fish in the water.
If anyone needs a head, the lover leaps up to offer his.
Kabir’s poems touch on the secrets of this bhakti.
***
Go and do good things for your god, who has
unexpectedly entered the temple of day and night.
Don’t be the lunatic in the second act; this day will not
last forever.
The one I love has waited for millions and millions of
years for me. It was for love of me that he lost his
self-sufficiency.
But I know nothing of that delight which was three
inches from me, because my love was still asleep.
Now my darling has made clear to me the meaning of
that note I heard.
Now my good time has come!
Kabir says: See how great my luck is. Imagine someone
you love stroking you, and that tenderness
never ends!
***
There is nothing but water in the holy pools.
I know, I have been swimming in them.
All the gods sculpted of wood or ivory can’t say a
word.
I know, I have been crying out to them.
The Sacred Books of the East are nothing but words.
I looked through their covers one day sideways.
What Kabir talks of is only what he has lived through.
If you have not lived through something, it is not true.
***
Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat.
My shoulder is against yours.
You will not find me in stupas, not in Indian shrine
rooms, nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals:
not in masses, nor kirtans, not in legs winding around
your own neck, nor in eating nothing but
vegetables.
When you really look for me, you will see me instantly
you will find me in the tiniest house of time.
Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?
He is the breath inside the breath.
***
I know of a strange tree—it climbs into air even
though it lacks roots.
It never blossoms but it bears fruit.
It has neither branches nor leaves; it is lotus through
and through.
Two birds sit on that tree singing. One is the Teacher;
the other is the Student.
The Student chooses all the mangos of life and tastes
each one.
His Teacher is glad as he sees that.
Kabir will tell you a difficult thing: “The bird cannot
be found, but is perfectly visible.
The divine energy is right in the midst of creatures.
I am here to praise all creatures.”
***
It is time to put up a love-swing!
Tie the body and then tie the mind so that they swing
between the arms of the Secret One you love.
Bring the water that falls from the clouds to your eyes,
and cover yourself inside entirely with the shadow of
night.
Bring your face up close to his ear,
and then talk only about what you want deeply to
happen.
Kabir says: Listen to me, brother, bring the shape, face,
and odor of the Holy One inside you.
***
Friend, if you’ve never really met the Secret One,
what is the source of your self-confidence?
Stop all this flirtation using words.
Love does not happen with words.
Don’t lie to yourself about the holy books and what
they say.
The love I talk of is not in the books.
Who has wanted it has it.
***
Breathe in that word out of which the whole Milky
Way has come!
That word is your Teacher; I heard that sound, and I
am its disciple.
How many are there alive who have taken in its
meaning?
Listen, student, hold to that word! Do it!
All the old texts and holy poems shout about it.
The world has its deep roots in that word.
The Rishas and the devotees babble about it,
but no one grasps how mysterious the word is!
The father gets up from supper and walks out when he
hears it.
The ascetic returns to love when he hears it.
The Six Great Systems keep laying it all out.
The animal of renunciation drives toward that word.
The world with all its elephants and microbes has
jumped out of that word.
Inside the word everything is full of light.
Kabir says: True. But who knows where the word came
from in the first place?
***
I have been thinking of the difference between water
and the waves on it. Rising,
water’s still water, falling back,
it is water, will you give me a hint
how to tell them apart?
Because someone has made up the word
“wave,” do I have to distinguish it
from water?
There is a Secret One inside us;
the planets in all the galaxies
pass through his hands like beads.
That is a string of beads one should look at with
luminous eyes.
***
Inside this clay jug there are canyons and pine
mountains, and the maker of canyons and pine
mountains!
All seven oceans are inside, and hundreds of millions
of stars.
The acid that tests gold is there, and the one who
judges jewels.
And the music from the strings no one touches, and
the source of all water.
If you want the truth, I will tell you the truth:
Friend, listen: the God whom I love is inside
***
A certain bird sits in this tree. The delight of life is
where it dances.
Nobody knows where the bird is, nor what all this
music means.
It makes a nest where the branches make the most
darkness.
It appears at dusk and disappears at dawn, and it
never gives one hint of what all this means.
Nobody talks to me about this singing bird.
It has no color, nor is it free of color. It has no shape,
no form, no boundaries.
It sits in the shadow thrown by love.
It lives in what cannot be reached, where time doesn’t
end, where dying things don’t exist. And no one
pays any attention to its coming or going.
Kabir says: You brother, you seeker, this whole thing is
a great mystery.
Tell all the wise men it would be a good thing to know
where this bird spends the night.
***
Have you heard the music that no fingers enter into?
Far inside the house
entangled music—
What is the sense of leaving your house?
Suppose you scrub your ethical skin until it shines,
but inside there is no music,
then what?
Mohammed’s son pores over words, and points out this
and that,
but if his chest is not soaked dark with love,
then what?
The Yogi comes along in his famous orange.
But if inside he is colorless, then what?
Kabir says: Every instant that the sun is risen, if I stand
in the temple, or on a balcony, in the hot fields, or
in a walled garden, my own Lord is making love
with me
***
Don’t go outside your house to see flowers.
My friend, don’t bother with that excursion.
Inside your body there are flowers.
One flower has a thousand petals.
That will do for a place to sit.
Sitting there you will have a glimpse of beauty
inside the body and out of it,
before gardens and after gardens.
***
The Guest is inside you, and also inside me; you know
the sprout is hidden inside the seed.
We are all struggling; none of us has gone far.
Let your arrogance go, and look around inside.
The blue sky opens out farther and farther,
the daily sense of failure goes away,
the damage I have done to myself fades,
a million suns come forward with light,
when I sit firmly in that world.
I hear bells ringing that no one has shaken,
inside “love” there is more joy than we know of,
rain pours down, although the sky is clear of clouds,
there are whole rivers of light.
The universe is shot through in all parts by a single
sort of love.
How hard it is to feel that joy in all our four bodies!
Those who hope to be reasonable about it fail.
The arrogance of reason has separated us from that
love.
With the word “reason” you already feel miles away
How lucky Kabir is, that surrounded by all this joy
he sings inside his own little boat.
His poems amount to one soul meeting another.
These songs are about forgetting dying and loss.
They rise above both coming in and going out.
September 18, 2016
Something about 'non-Western mentality', the less-than-rational, or the putting aside of the rational, that's sluggish in prose, but that sparkles in poems.
Kabir's own words will forever be unknown to me, just as I can make my way only clumsily and from the outside of mindsets rooted east of Suez, further east even, in the soil of the Asian subcontinent.
Rich, rich. Maybe the mystery is extra, my being so very American, so very molded from cosmopolitan ideals looking much like the best of New York City or the sporty imaginings of Hollywood.
My manner . . . should I denigrate the brash confidence I value by calling it simply 'superficial'? . . . is an approach, even when seriously engaged, that finds Kabir's sense of life deep indeed. If there are spiritual questions to answer, the answer is 'inside'.
'Inside' too often, for me, means a quiet reassessment of how to go about doing something better 'outside'. He's calling for me, for us, to look inside ourselves and actually find 'spiritual' joy. As in: it's right there, baby!
Kabir's words: by me, not ever to be known.
Bly's words, though: those of a master-at-trade. Does Bly actually know the Bengali of Tagore's that provide him that translation of Kabir's original (?) Hindi? Is he applying his own aesthetic to prior English translations?
As an element of 'lay' appreciation, it matters not. If Bly is taking liberties, I must believe he's done that in good faith. Translation is never an exactitude. What does cut ice is the final result. These pieces are gems.
Kabir's own words will forever be unknown to me, just as I can make my way only clumsily and from the outside of mindsets rooted east of Suez, further east even, in the soil of the Asian subcontinent.
Rich, rich. Maybe the mystery is extra, my being so very American, so very molded from cosmopolitan ideals looking much like the best of New York City or the sporty imaginings of Hollywood.
My manner . . . should I denigrate the brash confidence I value by calling it simply 'superficial'? . . . is an approach, even when seriously engaged, that finds Kabir's sense of life deep indeed. If there are spiritual questions to answer, the answer is 'inside'.
'Inside' too often, for me, means a quiet reassessment of how to go about doing something better 'outside'. He's calling for me, for us, to look inside ourselves and actually find 'spiritual' joy. As in: it's right there, baby!
Kabir's words: by me, not ever to be known.
Bly's words, though: those of a master-at-trade. Does Bly actually know the Bengali of Tagore's that provide him that translation of Kabir's original (?) Hindi? Is he applying his own aesthetic to prior English translations?
As an element of 'lay' appreciation, it matters not. If Bly is taking liberties, I must believe he's done that in good faith. Translation is never an exactitude. What does cut ice is the final result. These pieces are gems.
February 17, 2020
It was quite difficult to read, so it took me a while to finish it. However, there's a lot of poem that really sticks to me and make senses of life.
One of the example,
"The small ruby everyone wants has fallen out on the road.
Some think it is east of us, others west of us.
Some say, 'among the primitive earth rocks,' others, 'in the deep waters.'
Kabir's instinct told him it was inside, and what it was worth,
And he wrapped it up carefully in his heart cloth."
One of the example,
"The small ruby everyone wants has fallen out on the road.
Some think it is east of us, others west of us.
Some say, 'among the primitive earth rocks,' others, 'in the deep waters.'
Kabir's instinct told him it was inside, and what it was worth,
And he wrapped it up carefully in his heart cloth."
September 17, 2019
I have not read Kabir in other formats, so I lack comparative knowledge. However, the playfulness, depth, intrigue, and variety of this Bly presentation inspire me to further explore Kabir in both history and literature. The dedication inspires: "Dedicated to Kabir, and all those working confused in inner labor." I will re-read this small volume more than once. One terribly profound example of a short, pithy, layered inclusion: "The buds are shouting: "The Gardener is coming! Today he picks the flowers, tomorrow us!" What more is there to say about life?
March 11, 2020
As a quick aside here, one of my favorite poets is Whitman. Whitman's early Leaves of Grass is somewhat epic in size and scope as it catalogs the people and life around him in ways that are ultimately and ecstatically bursting with eroticism and vigor.
The Kabir Book in contrast, has a small number of very short poems. Each poem can be scanned in seconds, but each one addresses something that stops you dead in your tracks. In each poem, the poet points to something, often with sensuous imagery, but when the reader turns to see what it is that is being pointed at, it subtly moves away.
The Kabir Book in contrast, has a small number of very short poems. Each poem can be scanned in seconds, but each one addresses something that stops you dead in your tracks. In each poem, the poet points to something, often with sensuous imagery, but when the reader turns to see what it is that is being pointed at, it subtly moves away.
July 26, 2015
Kabir: ecstatic and rebellious originality; opposition to standard dogmas; intensity more important than method: The primary danger is spiritual passivity.
Listen to Kabir:
Don't go outside your house to see flowers.
My friend, don't bother with that excursion.
Inside your body there are flowers.
One flower has a thousand petals.
That will do for a place to sit.
Sitting there you will have a glimpse of beauty
inside the body and out of it,
before gardens and after gardens.
Listen to Kabir:
Don't go outside your house to see flowers.
My friend, don't bother with that excursion.
Inside your body there are flowers.
One flower has a thousand petals.
That will do for a place to sit.
Sitting there you will have a glimpse of beauty
inside the body and out of it,
before gardens and after gardens.
November 23, 2021
useless afterword. westernized translation. but good poems.
August 19, 2013
WORLD LITERATURE CLASSICS FROM MUGHAL DYNASTY INDIA---GHALIB--MASTER OF THE LOVE GHAZAL, SAUDA--MASTER SATIRIST, KABIR--POET SAINT OF RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE, MIR TAQI MIR, BANARASIDAS, BABUR, JAHANGIR AND AKBAR THE GREAT---FROM THE WORLD LITERATURE FORUM RECOMMENDED CLASSICS AND MASTERPIECES SERIES VIA GOODREADS—-ROBERT SHEPPARD, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
THE MUGHAL EMPIRE IN INDIA (1526-1857)
In the 1500's the Mughals under their leader Babur made their way into India, expanding under Akbar the Great, and built one of the most remarkable empires in history before being suceeded by the rule of the British Empire. They extended their sway over the greater part of South Asia bringing an era of peace and stability that allowed the economy and society to flourish. The Mughal Empire ruled over 150 million people at a time when Britain had fewer than 10 million, France less than 20 and even the comparable Ottoman Empire less than 30 million. They stimulated a wide range of cultural interactions and transformations that were to enrich the Indian world in remarkable ways,, from miniature painting, to calligraphy and the growth of the Urdu language and script to the splendor of the Taj Mahal, one of the wonders of world architecture. Equally important if less well appreciated in the West is the magnificent literature the Mughals produced and patronized, first in the imperial language of the court, Persian, and from the early eighteenth century, in Urdu, a north Indian language closely related to Hindi but using the Mughal Persian script and adding a large vocabulary of loan-words and cultural allusions, genres and aesthetics from Persian and Muslim Arabic. Writers of global significance from this period include such renown figues as Ghalib, master of the ghazal love poem, Sauda the great prose satirist, the Jain writer Banarasidas, Mir Taqi Mir, the great poet of religious tolerance Kabir, and even the journals and lagacies of the Mughal Emperors themselves, such as Babur, Jahangir and Akbar the Great.
Though geographically the sub-continent of India is somewhat isolated from its Eurasian surroundings by the barrier of the Himalayas, it has nonetheless remained a significant "crossroads of the world" in which movements of peoples and cultures have brought great cross-fertilization from the time of the arrival of the Vedic Aryans onward to include the movements of Greeks and Persians, Kushans and Scythians, Buddhist monks from China and Japan, Mongols and Timurids, Muslims, the Portugese, French and the global British Empire. As such it has also been renown as a cradle of spirituality, the origin of Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh and other religions, as well as bearing the influence of other religious traditions such as Christianity and Islam.
The Moghal Empire was one of the three Muslim empires which arose following the Mongol destruction of the Abbasid Caliphate in the 13th century, which were often referred to as the "Gunpowder Empires" as part of their power and consolidation arose from the use of firearms and cannon, as exemplified in the Ottoman Janissary Corps. Thus the Ottoman Empire (1300-1922), the Safavid Persian Empire (1501-1736)which institutionalized the Shi'a religion in Iran, and the Mughal Empire (1526-1857) bridged the era from the fall of the Caliphate to the Mongols to the rise of global Western Imperialism. At the early stages they dwarfed the European states and their relative demise was anything but a foregone conclusion, the Ottomans almost taking Vienna; if America had not been discovered global history might have turned out quite otherwise.
As the West ascended to supremacy reinforced by the Renaissance, Reformation, Scientific Revolution and Industrial Revolution their empires gradually dismembered and absorbed their relatively stagnant Islamic rivals, particularly the modernizing Russian Empire (1547-1917) to the north and the economically, scientifically and culturally dynamic British Empire (1497-1970), which was destined to supplant all three as the largest and most powerful empire in all of world history, ruling over more than one-fourth of all global land area and human population. Nonetheless, for centuries the three Islamic empires constructively competed and also learned from each other cultually, sharing the Arabic language,Islamic religion and sharia law in the religious domain, as well as the Persian language for administration, diplomacy and culture in the royal courts, forming an impressive era of Islamic civilization.
The mission of the World Literature Forum is to introduce to readers coming from their own national literary traditions such as the West, to the great writers of all the world's literary traditions whose contribution and influence beyond their own borders have had an influence on the formation of our emerging World Literature in our age of globalization, unprecedented travel and interaction of cultures including the instantaneous global communications of the Age of the Internet and the cross-border e-Book. The contributions of India and the Muslim world including those of the Mughal Dynasty in India form a rich part of this common heritage of mankind.
KABIR, RENOWN POET OF RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE AND SPIRITUALITY
An early figure in the mixing of the Vedic and Muslim traditions was that of the poet Kabir (1440-1518) born as an illegitimate child of a Brahmin mother in Varanasi who was raised by a Muslim family, then became a desciple of the Vaisnava Saint Ramananda. As such he turned away from the intolerance of sectarian religion on all sides and strove for the unification of all spiritual traditions in an ecumenical mysticism, Muslim, Sufi, Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist, seeking after a simple "oneness" with God in all manifestations. He was also a staunch champion of the poor and oppressed and a devoted opponent of social injustice in all forms. Persecuted at times by all sides in the collision of faiths, Kabir's legend describes his victory in trials by a Sultan, a Brahmin, a Qazi, a merchant and god, and he became the subject of folk legends that still inspire tolerance in sectarian strife between Muslims and Hindus down to the present.
His greatest work is the "Bijak" (the "Seedling"), an idea of the fundamental oneness of man, and the oneness of man and God. He often advocated leaving aside the Qur'an and Vedas and simply following the Sahaja path, or the Simple/Natural Way to Oneness in God. He believed in the Vedantic concept of atman, but unlike earlier orthodox Vedantins, he spurned the Hindu societal caste system and murti-pujan (idol worship), showing clear belief in both bhakti and Sufi ideas. The major part of Kabir's work was collected as a bhagat by the fifth Sikh guru, Guru Arjan Dev, and incorporated into the Sikh scripture, "Guru Granth Sahib." An example of his poetry showing openess and tolerance is "Saints, I See the World is Mad:"
Saints, I See the World Is Mad
Saints, I see the world is mad.
If I tell the truth they rush to beat me,
If I lie they trust me.
I've seen the pious Hindus, rule-followers,
early morning bath-takers---
killing souls, they worship rocks.
They know nothing.
I've seen plenty of Muslim teachers, holy men
reading their holy books
and teaching their pupils techniques.
They know just as much.
And posturing yogis, hypocrites,
hearts crammed with pride,
praying to brass, to stones, reeling
with pride in their pilgrimage,
fixing their caps and their prayer-beads,
painting their brow-marks and arm-marks,
braying their hymns and their couplets,
reeling. The never heard of soul.
The Hindu says Ram is the Beloved,
The Turk says Rahim.
Then they kill each other.
No one knows the secret.
They buzz their mantras from house to house,
puffed with pride.
The pupils drown along with their gurus.
In the end they're sorry.
Kabir says, listen saints:
They're all deluded!
Whatever I say, nobody gets it.
It's too simple.
THE MUGHAL EMPERORS AS AUTHORS---BABUR, AKBAR THE GREAT AND JAHANGIR
BABUR
The first Moghul Emperor, Babur (1483-1530) laid the foundations of the later empire by leading his army from the steppes and highlands of Samarkand and Afghanistan down into the plains of India. In addition to being a conqueror he was also a keen writer, and his autobiography, the "Baburnama" or "Memoirs of Babur" has been compared to the "Meditations" of Marcus Aurelius and the "Confessions" of Augustine and Rousseau, for its uncommon candor in the presentation of self. It is sometimes regarded as the first autobiography in the entire Muslim world, establishing the genre. His personality emerges from such small details as his correcting the spelling errors in the letters of his son and successor as Emperor, Humayun, and his catalogue of his likes and dislikes. He liked gardens with flowing water; he disliked India. Having conquered it, he writes of India: "It is a strange country. Compared to ours, it is another world, this unpleasant and inharmonious India." He did not stay long after the conquest but returned to the highlands; but his sons and successors did, making the Mughal Dynasty.
AKBAR THE GREAT---EMPEROR OF RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE AND REASON
Akbar the Great (1542-16050 was great in more ways than one, being not only a conquering general who extended the Mughal Empire southwards to take in nearly all of India, but also like Kabir a seeker after tolerance, peaceful coexistence and unity within the Empire across the divide of Hindu-Muslim sectarianism. He abolished the Muslim tax on other religious communities and encouraged intermarriage between Muslim and Hindu princes and princesses and royal courts. He was fond of literature, and created a library of over 24,000 volumes written in Sanskrit, Hindustani, Persian, Greek, Latin, Arabic and Kashmiri, staffed by many scholars, translators, artists, calligraphers, scribes, bookbinders and readers. Holy men of many faiths, poets, architects and artisans adorned his court from all over the world for study and discussion. He encouraged open and free debate and intercourse at the royal court between all the religions, even including atheists, first shifting his personal belief from orthodox Islam to the mystic Muslim interpretations of the Sufis, then reacting against the too prominent bigotry within his own Muslim faith to found a short-lived unsuccessful rationalist-syncretistic religion to unite all religions within India, termed Din-i-Ilahi, or Universal Peace. Needless to say, such efforts at religious tolerance and rationalism outraged fundamentalists within his own Muslim and other faiths, and ultimately his efforts, like those of Akhnaton in Egypt to found a more rationalist monotheism, were defeated by the reactionary clerics who after his death termed his policies heresy and returned to the traditions of orthodoxy and intolerance.
JAHANGIR
Jahangir, son of Akbar the Great and a Rajasthani Princess, was fluent in Hindi, though he composed his "Autobiography" in the court Persian of the royal family. While not so penetrating as that of Babur, it is strikingly modern in revealing his personality in modern dilemmas such as his struggle with substance abuse---addiction to wine and opium, his search for spirituality from both Hindu and Muslim sources, and his almost childlike fascination with the natural world, including a passion for exotic things such as American Turkeys, pineapples, and African zebras.
SAUDA----THE GREAT MUGHAL SATIRIST
Sauda is the penname of Mirza Muhammad Rafi (1713-1781) one of the greates prose writers, poets and satirists of the Urdu language. Urdu and Hindi, those peculiar twin languages of the Indian subcontinent are essentially the same language, yet divided into two by the usage of two different scripts for writing, Persian and Devangari, and the differing religions and cultures of their respective communities, being largely though not exclusively, Muslim and Hindu respectively. Urdu is also distinguished by the heavy influence of court Persian and of Arabic from the mosque. While Urdu literary culture was generally conservative, Sauda was anything but tradition-bound. With fierce independence of mind and an acid tongue, little around him escaped his wit and caustic laceration, including the Mughal Emperor himself. The Emperor fancied himself a good poet and often summoned literary men to hear him recite his works. Being thus called into the presence of the emperor, he remarked that his Royal Highness had composed a great many poems, asking him:
"How many poems do you compose a day?"
"Three or four couplets a day, if I am inspired......" answered the Emperor, then adding a boast, "........I can even compose four whole poems sitting in the bathroom!"
"They smell like it," replied Sauda.
Escerpt from Sauda's Satires---"How to Earn a Living in Hindustan"
"Better to keep silent than try to answer such a question, for even the tongues of angels cannot do justice to the answer. There are many professions which you could adopt, but let us see what difficulties will beset you in each of them these days. You could buy a horse and offer yourself in service in some noble's army. But never in this world will you see your pay, and you will rarely have both a sword and a shield by you, for you must pawn one or the other each day to buy fodder for your horse; and unless the moneylender is kind to you, you or your wife must go hungry, for you will not get enough to feed you both. You could minister to the needs of the faithful in a mosque, but you would find asses tethered there and men young and old sitting there idle and unwilling to be disturbed. Let the muezzin give the call to prayer and they will stop his mouth, for no one cares for Islam these days.....You could become a courtier of some great man, but your life would not be worth living. If he does not feel like sleeping at night, you too must wake with him, though you are ready to drop, and until he feels inclined to dine, you may not, though you are faint with hunger and your belly is rumbling. Or you could become his physician; but if you did, your life would be passed in constant apprehension, for should the Nabob sneeze, he will glare at you as though you ought to have given him a sword and buckler to keep off the cold wind. You will live through torture as you watch him feed. He will stuff himself with sweet melon and cream and then fish, and then cow's tongue, and with it all fancy breads of all kinds; and if at any stage he feels the slightest pain in his stomach, then you, ignorant fool are to blame, though you were Bu Ali Sina himself......Here there is nothing but the struggle to live; there, nothing but the tumult of the Judgment Day."
BANARASIDAS----JAIN MASTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Banarasidas was a merchant member of the Jain religious community in the mid-1600's who left behind in his "Half a Tale" one of the remarkable autobiographies of World Literature. It tells of his sorrow as a young man at the death of Emperor Akbar the Great in 1605, and the main occupations of his life, the quest for merchant success and the greater quest for spiritual fulfillment. It is not a mere succession of years, as the autobiography of Babur tends to be, but an inner dialogue of spiritual questioning and search. In Banarasidas, the writer conveys a more vivid sense of himself as self in his world than in the case of Jahangir. As a merchant, the archetypal "self made man," he explores the unique consciousness of such a process of "self-making." If the transition to Modernity turns on new forms of self-awareness, then Banarasidas begins this process in South Asia even as writers such as Montaigne began it in Europe.
MIR TAQI MIR & GHALIB, MASTERS OF THE URDU GHAZAL AND LOVE POETRY
The Ghazal love poem, or "Conversation with the Beloved" is one of the great traditions in Urdu and Indian tradition, being sung at weddings and celebrations as a living tradition. Mir Muhammad Taqi Mir (1723-1810) along with Ghalib (1797-1869) were two of the grandmasters of the genre, living in the days of the final decline and dismemberment of the Mughal Empire and the rise of the British Raj. Mir's love poems became classics of the genre, enjoyed by both Hindus and Muslims for their supple grace and lyrical expressiveness. He also left behind an autobiography, written in Persian, which relates his obsessions, his private life with his father, an eccentric Sufi mystic, and the misery of public life in Dehli where the Emperor was reduced to an impotent figurehead hardly even in command of one city, his own capital. Ghalib was one of the greatest poets in two languages, Urdu and Persian, and was, like Byron, an aristocratic rebel, religious sceptic and outsider who was difficult for either his friends or enemies to understand or deal with. Also like Byron, Ghalib made himself a leading figure in his poems, assuming the stature of a kind of "Byronic Hero." Ghazals usually ended with some personal reference to the poet, but Ghalib built this tradition up to Byronic proportions, fashioning his persona into a witty, sophisticated and melancholy commentator on his own life and the crumbling and corrupt world of society and the Mughal court around him. Though he wrote for the Emperor and the court, Ghalib was never a sychophant, and like Sauda, did not hesitate to express his dislike for the Emperor's own poetry and the claims of Muslim orthodoxy. Interrogated by the British during the 1857 Mutiny, he was asked by the British commander: "Are you a Muslim?" He curtly replied: "Half a Muslim: I drink wine but I don't eat pork." Ghalib is now considered as the greatest poet of the Urdu ghazal of any period.
SPIRITUS MUNDI AND ISLAMIC LITERATURE
My own work, Spiritus Mundi the contemporary and futurist epic, is also influenced by Islamic and Sufi literary traditions. It features one major character, Mohammad ala Rushdie who is a Sufi novice in the Mevlevi order who is also a modern social activists in the Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly for global democracy. He in the course of the novel is taken hostage by terrorists and meets the Supreme Leader of Iran, urging him to "Open the Gates of Ijtihad," or reinvigorate Islamic tradition with creative reasoning and openness rather than binding it to blind precedent and unthinking tradition--much in the tradition of Kabir and Akbar the Great. Another historical chapter, "Neptune's Fury" features the sojourn of Admiral Sir George Rose Sartorius in the Maldive Islands where he encounters the "Sultan of the Sea of Stories" and during which he must, like the Schehereqade of the One Thousand and One Nights, tell a story each day to avoid execution by the Sultan.
World Literature Forum invites you to check out the great writers of World Literature from the Mughal Age in India, and also the contemporary epic novel Spiritus Mundi, by Robert Sheppard. For a fuller discussion of the concept of World Literature you are invited to look into the extended discussion in the new book Spiritus Mundi, by Robert Sheppard, one of the principal themes of which is the emergence and evolution of World Literature:
For Discussions on World Literature and n Literary Criticism in Spiritus Mundi: http://worldliteratureandliterarycrit...
Robert Sheppard
Editor-in-Chief
World Literature Forum
Author, Spiritus Mundi Novel
Author’s Blog: http://robertalexandersheppard.wordpr...
Spiritus Mundi on Goodreads:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17...
Spiritus Mundi on Amazon, Book I: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CIGJFGO
Spiritus Mundi, Book II: The Romance http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CGM8BZG
Copyright Robert Sheppard 2013 All Rights Reserved
November 17, 2025
Mallika @Literary Potpourri and I have been reading several books together. In the course of our comments, she got me intrigued about Kabir, a 15th century Indian mystic poet.
I found this book at my library.
I loved the poetry! Actually, many passages above love and desire for God made me think of the book of The Song of Songs (Bible).
The reason I gave it only 4 stars is that it's hard to tell what's really Kabir's and what's Bly's (as highlighted by John Stratton Hawley in his Afterword). The book is not even subtitled 'translation', but 'versions'. And Bly specifies: "My version is Rabindranath Tagore's translation rephrased into more contemporary language." And Tagore's translation had apparently similar problems.
Plus, Bly has given himself a lot of freedom to adapt vocabulary and even items more relevant to Western 21st century.
Actually, reading more about Kabir, I discovered there were so many issues about who the real Kabir was, and what was written by him or not.
Being from France, where we have solid traces of literature going back to 10th and earlier, I'm amazed 15th poetry would be so difficult to trace.
But Kabir was at the confluence of Hinduism and Islam, and I read the oral tradition was still prepoderant in India between the 15th-17th century. Plus he wrote in Sadhukkari (a mix of several vernacular languages, to be more accessible to all), and he was extremely popular. So, many would have enjoyed spreading his message, but also imitating it.
I found this book at my library.
I loved the poetry! Actually, many passages above love and desire for God made me think of the book of The Song of Songs (Bible).
The reason I gave it only 4 stars is that it's hard to tell what's really Kabir's and what's Bly's (as highlighted by John Stratton Hawley in his Afterword). The book is not even subtitled 'translation', but 'versions'. And Bly specifies: "My version is Rabindranath Tagore's translation rephrased into more contemporary language." And Tagore's translation had apparently similar problems.
Plus, Bly has given himself a lot of freedom to adapt vocabulary and even items more relevant to Western 21st century.
Actually, reading more about Kabir, I discovered there were so many issues about who the real Kabir was, and what was written by him or not.
Being from France, where we have solid traces of literature going back to 10th and earlier, I'm amazed 15th poetry would be so difficult to trace.
But Kabir was at the confluence of Hinduism and Islam, and I read the oral tradition was still prepoderant in India between the 15th-17th century. Plus he wrote in Sadhukkari (a mix of several vernacular languages, to be more accessible to all), and he was extremely popular. So, many would have enjoyed spreading his message, but also imitating it.
September 27, 2024
Kabir is one of the best of all time it's just true. Calling "it" "the Guest" is such a perfect decision.
From this book I learned that according to his hagiographic biography Kabir met Mirabai and brought her to a gathering of 1,500 male meditators to challenge their "male egos" and when they saw Mirabai's bhakti they all decided to go home because they clearly had more work to do. This is such an awesome story.
From this book I learned that according to his hagiographic biography Kabir met Mirabai and brought her to a gathering of 1,500 male meditators to challenge their "male egos" and when they saw Mirabai's bhakti they all decided to go home because they clearly had more work to do. This is such an awesome story.
March 23, 2025
Very cool poems--a window into a mystical, spiritual world. I felt I was dining on a flavorful exotic dish of poetry from a far-off land, a time long ago. Here is one line I liked: “If you have not lived through something, it is not true.”
I found this slim volume in a box of books a friend left with me because he was thinning down his collection to move. I thought it fascinating; and now that I have had the experience of living through them by reading, I know they are true.
I found this slim volume in a box of books a friend left with me because he was thinning down his collection to move. I thought it fascinating; and now that I have had the experience of living through them by reading, I know they are true.
July 29, 2017
There was probably too much lost in translation, too many substitutions and other changes for the poems to have the full meaning as intended. Plus my own blind spot of the politics & history of where the poems came from (which, as the afterward points out, were glossed over in Bly's version of the poems anyway) -- still, they were enjoyable.
May 27, 2019
I was given a tape years back of this book translated by Robert Bly- spoken verse accompanied by tabla (Indian drum). It took me to a place I had never gone before. It resonated so deep. ( a deep felt sense of being re-woken up.) His teachings are wise and the verses lovely. I bought the book when the tape died. Its in my earthquake box with other books I love.
October 12, 2021
It is always a good idea to read some of the beautiful poetry of Kabir; this should be read in bed, lying on the chest of your beloved, while the rain patters outside and you are scantily clad but covered with a blanket. Then again, I have a toddler, so I read this on the ferry. Still, I enjoyed it.
January 12, 2019
A westernized interpretation, misidentified as a translation, that does little justice to the language of the original thinker.
May 5, 2020
Ecstatic indeed.
August 26, 2020
Timeless wisdom of the divine
December 5, 2021
English language falls short, yet this is a good rendering. Enjoy the the bliss….
April 1, 2022
A really great compilation of poems. Really helped me center and ground in the evenings before bed.
January 26, 2023
In your face at times with conviction and subtlety, open the doors of your heart and be the one you are to be. An interesting and fun read.
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