The Bijak of Kabir

Intro

• On Augustine’s shift from rhetorician to theologian/mystic (?), he matured from trying to persuade to a point, to realizing a vision wherein all points are one.
• “One dictionary definition [of bhed] “mystery” or “innermost secret” —meaning the unifying insight that destroys the illusion of separateness. But another definition is “distinction,” “separation,” “boundary.” If we search for the original Sanskrit meaning, we find that it is to pierce or penetrate. What this strange congruence of meanings indicates is that the sword of knowledge simultaneously separates and joins.”
• Another such word is imbedded in the title Bijak, a term from the world of money and trade that means invoice, a list of goods and their values. But another meaning, more common in the Middle Ages, is a guide to hidden treasure, telling what has been hidden and who the owner is. The resonance of the word becomes more interesting when we look at its root-bij. Literally it means “seed” —the tiny kernel that contains a whole tree. It also means, through religious traditions going back more than 1,000 years before Kabir, bija-mantra, seed syllable: the one word that can reveal the mystery of existence”

Sabda

[24]
Hermit, that yogi is my guru
who can untie this song.
A tree stands without root,
without flowers bears fruit;
no leaf, no branch, and eight
sky-mouths thundering.
Dance done without feet,
tune played without hands,
praises sung without tongue,
singer without shape or form—
the true teacher reveals.
Seek the bird’s, the fish’s path.
Kabir says, both are hard.
I offer myself to an image:
the great being beyond boundaries
and beyond beyond.

• Some ineffable stream flows behind all these actions… the dance done without feet—the dancer? Their essence? Their soul? Reminded of Yeats’ ‘how do you distinguish the dancer from the dance’? Also, the Upanishadic how can the knower be known?
• The ineffable stream, the Spirit, causes, in the most fundamental sense, the tree to stand—not its roots. This stream is invisible, like the path of the bird and fish. This stream beyond the beyond.

[40]
The pandits’ pedantries are lies.

If saying Ram gave liberation
saying candy made your mouth sweet
saying fire burned your feet,
saying water quenched your thirst,
saying food banished hunger,
the whole world would be free.

The parrot gabbles “God” like a man
but doesn’t know God’s glory.
When he flies off to the jungle,
he’ll forget God.
If you don’t see, if you don’t touch,
what’s the use of the name?

If saying money made you rich,
nobody would be poor.

Lovers of lust and delusion
laugh at the lovers of God.

Kabir says, worship the one Ram,
or you’ll go, trussed up, to Death City.

• Talk is cheap.

[58]
Lord!
A fire is raging
without fuel.
No one can put it out.
I know it spreads from you, enflaming
the whole world.
Even in water
the flames sprout.
…
As the city blazes, the watchman
sleeps happily, thinking,
“My house is secure.
Let the town burn,
as long as my things are saved.”
…

• The Spirit burns on. The sleepy watchman analogy could have two meanings: 1) the ego who sees the city burning around him and believes, who sees itself as separate and stable is bound to become engrossed in the chaos avoided; 2) the complacent ego, through its mistaken independence, avoids the Spirit burning through Being around him.

[63]
Who can I tell?
And who will believe it?
When the bee touches that flower,
he dies.
In the middle of the sky’s temple
blooms a flower.
Its petals are down and its roots are up.
No tilling, sowing or watering,
no shoots or leaves—
just a flower.
Beautifully it blossoms, beautifully
the garland-maker ties her knots.
If it’s destroyed
the bee despairs.
Kabir says, listen saints:
the pandits are greedy
for that flower.

• The flower as Maya? When we touch delusion, so comes the illusion of death, separateness. Like the imagery of the roots drawing in the void above, self(?)-sustained, aesthetic (no leaves, shoots)
• Delusion draws us in, it is sweet. The garland-maker ties us in her knots (the gunas). When delusion is destroyed (revelation), we are struck with awe and despair as our preconceived misconceptions are challenged.

[70]
…
Kabir says, saint, say Ram, Ram
and Ram and Ram again, sir.
The things men eat to please their tongues
come back to eat the men, sir.

• Talk is cheap idea again, but also the irony of what we consume for pleasure (words, even) ends in its pleasure of eating us.
• I am pleased to eat McDonald’s, McDonald’s is pleased to eat me.

[94]
What will you call the Pure?
Say, creature: how will you mutter the name
of one without hand or foot,
mouth, tongue or ear?
The light called light-within-light,
what is its sign?
When light-within-light is killed by light,
where has it gone?
…
Kabir says, seekers, sages, scholars,
listen and penetrate.

[97]
…
Does Khuda live in the mosque?
Then who lives everywhere?
Is Ram in idols and holy ground?
Have you looked and found him there?
Hari in the East, Allah in the West—
so you like to dream.
Search in the heart, in the heart alone:
there live Ram and Karim!
Which is false, Koran or Veda?
False is the darkened view.
It’s one, one in every body!
How did you make it two?
Every man and woman born,
they’re all your forms, says Kabir.
I’m Ram-and-Allah’s foolish baby,
he’s my guru and pir.

[101]
I looked and looked—astonishing!
(Only a rare one hears me sing.)
The earth shot backwards to the sky,
an elephant fell in an ant’s eye,
mountains flew without a breeze,
souls and creatures climbed the trees,
in a dry lake the waves lashed,
without water, waterbirds splashed.
Pandits sat and read the law,
babbled of what they never saw.
Who understands Kabir’s rhyme
is a true saint to the end of time.

• The elephant falling in an ants eye: the universal pouring through the particular (us!).
• This astonishing activity is surrounding the pandits, but they focus on law and word and what their words speak of.

Ramaini

[7]
…
Of the sourceless state, what to say?
No town, nowhere to stay;
seen without a trace;
what do you call that place?

Sakhi

[9]
Get supplies right here,
the road ahead is bumpy.
They rush to buy heaven
where there’s no salesman
and no shop.

• Act now! Live now! Heaven cannot be bought!

[10]
If you know you’re alive,
find the essence of life.
Life is the sort of guest
you don’t meet twice.

[69]
Drop falling in the ocean—
everyone knows.
Ocean absorbed in the drop—
a rare one knows.

• À la Blake

[80]
Many sayers, but no
graspers.
Let the sayers flow away
if they won’t
grasp.

[84]
Good words, bad words,
back and forth goes the tongue.
Mind gives a hit:
this way and that.
It’s Death behind the swing.

• The discriminating mind murdering to dissect.

[124]
The guru’s word is one,
ideas about it endless.
Sages and pandits exhaust themselves,
the Vedas can’t touch its limit.

[137]
…
don’t be afraid
of life;
the essence
of spirituality.

[140]
So what if you dropped illusion?
You didn’t drop your pride.
Pride has fooled the best sages,
pride devours all.

[172]
You don’t find:
diamonds in storerooms,
sandal trees in rows,
lions in flocks,
holy men in herds.

• Preciousness

[183]
I speak for all
but no one knows me.
It was okay then
and it’s okay now.
Ages pass, I stay the same.

• Brahma, the Spirit

[200]
Who knows me,
I know him.
I don’t care what the world
or the Vedas say.

• Whitman

[276]
Speech is priceless
if you speak with knowledge.
Weigh it in the heart’s balance
before it comes from the mouth.

[278]
So he’s like that;
don’t you be a fool.
This much relative,
that much absolute
knead them into one thought.

• The union of division and union. The coincidence of the universal and particular: finite transcendence.