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Let's Discuss the Philosophy of Kabir Das

Spice

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He believed in the oneness of God and opposed the idea of worshipping the idols. Kabir emphasized the need to persistently purify the soul to be close to God rather than to indulge in various rituals.

A well-known Indian mystic poet and sant, today, Kabir is an important figure in Hinduism, Sikhism and Islam, especially in Sufism.

My interest sprung from a quote found on RF. Can you share more about Kabir?
 

JustGeorge

Imperfect
Staff member
Premium Member
He believed in the oneness of God and opposed the idea of worshipping the idols. Kabir emphasized the need to persistently purify the soul to be close to God rather than to indulge in various rituals.

A well-known Indian mystic poet and sant, today, Kabir is an important figure in Hinduism, Sikhism and Islam, especially in Sufism.

My interest sprung from a quote found on RF. Can you share more about Kabir?
Afraid I don't know anything on Kabir.

Which quote caught your interest?
 

sun rise

The world is on fire
Premium Member
I've read a number of his poems and found them helpful.

This one I first heard on a Ram Dass and Amazing Grace tape:
Friend, please tell me what I can do about this world I hold to, and keep spinning out​
I gave up sewn clothes, and wore a robe,but I noticed one day the cloth was well woven​
So I bought some burlap, but I still throw it elegantly over my shoulder.​
I pulled back my sexual longings, and now I discover that I’m angry a lot.​
I gave up rage, and now I notice that I am greedy all day.​
I worked hard at dissolving my greed, and now I am proud of myself.​
When the mind wants to break its link with the world it still holds on to one thing.​
Kabir says: Listen, my friend, there are very few that find the path!​

This one speaks directly to a search for God:
"Are you looking for me?​
I am in the next seat.​
My shoulder is against yours.​
you will not find me in the 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."​

This one speaks directly to how superficial prayers and mantras do no good. Being sincere is needed. It's another from that Ram Dass tape:
If saying God 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?​
 

sun rise

The world is on fire
Premium Member
One more that a friend told me about:

Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.​
Jump into experience while you are alive!​
Think... and think... while you are alive.​
What you call 'salvation' belongs to the time​
before death.​
If you don't break your ropes while you're alive,​
do you think​
ghosts will do it after?​
The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic​
just because the body is rotten—​
that is all fantasy.​
What is found now is found then.​
If you find nothing now,​
you will simply end up with an apartment​
in the City of Death.​
If you make love with the divine now, in the next life​
you will have the face of satisfied desire.​
So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,​
believe in the Great Sound!​
Kabir says this: When the Guest is being search for,​
it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest​
that does all the work.​
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.​
And a final one from that same friend:
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 further 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.​
 
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