I know of a place not ruled by flatness
Or constant risings and depressions,
and those alive are not afraid to die.
There wild flowers come up through the leafy floor,
and the fragrance of "I am he" floats on the wind.
...There the love bee stays deep inside the flower
and cares for no other thing.
—Kabir
... love
Says,
"I will, I will take care of you,"
To everything that is
Near.
—Hafiz
The Gift
Daniel Ladinsky version
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 rejoin 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 searched 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.
—Kabir
Robert Bly version
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.
—Kabir
Robert Bly version
Kabir: Ecstatic Poems
There’s a moon in my body, but I can’t see it!
A moon and a sun.
A drum never touched by hands, beating, and I can’t hear it!
As long as a human being worries about when he will die,
and what he has that is his, all of his works are zero.
When affection for the I-creature and what it owns is dead,
then the work of the Teacher is over.
The purpose of labor is to learn;
when you know it, the labor is over.
The apple blossom exists to create fruit; when that
comes, the petal falls.
The musk is inside the deer, but the deer does not
look for it: it wanders around looking for grass.
—Kabir
There's a moon in my body, but I can't see it!A moon and a sun.A drum never touched by hands, beating,
and I can't hear it.
As long as a human being worries about when he will die,and what he has that is his,all of his works are zero.When affection for the I-creature and what it owns is dead,then the work of the Teacher is over.
The purpose of labor is to learn;when you know it, the labor is over.The apple blossom exists to create fruit;when that comes, the petal falls.The musk is inside the deer,but the deer does not look for it:It wanders around looking for grass.–Kabir
I know of a place not ruled by flatnessOr constant risings and depressions,and those alive are not afraid to die.There wild flowers come up through the leafy floor,and the fragrance of "I am he" floats on the wind.There the love bee stays deep inside the flowerand cares for no other thing.
–Kabir
