Where do you search for me? Kabir - Renderings...
There is a bird on this body tree
That dances in the ecstasy of life.
No one knows where it is,
And who could ever know
What its music means?
It nests where branches cast deep shadow;
It comes in the dusk and flies away at dawn
And never says a word of what it intends.
No one can tell me anything
About this bird that sings in my blood.
It isn’t colored or colorless;
It doesn’t have a form, or outline;
It sits always in the shadow of love.
It lives within the Unreachable, the Boundless, the Eternal
And no one can tell when it comes or when it goes.
Kabir says, “Fellow seeker,
The mystery of this bird
Is marvelous and profound.
Be wise; struggle to know
Where this bird comes to rest.”
—
I said to the wanting-creature inside me:
What is this river you want to cross?
There are no travelers on the river-road, and no road.
Do you see anyone moving about on that bank, or nesting?
There is no river at all, and no boat, and no boatman.
There is no tow rope either, and no one to pull it.
There is no ground, no sky, no time, no bank, no ford!
And there is no body, and no mind!
Do you believe there is some place that will make the soul less thirsty?
In that great absence you will find nothing.
Be strong then, and enter into your own body;
There you have a solid place for your feet.
Think about it carefully!
Don’t go off somewhere else!
Kabir says this: just throw away all thoughts of imaginary things,
And stand firm in that which you are.
—
Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think…and think… while you are alive.
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 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.
—
Where do you search for me?
I am with you
Not in pilgrimage, nor in icons.
Neither in solitudes
Nor in temples or mosques,
I am with you O beloved,
I am with you
Not in prayers or meditation
Neither in fasting or yogic exercises.
I am with you
Neither in renunciation
Nor in the vital force or in the body
Not even in the ethereal spaces.
I am with you
Neither in the womb of Nature
Nor in the breath of the breath.
Seek earnestly and discover,
In but a moment of search,
Listen with care now;
Where your true faith is,
In the searching itself,
I am there.