E18: Songs of Kabir (6, 9) - Kabir Das

Kabir Das - Songs of Kabir (songs 6 and 9)

Written: 1398 - 1518

Published: One Hundred Poems of Kabir 1915

Translated: Rabindranath Tagore

Theme: 

The songs of Kabir by Tagore represent both the philosophies of Hinduism and Sufism. It is a seamless, luminous setting of Kabir 's beloved prayer, offering praise to a holy spirit, universal and personal, both in this world and beyond. (Brainly.in, 2022)

 

Songs:

Song 6 

I.83 candā jhalkai yahi ghat māhīn 

The moon shines in my body, but my blind eyes cannot see it: The moon is within me, and so is the sun.

The unstruck drum of Eternity is sounded within me; but my deaf ears cannot hear it. 

So long as man clamours for the I and the Mine, his works are as naught:

When all love of the I and the Mine is dead, then the work of the Lord is done.

For work has no other aim than the getting of knowledge:

When that comes, then work is put away. 

The flower blooms for the fruit: when the fruit comes, the flower withers.

The musk is in the deer, but it seeks it not within itself: it wanders in quest of grass. 

 

Song 9 

I.104 aisā lo nahīn taisā lo 

O How may I ever express that secret word?

O how can I say He is not like this, and He is like that?

If I say that He is within me, the universe is ashamed:

If I say that He is without me, it is falsehood.

He makes the inner and the outer worlds to be indivisibly one;

The conscious and the unconscious, both are His footstools.

He is neither manifest nor hidden, He is neither revealed nor unrevealed:

There are no words to tell that which He is.

 

Credits: Songs of Kabir. Authored by: Kabir Das (Trans. by Rabindranath Tagore).