Kabir- Weaver Poet

kabir weaver poet

IV

I. 58 bago na ja re na ja

DO not go to the garden of flowers!
O Friend ! go not there;
In your body is the garden of flowers.
Take your seat on the thousand petals of the lotus, and there gaze on the Infinite Beauty.

I. 82. <i>pânî vic mîn piyâsî</i>

I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty:
You do not see that the Real is in your home, and you wander from
  forest to forest listlessly!
Here is the truth!  Go where you will, to Benares or to Mathura;
  if you do not find your soul, the world is unreal to you.

I. 104. aisâ lo nahîn taisâ 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? {p. 53}
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.

II. 103. <i>nâco re mero man, matta hoy</i>

Dance, my heart!  dance to-day with joy.
The strains of love fill the days and the nights with music, and
  the world is listening to its melodies:
Mad with joy, life and death dance to the rhythm of this music.
  The hills and the sea and the earth dance.  The world of man
  dances in laughter and tears.
Why put on the robe of the monk, and live aloof from the world in
  lonely pride?
Behold!  my heart dances in the delight of a hundred arts; and
  the Creator is well pleased.

I. 126. muralî bajat akhand sadâye

THE flute of the Infinite is played without ceasing, and its sound is love:
When love renounces all limits, it reaches truth.
How widely the fragrance spreads! It has no end, nothing stands in its way.
The form of this melody is bright like {p. 97} a million suns: incomparably sounds the vina, the vina of the notes of truth.

Kabir was born in a weaver's family and later adopted by childless Muslim weavers named Niru and Nimma, who found him near Lahara Tara lake, adjacent to the holy city of Varanasi. ^[5]

A Bhakti saint,who sang the ideals of seeing all of humanity as one.

A weaver by profession, Kabir ranks among the world's greatest poets. Back home in India, he is perhaps the most quoted author. The Holy Guru Granth Sahib contains over 500 verses by Kabir. The Sikh community in particular and others who follow the Holy Granth, hold Kabir in the same reverence as the other ten Gurus.

Kabir openly criticized all sects and gave a new direction to the Indian philosophy. This is due to his straight forward approach that has a universal appeal. It is for this reason that Kabir is held in high esteem all over the world. To call Kabir a universal Guru is not an over exaggeration. To me personally, the very name Kabir means Guru's Grace

Kabir is also considered one of the early northern India Sants. One source for modern adaptations of Kabir's poetry is Robert Bly's The Kabir Book: Forty-Four of the Ecstatic Poems of Kabir. (from Wikipedia)

There is also the on line, complete text of Rabindranath Tagore's translation.