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The Guest is inside you, and also inside me;

Kabir, Kabir poetry, Muslim / Sufi, Muslim / Sufi poetry,  poetry, [TRADITION SUB2] poetry, Yoga / Hindu poetry by Kabir
(15th Century) Timeline

English version by
Robert Bly

Original Language
Hindi

Muslim / Sufi
Yoga / Hindu
15th Century

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.

 

 

-- from The Kabir Book: Forty-Four fo the Ecstatic Poems of Kabir, Translated by Robert Bly

Amazon.com

 

Themes

  Awakening
  Bliss
  Light
  Lover and Beloved
  Sky


Recommended Books


The Bijak of Kabir, Translated by Linda Hess / Translated by Shukdeo Singh
The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry, by Stephen Mitchell
Islamic Mystical Poetry: Sufi Verse from the Early Mystics to Rumi, Translated by Mahmood Jamal
The Kabir Book: Forty-Four fo the Ecstatic Poems of Kabir, Translated by Robert Bly
Kabir: The Weaver's Songs, by Kabir / Translated by Vinay Dharwadker

More >>

 

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Ivan M. Granger's original poetry, stories and commentaries are Copyright © 2002 - 2011 by Ivan M. Granger.
All other material is copyrighted by the respective authors, translators and/or publishers.