SANT
KABIR
Here is a short note on Sant Kabir. He was an Indian mystic and a great
devotional poet. Born in a Muslim family, he adopted the Bhakti poet Swami
Ramananda who believed that God is inside every person as his guru.
Sant Kabir lived a long life. He was
born at Varanasi in 1398 and died in
Maghar in 1518. The Muslim parents who brought him up were weavers by
profession.
Kabir himself was a Bhakti poet and social reformer. His
Dohas (couplets) describe the greatness and unity of the Supreme Being. His
poetry found respectable place in Sikhism’s Guru Granth Sahib; the Satguru
Granth Sahib of Sant Garib Das, and Kabir Sagar of Dharamdas.
Kabir attached great importance to the guru or the teacher and regarded
him as the incarnation of God. Without a guru, the disciple is an unsuccessful traveler
on the path of mysticism.
In one of
his songs, Kabir says:
He is the
real Master, Who can reveal the form of the Formless to the vision of these
eyes: Who teaches the simple way of attaining Him. That is other than rites or
ceremonies: Who does not make you close the doors, and hold the breath, and
renounce the world.
As for God,
Kabir says : He who is within is without: I see him and none else.
In another
song: he tells us: I do not ring the temple bell: I do not set the idol on its
throne: I do not worship the image with flowers. When you leave off your clothes and kill your
senses, you do not please the Lord: The man who is kind and who practises righteousness,
who remains passive amidst the affairs of the world, who considers all
creatures on earth as his own self, he attains the Immortal Being, the true God
is ever with him. He attains the true Name whose words are pure, and who is
free from pride and conceit.
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1.
G.R.Kanwal
2.
13th
August 2023
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