Kabir. The son of a Muslim weaver in Benares, born around 1400. He was influenced by Sufi poets and Hindu thought. He is regarded as a great religious reformer and the founder of a sect to which nearly a million northern Hindus still belong. Here is one of his poems, translated by Robert Bly, from his book "Try to Live to See This!"
Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive.
THink and think while you are alive.
What you call "salvation" belongs to the time before death.
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.
And if you make love with the divine now, in the next life
you will have the face of satisfied desire.
Then 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...you will see a slave of that intensity."
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