"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."
Kabir
Who is Kabir?
(1440 - 1518) (also known as Kabira)
was an Indian mystic who preached an ideal of seeing all of humanity
as one. He was known to be a weaver and later became famed for scorning
religious affiliation, seen as a threat to the elite. His philosophies
and ideas of loving devotion to God are expressed in metaphor and language
from both the Hindu Vedanta and Bhakti streams and Muslim Sufi ideals.
Kabir is also considered one of the early northern India Sants. He was
initiated by Ramananda. Watch
His Bio on Documentary Film
Philosophies
Kabir was influenced by prevailing religious mood such
as old Brahmanic Hinduism, Hindu and Buddhist Tantrism, teachings of
Nath yogis and the personal devotinalism from South India mixed with
imageless God of Islam.[8] The influence of these various doctrines
is clearly evident in Kabir's verses. Even though he is often presented
to be synthesizer of Hinduism and Islam: the observation is held to
be a false one.
"The poetry of mysticism might be defined on the
one hand as a temperamental reaction to the vision of Reality: on the
other, as a form of prophecy. As it is the special vocation of the mystical
consciousness to mediate between two orders, going out in loving adoration
towards God and coming home to tell the secrets of Eternity to other
men; so the artistic self-expression of this consciousness has also
a double character. It is love-poetry, but love-poetry which is often
written with a missionary intention. Kabîr's songs are of this
kind: out-births at once of rapture and of charity. Kabir did not classify
himself as Hindu or Muslim, Sufi or Bhakta. The legends surrounding
his lifetime attest to his strong aversion to established religions.
Watch Robert Bly performs the poetry of Kabir at one
of the Mythic Journeys conferences. Musical accompaniment by Eugene
Friesen and Arto Tuncboyaciyan.
