Kabir : (1440-1518) a saint & mystic poet.
... Although Basu had some copies of Temenos sent by you, I could not find anywhere the work you had praised. Your present gift is really a rich answer to my desire. Apart from your own article "Yeats and Kabir", these nine poems were the first things I plunged into: I liked most two out of the three mentioned in your introductory note: "Shahjahan" and "The Sick Bed - 6", and one not particularly marked there:... magnificent version of the finest of the Bengali poet's short masterpieces: "Urvashi." I have not yet come across the Penguin book-. Now I'll search for it to get at this poem. Your "Yeats and Kabir" taught me several things. I had never realised Kabir's influence on Yeats. Now it is clear to me. Nor had I thought that Yeats had turned to the tradition of Indian spirituality resulting in his final... style, a forceful conciseness pregnant with a significant silence. What is said leaves an unsaid suggestion which is the heart of the meaning. When Yeats tells the "Horseman", by indicating a la Kabir that life and death are to be looked upon as having "no separation between them" any more than there is a difference between one hand and the other, he is not only hinting at "Unity and harmony" at ...
... that he cannot be considered totally unsympathetic to poetry of a spiritual order. "I can read," he says, "the Divine Comedy with pleasure, St. John of the Cross is a marvellous poet, poems of Kabir and Chandidas are exquisite. T. S. Eliot's Ash-Wednesday is an excellent poem of spiritual tension, confusion and resolution which I can read with great enjoyment and recall with surprising accuracy... intense yet not charged with the powerful amplitude of vision and vibration such as we find in the verses of the Upanishads, verses which seem to be the Infinite's own large and luminous language. Kabir and Chandidas are somewhat in the same category, though with a difference of tone and temper. They are indeed, as Mr. Lai says, exquisite and they are authentically spiritual, but again more intense... poetry. You actually try to prove that you are quite competent to pass judgment on spiritual poetry: you list your qualifications by commencing favourably on Dante, Eliot, St. John of the Cross, Kabir and Chandidas. The suggestion is unmistakable: Sri Aurobindo is a poetic failure and not merely a poet to whom you are allergic. It is this suggestion that drew my fire. I do not for a moment ...
... he quotes Kabir's idea of Sahaja-samadhi and advocates it as the ideal condition for the artist! In that song Kabir speaks of keeping the doors of his senses open and perceiving through them the delight of Divine Beauty everywhere—in all forms. A. But Kabir did not get the vision of this all-pervading Divine Beauty by merely keeping his senses open to the outer world. For, in... senses open to the world of forms. Nor could Kabir have perceived or seen this beauty with his physical eye only, because the beauty he speaks of is evidently not objective. That experience must have Page 27 been the result of long period of spiritual discipline or Yoga. The vision of the All-beautiful must have come to Kabir first in his inner consciousness i.e., as an inner... realisation. And then the experience must have become strong enough to influence his outer senses. So that even the physical senses were able to participate in the same vision. No one can say that Kabir was not a Yogi. Q- The question: "If beauty is everywhere, as you say, then why does not everybody perceive it?" still remains in my mind. A. The devotee sees the Divine Beauty because ...
... the result, I suppose, some time tomorrow. Your translations are very good, but much more poetic than the originals: some would consider that a fault, but I do not. The songs of these Bhaktas (Kabir and others) are very much in a manner and style that might be called the "hieratic primitive," like a picture all in intense lines, but only two or three essential lines at a time; the only colour is... instead of the bare sincerity of the original some kind of ostensible artificial artlessness that would not be at all the same thing. I have no objection to your substituting Krishna for Ram, and if Kabir makes any, which is not likely, you have only to sing to him softly, "R ā m Shy ā m jud ā mat karo bhai," [Don't separate R ā m and Shy ā m, 0 brother] and he will be silenced at once ...
... about Huxley or Baudelaire! 11 July 1931 Your translations are very good, but much more poetic than the originals: some would consider that a fault, but I do not. The songs of these Bhaktas (Kabir and others) are very much in a manner and style that might be called the "hieratic primitive", like a picture all in intense line, but only two or three essential lines at a time; the only colour is... instead of the bare sincerity of the original, some kind of ostensible artificial artlessness that would not be at all the same thing. I have no objection to your substituting Krishna for Rama, and if Kabir makes any, which is not likely, you have only to sing to him softly, " Rām Shyām judā mat karo bhāī ", and he will be silenced at once. The bottom reason for the preference of Rama or Krishna is ...
... that he cannot be considered totally unsympathetic to poetry of a spiritual order. "I can read", he says, "the Divine Comedy with pleasure , St. John of the Cross is a marvellous poet, poems of Kabir and Chandidas are exquisite, T. S. Eliot 's Ash- Wednesday is an excellent poem of spiritual tension, confusion and resolution which I can read with great enjoyment and recall with surprising accuracy... deeply intense yet not charged with the powerful amplitude of vision and vibration such as we find in verses of the Upanishads, verses which seem to be the Infinite's own large and luminous language. Kabir and Chandidas are somewhat in the same category, though with a difference of tone and temper. They are indeed, as Mr. Lal says, exquisite and they are authentically spiritual, but again more intense ...
... protests that he cannot be considered totally unsympathetic to poetry of a spiritual order. "I can read," he says, "the Divine Comedy with pleasure, St. John of the Cross is a marvellous poet, poems of Kabir and Chandidas are exquisite. T.S. Eliot's Ash-Wednesday is an excellent poem of spiritual tension, confusion and resolution which I can read with great enjoyment and recall with surprising accuracy... deeply intense yet not charged with the powerful amplitude of vision and vibration such as we find in verses of the Upanishads, verses which seem to be the Infinite's own large and luminous language. Kabir and Chandi-das are somewhat in the same category, though with a difference of tone and temper. They are indeed, as Mr. Lal says, exquisite and they are authentically spiritual, but again more intense... spiritual poetry. You actually try to prove that you are quite competent to pass judgment on spiritual poetry: you list your qualifications by commenting favourably on Dante, Eliot, St. John of the Cross, Kabir and Chandidas. The suggestion is unmistakable: Sri Aurobindo is a poetic failure and not merely a poet to whom you are allergic. It is this suggestion that drew my fire. I do not for a moment ...
... brother]" (The great medieval saint Kabir composed a song in Urdu, addressed to Lord Rama; Dilip Kumar translated this song into Bengali but in the process substituted Krishna for Rama. Sri Aurobindo commented on this change in the following words.) Page 180 Sri Aurobindo: I have no objection to your substituting Krishna for Rama, and if Kabir makes any, which is not likely, you have ...
... of the general Tantric theory of the Seed Sounds. Something like my OM Tut tut tut bring kring, which you refused to try. If you had— He says that Kabir also taught Sound-Yoga. The basic idea is at least three thousand years older than Kabir It is simply a big name for the use of the mantra. Anyway I am not very much interested in all this. There is something else now about which I want ...
... long strain of devotee poets keeps sounding the note that he struck and their work fills the greater space of Marathi poetry. The same type takes a lighter and more high-pitched turn in the poetry of Kabir. In Bengal again at the end of the Mahomedan period there is the same blending of fervent devotion with many depths and turns of religious thought in the songs of Ramprasad to the divine Mother, combined ...
... drama and poetry and romance, the Dhammapada and the Jatakas, the Panchatantra, Tulsidas, Vidyapati and Chandidas and Ramprasad, Ramdas and Tukaram, Tiruvalluvar and Kamban and the songs of Nanak and Kabir and Mirabai and the southern Shaiva saints and the Alwars,—to name only the best-known writers and most characteristic productions, though there is a very large body of other work in the different tongues ...
... the consciousness of the masses, a traditional continuity of the practical process of self-realisation runs throughout the period of Indian history including the period of her decline. The names of Kabir, Nanak, Ramanand, Tulsi, Dadu, Chaitanya and others easily come to the mind while tracing the continuity to the very dawn of the Indian renaissance, which can be said to begin with the appearance ...
... aspirations or the rev-elations so elegantly expressed by others: Kahlil Gibran had whispered in his book, The Prophet , "...And then I shall come to you, a boundless drop to a boundless ocean." Kabir, India's saintly bhakta had echoed the same spiritual encounter in a reverse sense as a duality of human-divine relation where the Infinite merges into an infinitesimal, " nave mey doob gai nadiya - ...
... * Mother, In the context of your recent messages to the school emphasising the future: As a language teacher I have been laying great stress on the Ramayana and the songs of Kabir, Mira, etc. and the stories of the Upanishads and the Mahabharata. Please tell me what to do. If I stop them as belonging to the past, how to replace them? If I continue them, shall I not be going against ...
... 14 April 1967 Mother, In the context of your recent messages to the school emphasising the future: As a language teacher I have been laying great stress on the Ramayana and the songs of Kabir, Mira, etc. and the stories of the Upanishads and the Mahabharata. Please tell me what to do. If I stop them as belonging to the past, how to replace them? If I continue them, shall I not be going against ...
... for the impersonal God. SRI AUROBINDO: Bhakti for the impersonal God? SATYENDRA: They don't have devotion for any personal God but for the One who is everywhere and beyond all personalities. Kabir and some other saints believe like that. Even when they take a particular name, they mean by it something more than the name. They will say "Rama" but believe in various aspects of Rama: for example ...
... nation, spiritual freedom, social freedom, political freedom. Spiritual freedom the ancient Rishis had already declared to us; social freedom was part of the message of Buddha, Chaitanya, Nanak and Kabir and the saints of Maharashtra; political freedom is the last work of the triune gospel.... God has set apart India as the eternal fountainhead of holy spirituality, and He will never suffer that fountain ...
... nation, spiritual freedom, social freedom, political freedom. Spiritual freedom the ancient Rishis had already declared to us; social freedom was part of the message of Buddha, Chaitanya, Nanak and Kabir and the saints of Maharashtra; political freedom is the last word of the triune gospel. Without political freedom the soul of man is crippled. Only a few mighty spirits can rise above 144. ...
... vast literature he has created, it is possible to get an idea of his philosophy and his interpretation of Indian culture. The Upanishads, the works of the saints and mystics of the Middle Ages like Kabir, and aspects of Vaishnavism have influenced his outlook. He was a firm believer in international peace and Shantiniketan was started to promote it; he pointed out the dangers of exclusive nationalism ...
... the consciousness of the masses, a traditional continuity of the practical process of self-realisation runs through- out the period of Indian history including the period of her decline. The names of Kabir, Nanak, Ramanand, Tuisi, Dadu, Chaitanya and others easily come to the mind while tracing the continuity to the very dawn of the Indian renaissance, which can be said to begin with the appearance of ...
... Vaishnavite and Saivite, for the revival of Hinduism, and the movement of Sufism in Islam, had also lost their great spiritual drive, and only a memory of god-intoxicated singers like Eknath and Kabir and Tulsi Das and Chaitanya and Farid and Nanak lay behind Page 9 to keep the obscured embers of Indian spirituality yet alive. Palsied in its outer forms, miserably racked within, breathing ...
... characteristic bent of the national mind, continuing through Rammohan Ray, Dayanand Saraswati and Keshavchandra Sen, the long and unbroken line of great religious teachers from Gautama to Chaitanya and Kabir. It is true that teachings of fatalism and inactive detachment have depressed the vitality of the people. Yet there is no reason to believe that this depression and this limitation are not removable ...
... cultured elite anywhere else. Where else could the lofty, austere and difficult teaching of a Buddha have seized so rapidly on the popular mind? Where else could the songs of a Tukaram, a Ramprasad, a Kabir, the Sikh gurus and the chants of the Tamil saints with their fervid devotion but also their profound spiritual thinking have found so speedy an echo and formed a popular religious literature? This ...
... 176 , 177 Jallianwala Bagh massacre, 156 (fn) Japan, 88, 137,202,216, 237 (fn) Japanese, 216, 218 jat, 90 Jews, 190, 242 Jinnah, 223, 224, 230, 241, 245 Judaism, 129 Judea, 137 K Kabir, 146 Kala Purusha , 91 Kali Yuga, 91 KaJi,44, 106, 124 Kalki,148 Karmayogin (English weekly) , 47, 71, 77,83 Kashmir, 228, 245(/n} Kemal , Mustapha , 169(fn), 192 Khaddar, 170 Khilafat ...
... cultured elite anywhere else. Where else could the lofty, austere and difficult teaching of a Buddha have seized so rapidly on the popular mind? Where else could the songs of a Tukaram, a Ramprasad, a Kabir, the Sikh Gurus and the chants of the Tamil saints with their fervid devotion but also their profound spiritual thinking have found so speedy an echo and formed a popular religious literature? This ...
... careful with books which have the most pernicious effect. Blessings. 17 April 1967 I have been laying great stress on the stories of the Ramayana and Mahabharata and on the songs of Kabir, Mira, etc. Is it against your way to continue these old things? Not at all—it is the attitude that is important. The past must be a spring-board towards the future, not a chain preventing from ...
... nation; spiritual freedom, social freedom, political freedom. Spiritual freedom the ancient Rishis had already declared to us; social freedom was part of the message of Buddha, Chaitanya, Nanak and Kabir and the saints of Maharashtra; political freedom is the last word of the triune gospel. Without political freedom the soul of man is crippled. Only a few mighty spirits can rise above their surroundings ...
... mission. This is the first and most important work which the Karmayogin sets for itself, to popularise this knowledge. The Vedanta or Sufism, the temple Page 20 or the mosque, Nanak and Kabir and Ramdas, Chaitanya or Guru Govind, Brahmin and Kayastha and Namasudra, whatever national asset we have, indigenous or acclimatised, it will seek to make known, to put in its right place and appreciate ...
... heir of Yeats. I don't have Temenos 8 where a review of his poetic work appears. In fact I have had access to only two numbers of Temenos - one of them was sent by you, containing your article on Kabir and Yeats and Radice's splendid translations of Tagore. I am interested to learn of your coming visit to America. You speak enthusiastically about the people there, but when I mentioned Thomas R ...
... Hinduism which have given us so much national vitality. I think rather it was its spirit. I am inclined to give more credit for the secular miracle of our national survival to Shankara, Ramanuja, Nanak & Kabir, Guru Govind, Chaitanya, Ramdas & Tukaram than to Raghunandan and the Pandits of Nadiya & Bhatpara. The result of this well-meaning bondage has been an increasing impoverishment of the Indian intellect ...
... Overhead 37,211 source of 200,215 Integral Yoga. See yoga intellect bright and dark 307 intelligence 82,215 intuition 235 Overmind 323,347 Iqbal 70 K Kabir 126 Kalidasa 182,205,216,218 Katha Upanishad 115 kavayah satyaśhrutah 184 Kavi 163 Kazantzakis, Nicos 60,213 Keats 18,197,336 knowledge Agni and 306 lustrous lid ...
... took more than 100 years to translate them into French and Latin. Educational Philosophy in Ancient India The most important value in ancient India, in the words of Professor Humayun Kabir, was"liberation of individual from bondage of evil." It was believed that education will achieve freedom from ignorance. Since evil was Page 65 thought to originate from ignorance, it ...
... its students to realize that there is a common thread that joins different beads representing different religions. * The most important value in ancient India, in the words of Professor Humayun Kabir, was 'liberation of individual from bondage of evil.' It was believed that education will achieve freedom from ignorance. Since evil was thought to originate from ignorance, it was rightly believed ...
... the Muslims there is a Socialist party which says that the problem is not at all religious but economic. SRI AUROBINDO: One can look at any question as one likes. (Laughter) PURANI: Professor Kabir and others are for an agreement with the Hindus. The Viceroy is seeing Jinnah on the 6th. It is not known whether the Viceroy has called him or Jinnah himself has asked to see him. SRI AUROBINDO: ...
... K. P., 508 Jinnah,M.A.,529,702,710 Joan of Arc 55,191 Johnson, Lionel, 99 Jones, Sir William, 13 Joyce, James, 535 Julius Caesar, 140 Kabir, 9, 497 Kalidasa. 10,50, 69ff, 90H, 337, 695 Kama, 169, 172 Kanungo, Hemachandra, 216, 326 Kant, Immanuel, 416 Kara-Kahini, 307fn, 308ff, 314H, 318, 320 ...
... renunciation is not for me"; I feel the embrace of freedom in thousandfold bonds of delight". He wants to keep the doors of the senses open and feel through them the universal delight. So did Kabir sing a few centuries ago: " santo sahaja samādhi bhalī"; "O holymen! spontaneous samadhi is the best". He says further, "Since I got the vision of the Lord, Page 93 my consciousness ...
... bonds of delight." He wants to keep the _____________________ 4 Future Poetry. 5 Ibid. Page 76 doors of the senses open and feel through them the universal delight. So did Kabir sing a few centuries ago: "santo sahaja samadhi bhali"—"O holymen! spontaneous samadhi is the best". He says further, "Since I got the vision of the Lord, my consciousness does not turn inwards. No ...
... worship of the Impersonal God. Sri Aurobindo : Worship of the Impersonal God? Disciple : They do not have any personal God, but they worship One who is everywhere, beyond personality. Kabir and some other Saints believe in this. Even when they take a particular Name of God, they mean by it something more than the name. They will say "Rama" but they believe in various aspects of Rama. ...
... narrate the story of my experiences while I was singing. Here is my letter to the Mother: “Mother mine, “I had a wonderful experience. I cannot but write to you about it at once. There is a song of Kabir, ‘Conquering my heart, Sri Rama was seated within it.’ I was singing it, sitting alone on the terrace at about 7 p.m. I wished to sing it to you on Friday. I had often had my good experiences during ...
... self-realisation and God-realisation". 17 And one particular feature of Indian religion has been the periodic occurrence of "messengers of the Spirit" - Nammalvar, Andal, Manikkavasagar, Tukaram, Kabir, Mira, Sankara Deva and Nanak - who were minstrels of God and ambassadors of the Absolute. But although many were these witnesses, these Seers, Rishis, Alvars, Acharyas, Prahladas, although many notes ...
... lead us further. We walked a lot and came to another place. Everywhere I found new and very wide open places. There I saw a huge tree of “Patience” covering a large area. It was as big as Kabirvad (Kabir's Banyan tree) 1 —even bigger and more beautiful in form. Some branches were touching the ground from many sides. The tree was full of light and its golden flowers were as big as the rose flower of ...
... which detracts, however little, from the saintly purity of feeling. Such a thing is inconceivable in Sri Aurobindo: this fact is to be particularly noted. In the work of almost all mystic poets — in Kabir's , in Donne's, even in Blake's, to take only a few instances, — we may hear the scolding voice, but not so anywhere in Sri Aurobindo's poetry. He observed the discipline of the "Higher State" even ...
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