Kabir: Communicating the Incommunicable

8/13/2019 Kabir: Communicating the Incommunicable

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Kabir: Communicating the Incommunicable

Author(s): Sehdev KumarSource: India International Centre Quarterly, Vol. 10, No. 2, MEDIA: response and change(JUNE 1983), pp. 206-215Published by: India International CentreStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23001645.

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METAPHYSICAL COMMUNICATION

Kabir: Communicating the Incommunicable*Sehdev Kumar

In Brazilian rivers, there exists a fish that sees with a twin-lensedeye. With one, it surveys the watery depths in which it resides, andwith another, it examines the upper world of air and sunshine.

The life and vision of the fifteenth-century saint-poet of India Kabirresembles that of this fish: with an unswerving glance, Kabir holdsthe vision of the earth and the heavens as one unified whole. Thegreatest of Indian mystics and poets, Kabir has been compared toGautama Buddha and hailed as 'the father of Hindi literature' and the'patron-saint' of religious harmony. Kabir's songs and couplets, whichrun into thousands, are recited to this day with a fervour that is commanded only by those who touch upon the most ardent yearning ofman: Love.

Kabir's vision has embraced, with an unparalleled intensity, theentire spectrum of life in India, spiritual and temporal alike. That iswhy for the Indians, he is all things to all men. For the sociallyconcerned, troubled as they are by the pain and suffering of millionsof their people, Kabir is a revolutionary who sang against the tyrannyof the powerful and the privileged. For the oppressed, Kabir isMahatma, like Gandhi, who spoke in their own tongue against themorass of untouchability. For a spiritual seeker, Kabir is a great Yogi,a Sat Purusa who shines like a beacon in the blinding storm. For menof letters, Kabir is a poet par excellence, the like of whom 'in a thousand years of Hindi literature, there has not been quite another'.1This article is based on the author's The Vision of Kabir, to be published byMcGill-Queens Press, Montreal, Canada, and also on a talk delivered at the IndiaInternational Centre.

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208 SEHDEV KUMAR

As a sage, Kabir saw much beyond the limited perceptions thatso bind us in our ordinary states of consciousness, as though thespectrum of light that touched his eye was far greater than ours. Inhis songs and couplets, there is an ever-pervasive sense of transcendence, of The Other Shore, The Unstruck Music, The InvisibleRiver. Yet for all these, Kabir is deeply rooted in his own times andthe soil that so nourished him. His metaphors and allegories, hissatire and his teachings, his concerns and yearnings reflect a manwho is as intensely alive to the trials of the people of his class andcasteas he is to the joys and ecstasies of eternity. All aspects ofthe universe command for him the same sacramental quality, as hesees the presence of the holy everywhere.

The truth of Kabir is that he is a lover, and his whole life is likean epic love-poem. Always yearning for or in embrace of his Beloved,Kabir sings joyously of love and longing, of rapture and separation,of laughter and tears. Kabir's Beloved, however, is not merely anotherperson. It is the Primal Element that permeates everywhere, 'the Beingof our being', the Soul of our soul'. But his experience of this Beloved, expressed so rhapsodicaliy in his songs, is as intense and aspalpable as any known on the human plane.With Thy Light0 my BelovedCome intoMy eyes,1 shall adore youForeverTo contain youInside meI'll lowermy eye-lidsSo you won't lookat anotherAnd I shall beholdOnly

I shall makemy eyesinto a bridal-chamberIn its pupilI shall lay



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the bridal bedI'll usemy eye-lasheslike bamboo curtains,And there, 0 my friend,I shall adoreMy Beloved.

Kabir's Beloved resides in no remote place, on some distantnountain in the clouds, or in a shrine or a cave, but within himselfike 'the pupil in the eye', 'the fragrance in the flower'; 'the pearl in thejyster-shell': I send lettersto my LoverAs though He wereIn another land0 how I forgetThat He resides hereIn my eyesIn my heart,Receiving messagesof my loveAt all times.

IllThe body of poetical work attributed to Kabir is large and varied.However, it is quite probable that Kabir was more or less illiterate.Certainly his social background as a low-caste weaver would havepermitted him little formal education. So what is attributed to him ismost likely his banis or 'utterances' communicated from the guru'smouth, gurumukha, and written down by his two disciples, Bhagodasand Dharmadas. Kabir's songs and couplets thus are utterances of avisionary, rather than literary compositions. In all of Kabir's work, thereis nothing else but an ardent expression of his personal, experientialvision. There are no narratives or allegories, epics or fables, commentaries or argumentsonly a raw, roaring, rhapsodic outburst ofhis experience of the Divine.As such, it is true that at times Kabir seems unfamiliar with thefiner subtleties of poetical composition; or is indifferent to the delicateart of ornate poetry. For some, his style is too rugged and tense to be

considered kavya in the traditional sense of the Indian poetical com



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position. But underneath an occasional roughness, Kabir is 'as tenderas a flower and as hard as a diamond'.4 The no-nonsense verve of hispoetry may not fully qualify him as a kavi, in the orthodox sense; butKabir was 'undoubtedly a great poet, one of the greatest in India. Asa mystical poet, he has probably never been surpassed'.5

Kabir's poetry thus requires at every step, a higher subjectivity; thenecessity of 'seeing the Beloved through the eyes of the lover'. 'Thosecritics who don't understand this', ProfessorDwivedi asserts,'are merelywasting the time of their readers through scholastic exhibitionism'.6

Kabir's banis principally comprise two poetic constructs: shortrhymed lyrics, known as padas and ramainis; the other distichs orcouplets called dohas or saloku (Sanskrit: sloka) or sakhis. Sakhiliterally means 'witness to the vision'. As direct evidence of the Truth,a sakhi is transmitted by word of mouth. It may be written but a sakhiis meant to be memorized. For a spiritual aspirant, a sakhi is like acall of a morning bird announcing dawn:

The sakhis are the eyes of wisdomReflect on themWithout their understandingThere is no end to anguish.

Though Kabir composed hundreds of padas, it is through hissakhis that his legend has come to be. It is said that in NorthernIndia, there is no conceivable occasion or ethical and spiritual truththat has not been expressed in a sakhi ascribed to Kabir. Several ofthese sakhis have a quality of an aphorism, that of a muhavra or alokokti, so that it is not easy to trace their genesis. It may be that acommon proverb has been used by Kabir, as was his style, to makethe ordinary symbolic. Or the name of Kabir has been associatedwith some age-old proverb, to give it new significance.For Kabir, this wisdom was as concrete and as real as one's ownheart-beat. He referred to it like a lover and a child: 'so drunk amI ...', 'the fragrance that resides in the flower', 'the music thatemanates from a thousand-stringed vina', 'the dance of abandon andecstasy', 'the rain of pearls', 'the laughter of children on the seashore', 'the clay-pot on the wheel', 'the oil in the seed'. All imagesreal and concrete but all alluding to the 'mythopoetic reference thatunderlies the facts'. The richness of Kabir's poetic imagery is that ofa saint; the luminosity that pervades his poems is there to illuminate

only one idea, the primal element: Love.



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His vision of love, Kabir said, is beyond even his own poemsand all the metaphors that they employ. By lifting poetry thus fromthe realm of the ordinary human consciousness, Kabir made it trulythe voice of gods. To do so, he employed many concrete symbolsand myths and metaphors; but often even they seemed inadequate toconvey the 'total otherness of the holy'.IV

On many such occasions there is a clear breakdown of all language, as Kabir resorts to the 'language of absurdity' that rendersitself to no understanding, easy or otherwise. Sometimes there is aninversion, an obvious contrariness: 'a lotus that blossoms withoutwater', 'a river that is drowned in the boat', 'the son of a barrenwoman', 'the oil oozing out of sand'. Such modes of expression havebeen called ultabamsis, 'the language of inversion'. There have beenseveral valiant attempts to 'decode'such utterances but they remainlargely elusive. This 'absurd' or paradoxical use of language is sometimes referred to as sandhabhasa: the'twilight language', the languagethat mediates, like twilight, between light and darkness. It is not merelyan allegorical style; its absurd enigmatic quality may be a deliberateattempt to allude to the transcendental nature of mystical experience.Indeed such 'non-use' of language is found even in the early vedicliterature; and the Sahejiya Sidhas and the Nath-Panthis, both withelaborate influence on Kabir, use this approach extensively.

The limitations of language, with all its allegorical richness,have been expressed by all those whose knowledge is primarilyexperientialthe artists no less than the lovers and the mystics.Kabir's ultabamsis thus call our attentionnot so much to their absurdand contradictory nature, but to the futility of words to express theExperience of the 'Beyond and the Beyond'.

Though Kabir was perhaps illiterate, to communicate the incommunicable, he played with sounds and nuances of words and mixed themthe way in which a painter mixes colours. The result, in some cases, isextraordinary; his sakhis then become a form of mantra, the words'momentary deity'. In the following sakhi No. 4, for instance, attentionmay be paid to the word manka which means a bead, but man kais 'of the heart'. Again in sakhi No. 8, lal means 'child', but lali isillumination. These two sakhis are amongst the most celebratedof Kabir's compositions, where he becomes gloriously both the wordand the medium.



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1. So drunk am Iwith the presence of my BelovedThat all my ambivalenceis goneForever0 KabirA potter's bowlOnce baked in the fireis not turnedOn the wheel again.

2. I shall makemy body intoa clay-lamp,My soul, its wickAnd my bloodOilAh, the lightof this lampWould revealthe faceof my BelovedTo me.

3. The guruis a potterAnd the pupila pot0 dear brotherHow it hurtswhen he thumpsfrom the outside,But seeHow delicatelyhe supportsfrom the inside,So a beautiful potmay be created.

*4. For eonsYou have been movingthe beadsin your hand,Yet nothing



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has movedin your heart0 my friendLeave asidethe beadsOpen your handsLet the heartTurn.

5. Sand and stoneThey have piled,And they call itA mosqueAnd thereHow like a hawkerThe priest shoutsthe name of Allahj4s thoughGod were deaf.

6. If by worshippinga stone-idolone could seeThe face of the Lordone might as wellworship a mountainOr better stillWhy not a grind-stone?It grinds the grainAnd feeds the world.

7. ScripturesYou have read all,0 PanditBut like a parrotin a cage,You only recite themto others,Without understandingWithout practice.

8. EverywhereMy eyes turnI see



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His illumination0 my friendsWhen I reach outto touch it1 tooBecome partof the illumination.

9. I amLike a day-pitcherFloating in the riverWater inside, water outsideNow suddenlywith the touch of the guruThe pitcher is brokenInsideOutside0 friendsIt's all One

10. The muskis in its navelYet obliviousof the sourceof fragranceThe deer wandersAll over the forestin its search0 seekerThe Holy One tooresides within;How unawarewe are of it

11. Just as the oilis hidden in the seedand the sparkin the stone0 seekerThy Master tooResides withinOpen your eyesAnd see.



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12. The presence of Godis like grains of sugarin a pile of sand,An elephantcan't pick themBut an antKnows the way0 Kabir, listen:Truth is very subtleBe humble to seek it.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. H.P. Dwivedi, Kabir, Bombay, 4th ed. 1953, p. 217.2. Padre Marco della Tomba stayed in India for almost twenty years during the mid18th century; he translated into Italian the Satnans Cabir or Satnam Kabir, also

known as Gyan-Sagar.3. Ch. Vaudeville, Kabir, Vol I, Oxford, 1974, p. 147.4. Dwivedi, op. cit., p. 162.5. Vaudeville, op. cit., p. 70.6. ibid., p. 212.7. For a detailed discussion on ultabamsis, see Dwivedi, op. cit., pp. 80-94; N.Tiwari, Kabir-bani-sudha, Allahabad, 1978, pp. 115-117.8. Dwivedi, op. cit., p. 223.

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Kabir: Communicating the Incommunicable