THE SONG OF LOVE

The flute of the infinite is played without ceasing,

and its sound is love:

When love renounces all limits,

it reaches truth.

How widely the fragrance spreads!

It has no end, nothing stand in its way.

The form of this melody is bright

Like a million suns:

Incomparably sounds the veena.

the veena of the notes of truth.

Subtle is the path of Love!

Therein there is no asking and no not asking,

there one looses one’s self at this feet,

there one is immersed in the joy of the seeking:

plunged in the deeps of love

as the fish in the water.

The lover is never slow in offering his head

for his lords service.

Kabir declares the secret of this love.

…Lovers penetrate into each other. It is not only a sexual metaphor; the penetration is spiritual, the sexual is only a shadow of it.

Lovers penetrate into each other. Their boundaries are blurred, they become nebulous, their definition becomes shaky. When living with a woman or with a man for many years, and suddenly the woman dies or the man dies, the pain that is felt, the suffering, the agony that is felt by the partner who is left behind is not only because somebody has died. It is because now he will never be whole. It is because now part of his being is destroyed completely, utterly. Now there will exist a black hole in his being, an abyss, an emptiness. When a lover dies, something deep inside you dies too. You had become so together; your life was no longer separate, it was overlapping. You were in two bodies, but you had become one soul – that is the meaning of love.

When the same happens to the whole of existence – that you start feeling that you are not separate, your boundaries overlap; not only do your boundaries overlap, your centers overlap; the world is your center too – in that ecstasy of oness is the fragrance called love.

… We can forget the word God, but we should not forget the word love. Love is far more valuable than the word God, because love is the very spirit of God. God may be just the body, love is the very soul.

When love renounces all limits… there are many limits, and our love is confined in limits. That’s why even if we love, we are never happy with it. The unhappiness that comes through love is not because love, but because of the limitations that surrounds it.

…People escape to the Himalayas: they are escaping from love, not from the world. They are afraid of love, and their fear has some reason behind it. Whenever you are in love, you are in a turmoil. Whenever there is love there is difficulty; whenever there is love there is conflict; whenever there is love there is hell. Says Jean-Paul Sartre, “The other is hell.” So whenever there is love the other enter your life, and suddenly there is conflict, collision, struggle to dominate each other, to posses each other, to master each, and other and the misery arises. Lovers are rarely happy. I am not saying that non-lovers are happy; non-lovers may not be happy, but they are never so unhappy as the lovers.

And lovers are more unhappy, because love had promised so much in the beginning – great expectation had arisen, great hope was there – and then everything is shattered on the rocks. A non-lover had no expectations; he was settled, he was not hoping for heaven: you cannot throw a man into hell if he is not hoping for heaven: you can only throw a man into hell only when he hopes for heaven; otherwise there is no possibility.

…When two people find themselves bound together, by and by they become acquainted with each other, and by and by they start liking each other. By and by they adjust. It is very mundane, it has no poetry in it.

In the West marriage is not a bed of roses. The boat is always rocking; it is always on the rocks, it is always is a state of collapse at any moment. Why? If you love, you expect. When you expect, love becomes contaminated, polluted. Then love is not really love; it now has limitation – because of the expectation. When you love a person you start possessing the person: you are afraid your woman may move to somebody else. You become so much afraid that you cannot even tolerate her looking at somebody. You cannot tolerate the idea that she was laughing with somebody else. That she can laugh without you? …it is impossible, it hurts. You start creating a prison for her – a beautiful cage, of course that you call home, but you create a cage. Certainly, when you start creating a cage, she has to create a cage for you too – because nobody can become the jailer unless he becomes a prisoner too. When you possess somebody, you are possessed. When you force somebody to be a slave, you have become a slave in the process itself.

…Never try to use anybody; share but never use. Respect the dignity of the other, never interfere, and then love has a bigger space, less limited. But still, it will be limited.

…Love is something bigger than you, you cannot control it. If you want to control, you can remain in hate. Hate can be controlled, hate is smaller than you. Love cannot be controlled, love is bigger than you. If you try to control love you will miss all possibilities. You will become a loveless being – and that’s what a dead person is: a loveless being who exist in the head and who has forgotten his own heart.

Kabir says: Bhakti ka marag jhina re – subtle is the path of love. Yes, it is not gross. The head is nothing but logic, arithmetic, calculations, cunningness, cleverness; good to exploit people, good to collect money, have a big bank balance; good to become a politician, good to overpower people, good to destroy. The head is very gross.

…Love concrete human beings, love concrete trees, love concretes rock, particulars. And only then will you know what love is. Forget great abstractions, they are dangerous. Man has been fighting because of them, destroying each other. A Mohammedan is ready to fight for Islam, and he will kill human beings for the love of Islam. Now this is foolish. The Christian is even ready to kill Christians if it is to save Christianity. What is this Christianity?

Love the concrete, love the immediate. Enjoy this moment, don’t prepare for tomorrow. Today is beautiful – delight in it, let it be a celebration.

Excerpts from “The Path of Love”

On the Songs on the Indian Mystic Kabir.