Tuesday, September 19, 2000

Garden: Be strong and enter...


Be strong, and ENTER into your own body: for there your FOOTHOLD is firm. Consider it well, O my heart! Go not elsewhere. Kabîr says: "Put all imaginations away, and stand fast in that which you are."

Where to next: the FEET or the ENTERING?


[Source: RT 20 (partial); 2.22. man tu pâr utar kânh jaiho]

Here is the full poem:

XX

II. 22. man tu pâr utar kânh jaiho

  To what shore would you cross, O my heart? there is no traveller
    before you, there is no road:
  Where is the movement, where is the rest, on that shore?
  There is no water; no boat, no boatman, is there;
  There is not so much as a rope to tow the boat, nor a man to draw
    it.
  No earth, no sky, no time, no thing, is there: no shore, no ford!
  There, there is neither body nor mind: and where is the place
    that shall still the thirst of the soul? You shall find naught
    in that emptiness.
  Be strong, and enter into your own body: for there your foothold
    is firm. Consider it well, O my heart! go not elsewhere,
  Kabîr says: "Put all imaginations away, and stand fast in that
    which you are."


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