Songs of Kabir · 12 of 100

XI: I Played day and night with my comrades, and now I am greatly afraid.

XI I. 131. nis' din khelat rahî sakhiyân sang

I PLAYED day and night with my comrades, and now I am greatly afraid. So high is my Lord's palace, my heart trembles to mount its stairs: yet I must not be shy, if I would enjoy His love. My heart must cleave to my Lover; I must withdraw my veil, and meet Him with all my body: p. 55 Mine eyes must perform the ceremony of the lamps of love. Kabîr says: "Listen to me, friend: he understands who loves. If you feel not love's longing for your Beloved One, it is vain to adorn your body, vain to put unguent on your eyelids."

Insight · 2

The bride climbing the palace stairs to her husband's chamber. This is the bhakti tradition's most common image for the soul approaching God — the mystical marriage. Teresa of Ávila wrote a whole book of it, Interior Castle, mapping the soul as a palace with many rooms leading to the bridal chamber. The lover's adorning ceremony, the lamp of love, the trembling ascent — this language is continuous across Sufi, Christian, and Bhakti mysticism. What Kabir adds is the self-admonishment: don't be shy. The bride's modesty is the last thing standing between her and the Beloved, and at some point it has to go.Teresa, Las Moradas VII; Mirabai's songs use the same bride-figure.

"Mine eyes must perform the ceremony of the lamps of love." The reference is to the Hindu ritual of arati, where the priest waves a tray of small flames before the deity's image. Kabir — who rejected temple worship elsewhere — here takes the ritual gesture and relocates it inside the bride's longing. The lamps are her eyes; the deity is her Beloved; the ceremony is her looking. This is classic Kabir move: the outer ritual is moved inward and redeemed in doing so.Arati ritual canonical across Hindu puja traditions.