Songs of Kabir · 21 of 100

XX: To what shore would you cross, O my heart? there is no traveller before…

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."

Insight · 2

To what shore would you cross? There is no shore. Every mystic eventually hits this wall — the realization that there is no place to get to because there is no place you are. No water, no boat, no boatman, no rope. And then: stand fast in what you are. This is the Advaita realization dressed in Kabir's practical vocabulary. The seeker becomes the sought, the journey collapses, and the instruction at the end of the search is the simplest possible: just be what you are. The whole edifice of spiritual effort is a palm tree you've been climbing, as he puts it a few songs later.Ashtavakra Gita 18.1; Ramana's 'Who am I?' inquiry.

Stand fast in what you are. Ramana Maharshi in 20th-century Tiruvannamalai would tell visitors: abide as the Self. Seng-tsan in 6th-century China wrote the line don't search for the truth, just cease to cherish opinions. This whole lineage of instruction — the non-instruction — is paradoxically the hardest to follow because there is nothing to do. Everything in the seeker wants a method. Kabir says: put all imaginations away. The imaginations are the method. Drop them and what was always there stays.Seng-tsan, Hsin Hsin Ming; Ramana, Who Am I?