NO: IT IS NOT yours to open buds into blossoms. Shake the bud, strike it; it is beyond your power to make it blossom. Your touch soils it, you tear its petals to pieces and strew them in the dust. But no colours appear, and no perfume. Ah! it is not for you to open the bud into a blossom. He who can open the bud does it so simply. He gives it a glance, and the life-sap stirs through its veins. At his breath the flower spreads its wings and flutters in the wind. Colours flush out like heart-longings, the perfume betrays a sweet secret. He who can open the bud does it so simply.
II. 22. man tu par utar kanh 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. Kabir says: 'Put all imaginations away, and stand fast in that which you are.'
বল তো এই বারের মতো, প্রভু, তোমার আঙিনাতে তুলি আমার ফসল যত। কিছু বা ফল গেছে ঝরে, কিছু বা ফল আছে ধরে, বছর হয়ে এল গত। রোদের দিনে ছায়ায় বসে বাজায় বাঁশি রাখাল যত। হুকুম তুমি কর যদি চৈত্র-হাওয়ায় পাল তুলে দিই, ওই যে মেতে ওঠে নদী। পার করে নিই ভরা তরী, মাঠের যা কাজ সারা করি ঘরের কাজে হই গো রত। এবার আমার মাথার বোঝা পায়ে তোমার করি নত।
