Poetry Chaikhana
Sacred Poetry from Around the World
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This brief, beautiful poem by Kabir manages to touch on many essential elements common to the mystical experience.
With deep opening, there is a sense of being flooded or even overwhelmed by waves of heat, like flames or a fever. This is felt both on physical and subtle levels. These are the "flames of Love" that flood the body. When you relax into this awareness, the experience is not painful but one of indescribably peaceful delight. This is Kabir's "furnace of bliss."
And it is in this furnace, this divine alchemical fire, where the "soul lives." It takes deep stillness and clarity to recognize it, but the soul is always at home within this warm embrace. This is where the soul is seated in perpetual rest, in this sacred, transformative warmth -- whether or not we are too distracted to notice.
Often accompanying the awareness of blissful heat is a sense of a very subtle, wonderfully sweet flavor in the mouth, at the back of the throat. This taste is so subtle that it could be described as a "fragrance," something just barely tasted, yet imprinting itself indelibly upon the awareness.
In this state, when the awareness is turned inward, it is in bliss; when turned outward, there is only the unifying awareness of love. This is what Kabir means when he says, "Love's fragrance... fans through all things / with each outbreath." When we breathe out, when we turn the unified awareness outward, then the perfume of that bliss is carried outward and seen to permeate everything one's perception touches. This leads to a sort of supreme Self-recognition in all things: There is bliss within and bliss without, there is only bliss flowing everywhere, through everything. You yourself are not separate from That. This recognition is the mystic's Love. It is the recognition of unity, the "fanning" of one's identity, the pouring of oneself, one's breath and presence, into all things, with an unhindered and equal flow in return.
Kabir is giving us a map, a grand path of Love that endlessly circles between the inner and outer:
Love (outer) -- flood, flame -- Bliss (inner) -- flavor, fan -- Love (outer)
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Ivan
M. Granger's original poetry, stories and commentaries are Copyright ©
2002 - 2009 by Ivan M. Granger.
All other material is copyrighted by the respective authors, translators and/or
publishers.
![Kabir, Kabir poetry, Muslim / Sufi, Muslim / Sufi poetry, poetry, [TRADITION SUB2] poetry, Yoga / Hindu poetry](images/Kabir_sm.jpg)
