Thursday, July 31, 2008

The Time Before Death


Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.

Jump into experience while you are alive!

Think... and think... while you are alive.

What you call "salvation" belongs to the time

before death.

If you don't break your ropes while you're alive,

do you think

ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will rejoice with the ecstatic

just because the body is rotten --

that is all fantasy.

What is found now is found then.

If you find nothing now,

you will simply end up with an apartment in the

City of Death.

If you make love with the divine now, in the next

life you will have the face of satisfied desire.

So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,

Believe in the Great Sound!

Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for,

it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that

does all the work.

Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.

~~~ By Kabir

~~~ Translated by Robert Bly

Ten Poems to Change Your Life, edited by Roger Housden