A section from the journey

Kabir: Neither Temple nor Mosque

Kabir was a weaver of the holy city of Varanasi, raised among Muslims, beloved by Hindus. He sang to a formless God he called Ram, who is no one's and everyone's. With sharp, plain words he teased the proud on every side, and pointed past temple and mosque to the One already close to each heart.

Picture a weaver at his loom in the city of , on the banks of the Ganga. His hands throw the shuttle back and forth, back and forth, and as he works, he sings. This is Kabir. The thread he weaves is cloth. The thread he sings is God.

Kabir came from a family of Muslim weavers. Yet Hindus loved him as their own, and still do. He stood, in a way, between the two great faiths of his land, and belonged fully to neither. That standing-between is the key to all he sang.

For Kabir sang to a God beyond all form. No image could hold this God, no idol, no picture. The word for such a God, which we met a moment ago, is , the formless. He often called this God by the name Ram. But hold this carefully, for it is easy to mistake. He did not mean Rama the prince of the great epic, the son of Dasharatha. He meant the One beyond every shape and story, who has no face to paint. Ram was simply his dearest name for the formless.

Kabir sang in short, sharp verses in the plain speech of the people. A is a small rhymed couplet, two lines that can turn your whole heart. A is a verse of witness, a word of counsel. He was no gentle flatterer. He teased the proud on every side.

He laughed at the Hindu who bowed to a stone and forgot the living God, and at the Muslim who cried out to the sky as though God were deaf or far. He laughed at the pride that calls one birth high and another low. He laughed at the pilgrim who walked a thousand miles to find what sat at home in the heart. To Kabir, all this fuss looked outward, when the treasure lay within.

Here, in his own words, kept for us long ago, is the heart of it.

“O servant, where dost thou seek Me? Lo! I am beside thee. I am neither in temple nor in mosque: I am neither in Kaaba nor in Kailash: neither am I in rites and ceremonies, nor in Yoga and renunciation. If thou art a true seeker, thou shalt at once see Me: thou shalt meet Me in a moment of time. Kabir says, ‘O Sadhu! God is the breath of all breath.’”

Read that again, slowly. Not in temple nor in mosque. Not in the famous holy places of either faith. Not even in hard practices and fasting. Where, then? Beside you. Within you. The breath of all breath. Kabir does not destroy the temple or the mosque. He simply points past them, to the One who was never far in the first place.

And the world, for Kabir, is a kind of veil. The word he and others use is , the great appearance that can fool us, that makes us chase shadows and miss the real. The wise one, he sang, learns to see through the veil to the One behind it. That is the whole work of a life.

When at last we drop the small, grasping self, the heart can simply dance. Kabir's songs are full of that joy. He sang that the One we seek is closer than our own breath, and that to know this is to be free, here, now, in the middle of an ordinary life. That is his gift to us: God is near, and love is enough.

Kabir says we look for God in far-off holy places, while the One we seek is “the breath of all breath,” already beside us. Where in your own life have you searched far and wide for something that was quietly close all along?