We sense that
there is some sort of spirit
that loves birds and animals and the ants —
perhaps the same one who gave a radiance to you
in your mother’s womb. Is it logical you would be walking
around entirely orphaned now? The truth is you turned away
yourself, and decided to go into the dark alone. Now you
are tangled up in others, and have forgotten what
you once knew, and that’s why everything
you do has some weird
failure in it.
The spiritual athlete often changes the color of his clothes,
and his mind remains gray and loveless.
He sits inside a shrine room all day,
so that the Guest has to go outdoors and praise the rocks.
Or he drills holes in his ears, his hair grows
enormous and matted,
people mistake him for a goat…
He goes out into wilderness areas, strangles his impulses,
and makes himself neither male nor female…
He shaves his skull, puts his robe in an orange vat,
reads the Bhagavad-Gita, and becomes a terrific talker.
Kabir says: Actually you are going in a hearse
to the country of death,
bound hand and foot!