HR!Day379 - Turn Me to Gold: Celebrating the Mystical Poetry of Kabir with Andrew Harvey
- --- Humanity Rising Day 379 - Tuesday December 7, 2021 (GoTo Bottom)
Kabir was a 15th century Indian mystical poet and saint whose writings influenced Hinduism and Islam in India. He was born in 1440 and died in 1518. The birth of Kabir remains shrouded in mystery and legend. Authorities disagree on both when he was born and who his parents were. According to one legend, his mother was a Brahman who became pregnant after a visit to a Hindu shrine. Because she was unwed, she abandoned Kabir, who was found and adopted by a Muslim weaver. That his early life began as a Muslim there is little doubt, but he was later strongly influenced by a Hindu ascetic Ramananda.
Although Kabir is often depicted in modern times as a harmonizer of Hindu and Muslim belief and practice, it would be more accurate to say that he was equally critical of both, often conceiving them as parallel to one another in their misguided ways. In his view, the mindless, repetitious, prideful habit of declaiming scripture could be visited alike on the sacred Hindu texts, the Vedas, or the Islamic holy book, the Koran; the religious authorities doing so could be Brahmans or qāḍīs (judges); meaningless rites of initiation could focus either on the sacred thread or on circumcision. What really counted, for Kabir, was utter fidelity to the one deathless truth of life, which he associated equally with the designations Allah and Ram—the latter understood as a general Hindu name for the divine, not the hero of the Ramayana. Kabir’s principal media of communication were songs called padas and rhymed couplets (dohas) sometimes called “words” (shabdas) or “witnesses” (sakhis). A number of those couplets, and others attributed to Kabir since his death, have come to be commonly used by speakers of north Indian languages.
- Andrew Harvey is modern day mystic and author of over 40 books on various forms of mysticism both ancient and modern. His book Turn me to Gold celebrate 108 poems of Kabir. We will premier his new film on Kabir made in India.
Co-Convener:
- Jim Garrison, President, Ubiquity University
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