The One Lives in Your Words and in Your Silence
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Wherever there are words, there are letters doing the work. But there is also a silence deeper than words, where the mind lets go and rests on nothing at all.
The One is in both places — inside every word you speak, and inside the quiet where words stop. It lives in speech and in silence alike. And no one can ever fully know it exactly as it is; it is always more than we can hold.
Kabir carries the opening paradox forward. Bol (speech) needs letters; abol (the wordless) is where “the mind rests on nothing” — a still, thought-free awareness. The One is madh, in the middle of both, belonging to neither. The last line, jas oh hai tas lakhai na ko-ee — “no one perceives it as it truly is” — is not a discouragement but an honesty: the Endless will always exceed our grasp, and that very endlessness is part of the awe. This pairs speech and silence the way earlier Gurbani pairs listening (Suniai) with inner stillness — both are doorways, neither is the room itself.
When do you feel closest to something true — when you're talking, or when everything goes quiet?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI