Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
The tongue is unclean, and its words are unclean. The eyes and the ears are all unclean too.
The body itself can never be washed clean, and even the Brahmin priest is burned up in that fire.
By that rule, our own bodies can never be clean.
jihbaa joothee bolat joothaa — the tongue is unclean, and so is what it says. The eyes and ears are unclean too. By that way of thinking, no part of us could ever pass.
Even the barahm, the priest who keeps the rules most carefully, gets caught. The verse says he is burned by the fire of it. Think of a list of rules so strict that even the person who wrote it keeps breaking them. The rule defeats itself. Kabir is not mocking anyone's faith. He is showing that this idea of "unclean" does not hold up.
Have you ever seen a rule so strict that it did not help anyone?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI