Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
How rare a human life is! So easily it might never have been at all — and yet this one was given.
So why drift through it half-asleep to what matters, when it could be lived fully awake?
Kabir is amazed at how rare a human life is, and he asks whether we live it awake.
His picture here is stark. He speaks of how many lives never come to be born, to show how easily this one might not have happened at all. Then, with another harsh picture, he asks: is this person really living, or just drifting through?
Think of winning a ticket to a concert that only a few people ever get into. It would be a shame to spend the whole show asleep in your seat. Life is that ticket. The teaching is simple: do not sleepwalk through a precious gift.
What would it mean to live a day fully awake to how precious it is?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI