Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
If you go looking for impurity, you'll find it everywhere. It is in the water and in the land. It is in every living thing that is born.
By that way of thinking, birth is impure and death is impure too. And everyone ends up tangled in the worry of it.
If you go hunting for impurity, you will find it everywhere, and you will get stuck.
Kabir takes on an old idea called sootak. Sootak means being "unclean" by a rule, not by dirt. In his time, many people believed that a birth or a death in the family made everyone unclean for a while.
Jal hai sootak thal hai sootak — there is impurity in the water, impurity on the land. Janmay sootak moo-ay fun sootak — impurity in birth, and more in death. Once you look at the world that way, it is everywhere. Everyone gets trapped in worry they never needed.
Think of someone so afraid of germs that they will not touch anything at all. Kabir is clearing the ground so that a better question can be asked.
Have you ever noticed that looking for problems everywhere just makes you find more?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI