Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
That One never falls into trouble and is never born. Its Name is the Pure One, spotless, beyond all beginning.
Kabir's own Beloved is just this Master, with no mother and no father. This One is the Source that everyone and everything comes from.
This one says the truest Beloved was never born and never fades.
Here Kabir answers his riddle. Sankat nahee parai jon nahee aavai — the One never falls into trouble and is never born. Naam niranjan jaa ko ray — whose Name is Niranjan: pure, without a stain, untouched. Jaa kai maa-ee na baapo ray — the One has no mother and no father.
This is not turning away from Krishna, or from Nand's sweet story. Kabir is lifting our eyes. He looks from the beautiful form to the Source without form behind every form. That Source is Ik Onkar, the One that is all. Think of a sunbeam coming through a window. The beam is lovely, and it leads your eye back to the sun.
The One does not need to be born to be near. The One is already the ground of everything that is born. This welcomes everyone: every tradition's beloved figure points home to the same unborn One.
What might it mean that the One has "no beginning" — that it was always simply there?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI