Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Here's a riddle: the person truly worth honoring is the one who works hardest on their own restless mind.
Pound it down, steady it, test it like metal on a touchstone — do that, and you walk free.
Kabir plays a bold word game, and it is all about working on your own mind.
He takes kootan, a rude name people used for someone in a shameful trade, and turns it upside down. Kootan so-ay jo man ka-o kootai — the true kootan is the one who pounds down his own mind. Man means mind.
Man kootai ta-o jam tay chhootai — pound the mind steady, and you escape jam, the messenger of death. Kut kut man kasvatee laavai — keep working it, and test it on the kasvatee, the touchstone. A touchstone is a stone jewelers use to test real gold. Think of kneading bread dough over and over until it turns smooth and strong. Steady work on the mind is the highest work there is. The whole song teaches us to look past the surface of a word to its deeper truth.
What's one way you could gently 'steady' your own mind when it's racing?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI