Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Kabir says: the gate to freedom is narrow — thinner than a tenth of a mustard seed.
And the mind has swollen up as big as an elephant; how will it ever fit through? But meet a true teacher, and by its kindness the gate swings wide open, and the soul slips through with ease.
This famous Shalok — borrowed from Kabir into the Vaar — pictures the "gate of liberation" as impossibly narrow and the ego-swollen mind as elephant-huge. By its own effort the elephant cannot pass. But grace changes the geometry: meet the true teaching, and "the gate of liberation becomes wide open." The narrowness was never the gate's problem; it was the mind's swelling. Shrink the elephant (the ego) — or rather, let grace do it — and the passage opens.
What in you has 'swollen up' so big it can't fit through? What might let it shrink back down?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI