Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
What good is bathing at the holy waters of Orissa? What good is bowing your head in the mosque?
If there is trickery hidden in your heart, what good is saying prayers? What good is the journey to Mecca?
An honest heart is what makes every bath, bow and journey count.
The pilgrimage lines — bathing at the holy site, bowing in the mosque, journeying to Mecca — are all weighed against one thing: what is inside the heart. Dil meh kapat: if deception is hiding inside, the outward act never arrives at its destination. Kabir does not forbid the practices; he says the geography of the sacred is interior. What the One reads is sincerity, not the itinerary.
When has doing the right thing on the outside not matched how you felt inside?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI