Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
What good is washing to make yourself pure? Why wash your face? Why bow your head in the mosque?
If your heart is full of trickery, what good are your prayers, or your journey to Mecca?
A clean face and a bowed head need an honest heart to go with them.
Kabir lists what people do before prayer. They wash. They clean the face. They bow in the maseet, the mosque. Then he asks what good it is ja-o dil meh kapat — if there is trickery in the heart. Even the haj, the journey to Mecca, cannot fix a heart that hides one thing and says another.
Think of washing a lunchbox on the outside but never inside. It looks shiny, but the old food is still there.
The One reads the heart, not just the hands. This is not aimed at one faith. It speaks to empty show anywhere, in our own tradition too.
What is one way to clean up the inside, not just the outside?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI