Bodhi Leaves - Offerings and Reflections from the Buddhist West

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

A Bird on a Tree

ON this tree is a bird: it dances in the joy of life.
None knows where it is: and who knows what the burden of its music may be?
Where the branches throw a deep shade, there does it have its nest: and it comes in the evening and flies away in the morning, and says not a word of that which it means.
None tell me of this bird that sings within me.
It is neither coloured nor colourless: it has neither form nor outline:
It sits in the shadow of love.
It dwells within the Unattainable, the Infinite, and the Eternal; and no one marks when it comes and goes.
Kabîr says: "O brother Sadhu! deep is the mystery. Let wise men seek to know where rests that bird."

-The Songs of Kabir, song 30, translated by Rabindranath Tagore

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