In the middle of your wounds, celebrate! || Acharya Prashant, on Saint Kabir (2017)

Questioner (Q): I read some couplets by Saint Kabir and they touched me deeply. He wants to become one with God or Truth so much, but he is pained that he is unable to do that. At times I feel like meeting Him is the only thing left for me to do, but at other times I just want to pause, just for an hour or so. How can I be so firmly devoted at one moment and not want it at all the next?

Acharya Prashant (AP): One lives in a house disorderly and filthy, and the lover is expected. The beloved is approaching, and he might knock on the gate at any time. One is busy cleaning up, but there is just too much to clean up. Just too much. At the same time, one recognizes that only a very clean house befits the beloved. If the house is filthy, it becomes useless and not worthy of entertaining the guest. So, one is trying with all her might to clean up as quickly as possible. All else is done, only the cleaning up remains, so one is hurrying up. But wherever one goes, one finds more to do: each room is stuffed with garbage.

Now, two opposing forces act on the mind. One: “Hurry up! Display more energy! The date is all set. What you have been wanting since ages is about to happen. He is coming! He is coming! You can almost hear the footsteps.” On the other hand, there is this trivial yet significant task remaining; it is such a trivial thing—the cleaning up—and yet it is such a great hindrance. One thinks, “What if the beloved comes and returns? What if he says that the house does not deserve his presence?”

So, one hurries up. And hurrying up in doing one’s best, in tirelessly striving to clean up, one gets tired, annoyed. Is the annoyance against the beloved or against one’s own filth?