Lover of Truth versus beggar of world || Acharya Prashant, on Guru Kabir (2019)

If dry bread pieces are all your fare, will salty or saltless taste really matter? If you are benumbed by slumber, can you wait for cushion or cover? Says Kabir—unique is the path of love. If you sever your head, why do you shed a tear?

~ Kabir

Questioner: What does Kabir mean by these verses? When he talks of severing one’s head, is he referring to ending one’s suffering?

Acharya Prashant: The difference between the lover of Truth and the pursuer of the world is stark. For the lover of Truth, the world and all the worldly experiences are just one thing, one unit, one entity, one taste, one monolith. For the one besotted by the world, chasing the world, the world and the experiences it offers are a complete spectrum—a complete spectrum holding an infinite number of distinct possibilities, an infinite number of distinct tastes. To all these possibilities and tastes, the pursuer of the world assigns different names, different connotations; to all these names correspond different feelings. At the two ends of this spectrum are the two states that most excite him. There is happiness at one end and there is sadness at one end, and in between there are various mixtures, combinations of happiness and sadness.

You go to someone who is enamored by the world and ask him, “How are you feeling right now?” He will have one description to offer to you; note down that description. Go to him after a couple of hours and ask again the same question, “How are you feeling now?” He will have a separate word to offer you. I am assuming his vocabulary is rich enough to depict all his different experiential states in different and suitable words. He will offer you a different, distinct word. Go to him again when he is in a different situation, a different mood, and repeat the same question. What is the question? “How are you feeling? How are you experiencing?” And he will offer you a third word. Go to him four hundred times, and I say that if his vocabulary is rich enough, and if language has possibilities to precisely and sharply indicate each color of man’s mood and mind, then he will have four hundred different words to offer you.