Although my path is not the path of theism, I have greatest respect for those who follow this path with love, integrity, and compassion. My own teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, has always sought an ecumenical approach with various spiritual traditions:

See:

In this same spirit, I have at this blog, from time to time, offered inspiring poems and insights from other traditions, with poets like the Sufi poet Rumi and the Indian mystic Kabir:

In this post, I am sharing a beautiful poem from the Indian mystic and poet Kabir. May its message be an inspiration to your life and spiritual practice, whatever path you walk!

The Time Before Before Death

by Kabir (version by Robert Bly)

Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.

Jump into experience while you are alive!

Think . . . and think . . . while you are alive.

What you call “salvation” belongs to the time

before death. If you don’t break your ropes while you’re alive,

do you think

ghosts will do it after? The idea that the should will rejoin the ecstatic

just because the body is rotten—

that is all fantasy.

What is found now is found then.

If you find nothing now,

you will simply end up with an apartment in the

City of the Death. If you make love with the divine now, in the next

life you will have the face of satisfied desire So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,

Believe in the Great Sound! Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for

it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that

does all the work.

Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.

https://mettarefuge.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/the-longing.mp3 This beautiful accompanying music (click above) is called “The Longing.” It’s from the album

Afterglow by Michael Hoppe, Martin Tillman, Tim Wheater

Highly recommended!

iTunes:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/the-longing/id108743078?i=108742848

♥♥♥

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