Kabir

Early life of Kabir:

                    The story of Kabir is of tremendous beauty. It is said that he was born into a Mohammedan family. Nothing is absolutely certain, but he was abandoned by the parents and he was brought up by a Hindu family. But the suspicion was there always that he was born a Mohammedan, brought up by a Hindu. The parents had simply thrown the child on the bank of the river.Somebody found him and brought him up. Nobody would accept him. His name also shows that he was a Mohammedan; 

Kabir is one of the names of God given by the Sufis. Sufis have a hundred names for God – ninety-nine can verbally be communicated, the hundredth cannot be communicated verbally; that is understood only in deep silence between the Master and the disciple. Out of those ninety-nine names, one is Kabir. Kabir literally means ’the great, the vast, the infinite’. Kabir is not a Hindu name, certainly. His name was Mohammedan, his birth suspicious – who would accept him?

Search of a master:

                    He had knocked on many so-called gurus’ doors and they would not accept him because he was a Mohammedan, or even if he was not, at least his birth was suspicious, uncertain. He must have been an illegal child, maybe – why was he abandoned?And the so-called Masters were afraid; he was rejected.

Difficulty in finding a master:

               He wanted to become a disciple of the great Ramananda, a very famous Master, but he was afraid to go to him – maybe he would not accept him, just as others had not accepted him.

One day Kabir went to Ramananda's house and was asking him to accept him as his disciple. But he rejected him. so kabir was sitting outside of Ramananda's house.

 Playing trick:

                 Ramananda stayed in his cottage all day and only left it at about 3 o'clock in the morning to go down to the Ganges River to have a bath and perform his rites. Kabir had a knowledge of Ramananda’s daily habits and so he waited one night for Ramananda by lying on the steps of Panchganga ghat. When Ramananda accidentally stepped on Kabir on his way to bathe, he uttered ”Hey Ram! My God!.This became, for Kabir, the sacred mantra. Ramananda later gave him formal Diksha. Kabir grew among the ranks of important religious reformers in India.This is how he got initiated into disciplehood. It was only later on, when the sun rose, that Ramananda became aware that it was Kabir. Everybody knew about him, that he was knocking on every door asking to be initiated. Ordinarily it is the Masters who create devices to initiate the disciples, but in Kabir’s case it was Kabir the disciple who created a device to be initiated by the Master.