Great Works of Saint Kabir
The impressive works of Kabir Das are generally collections of dohas and songs. The total works are seventy-two including some of the important and well-known works are Rekhtas, Kabir Bījak, Anurag Sagar, Kabir Bani, Kabir Granthawali, the Suknidhan, Mangal, Vasant, Sabdas, Sakhis, and Holy Agams.
Kabir’s impressive works include the Bījak: the most sacred book of the Kabir Panth sect is the Bījak, many passages from which are presented in the Guru Granth Sahib and the Anurag Sagar. In the prestigious Holy Book of the Sikhs, Guru Granth Sahib, 217 songs of Kabir are incorporated (Anno 1604). He contributed the most, of all Gurus, to the Guru Granth Sahib.
In a blunt and uncompromising style, the Bījak exhorts its readers to shed their delusions, pretensions, and orthodoxies in favor of a direct experience of truth. It satirizes hypocrisy, greed, and violence, especially among the religious. The Bījak includes three main sections (called Ramainī, Shabda, and Sākhī) and a fourth section containing miscellaneous folksongs. Most of Kabir’s material has been popularized through the song form known as Shabda (or pada) and through the aphoristic two-line sākhī (or Doha) that serves throughout North India as a vehicle for popular wisdom. In the Anurag Sagar, the story of creation is told to Dharamdas (one of Kabir Saheb’s disciples), and the Maan Sarowaris another collection of teachings of Kabir Saheb from the Dharamdasi branch of the Kabir Panth.
Kabir’s charisma was so enormous that later poets-mystic were prepared to have their own beautiful songs spread by the name of Kabir, not by their own name.
Kabir Das
Kabir Das was a 15th-century Indian mystic poet and saint, whose writings influenced Hinduism’s Bhakti movement and his verses are found in Sikhism’s scripture Guru Granth Sahib. His early life was in a Muslim family, but he was strongly influenced by his teacher, the Hindu bhakti leader Ramananda.
Kabir is known for being critical of both organized religion and religion. He questioned meaningless and unethical practices of all religions primarily the wrong practices in Hindu and Muslim religions. During his lifetime, he was threatened by both Hindus and Muslims for his views. When he died, both Hindus and Muslims he had inspired claimed him as theirs. Kabir means Famous Poet/Saint
Kabir suggested that Truth is with the person who is on the path of righteousness, considered everything, living and non-living, as divine, and is passively detached from the affairs of the world. To know the Truth, suggested Kabir, drop the “I” or the ego. Kabir’s legacy survives and continues through the Kabir Panth, a religious community that recognizes him as its founder and is one of the Sant Mat sects.