Today’s quote
..from the SciFi TV series “Babylon 5” – a conversation between the characters Dr. Stephen Franklin and Lt. Commander Susan Ivanova:
SF – “It’s all so brief, isn’t it? Typical human lifespan is almost a hundred years, but it’s barely a second compared to what’s out there. It wouldn’t be so bad if life didn’t take so long to figure out. Seems you just start to get it right and then .. it’s over.”
SI – “Doesn’t matter. If we lived two hundred years, we’d still be human. We’d still make the same mistakes.”
SF – “You’re a pessimist.”
SI – “I am Russian , Doctor. We understand these things.”
– Babylon 5 (Episode – Soul Hunter)
..and now, Kabir Day 26:
The couplet transliterated:
Sanjh padi din dhal gaya, baaghin gheri gaay |
Gaay bechari na mari, baaghin na bhooki jaay ||
Translation:
As the evening darkens, the tiger stalks the cow |
The poor cow cannot die, nor the tiger go hungry ||
My understanding:
Another allegorical couplet from Kabir, this is referring to the duality of the soul and the body and the cycle of life and death.
Here the cow represents the soul and the tiger represents death.
The tiger will not go hungry, and attack its prey at the first opportunity it gets. Death can kill the body, but not the soul. The soul, attached to the body, will suffer the pangs of separation as the body dies – this is the price it pays for its attachment to the body. The cycle of life and death is wrapped into every aspect of living as manifest amidst us. So that one may live, others must die (think of the plants and livestock that feed us and keep us going).
Kabir is enlightening us to these basic rules of life so that we may become aware of the sacrifice of those that feed us, physically and mentally, and then learn to contribute back into the spring of life and knowledge (life by planting and cultivating, knowledge by learning, understanding and improving on the base store of current knowledge).