Sant Kabir’s couplet
धीरे-धीरे रे मना, धीरे सब कुछ होय।
माली सींचे सौ घड़ा, ऋतु आए फल होय॥
Transliteration
Dhīre-dhīre re manā, dhīre sab kuch hoy |
Mālī sīñche sau ghaṛā, ṛtu āe phal hoy ||
Translation
Slowly, slowly, O mind; everything happens in its own time.
The gardener may pour a hundred pots of water,
but the fruit appears only when its season arrives.
My understanding
I have never been particularly good at waiting.
When I want something done, I want to do it.
When there is a problem, I want to solve it.
When there is something I do not understand, I want to understand it.
And preferably—
now.
I suspect I am not alone.
We live in a world that has made impatience almost respectable.
We measure computers in fractions of seconds. We expect messages to be answered immediately. Food arrives at our door. A question that once required a journey to a library can be answered before we have finished typing it.
And now, with AI, even thought itself seems to be acquiring an express lane.
So Kabir’s gardener presents us with a rather inconvenient problem.
He has planted his tree.
He has watered it.
And now—
he has to wait.
The gardener can bring another pot of water.
And another.
And another.
Kabir exaggerates beautifully:
pour a hundred pots if you wish.
The tree remains unimpressed.
The fruit will come when the season comes.
There is something wonderfully humbling about that.
Because Kabir is separating two things that I frequently confuse:
effort and outcome.
Effort belongs to me.
Outcome does not entirely belong to me.
I can prepare the soil.
I can plant the seed.
I can water it.
I can protect the young plant from animals and weeds.
I can make sure it receives sunlight.
These are all within my control.
But I cannot pull at the branches and command:
“Fruit! Now!”
Nature does not negotiate.
There is an old wisdom in the farmer that our modern world sometimes forgets.
The farmer understands that there is a time for preparing the earth.
A time for planting.
A time for watering.
A time for protecting.
And a time when there appears to be absolutely nothing happening at all.
Yet beneath the soil, something is happening.
That last part may be the hardest for me.
We tend to assume that if we cannot see progress, there is no progress.
But the seed does some of its most important work where nobody can see it.
Roots form before branches.
Foundations exist before buildings.
Understanding develops before words.
Character develops long before anyone notices it.
And perhaps spiritual growth is the same.
I may sit in meditation today and find nothing but noise.
I may repeat a mantra and discover that my mind has travelled everywhere except toward the Divine.
I may study a scripture and understand the words perfectly, yet not understand what they are trying to tell me.
So I try harder.
Another pot of water.
Another book.
Another lecture.
Another mantra.
Another technique.
Perhaps even another Guru!
And somewhere in the distance, I imagine Kabir’s gardener smiling.
Water it, certainly.
But don’t drown it.
There is a subtle difference between persistence and impatience.
Persistence says:
I will continue doing what must be done.
Impatience says:
I have done what must be done, so where is my reward?
The first is discipline.
The second is a transaction.
And much of our disappointment in life may come from turning effort into a contract with the universe.
I worked hard—therefore I should succeed.
I loved someone—therefore they should love me.
I helped someone—therefore they should remember.
I prayed—therefore God should answer.
I practiced—therefore I should have mastered it.
I planted.
I watered.
Where is my fruit?
Kabir’s answer is almost irritatingly simple.
Ṛtu āe phal hoy.
When the season comes, the fruit comes.
Not necessarily when I want it.
Not necessarily in the form I expected.
And perhaps not even the fruit I thought I had planted for.
That does not mean sitting idle and calling it patience.
The gardener in Kabir’s doha is not lazy.
He is watering the tree.
That matters enormously.
Kabir is not teaching fatalism.
He is teaching us to understand the boundary between karma and kāla—between what I must do and the time in which its consequences mature.
Do the work.
Water the tree.
Then allow time to do what effort cannot.
I think this becomes even more important as I grow older.
When I was younger, a year seemed enormous.
There was always another year.
Another opportunity.
Another season.
Now I increasingly understand that time is precious.
And strangely, that realization can produce two completely opposite responses.
One is:
Hurry! There isn’t enough time!
The other is:
Slow down. There isn’t enough time to waste life hurrying through it.
Perhaps Kabir is pointing toward the second.
There are things in my life today whose seeds were planted decades ago.
A sentence spoken by my father.
Something my mother taught me without realizing she was teaching it.
A verse I read and barely understood.
A word from a Guru that I thought I understood at the time—and only many years later began to understand differently.
The water was poured long ago.
The fruit came in another season.
And that makes me wonder how many seeds I am planting today whose fruit I may never see.
A word spoken kindly to someone.
Something taught to a child.
Knowledge shared freely.
An apology.
An act of generosity nobody remembers.
A prayer whispered for someone who never knows about it.
Perhaps some fruits are not ours to harvest.
We are merely asked to plant the tree.
There is another lesson hidden in Kabir’s metaphor.
The gardener does not stand before the mango tree every morning comparing it with the apple tree.
He understands that different trees have different seasons.
We humans are not nearly so sensible.
We look sideways.
Someone younger has accomplished more.
Someone else has more money.
Someone’s children seem more successful.
Someone has travelled further.
Someone understands something I have struggled with for years.
And suddenly I decide that my tree is defective.
So I pour another fifty pots of water on it!
Perhaps the problem is not the tree.
Perhaps it is simply not its season yet.
That applies to other people too.
I cannot force another person’s understanding.
I cannot hurry someone’s healing.
I cannot demand that another person grow according to my timetable.
Parents discover this with children.
Teachers discover it with students.
And Gurus, I suspect, have known it about disciples for thousands of years.
You can water.
You can nurture.
You can protect.
You can point toward the sun.
But eventually you must allow the seed to become what it is capable of becoming.
In its own season.
So perhaps today I need to look at the garden of my own life.
What have I planted?
What am I properly watering?
What am I neglecting?
What am I drowning because I am too impatient for results?
And what have I mistakenly declared dead simply because I cannot yet see anything growing?
Those are very different questions.
Kabir gives me no complicated philosophy here.
Just a gardener.
A tree.
A hundred pots of water.
And a season.
Five hundred years later, I have faster computers, faster cars, faster communication, instant information and machines capable of answering questions in seconds.
But the mango still refuses to ripen because I am in a hurry.
Perhaps that is good.
There should remain a few things in this world that refuse to obey our impatience.
They remind us that we are participants in life—
not its masters.
So I will water the tree today.
And tomorrow, if it needs it, I will water it again.
But perhaps I will stop digging around the roots every morning to see whether it has started growing.
Some things need effort.
Some things need faith.
And almost everything worthwhile needs time.
Think about it for a while.
Perhaps something is already growing.