1. A COMPARATIVE STUDY
OF
THE TEACHINGS OF KABIR AND MANAK
Dr. (Mrs.) RANI TIWARI
SENIOR LECTURER
DEPARTMENT OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES AND RESEARCH IN ENGLISH
S.S.V. COLLEGE (AFFILIATED TO C.C.S. UNIVERSITY, MEERUT)
Among all living beings only human beings are endowed with the faculty of reasoning
and discrimination. Therefore, we have a natural inclination to know about ourselves,
unravel the mystery of the world and realize the objective of human life. To do so, it is very
helpful to know what the great sages, saints and enlightened ones of different countries have
said regarding these matters, especially regarding the ultimate truth and the way to realize it.
Many great masters like Gautam Buddha and Sant Kabir have appeared in this world.
They are widely known for their sincere quest for the truth, persistent endeavours, moral
earnestness, spiritual insight and finally their compassionate resolve, after their
enlightenment, to preach and propagate their teachings for the good and happiness of many.
The Buddha established his Dharma (teachings) more than two thousand five hundred
years ago, but his thoughts and deeds are still alive and vibrant today in the minds and
hearts of a multitude of his devoted followers. All Buddhas are wise and compassionate
luminaries who have been coming to this world in succession since time immemorial and
continue to do so for all times to come. The teaching of one who has attained enlightenment
or Buddhahood, a universal or immortal state, is called Buddhism. Thus, it signifies a
universal teaching having a universal appeal.
A major Mahayana Buddhist School was established in China and was called Ch'an. It
derives its name from the Sanskrit word dhyana, meaning meditation. They give great
importance to meditation and relationship between master and student. The Ch'an school
spread to Korea (as Son), Vietnam (as Thien) and Japan (as Zen).
This paper is an attempt to have a comparative study between the spiritual poetry of a
Korean Seon Master Musan Cho Oh-Hyun and that of the Indian Saint Kabir who taught the
mystic path of God-realization in fifteenth century India. They both point out that to attain
enlightenment is the ultimate goal of human beings. For this they lay emphasis on leading a
good moral life, on being steadfast in one's meditation under the guidance of a competent
living master and on making one's best effort to gain insight into the realm beyond intellect
and speech. This indeed is the core of the common human heritage of wisdom emphasized
by many renowned sages and saints all over the world. The hope with this present paper is
that it will inspire people to listen afresh and be moved by the vital, vigorous and ever
contemporary message of both the masters. This study is done under different headings :-
1. DEATH
MANAK GATHAS is the collection of spiritual poetry of Cho Oh-Hyun. It has
many poetic pieces. Each piece is packed with sublimity, mysticism, symbolism,
lyricism, universality etc. like the poetry of Kabir. Many poetic pieces indicate towards
death, which is an eternal fact. Zen master's concept of death is that it is a part of
cyclical cosmic dance of life. He says that,
"Any how a bug it is not a crawling insect.
I will become feed for a bird,

2. Where living in the forest."1
Kabir has also expressed this idea :
Kabir, this day or the next,
Or in the dark of nights,
During work or walk,
All of a sudden,
At a moment unthought,
Kal will attack-
As the ruthless hawk pounces,
On the bird of prey.2
Death is the law in this world, for all that is created must perish, all that is born must
die. At many places Kabir describes this world as a city of the dead. He says that the law
of death covers the physical world, astral and causal regions. At the time of dissolution
all will perish. In this city of death the soul takes birth and dies again and again. The
Name of the Lord, the divine Word, is the only thing that is eternal. Kabir tells the
seeker to realize the Truth through Nam and be freed from this realm of death when he
says :
But all that is created will die,
For this is the city of the dead, my friends.
Says Kabir : Realize the truth, friends,
Do not die again and again in delusion. (239)
2. SIN AND SUFFERING
In Manak Gathas, the writer talks about sin and suffering. He says :
What kind of sin does it have?
The fellow who will be exposed is me. (13)
He further says :
If a man
To govern by a flail.
To have been living for forty years wrongly
How many straw of bags of my sin
Thresh and shaking down
To wish to put in. (63)
Kabir has reflected on humans as sinful creatures. He says :
O sinful creature!
How great is your greed,
But how short is your stay here.3
3. DISEASE
For our degraded spiritual state, Cho Oh-Hyun has used the images of disease. He
says that the world is totally diseased "The world is disquietingly as vomiting" (61)
He further says that this disease can be cured by inner enlightenment :

3. Our disease, shadow
Be able to see with closing eyes
The place of enlightenment in life….
Say! something to save the world
Your real word, your original talk. (56)
Kabir also says that it is the worldly desire that has diseased all. He says that the
mind will achieve happiness only when it abandons desires :
Just as an entire tree is concentrated in the seed,
So are all diseases centred in desire.
Therefore, be firm on the subject of detachment,
All burn up all desires. (Kabir, 133)
4. THE TREE OF KARMAS
The Seon Zen master conveys the principles of Karma in the following words :
Psoriasis no medicine spread over the whole body.
Previous life's eyes stuck
in the sexagenary cycle counting with hands
The three thousand world destroyed
with a thought and a stick. (46)
Pride, ego and a false sense of honor are some of the major obstacles on the spiritual
path. Kabir asks the devotees to get rid of them so that the willful mind acquires
humility and comes under their control. Kabir also disapproves of begging and living on
the charity of others, for whatever man takes or obtains without due paymenet adds to
his already heavy debt of Karmas. The devotee must support himself with his own
earning. Men do many dubious deeds to acquire wealth and gain status and fame, but
they only increase their load of Karmas and have to come back to the world to settle the
account. Saints urge seekers to give up all false pursuits, realize that the world is false
and try to gain release from it. He says :
Those who beg
And live on charity
Only help the tree of Karmas
To thrive and bear more fruit. (354)
5. A HANDFUL OF ASHES
Cho Oh-Hyun talks of our transitory life as a handful of ashes:
What will be left behind me sometime after I go?
Does Cuckoo's sorrow in which forest make feel sad?
There is only a handful of ashes what I sprinkled
on considering carefully. (14)
Cho Oh-Hyun further reflects in this short and transitory life:
"Life is nothing peculiar.
Just take a cup of tea and go." (16)
He says that life is like a day which is very soon exhausted. In life we are :

4. "Exhausting family accompanied,
The place is as a day laborer." (17)
Kabir has pointed many times in his poetry that unless we have been given initiation
by a master who teaches devotion to the divine Word of God, we go alone at the time of
death :
"He alone is liberated
Who gains liberation while living." (211)
Our wealth, health and beauty, of which we were so proud, vanish in a moment.
Saints have not only reflected on the existing condition of the world but they have also
suggested us a way to come out of this bondage.
6. VEGETARIANISM
In MANAK GATHAS the writer talks of "As sitting alone in mountain / Owe to
eating vegetarian diet" (60). Kabir and other saints have propagated vegetarianism.
Kabir says :
Beleive me, friend, those who eat meat and fish
And take intoxicating drinks will be rooted out
Like weeds pulled from a fertile field
And thrown away. (Kabir, 292)
Kabir also says :
Who eats grain is a man,
Who eats meat, a dog;
Who renders the living being dead
Is a devil incarnate. (146)
7. THE ROSARY OF THE MIND
Kabir taught that the inner enlightenment takes place only when the rosary of the
mind is recited and not by counting the polished beads of a rosary.
He says :
Know this secret : Nothing at all is gained,
By counting the polished beads of a rosary
While the mind wanders out into the world.
But if your recite the rosary of the mind
Your body will be full of light within. (Kabir 237)
Following this practice, a Buddha views the inner light and flower. As Cho Oh-
Hyun says :
A dream lighten up a candle flows,
Dyed a lotus flower,
A Bodhisattva who can not go-
Grasped a Buddhist rosary of 108 beads,
The more considering, more heavy.
Scattering abour conception,
It is threading beads berry after berry. (28)

5. 8. THE WEAVER OF GOD'S NAME
Kabir uses his weaver's profession to convey the merits of the practice of God's
name. Worldly people weave the cloth of misery, with desire and expectations as the
warp and weft, set upon the frame of mind. In return for their work they get paid with
births and rebirths and continue their round in cycle of transmigration. Kabir enjoins
upon man to weave the cloth of the Lord's name and earn the profit of union with Him.
He says that surat (the hearing faculty of the soul) and nirat (the seeing faculty of the
soul) are the two pegs that hold the frame ; knowledge is the processed yarn with which
the shuttle is loaded ; repetition is the dabber with which one cleans and applies starch
to the warp ; and realization or inner spiritual experience is that beater or wire comb that
removes the twists and knots from the yarn. Through such weaving Kabir has overcome
his wayward mind and its wild tendencies and has forever rid himself of the world's
misery and delusion. He has realized his true self, earned the wages of the Lord's love
and attained the sublime state of truth and bliss.
Cho Oh-Hyun in 'Word of Ending Karma' says of "Knitting cloth of the heaven
skirt".
9. THIRST OF THE LORD
Kabir says :
"Although close to the lake's shore,
The swan is still thirsty,
The water of divine bliss she cannot drink,
For she knows not the method." (385)
Cho Oh-Hyun also talks of the spiritual thirst at many places when he says of : "Life
is like a real paddy field/Thirsting is endless" (9) and "Thirsty-thirsty/Withering and
drying of my life what is going down." (12).
A seeker's hope of God-realization cannot be fulfilled until he comes in contact with
a perfect Master. There are many spiritual leaders in this world who profess to guide
others but have not realized God themselves. The true seeker remains thirsty in their
company. Kabir says that it is only through the Lord's own grace that a man comes
across an adept who has himself realized the Lord.
10. THE SOUL'S HOMECOMING
Cho Oh-Hyun talks of the enlightened as :
"As sitting in lightening spirit
to commit to the flame,
Suddenly honored mind,
When it is enlightened, when it is enlightened,
Relying on sleep slightly,
Is life or death? (52)
Kabir too says :
I absorbed my attention within
And realized my true self;
The color with which I'm dyed,
That I know is fact, is true. (390)

6. The devotee who goes within and tastes the bliss of the inner spiritual regions is
dyed in the indelible color of love and devotion. Intoxicated with bliss he becomes
disinterested in worldly pursuits. Kabir again and again says to light the lamp of the
heart with the spark of the Master's Word. Only then one shall be able to eliminate
darkness for ever. He says "O friend, light your lamp/With the Master's spark". (199).
He further says, "In every home burns a lamp" (373), and "One needs a lamp/To find the
imperceptible jewel." (508) For inner illumination, Cho Oh-Hyun also uses many
celestial images like "sunshines" (12), "Light a lamp of the sun and the moon" (18),
"day light" (24), "moon rises" (29), "the sun rising village" (54), "seeing lightening, the
color of a flame." (57).
Thus, saints offer a pragmatic and achievable path to final liberation from suffering.
They dived deep into the core of reality and emerged with the rare gem of eternal
wisdom. Out of their mercy and compassion, they reveal spiritual knowledge for the
good and happiness of people beset with ignorance and suffering. Since their insight
and inspiration comes from the same one source within, all have the same fundamental
message to convey, regardless of the time and place in which they are born. It is for us
to step onto the path of salvation and extinguish the illusory flame of our self so that we
too can become enlightened.
References
1. Cho Oh-Hyun Manak Gathas. Trans. Lee Chi-Ran. Ed. Heero Hito and Ashok Maitrey, India :
YSSSRF Publications, 2010, Pg. 11 (All the quotations of Cho Oh-Hyun have been taken from
this edition).
2. Sethi, V.K. Kabir : The Weaver of God's Name. India : Radha Swami Satsang Beas, 1998. Pg.
238(Most of the quotation of Kabir have been taken from this edition).
3. Ezekiel, Isaac A. Kabir the Great Mystic. India : Radha Swami Satsang Beas, 2002. Pg. 118
(Some quotations of Kabir have been taken from this edition cited with the word of Kabir in the
text).