He may or may not have submitted to
the traditional education of the Hindu or the S?f? contemplative:
it is clear, at any rate, that he never adopted the life of the
professional ascetic, or retired from the world in order to
devote himself to bodily mortifications and the exclusive pursuit
of the contemplative life. Side by side with his interior life
of adoration, its artistic expression in music and words--for he
was a skilled musician as well as a poet--he lived the sane and
diligent life of the Oriental craftsman. All the legends agree
on this point: that Kab?r was a weaver, a simple and unlettered
man, who earned his living at the loom. Like Paul the tentmaker,
Boehme the cobbler, Bunyan the tinker, Tersteegen the
ribbon-maker, he knew how to combine vision and industry; the
work of his hands helped rather than hindered the impassioned
meditation of his heart. Hating mere bodily austerities, he was
no ascetic, but a married man, the father of a family--a
circumstance which Hindu legends of the monastic type vainly
attempt to conceal or explain--and it was from out of the heart
of the common life that he sang his rapturous lyrics of divine
love.
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