This feeling for the material also means a recognition that the physical does not last. No clothes last, no pot can go on being useful for ever, as it is bound to eventually break, because the body itself is impermanent. This leads the poet who has this “material imagination” to look at nature itself as impermanent; the leaf that falls from the tree, cannot again be found. Buds are plucked to make garlands by the gardener, and in that process they too are found to have a beauty that passes away. This sense of impermanence seems to be part of what Kabir is understanding as being struck, or wounded by the word. And this woundedness helps the poet to feel compassion for all other creatures that are embodied, and have to come to terms with the experience of death, or being limited and finite.
Kabir is very conscious of the fact of life being a process of dying.
Just one day, just one moment.
The blink of an eye
Not a single moment can you take for granted.
I fear that day Oh Lord!
Meditate on this moment, friend
You won’t get another chance.
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