Most religions and schools of spiritual practice promise union with the Lord after death. Saints do not give value either to these paths or to the promises they make, for no one knows whether these hopes are ever fulfiled. Saints attach value only to liberation while living, realization while still in the body.

Kabir illustrates the meaninglessness of these promises with the imagery of an Indian wife who waits in her parents' home to be sent for by her husband. The promised day, when she is seemingly called back by her Husband, is the day of death, and death is the palanquin apparently sent by her Husband to take her back to him. But after leaving the house of her body, the soul-bride realizes that, instead of the promised land, the palanquin bearers — the messengers of death — have brought her to a strange place: neither is the Husband there, nor anyone known to her. She wants to turn back, but cannot; she begs the bearers to delay her departure so that she can say farewell to her near and dear ones, but they are unmoved. In other words, rituals, worship, austerities, renunciation of the world and all such efforts that man makes to attain detachment from the world prove to be of little avail at the time of death. The attachments remain suppressed in the mind and are projected prominently at the time of death.

Concluding this unusual poem, Kabir says that this world is the only place where the soul can pay off the debt of its karmas, finish its dealings with others and become free to attain its goal of union with the Lord. It is while living in the world that the soul can acquire the rare article of realization, for there is no other place where one can 'purchase' it.

The day of union
With my Husband has come,
The palanquin has arrived,
Thoughts of meeting Him
Fill my heart with joy.
The day of union has come!

But the bearers have brought the palanquin
To an unknown wilderness
Where no one is my own.
0 bearers, I bow at your feet,
I beg, I entreat:
Pray wait, for a moment wait,
Put down the palanquin
Just for a while
That I turn back and meet
My friends, my confidantes,
My much-loved kinsmen.

Kabir, the slave, sounds a warning
From beyond the attributes:
Think well, O friends,
Complete all your trading,
All buying and selling,
For in the land where you go
There is neither a shop
Nor a market.

Kabir, p. 278:73
Āyou din gaune ke ho