This verse, in the form of a dialogue between a tribal hunter and his wife, is one of the paradox-poems of Kabir. The hunter, before setting out on his hunting trip, asks his wife what type of meat she wants for their evening meal. The wife, in this poem the realized soul, through an apparently absurd demand indicates that a man's real quarry is his mind, which has no body or shape but still has energy — "flesh and blood" — to run about in the wild forests of the world. Man can only return to his home in the inner spiritual regions if he slays this "animal", which has no beak, hoof or body; only when he stills his mind can he go within.

The hunter's wife induces her husband to hunt this animal by pointing out the achievements of a rival hunter who has shot his quarry with a bow that has no string and has slain a deer yet kept it alive, thus bringing home a quarry which is not alive and at the same time not dead. The devotee has to 'slay' his mind not through any material weapons but by the arrow of simran shot with the stringless bow of meditation. The mind thus slain becomes dead to the external world but alive to the inner realms of spiritual bliss.

Kabir says that it is from the Master that the disciple learns the method of this 'hunting' and the skill to keep his mind alive even in its state of death; it is with his grace that he succeeds in his expedition.

Kill not the living,
Bring not the dead;
But without meat, dear husband,
Pray do not come home.
Hunt a creature that is
Without hoof, without beak,
Without even a body;
But kill not that beast, O husband,
Which has neither flesh nor blood.

Kill not the living,
Bring not the dead;
But, dear husband, I entreat,
Come not home without meat.

Look! The hunter across the river
Wields a bow which has no string.
See! The deer has pounced
Upon the delicate creeper,
A deer without a head.
The hunter has slain the deer
But keeps it alive too —
Such is the skill he has attained
Through the grace of the Master.

Kill not the living,
Bring not the dead;
But, dear husband, I entreat,
Return not home without meat.

Says Kabir: Beloved Lord,
I am a creeper,
I'll entwine Thee —
Though I am a creeper
Without a tendril,
Without even a leaf.

K.G., p. 119:212
Jeewat jini mārai