In order to gain salvation people worship idols, undertake arduous journeys to holy places, take to wearing various garbs, grow long tufts of matted hair, undergo penances and austerities, and inflict pain on their own body by fasting, plucking out hair or going about naked. Such people, says Kabir, far from realizing God, live and die in a state of confusion or delusion and become an easy prey to the lord of death who casts them into heaven, hell or the lower species, according to their karmas. Neither do monarchs, rulers and the wealthy attain salvation by virtue of their position, power and wealth, nor do pundits and scholars meet the Lord through their erudition. Those who learn the way of true devotion and the method of spiritual practice give up all such external pursuits and search for God within their own body. They will surely attain their object of God-realization.

Without devotion to the Lord
The entire world remains overcast
With the haze of confusion;
Yama hovers over their head
Ready to hurl his deadly net.

Hindus kill themselves worshipping idols;
Turks, undertaking holy journeys;
Jogis die raising and combing
Tufts of matted hair all their lives.
None, oh none of them
Ever finds the Lord.

Poets pass away weaving mythology in verse;
Kapris, threading their way to Kedarnath;
Fasting ascetics waste their lives
Plucking out their hair.
None, oh none of them
Ever finds the Lord.

Kings die usurping wealth;
The rich, amassing gold;
Pundits die reading scriptures;
Women, gazing at their own beauty.
None, oh none of them
Ever finds the Lord.

But they who know the way
Of practice and devotion
Search for the Lord
Within their own body;
Says Kabir the weaver,
They will surely attain salvation,
They will without doubt
Meet the Lord.

K.G., p. 146:317
Rām binā sansār dhundh kuherā