निंदक नियरे राखिये

निंदक नियरे राखिये, आँगन कुटी छवाय /बिनु साबुन पानी बिनु, निर्मल करे सुभाय


As we have discussed earlier there are five types of afflictions of the mind that come in the way of our salvation and restrict the Union with God .
These are
1 Ignorance (in the form of a misunderstanding about Reality) or Avidyaa,
2 egoism (in the form of an erroneous identification of the Self with the intellect) or asmitaa,
3 attachment or raaga,
4 aversion or dvesha and
5 fear of death (which is derived from clinging ignorantly to life) -or abhinivesha.

Out of these the first one avidya leads the way to the other four .Therefore we need to get our vision of the reality of things right .When our critic condemns us for something we cannot take it even if it is constructive criticism , because of the second affliction above called asmita.It is a rare person who can remain unmoved by strong criticism, the instinct is to immediately protect oneself and go on the defensive or offensive or run away from and avoid criticism.Criticism makes us uncomfortable as our mind is affected by above affliction.A cleansed mind will not be affected by criticism.If we learn to face criticism by focussing on removing avidya,by practise or abhyasa of tap, svadhyaya and ishwar pranidhaan, with a feeling of detachment or vairagya, we can cleanse our mind of its sva bhav referred to as sabhay in this doha by Kabir.Coming face to face with criticism will help and compel us to perform this practise as criticism will act as a touchstone to judge how clean we are.
Kabir teaches us to embrace and tackle criticism rather than run away from it and use it as a useful tool for cleansing the mind of its afflictions which come in the way of union with God

Arvind Mishra