{
  "meta": {
    "schema_version": "1.1",
    "endpoint": "/api/sources/sufism/rumi-masnavi/02-the-masnavi-book-ii.json"
  },
  "work": {
    "slug": "rumi-masnavi",
    "name": "Masnavi-i-Manavi (Rumi)"
  },
  "parents": [
    {
      "slug": "sufism",
      "name": "Sufi Poets",
      "url": "/sources/sufism/"
    }
  ],
  "chapter": {
    "num": 2,
    "slug": "02-the-masnavi-book-ii",
    "title": "The Masnavi Book II",
    "of": 6,
    "words": 15574,
    "text": "## The Masnavi Book II\n\n\n\nTHE SPIRITUAL COUPLETS\nOF\nMAULANA JALALU-'D-DlN MUHAMMAD RUMI\n\nBook II.\nPROLOGUE.\n\nTHE Composition of this Masnavi has been delayed for a season; 1\nTime is needed for blood to become milk.\nTill thy fortune comes forth as a new-born babe,\nBlood becomes not milk, sweet and pleasant to the mind.\nWhen that light of God, Husamu-'d-Din\nTurned his course down from the summit of heaven,\nWhile he had ascended to sublimest verities,\nIn the absence of his spring the buds blossomed not,\nBut when out of that sea he came to shore,\nThe lute of the poesy of the Masnavi sounded again.\nThis Masnavi, which is the polisher of spirits,\nIts recommencement occurred on the day of \"Opening.\"\nThe commencement date of this precious work\nWas the year six hundred and sixty-two of the Flight.\nThe Bulbul started on this date and became a hawk;\nYea, a hawk to hunt out these mysteries.\nMay the wrist of the King be the resting-place of this hawk,\nAnd may this door be open to the people for ever!\n*NOTES:\n1. The delay was caused by the grief of Husam for the death of his wife.\n\nSTORY I.\nThe Sufi's Beast\nAfter anecdotes of the man, in the time of 'Omar, who mistook his eyelash for the new moon, of one who stole a snake and got bitten by it, and of 'Isa's foolish disciple who besought the Lord to teach him the spell whereby he raised the dead, comes the following story.\nA certain Sufi, after a long day's journey, arrived at a monastery, where he put up for the night, and strictly enjoined his servant to groom his ass carefully and give him plenty of litter and fodder. The servant assured him that his minute directions were superfluous, and promised to attend to the ass most carefully; but when his master's back was turned he neglected the ass, and the poor animal remained all night without water or food. Consequently he was weak and unfit to travel next morning, and in spite of the blows and kicks that were showered on him, could not carry his master, but had to be led. The other Sufis who were traveling with his owner thought that the ass was useless, and when they arrived at the place where they halted for the night, they sold the ass to a traveler, and with the proceeds of the sale bought delicate viands and torches, and made a feast. The owner of the ass, who was ignorant of this transaction, shared the feast, and joined in the chorus sung by the others, \"The ass is gone, the ass is gone,\" without attaching any sense to the words, and blindly following their example. Next morning he asked his servant what had become of the ass, and the servant told him it had been sold, adding that he thought he had known it overnight, because he had heard him singing \"The ass is gone\" along with the other Sufis. In the course of this story there occur anecdotes of God consulting with the angels as to the creation of man, of a king who lost his hawk and found it again in the house of a poor old man, and of Shaikh Ahmad Khizrawiya buying sweetmeats for his creditors.\nWhy the poet veils his doctrines in fables.\nWhat is it hinders me from expounding my doctrines\nBut this, that my hearers' hearts incline elsewhere.\nTheir thoughts are intent on that Sufi guest;\nThey are immersed in his affairs neck deep.\nSo I am compelled to turn from my discourse\nTo that story, and to set forth his condition.\nBut, O friend, think not this Sufi a mere outward form,\nAs children see in a vine nothing but raisins.\nO son, our bodies are as dried grapes and raisins;\nIf you are a man, cast away these things.\nIf you pass on to the pure mysteries of God,\nYou will be exalted above the nine heavenly spheres.\nNow hear the outward form of my story,\nBut yet separate the grain from the chaff.\nWhy the prophets were sent.\nGod sent the prophets for this purpose,\nNamely, to sever infidelity from faith.\nGod sent the prophets to mankind\nThat they might gather the pure grain on their tray.\nInfidel and faithful, Mosalman and Jew,\nBefore the prophets came, seemed all as one.\nBefore they came we were all alike,\nNo one knew whether he was right or wrong.\nGenuine coin and base coin were current alike;\nThe world was a night, and we travelers in the dark,\nTill the sun of the prophets arose, and cried,\n\"Begone. O slumber; welcome, O pure light!\"\nNow the eye sees how to distinguish colors,\nIt sees the difference between rubies and pebbles.\nThe eye distinguishes jewels from dust,\nHence it is dust makes the eyes smart.\nMakers of base coin hate the daylight,\nCoins of pure gold love the daylight,\nBecause daylight is the mirror that reflects them,\nSo that they see their own perfect beauty.\nMystical Meaning of \"Daylight\"\n\nGod has named the resurrection \"that day;\"\nDay shows off the beauty of red and yellow.\nWherefore \"Day\" in 'truth is the mystery of the saints;\nOne day of their moons is as whole years.\nKnow, \"Day \" is the reflection of the mystery of the saints,\nEye-closing night that of their hidden secrets.\nTherefore hath God revealed the chapter \"Daylight,\" 1\nWhich daylight is the light of the heart of Mustafa.\nOn the other view, that daylight means \"The Friend,\"\nIt is also a reflection of the same prophet.\nFor, as it is wrong to swear by a transitory being,\nHow can we suppose a transitory being spoken of by God?\nThe Friend of God said, \"I love not them that set?\" 2\nHow, then, could Allah have meant a transitory being?\nAgain, the words \"by the night\" mean Muhammad's veiling,\nNamely, the fair earthly body that he bore;\nWhen his sun proceeded from heaven on high\nInto that body's night, it said, \"He hath not forsaken thee;\"\nUnion with God arose out of the depth of that disgrace;\nThat boon was the word, \"He hath not been displeased.\"\nExpressions of religious or other feeling derive their only value from the state of mind from which they proceed.\nEvery expression is the sign of a state of mind;\nThat state is a hand, the expression an instrument.\nA goldsmith's instruments in the hand of a cobbler\nAre as grains of wheat sown on sand.\nThe tools of a cobbler in the hand of a cultivator\nAre as grass before a dog or bones before an ass.\nThe words, \"I am the Truth\" were light in Mansur's 3 mouth,\nIn the mouth of Pharaoh \"I am Lord Supreme\" was blasphemy.\nThe staff in the hand of Moses was a witness,\nIn the hands of the magicians it was naught.\nFor this cause 'Isa taught not to that foolish man\nThe words of power whereby he raised the dead.\nFor he who is ignorant misuses the instrument ;\nIf you strike flint on mud you will get no fire.\nHand and instrument resemble flint and steel;\nYou must have a pair; a pair is needed to generate.\nHe who has no peer or member is the \"One,\"\nAn uneven number, One without dispute!\nWhoso says \"one\" and \"two,\" and so on,\nConfesses thereby the existence of the \"One.\"\nWhen the illusion of seeing double is swept away,\nThey who say \"one\" and \"two\" are even as they who say \"One.\"\nIf you take \"One\" as your ball in his tennis-field,\nIt is made to revolve by the strokes of his bat. 4\nYea, the ball that is even and without fault\nIs made to revolve by the strokes of the King's hand.\nO man of double vision, 5 hearken with attention,\nSeek a cure for your defective sight by listening.\nMany are the holy words that find no entrance\nInto blind hearts, but they enter hearts full of light.\nBut the deceits of Satan enter crooked hearts,\nEven as crooked shoes fit crooked feet.\nThough you repeat pious expressions again and again,\nIf you are a fool, they affect you not at all;\nNay, not though you set them down in writing,\nAnd though you proclaim them vauntingly;\nWisdom averts its face from you, O man of sin,\nWisdom breaks away from you and takes to flight!\n0n Taqlid, blind imitation or cant.\n\"O wretch, why did you not come and say to me,\n'Such and such a disastrous affair has occurred?'\"\nThe servant replied, \"By Allah, I came again and again,\nThat I might acquaint you with the matter.\nYou were always saying, 'The ass is gone, my lad!'\nAlong with the others in high excitement;\nSo I went away, thinking you knew all about it,\nAnd were pleased at the transaction, being a wise man.\"\nThe Sufi said, \"They were all singing the same words,\nSo I felt impelled to sing them as well.\nBlind imitation of them has undone me.\nCursed be that blind imitation!\"\nThe effect of blindly imitating unprofitable conduct\nIs that men cast away honor for a morsel of bread.\nThe ecstasy of that company cast a reflection,\nWhereby that Sufi's heart became ecstatic like them.\nYou need many reflections from your associates\nIn order to draw water from the peerless Ocean.\nThe first reflection cast is mere blind imitation;\nAfter it has been often repeated you may test its truth.\nTill it is thus verified, take it not from your friends;\nThe drop, not yet become pearl, sever not from its shell.\nEvil influence of covetousness.\n\nWould you have eyes and ears of reason clear,\nTear off the obstructing veil of greed!\nThe blind imitation of that Sufi proceeded from greed;\nGreed closed his mind to the pure light.\nYea, 'twas greed that led astray that Sufi,\nAnd brought him to loss of property and ruin.\nGreed of victuals, greed of that ecstatic singing\nHindered his wits from grasping the truth.\nIf greed stained the face of a mirror,\nThat mirror would be as deceitful as we men are. 6\nIf a pair of scales were greedy of riches,\nWould they tell truly the weight of anything?\nThe Prophet saith, \"O people, through singleness of mind,\nI ask of you no recompense for my prophesying; 7\nI am a guide; God buyeth my guidance for you,\nGod giveth you my guidance in both worlds.\nTrue, a guide deserves his wages;\nWages are due to him for directing you aright.\nBut what are my wages? The vision of The Friend.\nAbu Bakr indeed offered me forty thousand pieces of gold,\nBut his forty thousand pieces were no wages for me. 8\nHow could I take brass beads for pearls of Aden?\"\nI will tell you a tale; hearken attentively,\nThat you may know how greed closes up the ears.\nEvery man subject to greed is a miser.\nCan eyes of hearts clouded with greed see clearly?\nThe illusion of rank and riches blinds his sight,\nLike hair dropping down before his eyes.\n*NOTES:\n1. Koran xciii: \"By the daylight and by the night thy, Lord hath not forsaken thee nor been displeased.\"\n2. Koran vi. 76: \"And when the night overshadowed Abraham, he beheld a star, and he said, 'This is my Lord;' but when it set he said, 'I love not Gods which set.'\"\n3. Mansur Hallaj, a celebrated Sufi who was put to death at Bagdad in 309 A.H. for using these words.\n4. i.e., unity is made to appear as plurality (see Gulshan i Raz, I. 710).\n5. See Gulshan i Raz, I. 104.\n6. The Turkish commentator translates thus. The Lucknow copy reads Ba sati for Ma sti.\n7. Koran xi 53.\n8. Abu Bakr made over all his goods to the Prophet in aid of the expedition to Syria.\n\nSTORY II.\nThe Pauper and the Prisoners.\nA certain pauper obtained admittance to a prison, and annoyed the prisoners by eating up all their victuals and leaving them none. At last they made a formal complaint to the Qazi, and prayed him to banish the greedy pauper from the prison. The Qazi summoned the pauper before him, and asked him why he did not go to his own house instead of living on the prisoners. The pauper replied that he had no house or means of livelihood except that supplied by the prison; whereupon the Qazi ordered him to be carried through the city, and proclamation to be made that he was a pauper, that no one might be induced to lend him money or trade with him. Accordingly the attendants sought for a camel whereon to carry him through the city, and at last induced a Kurd who sold firewood to lend his camel for the purpose. The Kurd consented from greed of reward, and the pauper, being seated on the camel, was carried through the city from morning till evening, proclamation being made in Persian, Arabic, and Kurdish that he was a pauper. When evening came the Kurd demanded payment, but the pauper refused to give him anything, observing that if he had kept his ears open he must have heard the proclamation. Thus the Kurd was led by greed to spend the day in useless labor.\nSatan's office in the world.\nThe pauper said, \"Your beneficence is my sustenance;\nTo me, as to aliens, your prison is a paradise.\nIf you banish me from your prison in reprobation,\nI must needs die of poverty and affliction.\"\nJust so Iblis said to Allah, \"O have compassion;\nLord! respite me till the day of resurrection;\nFor in this prison of the world I am at oase,\nThat I may slay the children of my enemies.\nFrom every one who has true faith for food,\nAnd as bread for his provisions by the way,\nI take it away by fraud or deceit,\nSo that they raise bitter cries of regret.\nSometimes I menace them with poverty, 2\nSometimes I blind their eyes with tresses and moles.\"\nIn this prison the food of true faith is scarce,\nAnd by the tricks of this dog what there is is lost.\nIn spite of prayers and fasts and endless pains,\nOur food is altogether devoured by him.\nLet us seek refuge with Allah from Satan.\nAlas ! we are perishing by his insolence.\nThe dog is one, yet he enters a thousand forms; 3\nWhatever he enters straight becomes himself.\nWhatever makes you shiver, know he is in it,\nThe Devil is hidden beneath its outward form.\nWhen he finds no form at hand, he enters your thoughts,\nTo cause them to draw you into sin.\nFrom your thoughts proceeds destruction,\nWhen from time to time evil thoughts occur to you.\nSometimes thoughts of pleasure, sometimes of business,\nSometimes thoughts of science, sometimes of house and home.\nSometimes thoughts of gain and traffic,\nSometimes thoughts of merchandise and wealth.\nSometimes thoughts of money and wives and children,\nSometimes thoughts of wisdom or of sadness.\nSometimes thoughts of household goods and fine linen,\nSometimes thoughts of carpets, sometimes of sweepers.\nSometimes thoughts of mills, gardens, and villas,\nSometimes of clouds and mists and jokes and jests.\nSometimes thoughts of peace and war,\nSometimes thoughts of honor and disgrace.\nAh! cast out of your head these vain imaginations,\nAh! sweep out of your heart these evil suggestions.\nCry, \"There is no power nor strength but in God!\"\nTo avert the Evil One from the world and your own soul.\nIt is the true Beloved who causes all\noutward earthly beauty to exist.\nWhatsoever is perceived by sense He annuls,\nBut He establishes that which is hidden from the senses.\nThe lover's love is visible, his Beloved hidden.\nThe Friend is absent, the distraction he causes present.\nRenounce these affections for outward forms,\nLove depends not on outward form or face.\nWhatever is beloved is not a mere empty form,\nWhether your beloved be of the earth or of heaven.\nWhatever be the form you have fallen in love with,\nWhy do you forsake it the moment life leaves it?\nThe form is still there; whence, then, this disgust at it?\nAh! lover, consider well what is really your beloved.\nIf a thing perceived by outward senses is the beloved,\nThen all who retain their senses must still love it;\nAnd since love increases constancy,\nHow can constancy fail while form abides? 4\nBut the truth is, the sun's beams strike the wall,\nAnd the wall only reflects that borrowed light.\nWhy give your heart to mere stones, O simpleton?\nGo! seek the source of light which shineth always!\nDistinguish well true dawn from false dawn,\nDistinguish the color of the wine from that of the cup;\nSo that, instead of many eyes of caprice,\nOne eye may be opened through patience and constancy.\nThen you will behold true colors instead of false,\nAnd precious jewels in lieu of stones.\nBut what is a jewel? Nay, you will be an ocean of pearls;\nYea, a sun that measures the heavens!\nThe real Workman is hidden in His workshop,\nGo you into that workshop and see Him face to face.\nInasmuch as over that Workman His work spreads a curtain,\nYou cannot see Him outside His work.\nSince His workshop is the abode of the Wise One,\nWhoso seeks Him without is ignorant of Him.\nCome, then, into His workshop, which is Not-being, 5\nThat you may see the Creator and creation at once.\nWhoso has seen how bright is the workshop\nSees how obscure is the outside of that shop.\nRebellious Pharaoh set his face towards Being (egoism),\nAnd was perforce blind to that workshop.\nPerforce he looked for the Divine decree to change,\nAnd hoped to turn his destiny from his door.\nWhile destiny at the impotence of that crafty one\nAll the while was secretly mocking.\nHe slew a hundred thousand guiltless babes\nThat the ordinance and decree of Allah might be thwarted.\nThat the prophet Moses might not be born alive,\nHe committed a thousand murders in the land.\nHe did all this, yet Moses was born,\nAnd was protected against his wrath.\nHad he but seen the Eternal workshop,\nHe had refrained hand and foot from these vain devices.\nWithin his house was Moses safe and sound,\nWhile he was killing the babes outside to no purpose.\nJust so the slave of lusts who pampers his body\nFancies that some other man bears him ill-will;\nSaying this one is my enemy, and this one my foe,\nWhile it is his own body which is his enemy and foe,\nHe is like Pharaoh, and his body is like Moses,\nHe runs abroad crying, \"where is my foe?\"\nWhile lust is in his house, which is his body,\nHe bites his finger in spite against strangers.\nThen follows an anecdote of a man who slew his mother because she was always misconducting herself with strangers, and who excused himself by pleading that if he had not done so he would have been obliged to slay strangers every day, and thus incur blood-guiltiness. Lust is likened to this abandoned mother; when it is once slain, you are at peace with all men. In answer to an objection that if this were so the prophets and saints, who have subdued lust, would not have been hated and oppressed as they were, it is pointed out that they who hated the prophets in reality hated themselves, just as sick men quarrel with the physician or boys with the teacher. Prophets and saints are created to test the dispositions of men, that the good may be severed from the bad. The numerous grades of prophets, of saints, and of holy men are ordained, as so many curtains of the light of God, to tone down its brilliance, and make it visible to all grades of human sight.\n*NOTES:\n1. Koran vii. 13.\n2. Koran ii. 279.\n3. cf. Gulshan i Raz, p. 86.\n4. This couplet exercises both the Turkish and the Lucknow commentators.\n5. i.e., annihilation of self and of all phenomenal being, regarding self as naught in the presence of the Deity.\n\nSTORY III.\nThe King and his Two Slaves.\nA king purchased two slaves, one extremely handsome, and the other very ugly. He sent the first away to the bath, and in his absence questioned the other. He told him that the first slave had given a very bad account of him, saying that he was a thief and a bad character, and asked if it was true. The second slave replied that the first was everything that was good, his inward qualities corresponding to the beauty of his outward appearance, and that whatever he had told the king was worthy of credit. The king replied that beauty was only an accident, and that, according to the tradition, accidents \"endure only two moments;\" that at death the animal soul is destroyed, that the text, \"Whoso shall present himself with beauty shall receive tenfold reward,\" I does not refer to outward accidents, but to the \"substance,\" the eternal soul. The slave in reply urged that the accidents of good works and thoughts will in some way bear fruit in the next world, pointing out that thought is always the precursor of the completed work, as the plan of the architect precedes the building, and the gardener's design the perfect fruit resulting from his labors. He added that the world is only the realized thought of \"Universal Reason\" 2 The king then sent away the slave with whom he had held this discourse, and summoned the other, and told him that his fellow slave had given a bad account of him, and asked what he had to say. He replied that his fellow slave was a liar and a rascal, and the king then dismissed him, observing that, in accordance with the tradition, \"Every man is hidden under his own tongue,\" his tongue had betrayed his inner vileness. \"The safety of a man lies in holding his tongue.\"\nThe apostolical succession of the prophets and the saints.\n\nWith that \"brightness of lightning\" 3 He kindled their souls\nSo that Adam acquired knowledge from that light.\nThat, which shone from Adam was gathered by Seth,\nWherefore Adam made him his viceroy when he saw it.\nWhen Noah received the gift of that lustre,\nHe became a soul bearing pearls in the tempest of the flood.\nBy that light the soul of Abraham was led,\nWithout fear he entered Nimrod's fiery furnace.\nWhen Ishmael sought out that light,\nHe meekly laid his head beneath his father's bright knife.\nThe soul of David was warmed by its heat,\nIron became pliable by the force of his weaving. 4\nWhen Solomon was nurtured by its fruition,\nThe devils became the submissive slaves of his will.\nWhen Jacob bowed his head to the Divine decree,\nHe recovered his sight at the scent of his son. 5\nWhen moonlike Joseph saw that brilliant sun,\nHe became so expert as he was in interpreting dreams.\nWhen the staff drew might from the hand of Moses,\nIt devoured the realm of Pharaoh at a mouthful.\nWhen the soul of Jirjis 6 became privy to its light,\nHe sacrificed his life seven times, and regained it.\nWhen Zakhariah 7 boasted of his love for it,\nHe ransomed his life in the hollow of the tree.\nWhen Jonah swallowed a draught from that cup,\nHe found repose in the belly of the fish.\nWhen John the Baptist became filled with its unction,\nHe laid his head in the golden charger in ardour for it.\nWhen Jethro became aware of this exaltation,\nHe risked his life to find it.\nPatient Job gave thanks for seven years,\nFor in his calamities he saw signs of its approach.\nWhen Khizr and Elias boasted of gaining it,\nThey found the water of life and were no more seen.\nWhen Jesus. Son of Mary, found that ladder of ascent,\nHe ascended to the height of the fourth heaven.\nWhen Muhammad gained that blessed possession,\nIn a moment he cleft asunder the disk of the moon. 8\nWhen Abu Bakr became the exemplar of that grace,\nHe was companion of that Lord, and a 'c faithful witness.\"\nWhen 'Omar was enraptured with that beauty,\nLike a mind he discerned true and false. 9\nWhen Osman viewed those brilliant sights,\nHe diffused light and became \"Lord of the two lights.\" 10\nWhen Martaza ('Ali) shined with its reflection,\nHe became the \"Lion of God\" in the soul's domain.\nWhen his two sons were illumined by this light,\nThey became the \"pearly earrings of highest heaven;\" 11\nOne of them losing his life by poison,\nThe other losing his head as he went about his march.\nWhen Junaid was succoured by the forces of that light,\nHis ecstatic states exceeded counting.\nBayazid saw his way to increased fruition thereof,\nAnd gained from God the name \"Polestar of Gnostics.\"\nWhat time King Mansur became victorious, 12\nHe left his throne and hastened to the stake.\nWhen Karkhi of Karkh became its keeper,\nHe became lord of love and of the breath of Jesus.\nIbrahim son of Adham rode his horse to that point,\nAnd became king of kings of equity.\nAnd that Shakik starting from that junction\nBecame a sun of wit and acute of genius.\nFazil from a highway robber became a sage of the way, 13\nWhen he was regarded with esteem by the King.\nTo Bishr Hafi the doctrine, was announced,\nAnd he set his face towards the desert of inquiry.\nWhen Zu-1-Ntin became distraught with care for it,\nEgypt (Milk) as sugar became the house of his soul.\nWhen Sari 14 lost his head in seeking the way thereto,\nHis rank was exalted above the seats of the mighty.\nA hundred thousand great (spiritual) kings\nExalted by this divine light approach the world.\nTheir names remain hidden through God's jealousy;\nEvery beggar tells not their names. 15\n*NOTES:\n1. Koran vi. 161.\n2. i.e., the Logos as Demiurge.\n3. Koran xxiv. 43. The prophetic inspiration is likened to a light handed on from one to another.\n4. Koran xxi. 80.\n5. Koran lxxvii. 96.\n6. Jirjis or St. George is supposed by Muhammadans to be the same person as Khizr or Elias.\n7. Zakhariah the prophet is said to have taken refuge from his persecutors in the hollow of a tree.\n8. Koran liv. 1.\n9. Omar was called \"The Discerner.\"\n10. He bore this name because he had two daughters of Muhammad as his wives.\n11. A tradition gives this title to Hasan and Hussain.\n12. Mansur Hallaj, the celebrated Sufi impaled at Bagdad. Shah or King was a title often assumed by darveshes.\n13. The \"way\" means the Sufi doctrines.\n14. All these saints lived in the second and third centuries of the Flight.\n15. In the introduction to the Nafahatu-'l Uns, Jami says there are always 4000 saints on the earth who are not even known to one another.\n\nSTORY IV.\nThe Falcon and the Owls.\nA certain falcon lost his way, and found himself in the waste places inhabited by owls. The owls suspected that he had come to seize their nests, and all surrounded him to make an end of him. The falcon assured them that he had no such design as they imputed to him, that his abode was on the wrist of the king, and that he did not envy their foul habitation. The owls replied that he was trying to deceive them, inasmuch as such a strange bird as he could not be a favorite of the king. The falcon repeated that he was indeed a favorite of the king, and that the king would assuredly destroy their houses if they injured him, and proceeded to give them some good advice on the folly of trusting to outward appearances. He said, \"It is true I am not homogeneous with the king, but yet the king's light is reflected in me, as water becomes homogeneous with earth in plants. I am, as it were, the dust beneath the king's feet; and if you become like me in this respect, you will be exalted as I am. Copy the outward form you behold in me, and perchance you will reach the real substance of the king.\"\nThe right use of forms.\nThat my outward form may not mislead you,\nDigest my sweet advice before copying me.\nMany are they who have been captured by form,\nWho aimed at form, and found Allah.\nAfter all, soul is linked to body,\nThough it in nowise resembles the body.\nThe power of the light of the eye is mated with fat,\nThe light of the heart is hidden in a drop of blood.\nJoy harbors in the kidneys and pain in the liver,\nThe lamp of reason in the brains of the head;\nSmell in the nostrils and speech in the tongue,\nConcupiscence in the flesh and courage in the heart.\nThese connections are not without a why and a how,\nBut reason is at a loss to understand the how.\nUniversal Soul had connection with Partial Soul, 1\nWhich thence conceived a pearl and retained it in its bosom.\nFrom that connection, like Mary,\nSoul became pregnant of a fair Messiah;\nNot that Messiah who walked upon earth and water,\nBut that Messiah who is higher than space. 2\nNext, as Soul became pregnant by the Soul of souls,\nSo by the former Soul did the world become pregnant;\nThen the World brought forth another world,\nAnd of this last are brought forth other worlds.\nShould I reckon them in my speech till the last day\nI should fail to tell the total of these resurrections. 3\n*NOTES:\n1. This is a figurative account of the emanations of Absolute Being, whereby the world of phenomena is constituted (see Gulshan i Raz, p. 21, note, and p. 66).\n2. i.e., the spirit of the Prophet Muhammad, whom the Sufis identify with the Primal Soul.\n3. Continually is creation born again in a new creation\" (Gulshan i Raz, p. 66). By constant effluxes from Absolute Being the world of phenomena is every moment renewed.\n\nSTORY V.\nThe Thirsty Man who threw Bricks into the Water.\nA thirsty man discovered a tank of water, but could not drink of it because it was surrounded by a high wall. He took some of the bricks off the top of the wall and cast them over it into the water. The water cried out, \"What advantage do you gain by doing this?\" He made answer, \"The first advantage is this, that I hear your voice; and the second, that the more bricks I pull off the wall, the nearer I approach to you.\" The moral is, that so long as the wall of the body intervenes, we cannot reach the water of life. The abasement of the body brings men nearer to union with the Deity. Destroy, therefore, the fleshly lusts which war against the soul. Then follows another parable to illustrate the folly of procrastination in this important matter.\n\"It was not ye who shot, but God shot; and\nthose arrows were God's not yours\". 1\n'Tis God's light that illumines the senses' light,\nThat is the meaning of \"Light upon light.\" 2\nThe senses' light draws us earthwards,\nGod's light carries us heavenwards.\nAs objects of sense are of base condition,\nGod's light is an ocean, and the senses' light a dewdrop.\nBut that light which is \"upon this light\" is not seen,\nSave through signs and holy discourses.\nSince the senses' light is gross and dense,\nIt lies hidden in the black pupil of the eye.\nWhen you cannot see the senses' light with the eye,\nHow can you see with the eye the Light of the mind?\nAs the senses' light is hidden in these gross veils,\nMust not that Light which is pure be also hidden?\nLike the senses, this world is ruled by a hidden Power.\nIt confesses its impotence before that hidden Power,\nWhich sometimes exalts it and sometimes lays it low,\nSometimes makes it dry and sometimes moist.\nThe hand is hidden, yet we see the pen writing;\nThe horse is galloping, yet the rider is hid from view.\nThe arrow speeds forth, yet the bow is not seen;\nSouls are seen, the Soul of souls (God) is hidden.\nBreak not the arrow, for it is the arrow of the King\nYea, it is an arrow from the bow of Wisdom.\n\"Ye shot not when ye shot,\" was said by God;\nGod's action has predominance over all actions.\nBreak your own passion, break not that arrow,\nThe eye of passion takes milk to be blood.\nKiss that arrow and bear it to the King,\nYea, though it be stained with your own blood.\nWhatsoever is seen is weak and base and impotent;\nWhat is hidden is equally fierce and headstrong.\nWe are the captured game; who is the snare?\nWe are the balls; where is the bat?\nHe tears and mends; who is this tailor?\nHe fans and kindles the flame; who is this kindler?\nAt one time He makes the faithful one an infidel,\nAt another He makes the atheist a devotee!\nNext comes an anecdote of a dirty man who refused to bathe because he was ashamed to go into the water, with the moral that \"Shame hinders religion;\" 3 and then another of Zu'l Nun, a celebrated Egyptian Sufi of the third century A.H. Zu'l Nun appeared to his ignorant friends to be mad, and they accordingly confined him in a madhouse. After a time they thought that he was not really mad, but had feigned madness for some deep purpose, and they went to the madhouse to inquire into the state of his health. When they arrived there, Zu'l Nun asked them who they were, and they answered that they were his devoted friends, who were now convinced that the story of his being mad was a calumny. Zu'l Nun jumped up and drove them away with sticks and stones, saying that true friendship would have been manifested in sharing his troubles, even as pure gold is tried by fire.\n*NOTES:\n1. Koran viii. 17, meaning, \"God is the Fa'il i Hakiki, or Only Real Agent.\"\n2. Koran xxiv. 35.\n3. Freytag, Arabum Proverbia, vol. ii. pp. 379 and 418, gives two proverbs - one, \"Shame is a part of religion;\" and the other, \"Shame hinders getting a livelihood.\"\n\nSTORY VI.\nLuqman's Master examines him and discovers his Acuteness.\nLuqman the Sage, 1 who is sometimes identified with Esop, and sometimes with the nephew of the prophet. Job, though \"gifted with wisdom by God,\" was a slave. His master, however, discovered his worth, and became extremely attached to him, so that he never received any delicacy without giving Luqman a share of it. One day, having received a watermelon, he gave Luqman the best part of it, and Luqman devoured it with such apparent relish that his master was tempted to taste it. To his surprise he found it very bitter, and asked Luqman why he had not told him of this. Luqman replied that it was not for him, who lived on his master's bounty, to complain if he now and then received disagreeable things at his hands. Thus, though to outward appearance a slave, Luqman showed himself to be a lord.\nLove endures hardships at the hands of the Beloved.\nThrough love bitter things seem sweet,\nThrough love bits of copper are made gold.\nThrough love dregs taste like pure wine,\nThrough love pains are as healing balms.\nThrough love thorns become roses,\nAnd through love vinegar becomes sweet wine.\nThrough love the stake becomes a throne,\nThrough love reverse of fortune seems good fortune.\nThrough love a prison seems a rose bower,\nWithout love a grate full of ashes seems a garden.\nThrough love burning fire is pleasing light,\nThrough love the Devil becomes a Houri.\nThrough love hard stones become soft as butter,\nWithout love soft wax becomes hard iron.\nThrough love grief is as joy,\nThrough love Ghouls turn into angels.\nThrough love stings are as honey,\nThrough love lions are harmless as mice.\nThrough love sickness is health,\nThrough love wrath is as mercy.\nThrough love the dead rise to life,\nThrough love the king becomes a slave.\nEven when an evil befalls you, have due regard;\nRegard well him who does you this ill turn.\nThe sight which regards the ebb and flow of good and ill\nOpens a passage for you from misfortune to happiness.\nThence you see the one state moves you into the other, 2\nOne opposite state generating its opposite in exchange.\nSo long as you experience not fears after joys,\nHow can you look for pleasures after disgusts?\nWhile ye fear the doom of the angel on the left hand,\nMen hope for the bliss of the angel on the right. 3\nMay you gain two wings! 4 A fowl with only one wing\nIs impotent to fly, O well-intentioned one!\nNow either permit me to hold my peace altogether,\nOr give me leave to explain the whole matter.\nAnd if you dislike this and forbid that,\nWho can tell what your desire is?\nYou must have the soul of Abraham in order with light\nTo see the mansions of Paradise in the fire.\nStep by step he ascended above sun and moon,\nAnd so lagged not below, as a ring that fastens a door.\nSince the \"Friend of God\" ascended above the heavens,\nAnd said, \"I love not Gods that set;\" 5\nSo this world of the body is a breeder of misconceptions\nIn all who have not fled from lust.\n*NOTES:\n1. See Koran xxxi. Another anecdote of his wit occurs in Book I.\n2. The doctrine of Heraclitus, that opposite states generate one another, is discussed by Jelaludin in a passage quoted in Lumsden's Grammar, ii. 323, and is mentioned in the Phado and the Nicomachean Ethics.\n3. An anacoluthon (see Koran i. 16).\n4. The two wings are hope and fear, both of which are needed to guide men's religious flight (see Book III. on \"Probability the guide of life\").\n5. Koran vi. 77.\n\nSTORY VII.\nMoses and the Shepherd.\nNext follows an anecdote of Bilkis, Queen of Sheba, whose reason was enlightened by the counsels of the Hoopoo sent to her by King Solomon. Outward sense is as opposed to true reason as Abu Jahl was to Muhammad; and when the outward senses are replaced by the true inner reason, man sees that the body is only foam, and the heart the limitless ocean. Afterwards comes an anecdote of a philosopher who was struck blind for cavilling at the verse, \"What think ye? If at early morn your waters shall have sunk away, who will then give you clear running water?\" 1 This is succeeded by the story of Moses and the shepherd. Moses once heard a shepherd praying as follows: \"O God, show me where thou art, that I may become. Thy servant. I will clean Thy shoes and comb Thy hair, and sew Thy clothes, and fetch Thee milk.\" When Moses heard him praying in this senseless manner, he rebuked him, saying, \"O foolish one, though your father was a Mosalman, you have become an infidel. God is a Spirit, and needs not such gross ministrations as, in your ignorance, you suppose.\" The shepherd was abashed at his rebuke, and tore his clothes and fled away into the desert. Then a voice from heaven was heard, saying, \"O Moses, wherefore have you driven away my servant? Your office is to reconcile my people with me, not to drive them away from me. I have given to each race different usages and forms of praising and adoring me. I have no need of their praises, being exalted above all such needs. I regard not the words that are spoken, but the heart that offers them. I do not require fine words, but a burning heart. Men's ways of showing devotion to me are various, but so long as the devotions are genuine, they are accepted.\"\nReligious forms indifferent.\nA voice came from God to Moses,\n\"Why hast thou sent my servant away?\nThou hast come to draw men to union with me,\nNot to drive them far away from me.\nSo far as possible, engage not in dissevering;\n'The thing most repugnant to me is divorce.' 2\nTo each person have I allotted peculiar forms,\nTo each have I given particular usages.\nWhat is praiseworthy in thee is blameable in him,\nWhat is poison for thee is honey for him.\nWhat is good in him is bad in thee,\nWhat is fair in him is repulsive in thee.\nI am exempt from all purity and impurity,\nI need not the laziness or alacrity of my people.\nI created not men to gain a profit from them,\nBut to shower my beneficence upon them.\nIn the men of Hind the usages of Hind are praiseworthy,\nIn the men of Sind those of Sind.\nI am not purified by their praises,\n'Tis they who become pure and shining thereby.\nI regard not the outside and the words,\nI regard the inside and the state of heart.\nI look at the heart if it be humble,\nThough the words may be the reverse of humble.\nBecause the heart is substance, and words accidents,\nAccidents are only a means, substance is the final cause.\nHow long wilt thou dwell on words and superficialities?\nA burning heart is what I want; consort with burning!\nKindle in thy heart the flame of love,\nAnd burn up utterly thoughts and fine expressions.\nO Moses! the lovers of fair rites are one class,\nThey whose hearts and souls burn with love are another.\nLovers must burn every moment,\nAs tax and tithe are levied on a ruined village.\nIf they speak amiss, call them not sinners;\nIf a martyr be stained with blood, wash it not away.\nBlood is better than water for martyrs,\nThis fault is better than a thousand correct forms.\nNo need to turn to the Ka'ba when one is in it,\nAnd divers have no need of shoes.\nOne does not take a drunken man as a guide on the way,\nNor speak of darns to torn garments.\nThe sect of lovers is distinct from all others,\nLovers have a religion and a faith of their own.\nThough the ruby has no stamp, what matters it?\nLove is fearless in the midst of the sea of fear.\nBeware, if thou offerest praises or thanksgivings,\nAnd know them to be even as the babble of that shepherd;\nThough thy praises be better compared with his,\nYet in regard to God they are full of defects.\nHow long wilt thou say, 'They obscure the truth,\nFor it is not such as they fancy'?\nThy own prayers are accepted only through mercy,\nThey are suffered as the prayers of an impure woman.\nIf her prayers are made impure by the flow of blood,\nThine are stained with metaphors and similitudes.\nBlood is impure, yet its stain is removed by water;\nBut that impurity of ignorance is more lasting,\nSeeing that without the blessed water of God\nIt is not banished from the man who is subject to it.\nO that thou wouldst turn thy face to thy own prayers,\nAnd become cognizant of the meaning of thy ejaculations,\nAnd say, 'Ah! my prayers are as defective as my being;\nO requite me good for evil!'\"\nMoses questions God as to the reason of\nthe flourishing state of the wicked.\nMoses said, \"O beneficent Creator,\nWith whom a moment's remembrance is as long ages,\nI see Thy plan distorted in this world of earth and water;\nMy heart, like the angel's, feels a difficulty thereat.\nWith what object hast thou framed this plan,\nAnd sowed therein the seeds of evil?\nWhy hast Thou kindled the fire of violence and wrong?\nWhy burnt up mosques and them who worship therein?\nParadise is attached to requirements unpleasant to us,\nHell is attached to things flattering our lusts.\nThe branch full of sap is the main fuel of thy fire.\n'They that are burnt with fire are near to Kausar.' 3\nWhoso is in prison and acquainted with troubles,\nThat is in requital for his gluttony and lusts.\nWhoso is in a palace and enjoying wealth,\nThat is in reward for toils and troubles.\nWhoso is seen enjoying uncounted gold and silver,\nKnow that he strove patiently to acquire it.\nHe, whose soul is exempt from natural conditions,\nAnd who possesses the power of overriding causes,\nCan see without causes, like eyes that pierce night;\nBut thou, who art dependent on sense attend to causes.\nHaving left Jesus, thou cherishest an ass (lust),\nAnd art perforce excluded, like an ass;\nThe portion of Jesus is knowledge and wisdom,\nNot so the portion of an ass, O asinine one!\nThou pitiest thine ass when it complains;\nSo art thou ignorant, thy ass makes thee asinine.\nKeep thy pity for Jesus, not for the ass,\nMake not thy lust to vanquish thy reason.\nLeave thy natural lusts to whine and howl,\nTear thee from them, escape that snare of the soul!\n*NOTES:\n1. Koran lxvii. 30.\n2. A tradition.\n3. A saying of the Prophet.\n\nSTORY VIII.\nThe Man who made a Pet of a Bear. 1\nA kind man, seeing a serpent overcoming a bear, went to the bear's assistance, and delivered him from the serpent. The bear was so sensible of the kindness the man had done him that he followed him about wherever he went, and became his faithful slave, guarding him from everything that might annoy him. One day the man was lying asleep, and the bear, according to his custom, was sitting by him and driving off the flies. The flies became so persistent in their annoyances that the bear lost patience, and seizing the largest stone he could find, dashed it at them in order to crush them utterly; but unfortunately the flies escaped, and the stone lighted upon the sleeper's face and crushed it. The moral is, \"Do not make friends with fools.\" In the course of this story occur anecdotes of a blind man, of Moses rebuking the worshippers of the calf, and of the Greek physician Galen and a madman.\nHe who needs mercy finds it.\nDoing kindness is the game and quarry of good men,\nA good man seeks in the world only pains to cure.\nWherever there is a pain there goes the remedy,\nWherever there is poverty there goes relief.\nSeek not water, only show you are thirsty,\nThat water may spring up all around you.\nThat you may hear the words, \"The Lord gives them to drink,\" 2\nBe athirst! Allah knows what is best for you.\nSeek you the water of mercy? Be downcast,\nAnd straightway drink the wine of mercy to intoxication.\nMercy is called down by mercy to the last.\nWithhold not, then, mercy from any one, O son!\nIf of yourself you cannot journey to the Ka'ba,\nRepresent your helplessness to the Reliever.\nCries and groans are a powerful means,\nAnd the All-Merciful is a mighty nurse.\nThe nurse and the mother keep excusing themselves,\nTill their child begins to cry.\nIn you too has God created infant needs;\nWhen they cry out, their milk is brought to them;\nGod said, \"Call on God;\" continue crying,\nSo that the milk of His love may boil up. 3\nMoses and the worshipper of the calf.\nMoses said to one of those full of vain imaginations,\n\"O malevolent one, through error and heresy\nYou entertain a hundred doubts as to my prophethood,\nNotwithstanding these proofs, and my holy character.\nYou have seen thousands of miracles done by me,\nYet they only multiply your doubts and cavils.\nThrough doubts and evil thoughts you are in a strait,\nYou speak despitefully of my prophethood.\nI brought the host out of the Red Sea before all men,\nThat ye might escape the oppression of the Egyptians.\nFor forty years meat and drink came from heaven,\nAnd water sprang from the rock at my prayer.\nMy staff became a mighty serpent in my hand,\nWater became blood for my ill-conditioned enemy.\nThe staff became a snake, and my hand bright as the sun;\nFrom the reflection of that light the sun became a star.\nHave not these incidents, and hundreds more like them,\nBanished these doubts from you, O cold-hearted one?\nThe calf lowed through magic,\nAnd you bowed down to it, saying, 'Thou art my God.' 4\nThe golden calf lowed; but what did it say,\nThat the fools should feel all this devotion to it?\nYou have seen many more wondrous works done by me,\nBut where is the base man who accepts the truth?\nWhat is it that charms vain men but vanity?\nWhat else pleases the foolish but folly?\nBecause each kind is charmed by its own kind,\nDoes a cow ever seek the lion?\nDid the wolf show love to Joseph, 5\nOr only fraud upon fraud with a view to devour him?\nTrue, if it lose his wolf-like nature it becomes a friend;\nEven as the dog of the cave became a son of man. 6\nWhen good Abu Bakr saw Muhammad,\nHe recognized his truth, saying, 'This one is true;'\nWhen Abu Bakr caught the perfume of Muhammad,\nHe said, 'This is no false one.'\nBut Abu Jahl, who was not one of the sympathizers,\nSaw the moon split asunder, yet believed not.\nIf from a sympathizer, to whom it is well known,\nI withhold the truth, still 'tis not hidden from him;\nBut he who is ignorant and without sympathy,\nHowever much I show him the truth, he sees it not.\nThe mirror of the heart must needs be polished\nBefore you can distinguish fair and foul therein.\"\n*NOTES:\n1. Anwari Suhaili, i. 27.\n2. Koran lxxvi. 21.\n3. Koran xvii. 110.\n4. See Koran xx. 90.\n5. Koran xii. 17.\n6. Koran xviii. 17.\n\nSTORY IX.\nThe Gardener and the Three Friends.\nA voice came from heaven to Moses, saying, \"O Moses why didst thou not visit me when I was sick?\" Moses inquired the meaning of this dark saying, and the answer was, \"When one of God's saints is sick, God regards his sickness as His own; and, therefore, he who desires to hold companionship with God must not forsake the saints.\" 1 This is illustrated by a story of a gardener who saw three friends walking in his garden, and making free with his fruit. Knowing he could not prevail against them while they remained united, he contrived by tricks to separate them, and then proceeded to chastise them one by one. And this caused one of them to make the reflection that he had acted very foolishly in deserting his friends.\n*NOTES:\n1. Cp. Matthew xxv. 40.\n\nSTORY X.\nBayazid and the Saint.\nThe celebrated Sufi, Abu Yazid or Bayazid of Bastam, in Khorasan, who lived in the third century of the Flight, was once making a pilgrimage to Mecca, and visiting all the \"Pillars of insight\" who lived m the various towns that lay on his route. At last he discovered the \"Khizr of the age\" in the person of a venerable Darvesh, with whom he held the following conversation:\nThe Sage said, \"Whither are you going, O Bayazid?\nWhere will you bring your caravan to a halt?\"\nBayazid replied, \"At dawn I start for the Ka'ba.\"\nQuoth the Sage, \"What provision for the way have you?\"\nHe answered, \"I have two hundred silver dirhams;\nSee them tied up tightly in the corner of my cloak.\"\nThe Sage said, \"Circumambulate me seven times;\nCount this better than circumambulating the Ka'ba;\nAnd as for the dirhams, give them to me, O liberal one,\nAnd know you have finished your course and obtained your wish,\nYou have made the pilgrimage and gained the life to come,\nYou have become pure, and that in a moment of time.\nOf a truth that is God which your soul sees in me,\nFor God has chosen me to be His house.\nThough the Ka'ba is the house of His grace and favors,\nYet my body too is the house of His secret.\nSince He made that house He has never entered it,\nBut none but That Living One enters this house;\nWhen you have seen me you have seen God,\nAnd have circumambulated the veritable Ka'ba.\nTo serve me is to worship and praise God;\nThink not that God is distinct from me.\nOpen clear eyes and look upon me,\nThat you may behold the light of God in a mortal.\nTho Beloved once called the Ka'ba 'My house,'\nBut has said to me 'O my servant' seventy times;\nO Bayazid, you have found the Ka'ba,\nYou have found a hundred precious blessings.\"\nBayazid gave heed to these deep sayings,\nAnd placed them as golden earrings in his ears.\nThen follow anecdotes of the Prophet paying a visit to one of his disciples who lay sick, of Shaikh Bahlol, nicknamed \"The Madman,\" who was a favorite at the court of Harunu-'r-Rashid, and of the people of Moses.\nThe sweet uses of adversity.\n\nThe sick man said, \"Sickness has brought me this boon.\nThat this Prince (Muhammad) has come to me this morn,\nSo that health and strength may return to me\nFrom the visit of this unparalleled King.\nO blessed pain and sickness and fever!\nO welcome weariness and sleeplessness by night!\nLo! God of His bounty and favor\nHas sent me this pain and sickness in my old age;\nHe has given me pain in the back, that I may not fail\nTo spring up out of my sleep at midnight;\nThat I may not sleep all night like the cattle,\nGod in His mercy has sent me these pains.\nAt my broken state the pity of kings has boiled up,\nAnd hell is put to silence by their threats!\"\nPain is a treasure, for it contains mercies;\nThe kernel is soft when the rind is scraped off.\nO brother, the place of darkness and cold\nIs the fountain of life and the cup of ecstasy.\nSo also is endurance of pain and sickness and disease.\nFor from abasement proceeds exaltation.\nThe spring seasons are hidden in the autumns,\nAnd autumns are charged with springs; flee them not.\nConsort with grief and put up with sadness,\nSeek long life in your own death!\nSince 'tis bad, whatever lust says on this matter\nHeed it not, its business is opposition.\nBut act contrary thereto, for the prophets\nHave laid this injunction upon the world. 2\nThough it is right to take counsel in affairs,\nThat you may have less to regret in the upshot;\nThe prophets have labored much\nTo make the world revolve on this pivot stone; 3\nBut, in order to destroy the people, lust desires\nTo make them go astray and lose their heads;\nThe people say, 'With whom shall we take counsel?'\nThe prophets answer, 'With the reason of your chief.'\nAgain they say, 'Suppose a child or a woman enter,\nWho lacks reason and clear judgment; '\nThey reply, 'Take counsel with them,\nAnd act contrary to what they advise.'\nKnow your lust to be woman, and worse than woman;\nWoman is partial evil, lust universal evil.\nIf you take counsel with your lust,\nSee you act contrary to what that base one advises.\nEven though it enjoin prayers and fasting,\nIt is treacherously laying a snare for you.'\nYou must abandon and ignore your own knowledge,\nAnd dip your hand in the dish of abnegation of knowledge.\nWhatever seems profitable, flee from it,\nDrink poison and spill the water of life.\nContemn whatever praises you,\nLend to paupers your wealth and profits!\nQuit your sect and be a subject of aversion,\nCast away name and fame and seek disgrace!\"\nGod the Author of good and evil.\nIf you seek the explanation of God's love and favor,\nIn connection therewith read the chapter \"Brightness.\" 4\nAnd if you say evil also proceeds from Him,\nYet what damage is that to His perfection?\nTo send that evil is one of His perfections.\nI will give you an illustration, O arrogant one;\nThe heavenly Artist paints His pictures of two sorts,\nFair pictures and pictures the reverse of fair.\nJoseph he painted fair and made him beautiful;\nHe also painted ugly pictures of demons and 'afrits.\nBoth sorts of pictures are of His workmanship,\nThey proceed not from His imperfection, but His skill,\nThat the perfection of His wisdom may be shown,\nAnd the gainsayers of His art be put to shame.\nCould He not paint ugly things He would lack art,\nAnd therefore He creates Guebers as well as Moslems.\nThus, both infidelity and faith bear witness to Him,\nBoth alike bow down before His almighty sway.\nBut know, the faithful worship Him willingly,\nFor they seek and aim at pleasing Him;\nWhile Guebers worship Him unwillingly,\nTheir real aim and purpose being quite otherwise.\nEvil itself is turned into good for the good.\nThe Prophet said to that sick man,\n\"Pray in this wise and allay your difficulties;\n'Give us good in the house of our present world,\nAnd give us good in the house of our next world. 5\nMake our path pleasant as a garden,\nAnd be Thou, O Holy One, our goal!'\"\nThe faithful will say on the last day, \"O King!\nWas not Hell on the route all of us traveled?\nDid not faithful as well as infidels pass through it?\nYet on our way we perceived not the smoke of the fire;\nNay, it seemed Paradise and the mansion of the blessed.\"\nThen the King will answer, \"That green garden,\nAs it appeared to you on your passage through it,\nWas indeed Hell and the place of dread torment;\nYet for you it became a garden green with trees.\nSince you have labored to make hellish lusts,\nAnd the 'fire of pride that courts destruction,\nTo make these, I say, pure and clean,\nAnd, to please God, have quenched those fires,\nSo that the fire of lust, that erst breathed flame,\nHas become a holy garden and a guiding light,\nSince you have turned the fire of wrath to meekness,\nAnd the darkness of ignorance to shining knowledge,\nSince you have turned the fire of greed into bounty,\nAnd the vile thorns of malice into a rose-garden;\nSince you have quenched all these fires of your own\nFor my sake, so that those poisons are now pure sweets;\nSince you have made fiery lust as a verdant garden,\nAnd have sowed therein the seed of fidelity,\nSo that nightingales of prayer and praise\nEver warble sweetly around this garden;\nSince you have responded to the call of God,\nAnd have drawn water out of the hell of lust,\nFor this cause my hell also, for your behoof,\nBecomes a verdant garden and yields leaves and fruit.\"\nWhat is the recompense of well-doing, O son?\nIt is kindness and good treatment and rich requital.\nHave ye not said, \"We are victims,\nMere nothings before eternal Being?\nIf we are drunkards or madmen,\n'Tis that Cup-bearer and that Cup which make us so.\nWe bow down our heads before His edict and ordinance,\nWe stake precious life to gain His favor.\nWhile the thought of the Beloved fills our hearts,\nAll our work is to do Him service and spend life for Him.\nWherever He kindles His destructive torch,\nMyriads of lovers' souls are burnt therewith.\nThe lovers who dwell within the sanctuary\nAre moths burnt with the torch of the Beloved's face.\"\nO heart haste thither, 6 for God will shine upon you,\nAnd seem to you a sweet garden instead of a terror.\nHe will infuse into your soul a new soul,\nSo as to fill you, like a goblet, with wine.\nTake up your abode in His soul!\nTake up your abode in heaven, O bright full moon!\nLike the heavenly Scribe,7 He will open your heart's book\nThat He may reveal mysteries unto you.\nAbide with your Friend, since you have gone astray,\nStrive to be a full moon; you are now a fragment thereof.\nWherefore this shrinking of the part from its whole?\nWhy this association with its foes?\nBehold Genus become Species in due course,\nBehold secrets become manifest through his light!\nSo long as woman-like you swallow blandishments,\nHow, O wise man, can you get relief from false flatteries?\nThese flatteries and fair words and deceits (of lust)\nYou take, and swallow, just like women.\nBut the reproaches and the blows of Darveshes\nAre really better for you than the praises of sinners.\nTake the light blows of Darveshes, not the honey of sinners,\nAnd become, by the fortune of good, good yourself.\nBecause from them the robe of good fortune is gained,\nIn the asylum of the spirit blood becomes life.\n*NOTES:\n1. Alluding to the Hadis: \"Heaven and earth contain me not, but the heart of my faithful servant contains me.\"\n2. Freytag quotes a saying of 'Omar, \"A fool may indicate the right course\" (Arabum Proverbia, i. p. 566).\n3. The law defining the right course.\n4. Koran xciii. : \"By the noonday brightness, and by the night when it darkeneth, thy Lord hath not forsaken thee nor been displeased.\"\n5. \"O Lord, give us good in this world and good in the next, and save us from the torment of the fire.\" (Koran ii. 197).\n6. i.e., to annihilation of self in God, as a moth in the flame.\n7. Atarid or Mercury.\n\nSTORY XI.\nMo'avia and Iblis.\nMo'avia, the first of the Ommiad Khalifas, was one day lying asleep in his palace, when he was awakened by a strange man. Mo'avia asked him who he was, and he replied that he was Iblis. Mo'avia then asked him why he had awakened him, and lblis replied that the hour of prayer was come, and he feared Mo'avia would be late. Mo'avia answered, \"Nay! it could never have been your intention to direct me in the right way. How can I trust a thief like you to guard my interests?\" Iblis answered, \"Remember that I was bred up as an angel of light, and that I cannot quite abandon my original occupation. You may travel to Rome or Cathay, but still you retain the love of your fatherland. I still retain my love of God, who fed me when I was young; nay, even though I revolted from Him, that was only from jealousy (of Adam), and jealousy proceeds from love, not from denial of God. I played a game of chess with God at His own desire, and though I was utterly checkmated and ruined, in my ruin I still experience God's blessings.\"\nMo'avia answered, \"What you say is not credible. Your words are like the decoy calls of a fowler, which resemble the voices of the birds, and so lure them to destruction. You have caused the destruction of hundreds of mortals, such as the people of Noah, the tribe of 'Ad, 1 the family of Lot, Nimrod, Pharaoh, Abu Jahl, and so on.\"\nIblis retorted, \"You are mistaken if you suppose me to be the cause of all the evil you mention. I am not God, that I should be able to make good evil, or fair foul. Mercy and vengeance are twin divine attributes, and they generate the good and evil seen in all earthly things. I am, therefore, not to blame for the existence of evil, as I am only a mirror, which reflects the good and evil existing in the objects presented to it.\"\nMo'avia then prayed to God to guard him against the sophistries of lblis, and again adjured lblis to cease his arguments and tell plainly the reason why he had awakened him. Iblis, instead of answering, continued to justify himself, saying how hard it was that men and women should blame him when they did anything wrong, instead of blaming their own evil lusts. Mo'avia, in reply, reproached him with concealing the truth, and ultimately brought him to confess that the true reason why he had awakened him was this, that if he had overslept himself, and so missed the hour of prayer, he would have felt deep sorrow and have heaved many sighs, and each of these sighs would, in the sight of God, have counted for as many as two hundred ordinary prayers.\nThe value of sighs.\nA certain man was going into the mosque,\nJust as another was coming out.\nHe inquired of him what had occurred to the meeting,\nThat the people were coming out of the mosque so soon.\nThe other told him that the Prophet\nHad concluded the public prayers and mysteries.\n\"Whither go you,\" said he, \"O foolish one,\nSeeing the Prophet has already given the blessing?\"\nThe first heaved a sigh, and its smoke ascended;\nThat sigh yielded a perfume of his heart's blood.\nThe other, who came from the mosque, said to him,\n\"Give me that sigh, and take my prayers instead.\"\nThe first said, \"I give it, and take your prayers.\"\nThe other took that sigh with a hundred thanks.\nHe went his way with deep humility and contrition,\nAs a hawk who had ascended in the track of the falcon.\nThat night, as ho lay asleep, he heard a voice from heaven,\n\"Thou hast bought the water of life and healing;\nThe worth of what thou hast chosen and possessed\nEquals that of all the people's accepted prayers.\"\nTo illustrate the treachery of wolves in sheep's clothing, - of Satans rebuking sin and preaching religion - an anecdote is told of a master of a house who caught a thief, but was induced to let him escape by the stratagem of the thief's confederate, who cried that he had got the real thief elsewhere. Apropos of the same theme, the poet next relates the story of \"those who built a mosque for mischief,\" as recorded in the Koran. 2 The tribe of Bani Ganim built a mosque, and invited the Prophet to dedicate it. The Prophet, however, discovered that their real motive was jealousy of the tribe of Bani Amru lbn Auf, and of the mosque at Kuba, near Medina, and a treacherous understanding with the Syrian monk Abu Amir, and therefore he refused their request, and ordered the mosque to be razed to the ground.\nWisdom the believer's lost camel.\nMy people adopt my law without obeying it,\nThey take that coin without assaying it.\nThe Koran's wisdom is like the \"believer's lost camel,' 3\nEvery one is certain his camel is lost.\nYou have lost your camel and seek it diligently;\nYet how will you find it if you know not your own?\nWhat was lost? Was it a female camel that you lost?\nIt escaped from your hand, and you are in a maze.\nThe caravan is come to be loaded,\nYour camel is vanished from the midst of it.\nYou run here and there, your mouth parched with heat;\nThe caravan moves on, and night approaches.\nYour goods lie on the ground in a dangerous road,\nYou hurry after your camel in all directions.\nYou cry \"O Moslems, who has seen a camel,\nWhich escaped from its stable this morning?\nTo him who shall give me news of my camel\nI will give a reward of so many dirhems.\"\nYou go on seeking news of your camel from every one,\nAnd every lewd fellow flatters you with a fresh rumor,\nSaying, \"I saw a camel; it went this way;\n'Twas red, and it went towards this pasture.\"\nAnother says, \"Its ear was cropped.\"\nAnother says, \"Its cloth was embroidered.\"\nAnother that it had only one eye,\nAnother that it had lost its hair from mange.\nTo gain the reward every base fellow\nMentions a hundred marks without any foundation.\nAll false doctrines contain an element of truth.\nJust so every one in matters of doctrine\nGives a different description of the hidden subject.\nA philosopher expounds it in one way,\nAnd a critic at once refutes his propositions.\nA third censures both of them;\nA fourth spends his life in traducing the others.\nEvery one mentions indications of this road,\nIn order to create an impression that he has gone it.\nThis truth and that truth cannot be all true,\nAnd yet all of them are not entirely astray in error.\nBecause error occurs not without some truth,\nFools buy base coins from their likeness to real coins.\nIf there were no genuine coins current in the world,\nHow could coiners succeed in passing false coins?\nIf there were no truth, how could falsehood exist?\nFalsehood derives its plausibility from truth.\n'Tis the desire of right that makes men buy wrong;\nLet poison be mixed with sugar, and they eat it at once.\nIf wheat were not valued as sweet and good for food,\nThe cheat who shows wheat and sells barley would make no profit!\nSay not, then, that all these creeds are false,\nThe false ones ensnare hearts by the scent of truth.\nSay not that they are all erroneous fancies,\nThere is no fancy in the universe without some truth.\nTruth is the \"night of power \" 4 hidden amongst other nights,\nIn order to try the spirit of every night.\nNot every night is that of power, O youth,\nNor yet is every night quite void of power.\nIn the crowd of rag-wearers there is but one Faqir; 5\nSearch well and find out that true one.\nTell the wary and discerning believer\nTo distinguish the king from the beggar.\nIf there were no bad goods in the world,\nEvery fool might be a skilful merchant;\nFor then the hard art of judging goods would be easy.\nIf there were no faults, one man could judge as well as another.\nAgain, if all were faulty, skill would be profitless.\nIf all wood were common, there would be no aloes.\nHe who accepts everything as true is a fool,\nBut he who says all is false is a knave.\n*NOTES:\n1. See Koran xi. 63.\n2. Koran ix. 108.\n3. This is a proverb ascribed to Ali. It means, people are always losing wisdom and seeking it like a lost camel (Freytag, Arabum Proverbia, i. p. 385).\n4. The night on which the Koran was revealed.\n5. So in the Phaedo, \"Many are the wandbearers, but few the Mystics.\"\n\nSTORY XII.\nThe Four Hindustanis who censured one another.\nFour Hindustanis went to the mosque to say their prayers. Each one duly pronounced the Takbir, and was saying his prayers with great devotion, when the Mu'azzin happened to come in. One of them immediately called out, \"O Mu'azzin, have you yet called to prayer? It is time to do so.\" Then the second said to the speaker, \"Ah! you have spoken words unconnected with worship, and therefore, according to the Hadis, you have spoiled your prayers.\" 1 Thereupon the third scolded the last speaker, saying, \"O simpleton, why do you rebuke him? Rather rebuke yourself.\" Last of all, the fourth said, \"God be praised that I have not fallen into the same ditch as my three companions.\" The moral is, not to find fault with others, but rather, according to the proverb, 2 to be admonished by their bad example. Apropos of this proverb, a story is told of two prisoners captured by the tribe of Ghuz. The Ghuzians were about to put one of them to death, to frighten the other, and make him confess where the treasure was concealed, when the doomed man discovered their object, and said, \"O noble sirs, kill my companion, and frighten me instead.\"\n*NOTES:\n1. Mishkat ul Masabih, by Matthews, i. 205.\n2. Freytag, Arabum Proverbia, i. 628.\n\nSTORY XIII.\nThe Old Man and the Physician.\n\nAn old man complained to his physician that he suffered from headache. The physician replied, \"That is caused by old age.\" The old man next complained of a defect in his sight, and the physician again told him that his malady was due to old age. The old man went on to say that he suffered from pain in the back, from dyspepsia, from shortness of breath, from nervous debility, from inability to walk, and so on; and the physician replied that each of these ailments was likewise caused by old age. The old man, losing patience, said, \"O fool, know you not that God has ordained a remedy for every malady?\" The physician answered, \"This passion and choler are also symptoms of old age. Since all your members are weak, you have lost the power of self-control, and fly into a passion at every word.\"\nBad principles always produce bad acts.\nFools laud and magnify the mosque,\nWhile they strive to oppress holy men of heart.\nBut the former is mere form, the latter spirit and truth.\nThe only true mosque is that in the hearts of saints.\nThe mosque that is built in the hearts of the saints\nIs the place of worship of all, for God dwells there.\nSo long as the hearts of the saints are not afflicted,\nGod never destroys the nation.\nOur forefathers lifted their hands against the prophets;\nSeeing their bodies, they took them for ordinary men.\nIn you also abide the morals of those men of old;\nHow can you avoid fearing that you will act like them?\nThe morals of those unthankful ones dwell in you,\nYour urn will not always return unbroken from the well.\nSeeing that all these bad symptoms are seen in you,\nAnd that you are one with those men, how can you escape?\n\nSTORY XIV.\nThe Arab Carrier and the Scholar.\nAn Arab loaded his camel with two sacks, filling one with wheat and the second with sand, in order to balance the first. As he was proceeding on his way he met a certain tradition-monger, who questioned him about the contents of his sacks. On learning that one contained nothing but sand, he pointed out that the object might be attained much better by putting half the wheat in one sack and half in the other. On hearing this, the Arab was so struck by his sagacity that he conceived a great respect for him, and mounted him on his camel. Then he said, \"As you possess such great wisdom. I presume that you are a king or a Vazir, or at least a very rich and powerful noble.\" The theologian, replied, \"On the contrary. I am a very poor man; all the riches my learning has brought me are weariness and headaches, and I know not where to look for a loaf of bread.\" The Arab said, \"In that case get, off my camel and go your way, and suffer me to go mine, for I see your learning brings ill luck.\" The moral of the story is the worthlessness of mere human knowledge, and its inferiority to the divine knowledge proceeding from inspiration. This thesis is further illustrated by an account of the mighty works which were done by the saint Ibrahim bin Adham, through the divine knowledge that God had given him. Ibrahim was originally prince of Balkh, but renounced his kingdom and became a saint. One day he was sitting by the shore mending his cloak, when one of his former subjects passed by and marvelled to see him engaged in such a, mean occupation. The saint at once, by inspired knowledge, read his thoughts, and thus corrected his false impressions. He took the needle with which he was mending, his cloak and cast it into the sea. Then with a loud voice he cried out, \"O needle rise again from the midst of the sea and come back again into my hands.\" Without a moment's delay thousands of fishes rose to the surface of the sea, each bearing in its mouth a golden needle, and cried out, \"O Shaikh, take these needles of God!\" Ibrahim then turned to the noble, saying, \"Is not the kingdom of the heart better than the contemptible earthly kingdom I formerly possessed? What you have just seen is a very trifling sign of my spiritual power as it were, a mere leaf plucked to show the beauty of a garden. You have now caught the scent of this garden, and it ought to attract your soul to the garden itself, for you must know that scents have great influence, e.g., the scent of Joseph's coat, 1 which restored Jacob's sight, and the scents which were loved by the Prophet.\" 2\n*NOTES:\n1. Koran xii. 93.\n2. There is a Hedis: \"The Prophet loved perfumes and fair women and brightness of eyes in prayer.\"\n\nSTORY XV.\nThe Man who boasted that God did not punish\nhim for his sins, and Jethro's answer to him.\nThat person said in the time of Shu'aib (Jethro),\n\"God has seen many faults done by me;\nYea, how many sins and faults of mine has He seen,\nNevertheless of His mercy He punishes me not.\"\nGod Almighty spake in the ear of Shu'aib,\nAddressing him with an inner voice in answer thereto,\n\"Why hast thou said I have sinned so much,\nAnd God of His mercy has not punished my sins?\"\nThou sayest the very reverse of the truth, O fool!\nWandering from the way and lost in the desert!\nHow many times do I smite thee, and thou knowest not?\nThou art bound in my chains from head to foot.\nOn thy heart is rust on rust collected,\nSo thou art blind to mysteries.\nThy rust, layer on layer, O black kettle!\nMakes the aspect of thy inner parts foul.\nIf that smoke touched a new kettle,\nIt would show the smut, were it only as a grain of barley;\nFor everything is made manifest by its opposite,\nIn contrast with its whiteness that black shows foul.\nBut when the kettle is black, then afterwards\nWho can see on it the impression of the smoke?\nIf the blacksmith be a negro,\nHis face agrees in color with the smoke.\nBut if a man of Rum does blacksmith's work,\nHis face becomes grimed by the smoke fumes;\nThen he quickly perceives the impression of his fault,\nSo that he wails and cries 'O Allah!'\nWhen he is stubborn and follows his evil practices,\nHe casts dust in the eyes of his discernment.\nHe recks not of repentance, and, moreover, that sin\nBecomes dear to his heart, so that he becomes without faith,\nOld shame for sin and calling on God quit him,\nRust five layers deep settles on his mirror,\nRust spots begin to gnaw his iron,\nThe color in his jewel grows less and less.\nWhen you write on white paper,\nWhat is written is read at a glance;\nBut when you write on the face of a written page,\nIt is not plain, reading it is deceptive;\nFor that black is written on the top of other black,\nBoth the writings are illegible and senseless.\nOr if, in the third place, you write on the page,\nAnd then blacken it like an infidel's soul,\nThen what remedy but the aid of the Remedier?\nDespair is copper and sight its elixir.\nLay your despair before Him,\nThat you may escape from pain without medicine.\"\nWhen Shu'aib spoke these aphorisms to him,\nFrom that breath of the soul roses bloomed in his heart,\nHis soul heard the revelations of heaven;\nHe said, \"If He has punished me, where is the sign of it?\"\nShu'aib said, \"O Lord, he repels my arguments,\nHe seeks for a sign of that punishment.\"\nThe Veiler of sins replied, \"I will tell him no secrets,\nSave only one, in order to try him.\nOne sign that I punish him is this,\nThat he observes obedience and fasting and prayer,\nAnd devotions and almsgiving, and so on,\nYet never feels the least expansion of soul.\nHe performs the devotions and acts enjoined by law,\nYet derives not an atom of relish from them.\nOutward devotion is sweet to him, spirit is not sweet,\nNuts in plenty, but no kernel in any of them.\nRelish is needed for devotions to bear fruit,\nKernels are needed that seeds may yield trees.\nHow can seeds without kernels become trees?\nForm without soul (life) is only a dream.\"\n\nSTORY XVI.\nThe Gluttonous Sufi.\nIn a certain convent there lived a Sufi whose conduct gave just offence to the brethren. They brought him before their Shaikh and thus accused him, \"This Sufi has three very bad qualities; he babbles exceedingly like a bell, at his meals he eats more than twenty men and when he sleeps he is as one of the Seven Sleepers.\" The Shaikh then admonished him, insisting on the obligation of keeping to the golden mean; and reminding him that even the prophet Moses 1 was once rebuked by Khizr for speaking to excess. But the delinquent excused himself on the grounds that the mean is relative, what is excess in one man being moderation in another, that he who is led by the spirit is no longer subject to the outward law, and that, the \"inner voice,\" which rules such an one s conduct, is its own evidence.\nThe mean is relative.\n\nHe said, \"Though the path of the mean is wisdom,\nYet is this same mean also relative.\nThe water which is insufficient for a camel\nIs like an ocean to a mouse.\nWhoso has four loaves as his daily allowance,\nWhether he eat two or three, he observes the mean.\nBut if he eat all four he transgresses the mean,\nA very slave to greed, and voracious as a duck.\nWhoso has an appetite for ten loaves,\nKnow, though he eat six, he observes the mean.\nIf I have an appetite for fifty loaves,\nWhile you can manage only six, we are not on a par.\nYou are wearied with ten prostrations in prayer,\nWhilst I can endure five hundred.\nSuch an one goes barefoot to the Ka'ba,\nWhilst another faints with going to the mosque.\"\nThe ecstatic state which exalts the subject of it above law.\n\"At times my state resembles a dream,\nMy dreaming seems to them infidelity.\nKnow my eyes sleep, but my heart is awake;\nMy body, though torpid, is instinct with energy.\nThe Prophet said, 'Mine eyes sleep,\nBut my heart is awake with the Lord of mankind.'\nYour eyes are awake and your heart fast asleep,\nMy eyes are closed, and my heart at the 'open door.'\nMy heart has other five senses of its own;\nThese senses of my heart view the two worlds.\nLet not a weakling like you censure me,\nWhat, seems night to you is broad day to me;\nWhat seems a prison to you is a garden to me.\nBusiest occupation is rest to me.\nYour feet are in the mire, to me, mire is rose,\nWhat to you is funeral wailing is marriage drum to me.\nWhile I seem on earth, abiding with you in the house,\nI ascend like Saturn to the seventh heaven.\n'Tis not I who companion with you, 'tis my shadow;\nMy exaltation transcends your thoughts,\nBecause I have transcended thought,\nYea, I have sped beyond reach of thought.\nI am lord of thought, not overlorded by thought,\nAs the builder is lord of the building.\nAll creatures are enslaved to thought;\nFor this cause are they sad at heart and sorrowful.\nI send myself on an embassy to thought,\nAnd, at will, spring back again from thought.\nI am as the bird of heaven and thought as the fly,\nHow can the fly lend a helping hand to me?\nWhoso has in him a spark of the light of Omnipotence,\nHowever much he eats, say ' Eat on;' 'tis lawful to him.\"\nTo the spiritual man the \"inner voice\" is its\nown evidence, and needs no other proof.\n\"If you are a true lover of my soul,\nThis truth-fraught saying of mine is no vain pretence,\n'Though I talk half the night I am superior to you;'\nAnd again, 'Fear not the night; here am I, your kinsman.'\nThese two assertions of mine will both seem true to you\nThe moment you recognize the voice of your kinsman.\nSuperiority and kinsmanship are both mere assertions,\nYet both are recognized for truth by men of clear wit.\nThe nearness of the voice proves to such an one\nThat the voice proceeds from a friend who is near.\nThe sweetness of the kinsman's voice, too, O beloved,\nProves the veracity of that kinsman.\nBut the uninspired fool who from ignorance\nCannot tell the voice of a stranger from a friend's,\nTo him the friend's saying seems a vain pretension,\nHis ignorance is the material cause of his disbelief.\nTo the wise, whose hearts are enlightened,\nThe mere sound of that voice proves its truth.\"\n\"When you say to a thirsty man, 'Come quickly;\nThis is water in the cup, take and drink it,'\nDoes the thirsty man say, 'This is a vain pretension;\nGo, remove yourself from me, O vain pretender,\nOr proceed to give proofs and evidence\nThat this is generic water, and concrete water thereof'?\nOr when a mother cries to her sucking babe,\n'Come, O son, I am thy mother,'\nDoes the babe answer, 'O mother, show a proof\nThat I shall find comfort from taking thy milk'?\nIn the hearts of every sect that has a taste of the truth\nThe sight and the voice of prophets work miracles.\nWhen the prophets raise their cry to the outward ear,\nThe souls of each sect bow in devotion within;\nBecause never in this world hath the soul's ear\nHeard from any man the like of that cry.\nThat poor man in that strange sweet voice\nRecognizes the voice of God, 'Verily I am nigh.'\" 2\n*NOTES:\n1. Koran xviii. 77.\n2. \"And when my servants ask thee concerning me then will I be nigh unto them. I will answer the cry of him that crieth, when he crieth unto me.\" (Koran ii. l82).\n\nSTORY XVII.\nThe Tree of Life.\nThe preceding story is followed by a short anecdote of the infants of the Virgin Mary and the mother of John the Baptist leaping in their mothers' wombs, 1 and in reply to matter of fact cavillers and questioners of this anecdote, the poet says we must look at its spirit and essential basis rather than its outward form. This introduces the story of the tree of life. A certain wise man related that in Hindustan there was a tree of such wonderful virtue that whosoever ate of its fruit lived forever. Hearing this, a king deputed one of his courtiers to go in quest of it. The courtier accordingly proceeded to Hindustan, and traveled all over that country, inquiring of every one he met where this tree was to be found. Some of these persons professed their entire ignorance, others joked him, and others gave him false information; and, finally, he had to return to his country with his mission unaccomplished. He then, as a last resource, betook himself to the sage who had first spoken of the tree, and begged for further information about it, and the sage replied to him as follows:\nThe Shaikh laughed, and said to him, \"O friend,\nThis is the tree of knowledge, O knowing one;\nVery high, very fine, very expansive,\nThe very water of life from the circumfluent ocean.\nThou hast run after form, O ill-informed one,\nWherefore thou lackest the fruit of the tree of substance.\nSometimes it is named tree, sometimes sun,\nSometimes lake, and sometimes cloud.\n'Tis one, though it has thousands of manifestations;\nIts least manifestation is eternal life!\nThough 'tis one, it has a thousand manifestations,\nThe names that fit that one are countless.\nThat one is to thy personality a father,\nIn regard to another person He may be a son.\nIn relation to another He may be wrath and vengeance,\nIn relation to another, mercy and goodness.\nHe has thousands of names, yet is One,\nAnswering to all of His descriptions, yet indescribable.\nEvery one who seeks names, if he is a man of credulity,\nLike thee, remains hopeless and frustrated of his aim.\nWhy cleavest thou to this mere name of tree,\nSo that thou art utterly balked and disappointed?\nPass over names and look to qualities,\nSo that qualities may lead thee to essence!\nThe differences of sects arise from His names;\nWhen they pierce to His essence they find His peace!\"\nThis story is followed by another anecdote illustrative of the same thesis that attending merely to names and outward forms, rather than to the spirit and essence of religion, leads men into error and delusion. Four persons, a Persian, an Arab, a Turk, and a Greek, were traveling together, and received a present of a dirhem. The Persian said he would buy \"angur\" with it, the Arab said he would buy \"inab,\" while the Turk and the Greek were for buying \"uzum\" and \"astaphil\" (staphyle), respectively. Now all these words mean one and the same thing, viz. \"grapes;\" but, owing to their ignorance of each other's languages, they fancied they each wanted to buy something different, and accordingly a violent quarrel arose between them. At last a wise man who knew all their languages came up and explained to them that they were all wishing for one and the same thing.\n*NOTES:\n1. Luke i. 41.\n\nSTORY XVIII.\nThe Young Ducks who were brought up under a Hen.\nAlthough a domestic fowl may have taken thee,\nWho art a duckling, under her wing and nurtured thee,\nThy mother was a duck of that ocean.\nThy nurse was earthy, and her wing dry land.\nThe longing for the ocean which fills thy heart,\nThat natural longing of thy soul comes from thy mother.\nThy longing for dry land comes to thee from thy nurse;\nQuit thy nurse, for she will lead thee astray.\nLeave thy nurse on the dry land and push on,\nEnter the ocean of real Being, like the ducks!\nThough thy nurse may frighten thee away from water,\nDo thou fear not, but haste on into the ocean!\nThou art a duck, and flourishest on land and water,\nAnd dost not, like a domestic fowl, dig up the house.\nThou art a king of \"the sons of Adam honored by God,\" l\nAnd settest foot alike on sea and land;\nFor impress on thy mind, \"We have carried them by sea,\"\nBefore the words, \"We have carried them by land.\"\nThe angels go not on dry land,\nAnd the animals know nothing of the sea;\nThou in body art an animal, in thy soul an angel;\nHence thou goest both upon earth and on heaven.\"\nHence to outward view \"He is a man like you,\" 2\nWhile to his sharp-seeing heart \"it hath been revealed.\"\nHis earthy form has fallen on earth,\nHis spirit revolving above highest heaven.\nO boy, we are all of us waterfowl,\nThe sea knows full well our language.\nSolomon 3 is, as it were, that sea, and we as the birds;\nIn Solomon we hold our course to eternity.\nAlong with Solomon plunge into the ocean, 4\nThen, like David, the water will make us coats-of-mail.\nThat Solomon is present to every one,\nBut negligence closes their eyes and bewitches them.\nHence, through ignorance, sloth, and folly,\nThough he stands hard by us, we are shut off from him.\nThe noise of thunder makes the head of the thirsty ache;\nWhen he knows not that it unlocks the blessed showers,\nHis eyes are fixed on the running stream,\nUnwitting of the sweetness of the rain from heaven.\nHe urges the steed of his desire towards the caused,\nAnd perforce remains shut off from the Causer.\nWhoso beholds the Causer face to face,\nHow can he set his heart on things caused on earth?\n*NOTES:\n1. Koran xvi. 72: \"And now have we honored the sons of Adam, by sea and by land have we carried them.\"\n2. Koran xviii. 110: \"Say, in sooth I am only a man like you. It hath been revealed unto me that your God is one only God.\"\n3. Koran xxvii. 16: \"Solomon said, O men, we have been taught the speech of birds.\"\n4. Koran xxvii. 44 and xxi. 80.",
    "project_translation": false,
    "license": null,
    "methodology_url": null
  }
}