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  "work": {
    "slug": "rumi-masnavi",
    "name": "Masnavi-i-Manavi (Rumi)"
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      "slug": "sufism",
      "name": "Sufi Poets",
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  "chapter": {
    "num": 5,
    "slug": "05-the-masnavi-book-v",
    "title": "The Masnavi Book V",
    "of": 6,
    "words": 18054,
    "text": "## The Masnavi Book V\n\n\n\nTHE SPIRITUAL COUPLETS\nOF\nMAULANA JALALU-'D-DlN MUHAMMAD RUMI\n\nBook V.\n\nSTORY I.\nThe Prophet and his Infidel Guest.\n\nAFTER the usual address to Husamu-'d-Din follows a comment on the precept addressed to Abraham, \"Take four birds and draw them towards thee, and cut them in pieces.\"1 The birds are explained to be the duck of gluttony, the cock of concupiscence, the peacock of ambition and ostentation, and the crow of bad desires, and this is made the text of several stories. Beginning with gluttony, the poet tells the following story to illustrate the occasion of the Prophet's uttering the saying, Infidels eat with seven bellies, but the faithful with one.\" One day some infidels begged food and lodging of the Prophet. The Prophet was moved by their entreaties, and desired each of his disciples to take one of the infidels to his house and feed and lodge him, remarking that it was their duty to show kindness to strangers at his command, as much as to do battle with his foes. So each disciple selected one of the infidels and carried him off to his house; but there was one big and coarse man, a very giant Og, whom no one would receive, and the Prophet took him to his own house. In his house the Prophet had seven she-goats to supply his family with milk, and the hungry infidel devoured all the milk of those seven goats, to say nothing of bread and other viands. He left not a drop for the Prophet's family, who were therefore much annoyed with him, and when he retired to his chamber one of the servant-maids locked him in. During the night the infidel felt very unwell in consequence of having overeaten himself, and tried to get out into the open air, but was unable to do so, owing to the door being locked. Finally, he was very sick, and defiled his bedding. In the morning he was extremely ashamed, and the moment the door was opened he ran away. The Prophet was aware of what had happened, but let the man escape, so as not to put him to shame. After he had gone the servants saw the mess he had made, and informed the Prophet of it; but the Prophet made light of it, and said he would clean it up himself. His friends were shocked at the thought of the Prophet soiling his sacred hands with such filth, and tried to prevent him, but he persisted in doing it, calling to mind the text, \"As thou livest, O Muhammad, they were bewildered by drunkenness,\" 2 and being, in fact, urged to it by a divine command. While he was engaged in the work the infidel came back to look for a talisman which he had left behind him in his hurry to escape, and seeing the Prophet's occupation he burst into tears, and bewailed his own filthy conduct. The Prophet consoled him, saying that weeping and penitence would purge the offence, for God says, \"Little let them laugh, and much let them weep;\" 3 and again, \"Lend God a liberal loan;\" 4 and again, \"God only desireth to put away filthiness from you as His household, and with cleansing to cleanse you.\" 5 Prophet then urged him to bear witness that God was the Lord, even as was done by the sons of Adam, 6 explained how the outward acts of prayer and fasting bear witness of the spiritual light within. After being nurtured on this spiritual food the infidel confessed the truth of Islam, and renounced his infidelity and gluttony. He returned thanks to the Prophet for bringing him to the knowledge of the true faith and regenerating him, even as 'Isa had regenerated Lazarus. The Prophet was satisfied of his sincerity, and asked him to sup with him again. At supper he drank only half the portion of milk yielded by one goat, and steadfastly refused to take more, saying he felt perfectly satisfied with the little he had already taken. The other guests marveled much to see his gluttony so soon cured, and were led to reflect on the virtues of the spiritual food administered to him by the Prophet.\nOutward acts bear witness of the state of the heart within.\nPrayer and fasting and pilgrimage and holy war\nBear witness of the faith of the heart.\nGiving alms and offerings and quitting avarice\nAlso bear witness of the secret thoughts.\nSo, a table spread for guests serves as a plain sign,\nSaying, \"O guest, I am your sincere well-wisher.\"\nSo, offerings and presents and oblations\nBear witness, saying, \"I am well pleased with you.\"\nEach of these men lavishes his wealth or pains,\nWhat means it but to say, \"I have a virtue within me,\nYea, a virtue of piety or liberality,\nWhereof my oblations and fasting bear witness\"?\nFasting proclaims that he abstains from lawful food,\nAnd that therefore he doubtless avoids unlawful food.\nAnd his alms say, \"He gives away his own goods;\nIt is therefore plain that he does not rob others.\"\nIf he acts thus from fraud, his two witnesses\n(Fasting and alms) are rejected in God's court;\nIf the hunter scatters grain\nNot out of mercy, but to catch game;\nIf the cat keeps fast, and remains still\nIn fasting only to entrap unwary birds;\nMaking hundreds of people suspicious,\nAnd giving a bad name to men who fast and are liberal;\nYet the grace of God, despite this fraud,\nMay ultimately purge him from all this hypocrisy.\nMercy may prevail over vengeance, and give the hypocrite\nSuch light as is not possessed by the full moon.\nGod may purge his dealings from that hypocrisy,\nAnd in mercy wash him clean of that defilement.\nIn order that the pardoning grace of God may be seen,\nGod pardons all sins that need pardon.\nWherefore God rains down water from the sign Pisces,\nTo purify the impure from their impurities. 7\nThus acts and words are witnesses of the mind within,\nFrom these two deduce inferences as to the thoughts.\nWhen your vision cannot penetrate within,\nInspect the water voided by the sick man.\nActs and words resemble the sick man's water,\nWhich serves as evidence to the physician of the body.\nBut the physician of the spirit penetrates the soul,\nAnd thence ascertains the man's faith.\nSuch an one needs not the evidence of fair acts and words\n\"Beware of such, they spy out the heart.\"\nRequire this evidence of act and word only from one\nWho is not joined to the divine Ocean like a stream.\nBut the light of the traveler arrived at the goal,\nVerily that light fills deserts and wastes.\nThat witness of his is exempt from bearing witness,\nAnd from all trouble and risk and good works.\nSince the brilliance of that jewel beams forth,\nIt is exempted from these obligations.\nWherefore require not from him act and word evidence,\nBecause both worlds through him bloom like roses.\nWhat is this evidence but manifestation of hidden things,\nWhether it be evidence in word, or deed, or otherwise?\nAccidents serve only to manifest the secret essence;\nThe essential quality abides, and accidents pass away.\nThis mark of gold endures not the touchstone,\nBut only the gold itself, genuine and undoubted.\nThese prayers and holy war and fasting\nWill not endure, only the noble soul endures.\nThe soul exhibits acts and words of this sort,\nThen it rubs its substance on the touchstone of God's command,\nSaying, \"My faith is true, behold my witnesses!\"\nBut witnesses are open to suspicion.\nKnow that witnesses must be purified,\nAnd their purification is sincerity, on that you may depend.\nThe witness of word consists in speaking the truth,\nThe witness of acts in keeping one's promises.\nIf the witness of word lie, its evidence is rejected,\nAnd if the witness of act play false, it is rejected.\nYour words and acts must be without self-contradiction\nIn order to be accepted without question.\n\"Your aims are different,\" 8 and you contradict yourselves,\nYou sew by day, and tear to pieces by night.\nHow can God listen to such contradictory witness,\nUnless He be pleased to decide on it in mercy?\nAct and word manifest the secret thoughts and mind,\nBoth of them expose to view the veiled secret.\nWhen your witnesses are purified they are accepted,\nOtherwise they are arrested and kept in durance.\nThey enter into conflict with you, O stiff-necked one;\n\"Stand aloof and wait for them, for they too wait.\" 9\nPrayers for spiritual enlightenment.\nO God, who hast no peer, bestow Thy favor upon me;\nSince Thou hast with this discourse put a ring in my ear,\nTake me by the ear, and draw me into that holy assembly\nWhere Thy saints in ecstasy drink of Thy pure wine!\nNow that Thou hast caused me to smell its perfume,\nWithhold not from me that musky wine, O Lord of faith\nOf Thy bounty all partake, both men and women,\nThou art ungrudging in bounties, O Hearer of prayer.\nPrayers are granted by Thee before they are uttered,\nThou openest the door to admit hearts every moment!\nHow many letters Thou writest with Thy Almighty pen!\nThrough marveling thereat stones become as wax.\nThou writest the Nun of the brow, the Sad of the eye,\nAnd the Jim of the ear, to amaze reason and sense.\nThese letters exercise and perplex reason;\nWrite on, O skilful Fair-writer!\nImprinting every moment on Not-being the fair forms\nOf the world of ideals, to confound all thought! 10\nYea, copying thereon the fair letters of the page of ideals,\nTo wit, eye and brow and moustache and mole!\nFor me, I will be a lover of Not-being, not of existence,\nBecause the beloved of Not-being is more blessed. 11\nGod made reason a reader of all these letters,\nTo suggest to it reflections on that outpouring of grace. 12\nReason, like Gabriel, learns day by day\nIts daily portion from the \"Indelible Tablet.\" 13\nBehold the letters written without hands on Not-being!\nBehold the perplexity of mankind at those letters!\nEvery one is bewildered by these thoughts,\nAnd digs for hidden treasure in hope to find it.\nThis bewilderment of mankind as to their true aims is compared to the bewilderment of men in the dark looking in all directions for the Qibla, and recalls the text, \"O the misery that rests upon my servants.\" 14\nThen follow reflections on the sacrifice by Abraham of the peacock of ambition and ostentation. Next comes a discourse on the thesis that all men can recognize the mercies of God and the wrath of God; but God's mercies are often hidden in His chastisements, and vice versa, and it is only men of deep spiritual discernment who can recognize acts of mercy and acts of wrath concealed in their opposites. The object of this concealment is to try and test men's dispositions; according to the text, \"To prove which of you will be most righteous in deed.\" 15\n*NOTES:\n1. Koran ii. 262.\n2. Koran xv. 72.\n3. Koran ix. 33.\n4. Koran lxxiii. 20.\n5. Koran xxxiii. 33.\n6. Koran vii. 171.\n7. \"Islam is the baptism of God\" (Koran ii. 132).\n8. Koran xcii. 4.\n9. Koran xxxii. 30. i.e., Wait thou for their punishment, as they wait for thy downfall (Rodwell).\n10. Here we have another Platonic doctrine. \"Some say the belief of the Sufis is the same as that of the Ishraqin (Platonists).\" Dabistan i Muzahib, by Shea and Troyer, iii. 281.\n11. I.e., I will recognize the nonentity of all this phenomenal being, and court self-annihilation.\n12. The Bulaq translator renders An naward thus.\n13. The \"Indelible Tablet\" (of God's decrees) is here applied to the Logos-the channel through whom God renews the \"world of creation\" day by day.\n14. Koran xxxvi. 29.\n15. Koran lxvii. 2.\n\nSTORY II.\nThe Arab and his Dog.\nThe doctrine of the Mu'tazilites, 1 mentioned, that all men's intellects are alike and equal at birth, is again controverted, and the poet dwells on the essential differences which characterize the intellects akin to Universal Reason or the Logos, and those swayed by partial or carnal reason; the former, like the children of Israel, seeking exaltation through self-abasement; and the others, like Pharaoh, running after worldly rank and power, to their own destruction. In order to make probation of men, as already explained, God fills the world with deceptions, 2 making apparent blessings destructive to us, and apparent evils salutary. On the other hand, if men try to deceive God, they fail signally. Hypocritical weeping and wailing like that of Joseph's brethren is at once detected by God. Thus a certain Arab had a dog to which he was much attached; but one day the dog died of hunger. He at once began to weep and wail, and disturbed the whole neighborhood by his ostentatious grief One of the neighbors came and inquired into the matter, and on hearing that the dog had died of hunger, he asked the Arab why he had not fed him from the wallet of food which he had in his hand. The Arab said that he had collected this food to support himself, and made it a principle not to part with any of it to any one who could not pay for it; but that, as his tears cost him nothing, he was pouring them forth in token of the sorrow he felt for his dog's death. The neighbor, on hearing this, rebuked him for his hypocrisy, and went his way. Then follows a commentary on the text, \"Almost would the infidels strike thee down with their very looks when they hear the reading of the Koran.\" 3\n*NOTES:\n1. The Mu'tazilites were one of the principal unorthodox sects. See Sale, Prelim. Disc., p. 112.\n2. \"Of them who devise stratagems, God is beast\" (Koran iii. 47).\n3. Koran lxviii. 51.\n\nSTORY III.\nThe Sage and the Peacock.\nA sage went out to till his field, and saw a peacock busily engaged in destroying his own plumage with his beak. At seeing this insane self-destruction the sage could not refrain himself, but cried out to the peacock to forbear from mutilating himself and spoiling his beauty in so wanton a manner. The peacock then explained to him that the bright plumage which he admired so much was a fruitful source of danger to its unfortunate owner, as it led to his being constantly pursued by hunters, whom he had no strength to contend against; and he had accordingly decided on ridding himself of it with his own beak, and making himself so ugly that no hunter would in future care to molest him. The poet proceeds to point out that worldly cleverness and accomplishments and wealth endanger man's spiritual life, like the peacock's plumage; but, nevertheless, they are appointed for our probation, and without such trials there can be no virtue.\n\"There is no monkery in Islam.\"1\nTear not thy plumage off it cannot be replaced;\nDisfigure not thy face in wantonness, O fair one!\nThat face which is bright as the forenoon sun,\nTo disfigure it were a grievous sin.\n'Twere paganism to mar such a face as thine!\nThe moon itself would weep to lose sight of it!\nKnowest thou not the beauty of thine own face?\nQuit this temper that leads thee to war with thyself!\nIt is the claws of thine own foolish thoughts\nThat in spite wound the face of thy quiet soul.\nKnow such thoughts to be claws fraught with poison,\nWhich score deep wounds on the face of thy soul.\nRend not thy plumage off, but avert thy heart from it\nFor hostility between them is the law of this holy war.\nWere there no hostility, that war would be impossible.\nlladst thou no lust, obedience to the law could not be. 2\nHadst thou no concupiscence there could be no abstinence.\nWhere no antagonist, what need is there of armies?\nAh! make not thyself an eunuch, 3 not a monk,\nBecause chastity is mortgaged to lust.\nWithout lust denial of lust is impossible\nNo man can display bravery against the dead.\nGod says, \"Expend;\" 4 wherefore earn money.\nSince expenditure is impossible without previous gain?\nAlthough the passage contains only the word \"Expend,\"\nRead \"Acquire first, and then expend.\"\nIn like manner, when the King of kings says \"Abstain,\" 5\nIt implies an object of desire wherefrom to abstain.\nAgain, \"Eat ye,\" is said recognising the snares of lust,\nAnd afterwards, \" Exceed not,\" 6 to enjoin temperance.\nWhen there is no subject,\nThe existence of a predicate is not possible. 7\nWhen thou endurest not the pains of abstinence\nAnd fulfillest not the terms, thou gainest no reward.\nHow easy those terms! how abundant that reward!\nA reward that enchants the heart and charms the soul!\nThis is followed by the admonition that the only way to be safe from one's internal enemies is to annihilate self, a,nd to be absorbed in the eternity of God, as the light of the stars is lost in the light of the noonday sun. Everything but God is at once preyed on by others, and itself preys on others, like the fowl which, when catching a worm, was itself caught by a cat. Men are so intent on their own low objects of pursuit that they see not their foes who are trying to make them their prey. Thus it is said, \"Before them have we set a barrier, and behind them a barrier, so that they shall not see.\" 8 Persons who lust after the vile pleasures of this world, and desire long life, not to serve God, but to satisfy their own carnal lusts, resemble the crow slain by Abraham, because he only lived for the sake of carrion; or Iblis, who prayed to be respited till the day of judgment, not for the purpose of reforming himself but only to do mischief to mankind. 9\nPrayers to God to change our base inclinations and give us higher aspirations.\nO Thou that changest earth into gold,\nAnd out of other earth madest the father of mankind,\nThy business is changing things and bestowing favors,\nMy business is mistakes and forgetfulness and error.\nChange my mistakes and forgetfulness to knowledge;\nI am altogether vile, make me temperate and meek.\nO Thou that convertest salt earth into bread,\nAnd bread again into the life of men;\nThou who madest the erring soul a guide to men,\nAnd him that erred from the way a prophet; 10\nThou makest some earth-born men as heaven,\nAnd muitipliest heaven-born saints on earth!\nBut whoso seeks his water of life in worldly joys,\nTo him comes death quicker than to the rest.\nThe eyes of the heart which behold the heavens\nSee that the Almighty Alchemist is ever working here.\nMankind are ever being changed, and God's elixir\nJoins the body's garment without aid of needle.\nOn the day that you entered upon existence,\nYou were first fire, or earth, or air.\nIf you had continued in that, your original state,\nHow could you have arrived at this dignity of humanity?\nBut through change your first existence remained not\nIn lien thereof God gave you a better existence\nIn like manner He will give you thousands of existences,\nOne after another, the succeeding ones better than the former.\nRegard your original state, not the mean states,\nFor these mean states remove you from your origin.\nAs these mean states increase, union recedes;\nAs they decrease, the unction of union increases.\nFrom knowing means and causes holy bewilderment fails;\nYea, the bewilderment that leads you to God's presence.\nYou have obtained these existences after annihilations;\nWherefore, then, do you shrink from annihilation?\nWhat harm have these annihilations done you\nThat you cling so to present existence, O simpleton?\nSince the latter of your states were better than the former,\nSeek annihilation and adore change of state.\nYou have already seen hundreds of resurrections\nOccur every moment from your origin till now;\nOne from the inorganic state to the vegetive state,\nFrom the vegetive state to the animal state of trial;\nThence again to rationality and good discernment;\nAgain you will rise from this world of sense and form.\nAh! O crow, give up this life and live anew!\nIn view of God's changes cast away your life!\nChoose the new, give up the old,\nFor each single present year is better than three past.\nThis is followed by a commentary on the saying of the Prophet, \"Pity the pious man who falls into sin, and the rich man who falls into poverty, and the wise man who falls into the company of fools.\" This is illustrated by an anecdote of a young deer who was placed in the asses stable, and jeered at and maltreated by them. This suggests.\n*NOTES:\n1. A Hadis.\n2. Cp. Bp. Butler, \"On a state of probation as implying trial and danger\" (Analogy, Chap. iv. Pt. 1).\n3. Probably referring to Origin.\n4. Koran ii. 264.\n5. Koran iii. 200.\n6. Koran vi. 142: \"Eat of their fruit, but be not prodigal, and exceed not.\"\n7. Or, \"If there be no supporter, there can be nothing supported.\"\n8. Koran xxxvi. 8.\n9. Koran vii. 13.\n10. Koran xciii. 7.\n\nSTORY IV.\nMuhammad Khwarazm Shah and the Rafizis of Sabzawar.\nMuhammad Shah was the last prince but one of the Khwarazm dynasty of Balkh, to which family both the poet's mother and grandmother belonged. He was the reigning prince in AD. 1209, the year in which the poet's father fled from Balkh, and was defeated by Chingiz Khan a year or two later. In one of his campaigns Muhammad Shah captured the city of Sabzawar, in Khorasan, which city as inhabited by Rafizis or rank Shi'as, naturally most obnoxious to a Sunni prince claiming descent from the first Khahif Abu Bakr. After the city was taken the inhabitants came out, and proceeded with all humility to beg their lives, offering to pay any amount of ransom and tribute that he might impose upon them. But the prince replied that he would spare their lives only on one condition, viz., that they produced from Sabzawar a man bearing the name Abu Bakr. They represented to him that it would be impossible to find in the whole city a single man bearing a name so hateful to the Shi'as; but the prince was inexorable, and refused to alter the conditions. So they went and searched all the neighbourhood, and at last found a traveler lying at the roadside at the point of death, who bore the name of Abu Bakr. As he was unable to walk, they placed him on a bier and carried him into the king's presence. The king reproached them for their contempt and neglect of this pious Sunni, the only true heart amongst them, and reminded them of the saying of the Prophet, \"God regards not your outward show and your wealth, but your hearts and your deeds.\" In this parable, says the poet, Sabzawar is the world, the poor Sunni the man of God, despised and rejected of men, and the king is God Almighty, who seeks a true heart amongst evil men.\nSatan's snares for mankind.\nThus spake cursed Iblis to the Almighty,\n\"I want a mighty trap to catch human game withal.\"\nGod gave him gold and silver and troops of horses\nSaying, \"You can catch my creatures with these.\"\nIblis said, \"Bravo!\" but at the same time hung his lip,\nAnd frowned sourly like a bitter orange.\nThen God offered gold and jewels from precious mines\nTo that laggard in the faith,\nSaying, \"Take these other traps, O cursed one.\"\nBut Iblis said, \"Give me more, O blessed Defender.\"\nGod gave him succulent and sweet and costly wines,\nAnd also store of silken garments.\nBut Iblis said, \" O Lord, I want more aids than these,\nIn order to bind men in my twisted rope\nSo firmly that Thy adorers, who are valiant men\nMay not, man-like, break my bonds asunder.\"\nWhen at last God showed him the beauty of women,\nWhich bereaves men of reason and self-control,\nThen Iblis clapped his hands and began to dance,\nSaying, \"Give me these; I shall quickly prevail with these!\"\nThis is followed by comments on the text, \"Of goodliest fabric we created man, and then brought him down to the lowest of the low, saving those who believe and do the things that are right;\" 1 and on the verses,\n\"If thou goest the road, they will show thee the road;\nIf thou becomest naught, they will turn thee to being.\"\n*NOTES:\n1. Koran xcv. 4.\n\nSTORY V.\nThe Man who claimed to be a Prophet.\nA man cried out to the people, \"I am a prophet; yea, the most excellent of the prophets.\" The people seized him by the collar, saying, \"How are you any more a prophet than we are?\" He replied, \"Ye came to earth from the spirit-world as sleeping children, seeing nothing of the way; but I came hither with my eyes open, and marked all the stages of the way like a guide.\" On this they led him before the king, and begged the king to punish him. The king, seeing that he was very infirm, took pity on him, and led him apart and asked him where his home was. The man replied, \"O king, my home is in the house of peace (heaven), and I am come thence into this house of reproach.\" The king then asked him what he had been eating to make him rave as he did, and he said if he lived on mere earthly bread he should not have claimed to be a prophet. His preaching was entirely thrown away on worldly men, who only desire to hear news of gold or women, 1 and are annoyed with all who speak to them of the eternal life to come. They cleave to the present life so fast that they hate those who tell them of another. They say, \"Ye are telling us old fables and raving idly;\" and when they see pious men prospering they envy them, and, like Satan, become more opposed to them. God said, \"What thinkest thou of him who holdeth back a servant of God when he prayeth? \" 2\nThe king then said to him, \"What is this inspiration of yours, and what profit do you derive from it?\" The man answered, \"What profit is there that I do not derive from it? I grant I am not rich in worldly wealth, yet the inspiration God teaches me is surely as precious as that which He taught the bees. 3 God taught them to make wax and honey, and He teaches me nobler things than these. Whoso has his face reddened with celestial wine is a prophet of like disposition with Muhammad, and whoso is unaffected by that spiritual drink is to be accounted an enemy to God and man.\"\nThe Prophet's prayer for the envious people.\nO Thou that givest aliment and power and stability,\nSet free the people from their instability.\nTo the soul that is bent double by envy\nGive uprightness in the path of duty,\nGive them self-control, \"weigh down their scales,\" 4\nRelease them from the arts of deceivers.\nRedeem them from envying, O gracious One,\nThat through envy they be not stoned like Iblis. 5\nEven in their fleeting prosperity, see how the people\nBurn up wealth and men through envy!\nSee the kings who lead forth their armies\nTo slay their own people from envy!\nLovers of sweethearts have conceived jealousy,\nAnd attempted one another's lives,\nRead \" Wais and Ramin\" and \"Khosrau and Shirin\"\nTo see what these fools have done to one another.\nLovers and beloved have both perished;\nAnd not themselves only, but their love as well.\n'Tis God alone who agitates these nonentities\nMaking one nonentity fall in love with another.\nIn the heart that is no heart envy comes to a head,\nThus Being troubles nonentity.\nThis is followed by an anecdote of a lover who recounted to his mistress all the services he had done, and all the toils he had undergone for her sake, and inquired if there was anything else he could do to testify the sincerity of his love. His mistress replied, \"All these things you have done are but the branches of love; you have not yet attained to the root, which is to give up life itself for the sake of your beloved.\" The lover accordingly gave up his life, and enjoyed eternal fruition of his love, according to the text, \"O thou soul which art at rest, return to thy Lord, pleased, and pleasing Him.\" 6\nThis is followed by a statement of the doctrine of the jurist Abu hanifa, to whose school the poet belonged, that weeping, even aloud, during prayer does not render the prayers void, provided that the weeping be caused by thoughts of the world to come, and not by thoughts of this present world. 7 And, apparently in allusion to the name Abu Hanifa, the poet recalls the text, \"They followed the faith of Abraham, the orthodox\" (Hanifun). 8\n*NOTES:\n1. Koran iii. 22.\n2. Koran xcvi. 9.\n3. Koran xvi. 70.\n4. Koran ci. 5.\n5. Koran xv. 17. The sin of Iblis was his envy of Adam.\n6. Koran lxxxix. 27\n7. Mishkat ul Masabih, i. p. 209, note.\n8. Koran iv. 124.\n\nSTORY VI.\nThe Disciple who blindly imitated his Shaikh.\nAn ignorant youth entered an assembly of pious persons who were being addressed by a holy Shaikh. He saw the Shaikh weeping copiously, and in mere blind and senseless imitation he copied the Shaikh's behavior, and wept as copiously himself, though he understood not a word of the discourse. In fact, he behaved just like a deaf man who sees those around him laughing, and laughs himself out of compliment to them, though he knows not the subject of their merriment, and is obliged to have it explained to him before he can laugh again with real perception of the joke. After he had wept in this ignorant way for some time he made due obeisance to the Shaikh, and took his departure. But one of the Shaikh's true disciples, being jealous for the honor of his master, followed him, and thus addressed him, \"I adjure you by Allah that you go not and say, 'I saw the Shaikh weeping, and I too wept like him.' Your ignorant and mere imitative weeping is totally unlike the weeping of that holy saint. Such weeping as his is only possible to one who has, like him, waged the spiritual war for thirty years. His weeping is not caused by worldly grieves, but by the deep concerns of the spirit. You cannot perceive by reason or sense the spiritual mysteries that are open and plain to his enlightened vision, any more than the darkness can behold the light. His breathings are as those of 'Isa, and not like mere human sighs raised by worldly sorrows. His tears and his smiles and his speeches are not his own, but proceed from Allah. Fools like you are ignorant of the motive and design of saints' actions, and therefore only harm themselves if they try to imitate them, without understanding their meaning.\" To illustrate this a curious story is told of a foolish lady who copied a trick of her clever slave-girl, without understanding the modus operandi, and by so doing caused her own death. In like manner parrots are taught to speak without understanding the words. The method is to place a mirror between the parrot and the trainer. The trainer, hidden by the mirror, utters the words, and the parrot, seeing his own reflection in the mirror, fancies another parrot is speaking, and imitates all that is said by the trainer behind the mirror. So God uses prophets and saints as mirrors whereby to instruct men, being Himself all the time hidden behind these mirrors, viz., the bodies of these saints and prophets; and men, when they hear the words proceeding from these mirrors, are utterly ignorant that they are really being spoken by \"Universal Reason\" or the \"Word of God\" behind the mirrors of the saints.\nThe worthlessness of mere blind imitation (taqlid) of religious exercises.\nWhen a friend tells a joke to his friend,\nThe deaf man who listens laughs twice over;\nThe first time from imitation and foolishness,\nBecause he sees all the party laughing;\nYet, though he laughs like the others,\nHe is then ignorant of the subject of their laughter;\nThen he inquires what the laughter was about,\nAnd, on hearing it, proceeds to laugh a second time.\nWherefore the blind imitator is like a deaf man,\nIn regard to the joy he feigns to feel.\nThe light is the Shaikh's, the fountain the Shaikh's,\nAnd the outpouring of joy is also the Shaikh's, not his.\n'Tis like water in a vessel, or light through a glass;\nIf they think they come from themselves, they are wrong.\nWhen the vessel leaves the fountain, it sees its error;\nIt sees the water in it comes from the fountain.\nThe glass also learns, when the moon sets,\nThat its light proceeded from the shining of the moon.\nWhen his eyes are opened by the command, \"Arise!\" 1\nThen that disciple smiles a second time, like the dawn.\nHe laughs also at his own previous laughter,\nWhich overtook him out of mere blind imitation.\nWhen he returns from his long and distant wanderings\nHe says, \"Lo! this was the truth, this the secret!\nWith what blindness and misconception did I pretend.\nTo experience joy in that distant valley?\nWhat a delusion I was under! what a mistake!\nMy feeble wit conjured up vain imaginations.\"\nHow can an infant on the road know the thoughts of men?\nHow far its fancies are removed from true knowledge!\nThe thoughts of infants run on the nurse and milk,\nOr on raisins or nuts, or on crying and wailing.\nThe blind imitator is like a feeble infant,\nEven though he possesses fine arguments and proofs.\nHis preoccupation with obscure arguments and proofs\nDrags him away from insight into truth.\nHis stock of lore, which is the salve of his eyes,\nBears him off and plunges him in difficult questions.\nAh! man of imitation, come out of Bokhara! 2\nAnd humble yourself in order to be exalted.\nThen you will, behold another Bokhara within you,\nWhereof the heroes ignore these questions of law.\nThough a footman may be swift of foot on land,\nYet on the sea he is as one with ruptured tendons.\nThat footman is only \"carried by land,\" 3\nBut he who is \"carried by sea\" is the truly learned one.\nThe King of kings showers special favors upon him;\nKnow this, O man pledged to vain illusions!\nThe mere legal theologian is impotent to behold the light of the Spirit.\nWhen the day dawns from heaven night flees away;\nWhat, then, can its darkness know of the nature of light?\nThe gnat scuds away before the blast of the winds;\nWhat, then, knows the gnat of the savor of the winds?\nWhen the Eternal appears the transitory is annulled;\nWhat, then, knows he transitory of the Eternal?\nWhen He sets foot on the transitory He bewilders it;\nWhen it is become naught He sheds his light upon it, 4\nIf you wish, you can adduce hundreds of precedents,\nBut I take no heed of them, O man poor in spirit!\nThe letters Lam, Mim, and Ha, Mim prefixed to some Suras\nResemble the staff of Moses, when fully understood. 5\nOrdinary letters resemble these 'to outward view,\nBut are far beneath them in signification.\nIf an ordinary man 'take a staff and try it,\nWill it prove like the staff of Moses in the test?\nThis breath of 'Isa is not like every ordinary breath,\nWhich proceeds from mere human joy or sorrow.\nThese Alif, Mim, Ha and Mim, O father,\nProceed from the Lord of mankind.\nIf you have sense, regard not in the same way as these\nEvery ordinary Alif and Lam which resembles these;\nAlthough these sacred letters consist of common ones,\nAnd resemble common ones in their composition.\nMuhammad himself was formed of flesh and skin,\nAlthough no man is of the same genus as he.\nHe had flesh and skin and bones,\nAlthough no man resembles him in composition;\nBecause in his composition were contained divine powers,\nWhereby all human flesh was confounded.\nIn like manner the composition of the letters Ha, Mim\nIs far exalted above ordinary compounds of letters;\nBecause from these mysterious compositions comes life,\nEven as utter confusion follows the last trump.\nThat staff becomes a serpent and divides the Nile,\nLike the staff of Ha, Mim, by the grace of God.\nIts outward form resembles the outward forms of others,\nYet the disk of a cake differs much from the moon's disk.\nThe saint's weeping and laughter and speech\nAre not his own, but proceed from God.\nWhereas fools look only to outward appearances,\nThese mysteries are totally hidden from them;\nOf necessity the real meaning is veiled from them,\nFor the mystery is lost in the intervening medium.\nThen follows an anecdote of a man who heard whelps barking in their mother's womb. A voice came from heaven and explained that these whelps were like the men who have not emerged into the light of truth, but are still veiled in spiritual darkness, and, though they make pretensions to spiritual sight, their discourses are useless, both to procure spiritual food for themselves, and to warn their hearers of spiritual dangers.\nNext comes an anecdote of a pious man of Zarwan, who made a point of giving to the poor four times the legal amount of alms due from his growing crops. Thus, instead of paying one-tenth on each crop, which is the legal amount enjoined by the Prophet, 6 he was wont to pay one-tenth of the green ears of corn, another tenth of the ripe wheat, a third tenth of the threshed grain, and a fourth of the bread made therefrom, and so on with grapes and other produce of hi garden. In recognition of his piety God blessed his garden and made it bear fruit abundantly. But his sons, who were blind to spiritual matters, saw only his lavish expenditure upon the poor, and could not see the divine blessing upon the garden, called down by his liberality, and rebuked him for his extravagance. There is no limit to the divine bounty, because God's ability to bestow bounties, unlike human ability, is unbounded and infinite.\n*NOTES:\n1. Koran lxxiv. 2. Dawn smiles first as \"false dawn,\" and the second time as \"true dawn.\"\n2. Alluding to Bokhari, the author of the \"Sahih Bokhari,\" the first and most esteemed collection of traditions.\n3. Koran xvii. 72. The man of \"external knowledge\" is \"carried only by land,\" but the mystic is led over sea as well.\n4. When reason is annihilated, the \"Truth\" is reflected in the resulting caput mortuum or Not-being, as in a mirror (Gulshan i Raz, I. 125).\n5. These letters were supposed to have mysterious meanings. See Rodwell, Koran, p. 17, note.\n6. Miskat ul Masabih, i. 417.\n\nSTORY VII.\nHow Adam was created out of a handful of earth brought by an Angel.\nWhen the Almighty determined to create mankind to be proved by good and evil, He deputed the angel Gabriel to bring a handful of earth for the purpose of forming Adam's body. Gabriel accordingly girded his loins and proceeded to the Earth to execute the divine commands. But the Earth, being apprehensive that the man so created would rebel against God and draw down God's curse upon her, remonstrated with Gabriel, and besought him to forbear. She represented that Gabriel would at the last day be pre-eminent over all the eight angels who would then support the throne, 1 and that it therefore was only right that he should prefer mercy to judgment. At last Gabriel granted her prayer, and returned to heaven without taking the handful of earth. Then God deputed Michael on the same errand, and the Earth made similar excuses to him, and he also listened to her crying, and returned to heaven without taking a handful. He excused himself to the Almighty by citing the example of the people to whom the prophet Jonah was sent, who were delivered from the threatened penalty in consequence of their lamentation for their sins; 2 and the text, \"If He please, He will deliver you from that which ye shall cry to Him to avert.\" 3 Then God sent the angel Israfil on the same errand, and he also was diverted from the execution of it by a divine intimation. At last God sent 'Izrail, the angel of death, who, being of sterner disposition than the others, resolutely shut his ears to the Earth's entreaties, and brought back the required handful of earth. The Earth pressed him with the argument that God's command to bear away a handful of her substance against her will did not override the other divine command to take pity on suppliants; but 'Izrail would not listen to her, remarking that, according to the canons of theological interpretation, it was not allowable to have recourse to analogical reasoning to evade a plain and categorical injunction. He added, that in executing this injunction, painful though it might be, he was to be regarded only as a spear in the hand of the Almighty. The moral is, that when any of God's creatures do us a harm, we ought to regard them only as instruments of God, who is the Only Real Agent.\nGod the Only Real Agent.\nDo not, like fools, crave mercy from the spear,\nBut from the King in whose hand the spear is held.\nWherefore do you cry to spear and sword,\nSeeing they are captives in the hand of that Noble One?\nHe is as Azar, maker of idols; I am only the idol;\nWhatever instrument He makes me, that I am.\nIf He makes of me a cup, a cup am I;\nIf He makes of me a dagger, a dagger am I.\nIf He makes me a fountain, I pour forth water;\nIf He makes me fire, I give forth heat.\nIf He makes me rain, I produce rich crops;\nIf He makes me a dart, I pierce bodies.\nIf He makes me a snake, I dart forth poison;\nIf He makes me a friend, I serve my friends.\nI am as the pen in the fingers of the writer,\nI am not in a position to obey or not at will.\nOn the return of 'Izrail to heaven with the handful of earth, God said he would make him the angel of death. 'Izrail represented that this would make him very hateful to men; but God said 'Izrail would operate by disease and sickness, and men would not look for any cause beyond these diseases, according to the text, \"He is nearer to you than ye are; yet ye see Him not.\" 4 Moreover, death is in reality a boon to the spiritual, and it is only fools who cry, \"Would that this world might endure for ever, and that there were no such thing as death!\"\nDeath is gain, for \"God will change their evil things into good things.\" 5\nOne said, \"The world would be a pleasant place\nIf death never set foot within it.\"\nAnother answered, \"If there were no death,\nThe complicated world would be worth not a jot.\nIt would be a crop raised in a desert,\nLeft neglected and never threshed out.\nThou fanciest that to be death, which is life,\nThou sowest thy seed in salt ground.\nCarnal reason deceives us; do thou contradict it,\nFor that fool takes what is really death to be life.\nO God, show us all things in this house of deception,\nShow them all as they really are!\" 6\nIt is said in the Hadis that on the last day\nThe command, \"Arise,\" will come to every single body.\nThe blast of the last trump will be God's command\nTo every atom to lift its head from the earth.\nThe souls, also, of each will return to their bodies,\nEven as sense returns to bodies awaking from sleep.\nOn that morn each soul will recognize its own body,\nAnd return to its own ruin like hidden treasure.\nIt will recognize its own body and enter it.\nThe soul of the goldsmith will not enter the tailor;\nThe soul of the wise will enter the body of the wise,\nThe soul of the unjust the body of the unjust.\nIn like manner as the souls will fly into their clay,\nSo will the books fly into their right hands and left. 7\nGod will place in their hands their books of greed and liberality,\nOf sin and piety, and whatever they have practiced.\nWhen they shall awake from sleep on that morning,\nAll the evil and good they have done will recur to them.\nEvery thought which has dwelt in them during life\nWill appear as a form visible to all, 8\nLike the thought of an architect realized in a house,\nOr the perfect plant issuing from the seed in the ground.\nFrom onion and saffron and poppy\nThe hand of spring will unfold the secret of winter.\nThis one will be verdant and flourish, saying, \"We are the pious;\"\nThat other will hang his head like the violet,\nWith tears starting from his eyes through deadly fear;\nYea, tens of founts of tears through terrible dread;\nWith eyes wide opened in deadly apprehension\nLest his book may be placed in his left hand.\nThen will the evildoer be sent to the fiery prison,\nFor thorn can in no wise escape the flame.\nWhen his guardian angels behind and before,\nWho before were unseen, shall appear like patrols,\nThey will hurry him off, pricking him with their spears,\nAnd saying, \"O dog, begone to thy kennel!\"\nThen the prisoner will cry, \"O Lord, I am a hundred,\nYea, a hundred times as wicked as Thou sayest.\nBut in mercy Thou veilest my sins,\nOtherwise my vileness were known to Thy all-seeing eye.\nBut, independently of my own works and warfare,\nIndependently of my faith or unfaith, good or evil,\nIndependently of my poor devotion to Thee,\nAnd of my thoughts and the thoughts of hundreds like me,\nI fix my hopes on Thy mercy alone.\nWhether Thou adjudge me upright or rebellious,\nI sue for free pardon from Thy unbought justice.\nO Lord, who art gracious without thought of consequence,\nI set my face towards that free grace of Thine;\nI have no regard to my own acts.\nI set my face towards this hope,\nSeeing that Thou gayest me my being first of all;\nThou gayest me the garment of being unasked,\nWherefore I firmly trust in Thy free grace.\nWhen he thus enumerates his sins and faults,\nGod at last will grant him pardon as a free gift,\nSaying, \"O angels, bring him back to me,\nSince the eyes of his heart were set on hope,\nWithout care for consequences I set him free,\nAnd draw the pen through the record of his sins!\"\n*NOTES:\n1. Koran lxix. 17.\n2. Koran x. 98.\n3. Koran vi 41.\n4. Koran lvi. 84.\n5. Koran xxv. 70. The \"final restitution\" of all by free grace.\n6. Cp. the Hadis: \"Inspiration is a light that shines in the heart, and shows the nature of all things as they really are.\"\n7. See Koran lxix. 18.\n8. See the parallel passage in Guishan i Raz, 1. 690.\n\nSTORY VIII.\nMahmud and Ayaz. 1\nMahmud, the celebrated king of Ghazni, had a favorite named Ayaz, who was greatly envied by the other courtiers. One day they came to the king and informed him that Ayaz was in the habit of retiring to a secret chamber, and locking himself in, and that they suspected he had there concealed coin stolen from the treasury, or else wine and forbidden drink. The fact was, that Ayaz had placed in that chamber his old shoes and the ragged dress which he used to wear before the king had promoted him to honor, and used to retire there every day and wear them for a time, in order to remind himself of his lowly origin, and to prevent himself from being puffed up with pride. This he did in accordance with the text, \"Let man reflect out of what he was created.\" 2 The intoxication of the present life puffs up many with false pride, even as Iblis, who refused to worship Adam, saying, \"Who is Adam, that he should be lord over me?\" This he said because he was one of the Jinn, who are all created of fire. 3 Adam, on the other hand, confessed his own vileness, saying, \"Thou hast formed me out of clay.\" The king was well assured of the fidelity of Ayaz; but in order to confute those who suspected him, he ordered them to go by night and break open that chamber and bring away all the treasure and other things hidden in it. It is a characteristic of evildoers to think evil of the saints, because they judge of their conduct by the light of their own evil natures, as the crooked foot makes a crooked footprint, and as the spider sees things distorted through the web he has spun himself The hug's conduct in this did not betoken any diminution of his love for Ayaz, because lover and beloved are always as ono soul, though they may be opposed to outward view. Accordingly the courtiers proceeded to the chamber of Ayaz at night, and broke open the door, and searched the floor and the walls, but found only the old shoes and the ragged dress. They then returned to the king discomfited and shamefaced, even as the wicked who have slandered the saints will be on the day of judgment, according to the text, \"On the resurrection day thou shalt see those who have lied of God with their faces black.\" 4 Then they besought the king to pardon their offence, but he refused, saying that their offence had been committed against Ayaz, and that he would leave it to Ayaz to decide whether they should be punished or pardoned. If Ayaz showed mercy it would be well; and if he punished it would be well also, for \"the law of retaliation is the security for life.\" 5 Only he enjoined him to pronounce his sentence without delay, because \"Waiting is punishment.\"\nA description of genuine union with God.\nA loved one said to her lover to try him,\nEarly one morning, \"O such an one, son of such an one,\nI marvel whether you hold me more dear,\nOr yourself; tell me truly, O ardent suitor!\"\nHe answered, \"I am so entirely absorbed in you,\nThat I am full of you from head to foot.\nOf my own existence nothing but the name remains\nIn my being is nothing besides you, O Object of desire!\nTherefore am I thus lost in you,\nJust as vinegar is absorbed in honey;\nOr as a stone, which is changed into a pure ruby,\nIs filled with the bright light of the sun.\nIn that stone its own properties abide not\nIt is filled with the sun's properties altogether;\nSo that, if afterwards it holds itself dear\n'Tis the same as holding the sun dear, O beloved!\nAnd if it hold the sun dear in its heart,\n'Tis clearly the same as holding itself dear.\nWhether that pure ruby hold itself dear,\nOr hold the sun dear,\nThere is no difference between the two preterences;\nOn either hand is naught but the light of dawn.\nBut till that stone becomes a ruby it hates itself\nFor till it becomes one 'I,' it is two separate 'I's,'\nFor 'tis then darkened and purblind,\nAnd darkness is the essential enemy of light.\nIf it then hold itself dear, it is an infidel;\nBecause that self is an opponent of the mighty Sun.\nWherefore 'tis unlawful for the stone then to say 'I,\nBecause it is entirely in darkness and nothingness.\"\nPharaoh said, \"I am the Truth,\" and was laid low.\nMansur Hallaj said, \"I am the Truth,\" and escaped free.' 6\nPharaoh's \"I\" was followed by the curse of God;\nMansur's \"I\" was followed by the mercy of God, O beloved!\nBecause Pharaoh was a stone, Mansur a ruby;\nPharaoh an enemy of light, Mansur a friend.\nO prattler, Mansur's \"I am He\" was a deep mystic saying,\nExpressing union with the light, not mere incarnation. 7\n*NOTES:\n1. All the latter part of this story is a parable of the last judgement.\n2. Koran lxxxvi. 5.\n3. Koran xviii. 48, and lv. 14.\n4. Koran xxxix. 61.\n5. Koran ii. 17.\n6. See Guishan i Raz, Answer vii. p. 45. Mansur Hallaj (woolcarder), the celebrated Sufi who was put to death at Baghdad in 309 (A.H.)\n7. See Guishan i Raz, i. 454, and note. The doctrine of the descent of the Deity into man (Halul), or incarnation, is rejected both by Rumi and Shabistari in favor of the doctrine of intimate union (Ittihad or Wahdat).\n\nSTORY IX.\nThe sincere repentance of Nasuh.\nAyaz, in weighing the pros and cons in regard to pardoning the courtiers, remarks that professions of faith and penitence when contradicted by acts are worthless, according to the text, \"If ye ask them who hath created the heavens and the earth, they will say 'God;' yet they devise lies.\" 1 And in illustration of this he tells a story of a faithless husband who retired to a secret chamber ostensibly to say his prayers, but really to carry on an intrigue with a slave-girl, and the falsity of whose pretences was demonstrated by ocular proof of his condition. In like manner, on the day of resurrection man's hands and eyes and feet will bear witness against him of the evil actions done by him, thus confuting his pretences to piety. The test of a sincere repentance is abhorrence of past sins and utter abandonment of all pleasure in them, the old love for sin being superseded by the new love for holiness. Such a repentance was that of Nasuh. Nasuh in his youth disguised himself in female attire and obtained employment as attendant at the women's baths, where he used to carry on shameful intrigues with some of the women who frequented the bath. At last, however, his eyes were opened to the wickedness of his conduct, and be went to a holy man and besought him to pray for him. The holy man, imitating the long-suffering of the \"Veiler of sins\" did not so much as name his sin, but prayed, saying, \"God give thee repentance of the sin thou knowest!\" The prayer of that holy man was accepted, because the prayers of such an one are the same as God's own will, according to the tradition, \"My servant draws nigh to me by pious works till I love him; and when I love him I am his ear, his eye, his tongue, his foot, his hand; and by me he hears, sees, talks, walks, and feels. \"Nasuh then returned to the bath a truly repentant man; but soon afterwards one of the women frequenting the bath lost a valuable jewel, and the king gave order that all persons connected with the bath should be stripped and searched. When the officers came to the bath to execute this order Nasuh was overwhelmed with fear, for he knew that if his sex were discovered he would certainly be put to death. In his fear he called upon God for deliverance, and swooned with fear and became beside himself, so that his natural self was annihilated, and he became a new creature, even as a corpse rising from the grave. When he came to himself he found that the lost jewel had been found, and those who had suspected him came and begged his pardon. Shortly afterwards the king's daughter sent for him to come and wash her head; but, in spite of her imperative commands, he refused to place himself again in the way of temptation, lest he might fall again, and God might \"make easy to him the path to destruction.\" 2\nMan's members will bear witness against him on the day of judgement, and confute his claims to piety.\nOn the resurrection day all secrets will be disclosed;\nYea, every guilty one will be convicted by himself.\nHand and foot will bear testimony openly\nBefore the Almighty concerning their owner's sins.\nHand will say, \"I stole such and such things;\"\nLip will say, \"I asked for such and such things.\"\nFoot will say, \"I went after my own desires;\"\nArm will say, \"I embraced the harlot.\"\nEye will say, \"I looked after forbidden things;\"\nEar will say, \"I listened to evil talk.\"\nThus the man will be shown to be a liar from head to foot,\nSince his own members will prove him to be a liar.\n*NOTES:\n1. Koran xxix. 61.\n2. Koran xcii. 10.\n\nSTORY X.\nThe Lion, the Fox, and the Ass.\nAs an instance of false and insincere repentance, a story is next told, which is also found in the fifth chapter of the Anwar i Suhaili. A lion had been wounded in fight with a male elephant, and was unable to hunt game for himself. In this strait he called a fox who was wont to attend upon him, and to live on the meat that was left from his repasts, just as disciples attending on a saint subsist on the heavenly food dropping from his lips. He called this fox, and bade him go and entice some animal to come near his lair, so that he might kill it and make a meal of it. The fox went and searched the neighborhood, and at last found a lean and hungry ass who was grazing in a stony place where there was little or no grass. The fox, after making due salutations, condoled with the ass on his unfortunate condition; but the ass replied that it was his divinely appointed lot, and that it would be impious to complain of the dispensations of Providence. He also instanced the case of the ass of a water-carrier, which, after having starved and worked hard in its master's service, by chance found admittance to the king's stables, where it was struck by the sleek appearance of the horses. But one day the horses were taken out to battle, and returned in a most miserable plight, some grievously wounded, and others dying. After seeing this sight it determined that its own hard life was preferable, and returned to its master. The fox replied that the ass was wrong in carrying passive resignation to such an extent as to refuse to try to better his condition when the opportunity of doing so presented itself, because God says, \"Go in quest of the bounties of God.\" 1 He added, if the ass would come with him, he would take him to a delightful meadow, where he would never lack plenty of grass all the year round. The ass rejoined that the command to strive for sustenance was only issued on account of the weakness of man's faith. The fox replied that this exalted faith was only vouchsafed to a few great saints, because the Prophet describes contentment as a treasure, and treasure is not found by everyone. The ass rejoined that the fox was perverting the Scripture, as no pious man who trusted in God was ever forsaken. In illustration of this he told an anecdote of a devotee who determined to put the matter to the test, and went out into the desert, trusting only to God to supply his wants, and resolved to seek no aid of man, and not to exert himself in any way to gain food. He lay down on a stone and went to sleep; and God sent a caravan of travelers that way, who found him, and forced him to take food in spite of himself. The fox again pressed the ass to try to better his condition, saying that God had given men hands to use and not to do anything with. The ass answered that he knew of no occupation and exertion better than trust in God, as worldly occupations often lead to ruin, according to the text, \"Throw not yourselves with your own hands into ruin.\" 2 But though the ass repeated all these excellent precepts, yet it was only so much cant on his part, because he was not firmly rooted in. the faith. He had all the time a carnal hankering after the pleasant grazing-ground the fox told him of, and the objections he made were only a parrot-like repetition of precepts heard, but not thoroughly understood and taken to heart. To illustrate the worthless nature of mere imitated religion and profession divorced from practice, a story is told of an infamous fellow who used to carry a dagger to protect as he said, his honor, though his every action showed that he had neither honor to protect nor manliness to protect it. The ass, though like Abraham, he had broken his idols, had not a sufficiently rooted faith to leap, like Abraham, into the fire, and thus prove his faith. [Here the poet apologizes for the trivial illustrations he uses by citing the text, \"Verily God is not ashamed to set forth as well the instance of a gnat as of any nobler object\" 3.] Finally the ass yielded to the fox's enticement, and accompanied him to the lion's lair. The lion, being famished with hunger, sprang upon him the moment he appeared. Being, however, weak with sickness and fasting, he missed his aim, and the ass escaped with a slight wound. Then the fox blamed the lion for his precipitation, and the lion, after excusing himself as best he could, persuaded the fox to try to allure the ass a second time into his lair. The fox consented to try, observing that experience would probably have been thrown away on an ass, and his vows of repentance forgotten. Those who lapse from repentance, in forgetfulness of their former experience, may be compared to the Jews changed into apes and swine by 'Isa. 4 The fox was received by the ass with many reproaches for having deceived him; but he at last managed to persuade the ass that what he had seen was not a real lion, but only a harmless talisman; and the silly ass allowed himself to be again deluded, and forgot his vows of repentance, and again followed the fox to the lion's lair, where he speedily met his doom.\n.\nMen who make professions of holiness merely from blind imitation of others are detected and confuted by the opposition between their words and their deeds.\nA man asked a camel, saying, \"Ho! whence comest thou,\nThou beast of auspicious footstep?\"\nHe replied, \" From the hot bath of thy street.\"\nThe man said, \" That is proved false by thy dirty legs!\"\nSo, when stubborn Pharaoh saw Moses' staff a serpent,\nAnd begged for a delay (to fetch magicians) 5 and relented,\nWise men said, \"He ought to have become harsher,\nIf He really be, as He says, the Lord Supreme. 6\nWhat could miracles such as these of serpents,\nOr even dragons, matter to the majesty of His divinity?\nIf He be really Lord Supreme, seated on His throne,\nWhat need has He to wheedle a worm like Moses?\"\nO babbler, while thy soul is drunk with mere date wine,\nThy spirit hath not tasted the genuine grapes.\nFor the token of thy having seen that divine light\nIs this, to withdraw thyself from the house of pride.\nWhen a fowl flies to the salt water,\nIt has never beheld the blessing of sweet water;\nBut its faith is mere imitation of other fowl,\nAnd its soul has never seen the face of real faith.\nWherefore the blind imitator encounters great perils,\nPerils of the road, of robbers, of cursed Satans.\nBut when he has seen the light of God, he is safe\nFrom the agitation of doubt, and is firm in the faith.\nTill the foam has landed on the shore and dry land,\nWhich is its home, it is ever tossed to and fro.\n'Tis at home on the land, but a stranger on the water.\nWhile it remains a stranger, it must be tossed about.\nWhen its eyes are opened, and it sees the vision of land,\nSatan has no longer any domination over it.\nAlthough the ass repeated verities to the fox,\nHe spoke them idly and in the way of cant.\nHe praised the water, but was not eager to drink;\nHe rent his garments and his hair, but was no real lover.\nThe excuse of a hypocrite is rejected, not approved,\nBecause it comes only from the lips, not from the heart.\nHe has the scent of the apple, but not a piece of it,\nAnd the scent only for the purpose of misleading others.\nThus a woman's onset in the midst of a battle array,\nShe keeps in line, and forms part of the battle array,\nYet, though she looks a very lion as she stands in line,\nHer hand begins to tremble as soon as she takes a sword.\nWoe to him whose reason is like a woman\nWhile his lust is like a resolute man!\nOf a certainty his reason will be worsted in the fight,\nAnd his imitation of a man will only lead him to ruin.\nHappy is he whose reason is masculine,\nAnd his ugly lust feminine and under subjection!\nThough the mere imitator quotes a hundred proofs,\nThey are all based on opinion, not on conviction.\nHe is only scented with musk, he is not himself musk;\nHe smells of musk, but is really naught but dung.\nFor his dung to become musk, O disciple,\nHe must graze year after year in the divine pasture.\nFor he who, like the musk-deer, feeds on saffron of Khoten\nMust not eat grass and oats like asses.\nThat man of cant has at his tongue's end\nA hundred proofs and precepts, but there is no life in him.\nWhen the preacher has himself no light or life,\nHow can his words yield leaves and fruit?\nHe impudently preaches to others to walk aright,\nWhile himself He is unsteady as a reed shaken by wind.\nThus, though his preaching is very eloquent,\nIt hides within it unsteadiness in the faith.\nIn order to gain true wisdom man must shake off worldly illusions.\nThe fox said, \"In my pure wine there are no dregs;\nThese vain suspicions are not becoming.\nAll this is only baseless suspicion, O simple one,\nElse you would know I am not plotting against you.\nYou repudiate me on account of your own bad fancies;\nWhy do you thus suspect your true friends?\nThink well of the 'Brothers of purity,' 7\nEven though they show harshness toward you;\nFor when evil suspicion takes hold of you,\nIt severs you from hundreds of friends.\nIf a tender friend treats you roughly to try you,\n'Tis contrary to reason to distrust him.\nThough I bear a bad name, my nature is not malevolent;\nWhat you saw was not dangerous, it was only a talisman.\nBut even if there were danger in that object of suspicion,\nFriends always pardon an offence.\"\nThis world of illusions, fancies, desires, and fears,\nIs a mighty obstacle in the traveler's path.\nThus, when these forms of delusive imaginations\nMisled Abraham, who was a very mountain of wisdom,\nHe said of the star, \" This is my Lord,\" 8\nHaving fallen into the midst of the world of illusion.\nHe thus interpreted the meaning of sun and stars,\nYea, he, that great man who threaded jewels of interpretation,\nSeeing then that this world of eye-fascinating illusion\nSeduced from the right path such a mountain as Abraham,\nSo that he said of the star, \"This is my Lord,\"\nWhat will not its illusions effect on a stupid ass?\nHuman reason is drowned, like the high mountains,\nin the flood of illusion and vain imaginations.\nThe very mountains are overwhelmed by this flood,\nWhere is safety to be found save in Noah's ark?\nBy illusions that plunder the road of faith\nThe faithful have been split into seventy-two sects.\nBut the man of conviction escapes illusion;\nHe does not mistake his eyelash for the new moon.\nHe who is divorced from 'Omar's light\nIs deceived by his own crooked eyelash. 9\nThousands of ships, in all their majesty and pomp,\nHave gone to pieces in this sea of illusion.\nThen follows an anecdote of Shaikh Muhammad of Ghazni, who was named \"Sar i Razi,\" because he used to take only a vine-leaf to break his fast. He dwelt a long time in the desert, and was there miraculously preserved from death, and directed by divine intimation to proceed to Ghazni, and beg money of the rich and distribute it to the poor. After he had done this some time a second intimation came to him to beg no longer, as the money for his charities would be supplied to him miraculously. He at last attained to such a degree of spiritual insight that he knew the wants of those who came to him for aid before they uttered them. He said the reason of this preternatural discernment was, that he had purified his heart of all but the love of God, and thus, whenever thoughts of anything besides God occurred to his mind, he knew they did not appertain to him, but must have been in some way suggested to him by the person asking aid of him.\nThen follow some reflections on the power of fasting and abstinence to subdue the carnal lusts which lead man to destruction; and two short anecdotes to illustrate the thesis that God never fails to provide sustenance for those who take no thought for the morrow, but place absolute trust in Him.\nThe fate of the ass then suggests to the poet another train of reflections. After the lion had slain the ass, he went to the river to quench his thirst, telling the fox to watch the dead body till he returned; but the moment the lion's back was turned the fox ate up the heart and liver, which are the daintiest parts. When the lion returned and inquired for them, the fox assured him that the ass had possessed neither a heart nor a liver, for if he had he would never have shown himself so stupid. Men without understanding are not really men at all, but only simulacra or forms of men. For lack of understanding many will cry in the world to come, \"Had we but hearkened or understood, we had not been among the dwellers in the flame\" 10 Then follows a story of a monk (Diogenes) who took a lantern and searched all through a bazaar crowded with men to find, as he said, a man.\nThe monk's search for a man.\nThe monk said, \"I am searching everywhere for a man\nWho lives by the life of the breath of God.\"\nThe other said, \"Here are men; the bazaar is full;\nThese are surely men, O enlightened sage!\"\nThe monk said, \"I seek a man who walks straight\nAs well in the road of anger as in that of lust.\nWhere is one who shows himself a man in anger and lust?\nIn search of such a one I run from street to street.\nIf there be one who is a true man in these two states,\nI will yield up my life for him this day!\"\nThe other, who was a fatalist, said, \"What you seek is rare.\nBut you are ignorant of the force of the divine decree;\nYou see the branches, but ignore the root.\nWe men are but branches, God's eternal decree the root.\nThat decree turns from its course the revolving sky,\nAnd makes foolish hundreds of planets like Mercury.\nIt reduces to helplessness the world of devices;\nIt turns steel and stone to water.\nO you who attribute stability to these steps on the road,\nYou are one of the raw ones; yea, raw, raw!\nWhen you have seen the millstone turning round,\nThen, prithee, go and see the stream that turns it.\nWhen you have seen the dust rising up into the air,\nGo and mark the air in the midst of the dust.\nYou see the kettles of thought boiling over,\nLook with intelligence at the fire beneath them.\nGod said to Job, 'Out of my clemency\nI have given a grain of patience to every hair of thine.'\nLook not, then, so much at your own patience;\nAfter seeing patience, look to the Giver of patience.\nHow long will you confine your view to the waterwheel?\nLift up your head and view also the water.\"\n*NOTES:\n1. Koran lxii. 10.\n2. Koran ii. 191.\n3. Koran ii. 24.\n4. Koran v. 65.\n5. Koran xx. 25.\n6. Koran xxviii. 38.\n7. A society at Basra, who wrote, about 980 AD., an encyc1opedia of philosophy (trans. by Dieterici).\n8. Koran vi. 76.\n9. Alluding to the first anecdote in Book II.\n10. Koran lxxvii. 10.\n\nSTORY XI.\nThe Mosalman who tried to convert a Magian.\nA Mosalman pressed a Magian to embrace the true faith. The Magian replied, \"If God wills it, no doubt I shall do so.\" 1 The Mosalman replied, \"God certainly wills it, that your soul may be saved from hell; but your own evil lusts and the Devil hold you back.\" The Magian retorted, using the arguments of the Jabriyan or \"Compulsionists,\" that on earth God is sole sovereign, and that Satan and lust exist and act only in furtherance of God's will. To hold that God is pulling men one way and Satan another is to derogate from God's sovereignty. Man cannot help moving in the direction he is most strongly impelled to go; if he is impelled wrongly he is no more to blame than a building designed for a mosque but degraded into a fire-temple, or a piece of cloth designed for a coat but altered into a pair of trousers. The truth is, that whatever occurs is according to God's will, and Satan himself is only one of His agents. Satan resembles the Turkoman's dog who sits at the door of the tent, and is\" vehement against aliens, but full of tenderness to friends.\" 2 The Mosalman then replied with the arguments of the Qadarians and Mutazilites, to prove the freedom of the will and consequent responsibility of man for his actions. He urged that man's free agency and consequent responsibility are recognized in common parlance, as when we order a man to act in a certain way,-that God expressly assumes man to be a free agent by addressing commands and prohibitions to him, and by specially exempting some, such as the blind, 3 from responsibility for certain acts, that our internal consciousness assures us of our power of choice, just as outward sense assures us of properties in material objects, and that it is just as sophistical to disbelieve the declarations of the interior consciousness, as those of the outward senses as to the reality of the material world. He then told an anecdote of a man caught robbing a garden and defending himself with the fatalist plea of irresponsibility, to whom the owner of the garden replied by administering a very severe beating, and assuring him that this beating was also predestined, and that he therefore could not help administering it. He concluded his argument by repeating that the traditions, \"Whatever God wills is,\" and \"The pen is dry, and alters not its writing,\" are not inconsistent with the existence of freewill in man. They are not intended to reduce good action and evil to the same level, but good actions will always entail good consequences, and bad actions the reverse. A devotee admired the splendid apparel of the slaves of the Chief of Herat, and cried to Heaven, \"Ah! learn from this Chief how to treat faithful slaves!\" Shortly after the Chief was deposed, and his slaves were put to the torture to make them reveal where the Chief had hidden his treasure, but not one would betray the secret. Then a voice from heaven came to the devotee, saying, \"Learn from them how to be a faithful slave, and then look for recompense.\" The Magian, unconvinced by the arguments of the Mosalman, again plied him with \"Compulsionist\" arguments, and the discussion was protracted, with the usual result of leaving both the disputants of the same opinion as when they began. The poet remarks that the contest of the \"Compulsionists\" and the advocates of man's free agency will endure till the day of judgment; for nothing can resolve these difficulties 4 but the true love which is \"a gift imparted by God to whom He will.\" 5\nLove puts reason to silence.\nLove is a perfect muzzle of evil suggestions;\nWithout love who ever succeeded in stopping them?\nBe a lover, and seek that fair Beauty,\nHunt for that Waterfowl in every stream!\nHow can you get water from that which cuts it off?\nHow gain understanding from what destroys understanding?\nApart from principles of reason are other principles\nOf light and great price to be gained by love of God.\nBesides this reason of yours God has other reasons\nWhich will procure for you heavenly nourishment.\nBy your carnal reason you may procure earthly food,\nBy God-given reason you may mount the heavens.\nWhen, to win enduring love of God, you sacrifice reason,\nGod gives you \"a tenfold recompense;\" 6 yea, seven hundred fold.\nWhen those Egyptian women sacrificed their reason, 7\nThey penetrated the mansion of Joseph's love;\nThe Cup-bearer of life bore away their reason,\nThey were filled with wisdom of the world without end.\nJoseph's beauty was only an offshoot of God's beauty;\nBe lost, then, in God's beauty more than those women.\nLove of God cuts short reasoning, O beloved,\nFor it is a present refuge from perplexities.\nThrough love bewilderment befalls the power of speech,\nIt no longer dares to utter what passes;\nFor if it sets forth an answer, it fears greatly\nThat its secret treasure may escape its lips.\nTherefore it closes lips from saying good or bad,\nSo that its treasure may not escape it.\nIn like manner the Prophet's companions tell us\n\"When the Prophet used to tell us deep sayings,\nThat chosen one, while scattering pearls of speech,\nWould bid us preserve perfect quiet and silence.\"\nSo, when the mighty phoenix hovers over your head, 8\nCausing your soul to tremble at the motion of its wings,\nYou venture not to stir from your place,\nLest that bird of good fortune should take wing.\nYou hold your breath and repress your coughs,\nSo as not to scare that phoenix into flying away.\nAnd if one say a word to you, whether good or bad,\nYou place finger on lip, as much as to say, \"Be silent.\"\nThat phoenix is bewilderment, 9 it makes you silent;\nThe kettle is silent, though it is boiling all the while.\n*NOTES:\n1. Note the true believer is here represented as using the arguments of the Qadarians or Mutazilites for free will, as against the Jabriyan or fatalist argument put into the mouth of the Magian.\n2. Koran xlviii. 29.\n3. Koran xxiv. 60.\n4. The Prophet said, \"Sit not with a disputer about fate, nor converse with him.\"\n5. Koran iii. 66.\n6. Koran vi. 161.\n7. \"And when they saw him they were amazed at him, and cut their hands\" (Koran xii. 31).\n8. It is supposed to bring good fortune.\n9. Bewilderment is the \"truly mystical darkness of ignorance\" which falls upon the mystic when the light of absolute Being draws near to him, and \"blinds him with excess of light.\" See Gulshan i Raz, p. 33, and notes.\n\nSTORY XII.\nThe Devotee who broke the noble's wine-jar.\nA certain noble, who lived under the Christian dispensation when wine was allowed, sent his servant to a monastery to fetch some wine. The servant went and bought the wine, and was returning with it, when he passed the house of a very austere and testy devotee. This devotee called out to him, \"What have you got there?\" The servant said, \"Wine, belonging to such a noble.\" The devotee said, \"What! does a follower of God indulge in wine? Followers of God should have naught to do with pleasure and drinking; for wine is a very Satan, and steals men's wits. Your wits are not too bright already, so you have no need to render them still duller by drink.\" In illustration of this, he told the story of one Ziayi Dalaq, a very tall man, who had a dwarfish brother. This brother one day received him very ungraciously, only half rising from his seat in answer to his salutation, and Ziayi Dalaq said to him, \"You seem to think yourself so tall that it is necessary to clip off somewhat of your height.\" Finally the devotee broke the wine-jar with a stone, and the servant went and told his master. The noble was very wrathful at the presumption of the devotee in taking upon himself to prohibit wine, as condemned by the law of nature, when it had not been prohibited by the Gospel, and he took a thick stick and went to the devotee's house to chastise him. The devotee heard of his approach and hid himself under some wool, which belonged to the ropemakers of the village, He said to himself, \"To tell an angry man of his faults one needs to have a face as hard as a mirror, which reflects his ugliness without fear or favor.\" Just so the Prince of Tirmid was once playing chess with a courtier, and being checkmated, got into a rage and threw the chessboard at his courtier's head. So before playing the next game the courtier protected his head by wrappings of felt. Then the neighbors of the devotee, hearing the noise, came out and interceded for him with the noble, telling him that the devotee was half-witted, and could not be held responsible for his actions; and moreover, that as he was a favorite of God, 1 it was useless to attempt to slay him before his time, for the Prophet and other saints had been miraculously preserved in circumstances fatal to ordinary persons. The noble refused to be pacified; but the neighbors redoubled their entreaties, urging that he had so much pleasure in his sovereignty that he could well dispense with the pleasure of wine. The noble strenuously denied this, saying that no other pleasure of sovereignty, or what not, could compensate him for the loss of wine, which made him sway from side to side like the jessamine. The prophets themselves had rejected all other pleasures for that of spiritual intoxication, and he who has once embraced a living mistress will never put up with a dead one. The moral is, that spiritual pleasures, typified by wine, are not to be bartered away for earthly pleasures. The Prophet said, \"The world is carrion, and they who seek it are dogs;\" and the Koran says, \"The present life is no other than a pastime and a sport; but the future mansion is life indeed.\" 2\nDescription of a devotee who trusted to the light of nature.\nHis brain is dried up; and as for his reason,\nIt is now less than that of a child.\nAge and abstinence have added infirmity to infirmity,\nAnd his abstinence has yielded him no rejoicing.\nHe has endured toils, but gained no reward from his Friend;\nHe has done the work, but has not been paid.\nEither his work has lacked value,\nOr the time of recompense is not decreed as yet.\nEither his works are as the works of the Jews, 3\nOr his reward is held back till the appointed time.\nThis grief and sorrow are enough for him,\nThat in this valley of pain he is utterly friendless.\nWith sad eyes he sits in his corner,\nWith frowning face and downcast looks.\nThere is no oculist who cares to open his eyes, 4\nNor has he reason enough to discover the eye-salve.\nHe strives earnestly with firm resolve and in hope,\nHis work is done on the chance of being right.\nThe vision of \"The Friend\" is far from his course,\nFor he loses the kernel in his love for the shell.\n*NOTES:\n1. Half-witted persons are supposed to be divinely protected.\n2. Koran xxix. 64.\n3. \"But as to the infidels, their works are like the mirage in the desert\" (Koran xxiv. 39).\n4. I.e., he has no director (Murshid i kamil) to instruct him in the right course.\n\nSTORY VIII.\n(continued).\nMahmud and Ayaz.\nThe poet now returns to the story of Mahmud and Ayaz, which is continued at intervals till the end of the book. The king inquired of Ayaz what made him continually visit his old shoes and garments, as Majnun used to visit his Laila, or as a Christian regularly visits his priest to obtain absolution for his sins. Why should he call to these dead things, like a fond mother calling to her dead infant, were it not that faith and love made them, as it were, living beings to him? The eye sees what it brings with it to see; it can see nothing but what it has gained the faculty of seeing. Thus the face of Laila, which seemed so lovely to the eyes of Majnun, made clairvoyant by love, seemed to strangers to have no claims to beauty. The earthly forms which here surround us are, as it were, vessels fraught with spiritual wine, only visible to those who have learnt to discern the deep things of the Spirit.\nLove and faith are a mighty spell.\nO Ayaz, what is this love of yours for your old shoes,\nWhich resembles the love of a lover for his mistress?\nYou have made these old shoes your object of devotion,\nJust as Majnun made an idol of his Laila!\nYou have bound the affection of your soul to them,\nAnd hung them up in your secret chamber.\nHow long will you say orisons to this old pair of shoes?\nAnd breathe your oft-told secrets into inanimate ears?\nLike the Arab lover to the house of his dead mistress,\nYou address to them long invocations of love.\nOf what great Asaf were your shoes the house?\nIs your old garment, think you, the coat of Yusuf?\nLike a Christian who confesses to a priest\nHis past year's sins of fornication, fraud, and deceit;\nIn order that the priest may absolve him of those sins;\nHe thinks the priest's absolution the same as God's!\nThat priest is unable to condemn or to absolve;\nBut faith and love are a mighty enchantment!\nGod's dealings visible to the spiritual.\nThe wine is from that world, the vessels from this;\nThe vessels are seen, but the wine is hidden!\nHidden indeed from the sight of the carnal,\nBut open and manifest to the spiritual!\nO God, our eyes are blinded!\nO pardon us, our sins are a heavy burden!\nThou art hidden from us, though the heavens are filled\nWith Thy light, which is brighter than sun and moon!\nThou art hidden, yet revealest our hidden secrets!\nThou art the source that causes our rivers to flow.\nThou art hidden in Thy essence, but seen by Thy bounties.\nThou art like the water, and we like the millstone.\nThou art like the wind, and we like the dust;\nThe wind is unseen, but the dust is seen by all.\nThou art the spring, and we the sweet green garden;\nSpring is not seen, though its gifts are seen.\nThou art as the soul, we as hand and foot;\nSoul instructs hand and foot to hold and take.\nThou art as reason, we like the tongue;\n'Tis reason that teaches the tongue to speak.\nThou art as joy, and we are laughing;\nThe laughter is the consequence of the joy.\nOur every motion every moment testifies,\nFor it proves the presence of the Everlasting God.\nSo the revolution of the millstone, so violent,\nTestifies to the existence of a stream of water.\nO Thou who art above our conceptions and descriptions,\nDust be on our heads, and upon our similitudes of Thee!\nYet Thy slaves never cease devising images of Thee;\nThey cry to Thee always, \"My life is Thy footstool!\"\nLike that shepherd who cried,\" O Lord! 1\nCome nigh to thy faithful shepherd,\nThat he may cleanse thy garment of vermin,\nAnd mend thy shoes, and kiss the hem of thy robe!\"\nNo one equaled that shepherd in love and devotion,\nThough his manner of expressing it was most faulty.\nHis love pitched its tent on the heavens,\nHe himself was as the dog at the tent-door.\nWhen the sea of love to God boiled up,\nIt touched his heart, but it touches your ears only.\nThe thesis that silence may indicate emotions too deep for expression, while eloquent expressions may indicate that the ears only, and not the heart, have been touched, is next illustrated by a ludicrous anecdote of a dwarf who disguised himself as a woman, and presented himself at a sermon addressed to women. This dwarf played a trick on a woman sitting next him, which made her cry out, and the preacher fancied that his sermon had touched her heart; but the dwarf said that if her heart had been touched she would not have betrayed her feelings by publishing them to the whole congregation.\nThe king then again pressed Ayaz to explain the mystery of his regard for the old shoes and rags, in order to admonish the courtiers, for he said that the beauty of true holiness is such that it attracts even infidels. To illustrate this he told an anecdote of a Mosalman who tried to convert a Gueber in the time of Bayazid. The Gueber said that he admired and envied the faith of Bayazid, though he had no power to imitate it; but as for the faith of the missionary who was trying to convert him, it only inspired him with aversion, because it was plainly insincere and hypocritical. And he told an anecdote of a harsh-voiced Mu'azzin who went into a heathen country and there uttered the call to prayer. It happened that there was a girl in that place who had long been inclined to embrace Islam, much to the grief of her parents; but when she heard this harsh call she was at once cured of her wish to forsake her own religion. Her father was so delighted at this that he ran out and loaded the Mu'azzin with gifts. The Gueber said the missionary had cured him of the wish to embrace Islam, just as the girl was cured by the Mu'azzin's harsh voice. But he said he still retained his reverence for the faith of Bayazid, though he failed to understand how so much spirituality as was seen in Bayazid could be contained in an earthly body. He gave a curious illustration of his meaning. A man brought home a piece of meat weighing over half a man, to provide a meal for a guest; but his wife, who was very greedy, ate it all up secretly. When the man missed his meat he asked his wife for it, and she said the cat had eaten it. The man took the cat and weighed her, and found she weighed only half a man. Then he said to his wife, \"If this half-man is all cat, where is the meat? and if it is meat, where is the cat?\" The Gueber said this was exactly the difficulty he felt about the spirit and the body of Bayazid. He concluded by saying, in the words of the Hadis, \"The true believer is attached to others, and others are attached to him, but the hypocrite inspires affection in no one.\nMahmud and Ayaz. (continued).\nMahmud again presses Ayaz to reveal his secrets, remarking that even if they suggest sad thoughts, they will benefit the hearers. The wise man is as a guest-house, and he admits all the thoughts that occur to him, whether of joy or of sorrow, with the same welcome, knowing that, like Abraham, he may entertain angels unawares. This is illustrated by the story of a woman who drove away a valued guest by a petulant remark, which he was not intended to hear, and afterwards repented her discourtesy so deeply that she put on mourning and turned her house into an inn. Let grief as well as joy lodge in the heart, for grief is sent for our benefit as well as joy. Endure woe patiently, like Joseph and Job, and regard it as a blessing, saying with Solomon, \"Stir me up, O Lord, to be thankful for Thy favor which Thou hast showed upon me!\" 2 Mahmud then praises Ayaz for being a true man who can control both lust and anger. Those who are carried away by anger or lust, like the girl of whom an anecdote is told, do not deserve the name of men. When anger or lust takes hold of a man reason departs from him. Then comes an anecdote of a cowardly Sufi who boasted of his bravery, but had not courage enough even to slay a captive infidel. Verily, the \"greater warfare,\" viz., that against one's own lusts and passions, demands as much courage as the \"lesser warfare\" against the infidels. This is illustrated by a story of a saint named Iyazi, who, after having been a great warrior against the infidels, renounced the world and applied himself to wage the \"greater warfare\" against his own lusts. One day, while sitting in his cell, he heard the noise of the army going out to fight, and his carnal passion urged him to go and join in the fight, but he thus rebuked it:\nIyazi's rebuke to his passion, whish lusted to join in the \"lesser warfare\".\nI said, \"O foul and faithless passion,\nWhence have you derived this inclination to war?\nTell me truly, O passion, is this your trickery?\nOr else is it stubbornness shunning obedience to God?\nIf you say not truly I will attack you,\nAnd will afflict you more severely with discipline.\"\nPassion then heaved a cry from its breast,\nAnd without mouth vented the following complaints:\n\"In this cell you slay me every day;\nYou slay my life like the life of a Gueber.\nNot a soul is aware of my condition;\nYou drag me along without food or sleep.\nIn the fight with one wound I shall quit the body,\nAnd the people will admire my valor and self-devotion.\"\nI said, \"O bad passion, you live as an infidel,\nAnd as an infidel you will die; shame be upon you!\nIn both worlds you are naught but a hypocrite;\nIn the two worlds only an unprofitable servant.\nI have vowed to God never to quit this cell\nWhile life remains in this body;\nBecause whatever the body does in this privacy\nIs not done to make a fair show before men.\nIts movements and its rest in the privacy of this cell\nAre not intended for the sight of any besides God.\nThis is the 'greater warfare,' that the 'lesser;'\nBoth these warfares have their Rustams and Haidars.\nThey are not to be fought by one whose reason and sense\nFlee away as soon as a mouse wags its tail.\nSuch persons must shun the array of battle,\nAnd keep aloof from it even as women do.\"\nThis is followed by an anecdote of another brave warrior who \"was among the faithful, and made good what he had promised to God.\" 3 Then comes a long story of a prince of Egypt who saw the portrait of a damsel belonging to the Chief of Mausil, and conceived an ardent passion for her, and sent an army to take her by force. The army succeeded in capturing her, and set out on the return march; but on the way the captain of the army fell in love with the damsel, and she returned his affection. When they reached Egypt she was made over to the prince, but at once took a dislike to him, as he was not nearly so manly as her beloved captain. The prince discovered her secret, and though he might justly have resented the treachery of the captain, he refrained, and showed true manliness in the \"greater warfare\" by pardoning his fault and uniting him with the damsel to whom he was so much attached.\nIdeas gained from hearing a thing lead to seeing it.\nA person put this question to a philosopher,\n\"O sage, what is true and what is false?\"\nThe sage touched his ear and said, \"This is false,\nBut the eye is true and its report is certain.\"\nThe ear is false in relation to the eye,\nAnd most assertions are related to the ear. 4\nIf a bat turn away its eyes from the sun,\nStill it is not veiled from some idea of the sun;\nIts very dread of the sun frames an idea of the sun,\nAnd that idea scares it away to the darkness.\nThat idea of light terrifies it,\nAnd makes it cling to the murky night.\nJust so 'tis your idea of your terrible foe\nWhich makes you cling to your friends and allies.\nO Moses, thy revelations shed glory on the mount,\nBut that frightened one endured not thy realities. 5\nBe not too proud, but know that you must first endure\nThe idea of the Truth, and thence come to the reality.\nNo one is frightened by the mere idea of fighting,\nFor \"no courage is needed before fighting begins.\" 6\nIn the mere idea of fighting a coward can imagine\nHimself as attacking and retreating like Rustam.\nThe pictures of Rustam on the wall of a bath\nAre similar to a coward's ideas of fighting.\nBut when these ideas are tested by actual sight,\nWhat of the coward then? His bravery is gone!\nStrive, then, from mere hearing to press on to seeing; 7\nWhat ear has told you falsely eye will tell truly.\nThen ear too will acquire the properties of an eye;\nYour ears, now worthless as wool, will become gems;\nYea, your whole body will become a mirror,\nIt will be as an eye or a bright gem in your bosom.\nFirst the hearing of the ear enables you to form ideas,\nThen these ideas guide you to the Beloved.\nStrive, then, to increase the number of these ideas,\nThat they may guide you, like Majnun, to the Beloved.\nConcerning the unbelievers who say, \"There is only this our present life; we live and we die, and naught but time destroyeth us.\" 8\nTo return; that prince played the fool,\nAnd took delight in the society of the damsel.\nO prince, suppose your dominion extend from east to west,\nYet, as it endures not, esteem it transitory as lightning\nYea, O sleeping heart, know the kingdom that endures not\nForever and ever is only a mere dream.\nI marvel how long you will indulge in vain illusion,\nWhich has seized you by the throat like a headsman.\nKnow that even in this world there is a place of refuge; 9\nHearken not to the unbeliever who denies it.\nHis argument is this: he says again and again,\n\"If there were aught beyond this life we should see it.\"\nBut if the child sees not the state of reason,\nDoes the man of reason therefore forsake reason?\nAnd if the man of reason sees not the state of love,\nIs the blessed moon of love thereby eclipsed?\nThe beauty of Joseph was not visible to his brethren;\nWas it therefore hidden from the eyes of Jacob?\nThe eyes of Moses regarded his staff as a stick,\nBut the divine eye saw it to be a deadly serpent.\nThe eye of the head was at issue with the divine eye,\nBut the latter prevailed and gave convincing proof.\nTo the eyes of Moses his hand looked a mere hand,\nBut to the divine eye it appeared a flashing light.\nThis subject in its entirety is endless,\nBut to the unbeliever it is a mere fanciful idea.\nThe only realities to him are lust and gluttony;\nSpeak not then to him of the mysteries of the Beloved.\nTo us believers lust and gluttony are only ideas,\nTherefore we behold always the beauty of the Beloved.\nTo all men whose creed is lust and gluttony,\nApplies the text, \"To you be your creed, to me mine.\" 10\nIn the face of negations like these cut short speech,\n\"O Ahmad, say little to an old Fire-worshipper!\"\n\"We distribute among them,\" 11 to some carnal lusts, and to others angelic qualities.\nIf the prince lacked the animal manliness of asses,\nYet he possessed the true manliness of the prophets.\nHe renounced lust and anger and concupiscence,\nAnd showed himself a man of the lineage of the prophets.\nGrant that he lacked the virility of asses,\nYet God esteemed him a lord of lords.\nLet me be dead, so long as God regards me with favor!\nI am better off than the living who are rejected of God;\nThe former is the kernel of manliness, the latter only the rind;\nThe former is borne to Paradise, the latter to hell.\nThe Prophet says, \"Paradise is annexed to tribulation,\nBut hell-fire follows indulgence in lust.\" 12\nO Ayaz, who slayest demons like a male lion,\nManliness of asses is naught, manliness of mind much.\nWhat sort of man dost thou think him who sports as a boy,\nBut who has no comprehension of these chief matters?\no thou who hast seen the delight of my connnandments,\nAnd risked thy life to perform them faithfully,\nHear a tale of the sweetness of my commandments,\nThat the meaning of this sweetness may be made plain.\nThe story which follows is one in which Ayaz is himself the chief actor, and hence it may perhaps be inferred that this part of the poem had not received its final revision when the poet died. The king showed to all his courtiers in turn a valuable jewel, and asked them its value. Each declared it to be priceless. He thereupon ordered each of them to break it to pieces, but they refused, one after the other; on which he praised them highly and gave them presents. Finally the jewel came into the hands of Ayaz, and he, not being a mere imitator like the rest, nor being tempted by the rewards given to the rest, decided that the king's command ought to be obeyed at all costs, and therefore broke the jewel to pieces. Blind imitation of current fashions and ruling \"public opinion\" is the way of the world, but its worthlessness is at once manifested when it is put to the test. True faith is a reasonable faith, not one adopted and held in mechanical and parrot-like fashion. The king then commanded that those courtiers whose faith had been shown to be mere \"taqlid\" or imitation, and not vital and intelligent, should be put to death; but Ayaz interceded for them, saying, \"O Lord, punish them not if they forget or fall into sin;\"13 although their plea that they sinned through forgetfulness is of no more weight than the plea of having sinned through drunkenness, seeing that both forgetfulness and drunkenness are willfully incurred. Those who die in amity with God have no cause to fear death, \"It cannot harm them, for to their Lord will they return;\"14 but those who die at enmity with God are in a very different position, and have therefore a very strong claim for mercy. The Egyptian magicians, when threatened by Pharaoh with death for believing in Moses, recognized the truth that death in such a cause would unite them with God, and that extinction of the phenomenal self, on which Pharaoh prided himself, would bring them to the real Self from whom they had been estranged by life on earth. Like Habib, the carpenter of Antioch, who was martyred for taking the part of 'Isa's two apostles in that city, they said, \"O that my people knew how gracious God hath been to me, and that He hath made me one of His honored ones!\" 15 A man can only say \"I\" with truth when he has mortified self and unlearnt to say \"I\" in the sense in which Pharaoh said it. Fakhru-'d-Din Razi 16 discoursed learnedly on this point, saying much of \"incarnation\" and \"union\" as the modes in which the real \"I\" of the Deity indwells in the human soul; but as he lacked the true mystic unction, his words only serve to darken counsel. 17 But here Ayaz breaks off; saying, \"Who am I that I should say to the Almighty, 'Grant pardon to these offenders'?\" The Omniscient God needs not to be informed of their case, for He knows all; nor to be reminded of it, for He forgets nothing; nor to be urged to act mercifully, for He created men \"for their own benefit, and not to derive benefit from them.\" Such intercession, therefore, implies ignorance of God, and \"such only of His servants as are possessed of knowledge of God truly fear God.\" 18 God is at once center and circumference of the universe, and the only true wisdom consists in absolute self-surrender to His will, and this surrender of self will bring with it its own exceeding great reward.\n*NOTES:\n1. Alluding to Story vii. Book II.\n2. Koran xxvii. 19.\n3. Koran xxxiii. 23.\n4. i.e., are based on hearsay.\n5. \"When God manifested Himself to the mount He turned it to dust, and Moses fell in a swoon\" (Koran vii. 139). As the bat cannot endure the sight of the sun, men cannot at once endure the full blaze of the beatific vision.\n6. A proverb which is not given by Freytag.\n7. Ideas and types lead men on to actual sight when they are strong enough to bear it. Job xlii. 5.\n8. Koran xlv. 23.\n9. Place of refuge, i.e., heavenly visions; a foretaste of the world to come (Gulshan i Raz, I. 679).\n10. Koran cix. 6.\n11. Koran xliii. 31.\n12. Cp. Freytag, Arabum Proverbia, vol ii. p. 165.\n13. Koran ii. 286.\n14. Koran xxvi. 50.\n15. Koran xxxvi. 25.\n16. A great theologian of Khorasan who lived from A.D. 1150 to 1210. De Slane's Ibn Khallikan, ii. 652.\n17. See Gulshan i Raz, I. 453, note.\n18. Koran xxxv. 25.",
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