Zinda-Rud propounds his problems to the great spirits
Why do you keep far from the station of believers? That is, why are you exiled from Paradise?
Hallaj
The free man who knows good and evil, his spirit cannot be contained in Paradise.
The mullah’s Paradise is wine and houris and page boys, the Paradise of free men is eternal voyaging;
the mullah’s Paradise is eating and sleeping and singing, the lover’s Paradise is the contemplation of Being.
The mullah’s Resurrection is the splitting of the tomb and the trumpet’s blast, tumult arousing Love is itself the Dawn of Resurrection.
Science is founded upon fear and hope, lovers are troubled by neither hope nor fear;
science is fearful of the grandeur of creation, Love is immersed in the beauty of creation;
science gazes upon the past and the present, love cries, ‘Look upon what is coming!’
Science has made compact with the canon of constraint and has no other resource but constraint and resignation;
Love is free and proud and intolerant and boldly investigates the whole of Being.
Our love is a stranger to complaining even though it weeps the tears of drunkenness.
Our constrained heart is not truly constrained, our arrow is not shot by any houri’s glance;
our fire augments out of separation, separation is congenial to our soul.
Life without prickings is no true life; one must live with a fire under one’s feet.
Such living is the destiny of the self and through this destiny the self is built up.
A mote through infinite yearning becomes the envy of the sun, in its breast the nine spheres cannot be contained;
when yearning makes assault upon a world it transforms momentary beings into immortals.
Zinda-Rud
The wheeling of destiny is death and life; no man knows what the wheeling of destiny is.
Hallaj
Whoever possesses the apparatus of destiny, Iblis and death tremble before his might.
Predestination is the religion of men of zeal, predestination for heroes is the perfection of power.
Ripe souls become yet riper through constraint which for raw men is the embrace of the tomb.
Khalid constrained turns a world upside down; for us, constraint tears us up by the roots.
The business of true men is resignation and submission; this garment does not suit the weaklings.
You who know the station of the Sage of Rum, do you not know the words of the Sage of Rum?
‘A fire worshipper there was in the time of Ba Yazid; a blessed Muslim said to him,
“Better were it if you accepted the Faith so that salvation and the excellence would be yours.”
The other said, “Disciple, if this be faith that the Shaykh of the World Ba Yazid possesses,
I cannot endure its glowing heat which is too great for the strivings of my soul.”
Our concern is only with hope and fear; not every man has the zeal to surrender.
You who say, ‘This was to be, and so happened, all things were tethered to a divine decree, and so happened,’
you have little understood the meaning of destiny, you have seen neither selfhood nor God.
The believer true thus petitions God: ‘We accord with you, so accord with us.’
His resolution is the creator of God’s determination and on the day of battle his arrow is God’s arrow.
Zinda-Rud
Men of short vision have stirred up commotions and hung God’s true servant on the gibbet.
The hidden things of Being are manifest to you; declare then, what was your crime?
Hallaj
The sound of the Last Trump was in my breast; I saw a people hastening to the tomb,
believers with the character and colour of infidels who cried ‘No god but God’ and denied the self.
‘God’s bidding’ they called a vain image because it was bound to water and clay.
I kindled in my self the fire of life and spoke to the dead of the mysteries of life.
The whole world has been founded on selfhood, love therein has been compounded with violence
selfhood is everywhere visible, yet invisible, our gaze cannot endure to look on selfhood;
within its light many fires lurk hidden, from its Sinai creation’s epiphanies shine.
Every moment every heart in this ancient convent discourses, albeit secretly, of the self;
whoever has not taken his share of its fire has died in the world, a stranger to himself.
India and Iran alike are privy to its light, but few there are who also know its fire.
I have spoken of its light and its fire; confidant of my secret, see now my crime.
What I have done you too have done; beware! You have sought to resurrect the dead: beware!
Tahira
From the sin of a frenzied servant of God new creatures come into being;
unbounded passion rends veils apart, removes from the vision the old and stale,
and in the end meets its portion in rope and gallows neither turns back living from the Beloved’s street.
Behold Love’s glory in city and fields, lest you suppose it has passed away from the world;
it lies concealed in the breast of its own time— how could it be contained in such a closet as this?
Zinda-Rud
You who have been given the agony of the eternal quest, explain to me the meaning of a verse of yours:
The dove is a handful of ashes, the nightingale a network of colour— O lamentation, what is the true sign of a broken heart?
Ghalib
The lament that rises out of a broken heart— I have seen its effect different in every place;
the dove is consumed through its influence, the nightingale daubed with colours as its result.
In it, death is in the embrace of life, one moment here is life, there is death;
such a colour as glowed in Mani’s abode, such a colour as begets colourlessness.
You know not, this is the station of colour and scent; the portion of every heart is according to its ululation.
Either enter colour, or pass into colourlessness, that you may grasp a token of the broken heart.
Zinda-Rud
A hundred worlds are manifest in this azure expanse; are there saints and prophets in every world?
Ghalib
Consider well this being and not being; continuously worlds are coming into existence.
Wherever the tumultuous clamour of a world arises, there too is a Mercy unto all beings.
Zinda-Rud
Speak more plainly; my understanding flags.
Zinda-Rud
God’s image has been implanted on the world; I do not know how it has been implanted.
Hallaj
It has been implanted by force of love or it has been implanted by force of violence;
because God is more manifest in love, love is a better way than violence.
Zinda-Rud
Declare, master of the secrets of the East, what difference is there between the ascetic and the lover?
Hallaj
The ascetic is a stranger in this present world, the lover is a stranger in the world to come.
Zinda-Rud
The end of gnosis is not being what is life to repose in annihilation?
Hallaj
The intoxication of lovers comes from emptied cups; not being is to be ignorant of gnosis.
You who seek your goal in annihilation, non existence can never discover existence.
Zinda-Rud
He who counted himself better than Adam in his jar and cup remains neither wine nor lees;
our handful of dust is acquainted with the skies where is the fire of that destitute one?
Hallaj
Speak little of that Leader of those in separation, throat athirst, and eternally a blood filled cup.
We are ignorant, he knows being and not being; his infidelity revealed to us this mystery,
how that from falling comes the delight of rising, from the pain of waning springs the joy of waxing.
Love is to burn in his fire; without his fire, burning is no burning.
Because he is more ancient in love and service, Adam is not privy to his secrets.
Tear off the skirt of blind conformity that you may learn God’s Unity from him.
Zinda-Rud
You who hold the clime of the soul under your royal signet, keep company with me a moment more.
Hallaj
We do not tolerate confinement to one station, we are wholly and singly a yearning to soar;
every instant our occupation is to see and to quiver, our labour is to fly without feathers and wings.