English
On Renouncing the World: A Sermon in Verse
My heart, since you know that death follows every life, where does this endless craving of yours belong?
Why heap up these perishable things with greedy hands? Get hold of something that death cannot touch.
Sometimes your eyes are all on the crown, like a narcissus; sometimes your whole self is buttoned into fine robes, like a bud.
For good deeds your nature sits still as a stone; but let it spot wheat and it spins like a millstone, grinding away.
Greed makes even sugarcane bitter to your taste; miserliness turns even healing dust to plain dirt in your eyes.
You have only seen the wall of the garden of being, unaware of the lovely flowers blooming inside.
The surface of the world looks green and pleasant to you, because animal lust has thrown a veil over your reason.
You are indifferent to the color of the rose and the scent of jasmine, as long as, like a donkey, your gaze is fixed on the grass.
You have buried that noble jewel in the dirt; brush the earth off its head and see it is pure alchemy.
Have some shame, so I may call you human; for the noblest quality in a human being is modesty.
Why spend your life hoarding wealth? No one is wise who adds to his gold and subtracts from his days.
You dig gold from the dust to grow rich, while true poverty is your real wealth.
Give up the search, if you have provisions for this road; whoever lacks the poverty that is the road's provision travels destitute.
Not the poverty of mere appearance, twin to unbelief, but spiritual poverty, the pride of the prophets.
Five times a day it faces the Kaaba, that heart whose four sides border a church.
The niche of God's light in you has become a furnace of lust; through your baseness Jamshid's cup is reduced to a soup bowl.
You flee the beauty of paradise and graze with the swine; your manners are so coarse you cannot see this is cruelty to yourself.
Abandoning evil is the first step toward doing good; the first cure a sick man needs is to guard his diet.
The denial of the false comes first in the creed itself: first the seeking of refuge, then the praise.
First wash your hands, then pray; that is, let go of everything that is not remembrance of us.
Befriend knowledge, and rise up out of the water; for the pride of knowing floated up from that water.
A barrier stands between the meaning of the Quran and your soul; if you long for union, wear it thin, then tear it away.
That veil is hidden from your outward eye; open the eye of reason and you will see it is only vain desire.
Wretched is the hungry man who sits a lifetime at the king's table and is still called famished.
You have crammed your stomach so full of excess that it holds neither a hoard of good morsels nor room for appetite.
The spiritually beautiful turn their faces toward the heart, for in its clarity, like a mirror, the face shines pure.
You are down in the pit of your lower nature, while God in his grace has let down a rope without limit or end.
So you can grasp it and climb up, yet you spurn that rope with your foot, and that is your mistake.
When you speak God's name with your tongue, where is your heart? On reckoning day your words fail to pay their debt to the soul.
From this upside-down way that is your habit, if you turn yourself right over, you find the path of the saints.
Dead hearts are not revived by that speech whose words are severed from the true soul.
A voice that comes from the mouth as an empty bell suits only a donkey for a listener.
Whatever reaches your ear your tongue repeats; the uproar in the dome of your mind is only that echo.
What runs off the tongue goes no further than the ear; no word that did not rise from the soul ever enters the heart.
When does an arrow that strikes home ever fly back? Only the one that missed rebounds, its passage full of trouble.
That is why you have taken on the habit of a reed pipe, hollow talk, since in your heart words are just gusts of air.
Whoever breathes with sincerity, even for a single breath, has a whole world of light behind him, like the dawn.
The prayer niche is decked with gold designs; but your heart alone knows where its true altar lies.
Even that is the small blessing of your hypocritical prayer, though your prayer mat deserves to be called a bare reed mat.
The pain of evil and the ease of good both reach the heart; know then whose heart and mind you were meant to please.
So you are bound to do only good, since this is the first reward of good and evil alike.
If your obedience makes you feel safe, that safety is dangerous; if you fear your sin, that fear is the source of hope.
Obedience mixed with pride is the root of a curse; sin that breaks you open is the seed of being chosen.
Without God's pleasure, a rose petal is a hedgehog's spine; wherever there is his pleasure, even fire is a rose in bloom.
While you walk with existence, you are less than nothing; when you journey into self-annihilation, your rank is eternal life.
Whoever leans on anything but God is in pure rebellion; that is why the staff is named for it.
If you set that staff down in the sacred valley, it will be clear to you: it is no staff, but a serpent.
The flaw is in your prayer; otherwise, at his door the hand of answer waits, reaching out with grace.
If you do not believe me, the proof of these words is this: I answer the call of the one who calls when he calls.
I answer the call of the one who calls when he calls; and yet, for all that, your affairs stay in ruin.
Harder still: your accuser and your witness live within you, for each of your limbs testifies to your own deeds.
Tomorrow what good are your boasts and lies, where your own hand stands witness against you, speaking truth?
Waste no more of this precious life on the wind, for once it is gone there is no making it up, no second chance.
Steal back for yourself whatever of your life you can from the night; such theft is lawful in every faith.
You made a pact with time; time made none with you. So why this outcry that the days are faithless?
If your bread comes late, you would kill people over it; if your prayer is missed, you shrug it off as fate.
Be patient three or four days and bear a little hardship, for that pain is not wasted, and it is the cure for the ache.
See how the mountain endured the sword of the sun: look what precious rubies and gems its mine now holds.
You would be ashamed of your sin if I spelled out how much eternal grace attends to you.
So many thousands of creatures are in motion for your rest, and all of it means nothing to you.
The sky never rests, the stars never sleep, and you have no idea that all this is for your comfort.
Look at the sun, the very eye and lamp of existence: for your needs it toils in torment, night and day.
This scattering cloud, its heart drowned in generosity, is the water carrier of your street and gives you bread as well.
At sea the north wind is the whip that drives your ship; on land the east breeze is the fan that cools your soul.
In your kitchen the fire eats wood to cook your stew, that fire whose arrogance is the very stuff of pride.
The earth's soil climbs up into the branches for your sake, to set in your mouth the fruit you crave.
The high mountain guards the carpet you tread on; that is why its skirt stays still and its foot never wanders.
It is the mountain's own child, which with its heart's blood it nursed beneath its skirt exactly as it wished.
From under its shell the pearl is a slave, ring in ear, in your service, though you have no idea what all this is or why.
That orphan pearl, the beloved heart of the oyster: even its attachment is to your wife and child.
Sacred law protects your wife, your child, your wealth; your own nature keeps setting your household in order.
Before you, torch in hand, walks reason, the sovereign over all the kingdoms of the horizons.
Spring, the Kaykhosrow who leads armies, carries fodder on its eyes to feed your beasts of burden.
To serve you, all the animals have their faces bent low and their backs bowed down.
Every kind of blessing is your comfort; every stroke of affliction is your discipline.
When he frightens you, it is a lamp on your road; when he lays duty on you, it is the key to the door of grace.
When he lays duty on you, it is the key to the door of grace; who else holds a rank like the one you hold?
How long will you object to his lordship? Your task is servitude; lordship befits him.
What have you to do with the nonsense of Greek philosophy? Is it not enough that the Prophet and his word both guide you?
The one who raised his head into the eternal court is he whose pure soul carries the traces of the Chosen One.
Without him no one found the way to the presence of Oneness, for he is the special doorkeeper of the court of majesty.
The prophets are all bound to the saddle straps of his glory, and even Gabriel takes refuge at his stirrup.
The one whose sight is trapped behind a curtain of blindness can still read the inscription on the coin of his miracle.
The disc of the moon shattered in the bowl of the sky, since it begged like a pauper for a scrap from his miracle's table.
His states cannot be measured by human understanding; his ascension is beyond the ladders of thought.
The whole of creation exists as a gift of his being, even if in the form of time others came first.
Yes, the center exists for the sake of the circle, even though the circle's circumference begins from the center.
By fitting comparison, his face and stature are the full moon of the fourteenth night, riding at the zenith.
The sun with drawn sword is a lone soldier at his gate; the wheeling sky is a beggar with its bowl in his street.
The world appears through him, and the world is hidden in him, like the line that a single point brings forth into being.
For one to whom God apportioned both perfect form and perfect character, what could add or take away from such double praise?
Every page of our record is a mark of sin; the sh of his intercession heals every ailment.
If you would enter the house of truth, come in by the door, and that door is Ali, in the city of knowledge.
Do not leave his chosen companions behind you; how could they turn their backs on the one who leads them?
When the name of the household of the Prophet comes to my tongue, if musk does not keep me company, then musk itself is at fault.
Lord, the hope of your pardon has made us bold in everything that runs against your good pleasure.
We have no strength to bear your reproach, we are helpless; deal with all such deeds of ours through your forgiveness.