Number 16

Your face is the sun and all creation its scattered specks; your essence lies beyond both denial and affirmation. How could specks of dust ever reach the sun? Dust is dust, and the sun is beyond all reach. Every name and attribute of creation is lost, dissolved in delight within your essence. There is no name there, no epithet, no mark, no shape, no fixed form like yours. When manifestation arose from the outward signs, the names and attributes reached their full perfection. And for this purpose the earths, the elements, and the heavens came into being. Clear and defined, the verses were written out upon the page of existence. Through the painted image and its receiving forms, we saw it plainly, with no rival to it. One meaning and a hundred thousand shapes; one shape and a hundred thousand mirrors. The lamp is your face, my beloved; both worlds are the glass and the niche that hold it. Your sun became visible in the west, though it is by that sun the specks of dust are seen.