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2
591-640

  • No corner is without wild beasts; there is no rest but in the place where you are alone with God.
  • The corner (narrow cell) of this world's inevitable prison is not exempt from the charges for visitors and (the cost of) housewarming.
  • By God, if you go into a mouse-hole, you will be afflicted by some one who has the claws of a cat.
  • Man has fatness from (thrives on) fancy, if his fancies are beautiful;
  • And if his fancies show anything unlovely he melts away as wax (is melted) by a fire. 595
  • If amidst snakes and scorpions God keep you with the fancies of them that are (spiritually) fair,
  • The snakes and scorpions will be friendly to you, because that fancy is the elixir which transmutes your copper (into gold).
  • Patience is sweetened by fair fancy, since (in that case) the fancies of relief (from pain) have come before (the mind).
  • That relief comes into the heart from faith: weakness of faith is despair and torment.
  • Patience gains a crown from faith: where one hath no patience, he hath no faith. 600
  • The Prophet said, “God has not given faith to any one in whose nature there is no patience.”
  • That same one (who) in your eyes is like a snake is a picture (of beauty) in the eyes of another,
  • Because in your eyes is the fancy of his being an infidel, while in the eyes of his friend is the fancy of his being a (true) believer;
  • For both the effects (belief and unbelief) exist in this one person: now he is a fish and now a hook.
  • Half of him is believer, half of him infidel; half of him cupidity, half of him patience (and abstinence). 605
  • Your God has said, “(Some) of you (are) believing”; (and) again, “(Some) of you (are) unbelieving” (as) an old fire-worshipper.
  • (He is) like an ox, his left half black, the other half white as the moon.
  • Whoever sees the former half spurns (him); whoever sees the latter half seeks (after him).
  • Joseph was like a beast of burden in the eyes of his brethren; at the same time in the eyes of a Jacob he was like a houri.
  • Through evil fancy the (bodily) derivative eye and the original unseen eye (of the mind) regarded him (Joseph) as ugly. 610
  • Know that the outward eye is the shadow of that (inward) eye: whatever that (inward) eye may see, this (outward) eye turns to that (eye).
  • You are of where, (but) your origin is in Nowhere: shut up this shop and open that shop.
  • Do not flee to the (world of the) six directions, because in directions there is the shashdara, and the shashdara is mate, mate.
  • How the prisoners laid a complaint of the insolvent's high-handedness before the agent of the Cadi.
  • The prisoners came to complain to the Cadi's agent, (who was) possessed of discernment,
  • Saying, “Take now our salutations to the Cadi and relate (to him) the sufferings inflicted on us by this vile man; 615
  • For he has remained in this prison continuously, and he is an idle gad-about, a lickspittle, and a nuisance.
  • Like a fly, he impudently appears at every meal without invitation and without salaam.
  • To him the food of sixty persons is nothing; he feigns himself deaf if you say to him, ‘Enough!’
  • No morsel reaches the (ordinary) man in prison, or if by means of a hundred contrivances he discover some food,
  • That hell-throat at once comes forward (with) this (as) his argument, that God has said, ‘Eat ye.’ 620
  • Justice, justice against such a three years' famine! May the shadow of our lord endure for ever!
  • Either let this buffalo go from prison, or make him a regular allowance of food from a trust-fund.
  • O thou by whom both males and females are (made) happy, do justice! Thy help is invoked and besought.”
  • The courteous agent went to the Cadi and related the complaint to him point by point.
  • The Cadi called him (the insolvent) from the prison into his presence, and (then) inquired (about him) from his own officers. 625
  • All the complaints which that flock (of prisoners) had set forth were proved to the Cadi.
  • The Cadi said (to him), “Get up and depart from this prison: go to the house which is your inherited property.”
  • He replied, “My house and home consist in thy beneficence; as (in the case of) an infidel, thy prison is my Paradise.
  • If thou wilt drive me from the prison and turn me out, verily I shall die of destitution and beggary.”
  • (He pleaded) like the Devil, who was saying, “O Preserver, O my Lord, grant me a respite till the day of Resurrection; 630
  • For I am happy (to be) in the prison of this world, in order that I may be slaying the children of mine enemy,
  • (And), if any one have some food of faith and a single loaf as provision for the journey (to the life hereafter),
  • I may seize it, now by plot and now by guile, so that in repentance they may raise an outcry (of lamentation);
  • (And in order that) sometimes I may threaten them with poverty, sometimes bind their eyes with (the spell of) tress and mole.”
  • In this prison (the world) the food of faith is scarce, and that which exists is in (danger of being caught in) the noose (of destruction) through the attack of this cur. 635
  • (If) from prayer and fasting and a hundred helplessnesses (utter self-abnegations) the food of spiritual feeling come (to any one), he (the Devil) at once carries it off.
  • I seek refuge with God from His Satan: we have perished, alas, through his overweening disobedience.
  • He is (but) one cur, and he goes into thousands (of people): into whomsoever he goes, he (that person) becomes he (Satan).
  • Whoever makes you cold (damps your spiritual ardour) know that he (Satan) is in him: the Devil has become hidden beneath his skin.
  • When he finds no (bodily) form, he comes into (your) fancy, in order that that fancy may lead you into woe: 640