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5
465-514

  • The former, through service, gained the pride of lordship, while the latter, through lordship, turned from the path of glory. 465
  • The latter, through being a Pharaoh, was taken captive by the water (of perdition), while the Israelites, through captivity, became (mighty as) a hundred Suhrábs.
  • ’Tis a topsy-turvy game and a terrible quandary; do not try (to escape by) cunning: ’tis (all) a matter of (Divine) favour and fortune.
  • Do not weave plots in vain imagination and cunning; for the Self-sufficient One does not give way to the contriver.
  • Contrive, in the way of (by following the guidance of) one who serves (God) well, that you may gain the position of a prophet in a religious community.
  • Contrive that you may be delivered from your own contrivance; contrive that you may become detached from the body. 470
  • Contrive that you may become the meanest slave (of God): if you enter into (the state of) meanness (self-abasement), you will become lordly.
  • Never, O old wolf, practise foxiness and perform service with the purpose of (gaining) lordship;
  • But rush into the fire like a moth: do not hoard up that (service), play for love!
  • Renounce power and adopt piteous supplication: (the Divine) mercy comes towards piteous supplication, O dervish.
  • The piteous supplication of one sorely distressed and athirst is real; the piteous (but) cold supplication of falsehood is proper to the miscreant. 475
  • The weeping of Joseph's brethren is a trick, for their hearts are full of envy and infirmity.
  • Story of the Arab of the desert whose dog was dying of hunger, while his wallet was full of bread; he was lamenting over the dog and reciting poetry and sobbing and beating his head and face; and yet he grudged the dog a morsel from his wallet.
  • The dog was dying, and the Arab sobbing, shedding tears, and crying, “Oh, sorrow!”
  • A beggar passed by and asked, “What is this sobbing? For whom is thy mourning and lamentation?”
  • He replied, “There was in my possession a dog of excellent disposition. Look, he is dying on the road.
  • He hunted for me by day and kept watch by night; (he was) keen-eyed and (good at) catching the prey and driving off thieves.” 480
  • He (the beggar) asked, “What ails him? Has he been wounded?” The Arab replied, “Ravenous hunger has made him (so) lamentable.”
  • “Show some patience,” said he, “in (bearing) this pain and anguish: the grace of God bestows a recompense on those who are patient.”
  • Afterwards he said to him, “O noble chief, what is this full wallet in your hand?”
  • He replied, “My bread and provender and food left over from last night, (which) I am taking along (with me) to nourish my body.”
  • “Why don't you give (some) bread and provender to the dog?” he asked. He replied, “I have not love and liberality to this extent. 485
  • Bread cannot be obtained (by a traveller) on the road without money, but water from the eyes costs nothing.”
  • He (the beggar) said, “Earth be on your head, O water-skin full of wind! for in your opinion a crust of bread is better than tears.”
  • Tears are (originally) blood and have been turned by grief into water: idle tears have not the value of earth.
  • He (the Arab) made the whole of himself despicable, like Iblís: a piece of this whole is naught but vile.
  • I am the (devoted) slave of him who will not sell his existence save to that bounteous and munificent Sovereign, 490
  • (So that) when he weeps, heaven begins to weep, and when he moans (in supplication), the celestial sphere begins to cry, “O Lord!”
  • I am the (devoted) slave of that high-aspiring copper which humbles itself to naught but the Elixir.
  • Lift up in prayer a broken hand: the loving kindness of God flies towards the broken.
  • If thou hast need of deliverance from this narrow dungeon (the world), O brother, go without delay (and cast thyself) on the fire.
  • Regard God's contrivance and abandon thine own contrivance: oh, by His contrivance (all) the contrivance of contrivers is put to shame. 495
  • When thy contrivance is naughted in the contrivance of the Lord, thou wilt open a most marvellous hiding-place,
  • Of which hiding-place the least (treasure) is everlasting life (occupied) in ascending and mounting higher.
  • Explaining that no evil eye is so deadly to a man as the eye of self-approval, unless his eye shall have been transformed by the Light of God, so that “he hears through Me and sees through Me,” and (unless) his self shall have become selfless.
  • Do not regard thy peacock-feathers but regard thy feet, in order that the mischief of the (evil) eye may not waylay thee;
  • For (even) a mountain slips (from its foundations) at the eye of the wicked: read and mark in the Qur’án (the words) they cause thee to stumble.
  • From (their) looking (at him), Ahmad (Mohammed), (who was) like a mountain, slipped in the middle of the road, without mud and without rain. 500
  • He remained in astonishment, saying, “Wherefore is this slipping? I do not think that this occurrence is empty (of meaning),”
  • Until the Verse (of the Qur’án) came and made him aware that this had happened to him in consequence of the evil eye and enmity (of the unbelievers).
  • (God said to the Prophet), “Had it been any one except thee, he would at once have been annihilated: he would have become the prey of the (evil) eye and in thrall to destruction;
  • But there came (from Me) a protection, sweeping along (majestically), and thy slipping was (only) for a sign.”
  • Take a warning, look on that mountain, and do not expose thy (petty) leaf (to destruction), O thou who art less than a straw. 505
  • Commentary on “And verily those who disbelieve wellnigh cause thee to slip by their (malignant) eyes.”
  • “O Messenger of Allah, some persons in that assembly (of the unbelievers) smite with their (evil) eye the vultures (flying aloft).
  • By their looks the head of the lion of the jungle is cloven asunder, so that the lion makes moan.
  • He (such an one) casts on a camel an eye like death, and then sends a slave after it,
  • Saying, ‘Go, buy some of the fat of this camel’: he (the slave) sees the camel fallen dead on the road.
  • (He sees) mortally stricken by disease the camel that used to vie with a horse in speed; 510
  • For, without any doubt, from envy and (the effect of) the evil eye the celestial sphere would alter its course and revolution.”
  • The water is hidden and the water-wheel is visible, yet as regards (the wheel's) revolution the water is the source of action.
  • The remedy of the evil eye is the good eye: it makes the evil eye naught beneath its kick.
  • (Divine) mercy has the precedence (over Divine wrath): it (the good eye) is (derived) from (Divine) mercy, (while) the evil eye is the product of (Divine) wrath and execration.