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? 2190

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, 2195
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; 2200
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 2205
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. 2210
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; 2215
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; 2220
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, 2225
IbIis 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. 2230
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, 2235
do you not know the words of the Sage of Rum?
‘A fire-worshipper there was in the time of Ba Yazid;
a blessed Moslem said to him,
"Better were it if you accepted the Faith
so that salvation and the excellence would be yours. " 2240
The other said, "Disciple, if this be faith
that the Shaikh 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; 2245
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. 2250
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 2255
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 2265
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; 2270
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 2275
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. 2280
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, 2285
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; 2290
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— 2295
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. 2300
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; 2305
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? 2310

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 Marcy unto all beings.

Zinda-Rud

Speak more plainly; my understanding flags. 2315

Ghalib

It were a sin to speak of these things more plainly.

Zinda- Rud

Then is the conversation of adepts unprofitable?

Ghalib

It is difficult to give tongue to this subtlety.

Zinda- Rud

You are wholly afire with the glow of the quest,
yet how strange, you cannot master mere words! 2320

Ghalib

‘Creation’, ‘Predestination’, ‘Guidance’ are the beginning;
a Mercy unto all beings is the end.

Zinda-Rud

I have not yet glimpsed the face of the meaning;
if you possess a fire, then burn me!

Ghalib

You who like me descry the secrets of poetry, 2325
these words overstretch the string of poetry;
the poets have adorned the banquet of words,
but these Moses lack the White Hand.
What you demand of me is unbelief,
an unbelief transcending poetry. 2330

Hallaj

Wherever you see a world of colour and scent
out of whose soil springs the plant of desire
is either already illumined by the light of the Chosen One
or is still seeking for the Chosen One.

Zinda-Rud

I ask of you-though to ask is a sin— 2335
the secret of that essence whose name is the Chosen One;
is it a man, or an essence in being
such as but rarely comes into existence?

Hallaj

Before him the whole world bows prostrate,
before him who called himself His servant. 2340
‘His servant’ surpasses your understanding
because he is man, and at the same time essence.
His essence is neither Arab nor non-Arab;
he is a man, yet more ancient than man.
‘His servant’ is the shaper of destinies, 2345
in him are deserts and flourishing cultivations;
‘His servant’ both increases life and destroys it,
‘His servant’ is both glass and heavy stone.
‘Servant’ is one thing, ‘His servant’ is another;
we are all expectancy, he is the expectation. 2350
‘His servant’ is time, and time is of ‘His servant’;
we all are colour, he is without colour and scent.
‘His servant’ had beginning, but has no end;
what have our morn and eve to do with ‘His servant’?
No man knows the secret of ‘His servant’, 2355
‘His servant’ is naught but the secret of ‘save God’.
‘Save God’ is the sword whose edge is ‘His servant’;
do you want it plainer? Say, He is ‘His servant’.
‘His servant’ is the how and why of creation,
‘His servant’ is the inward mystery of creation. 2360
The true meaning of these two verses becomes not clear
until you behold from the station of Thou threwest not.
Zinda-Rud, have done now with speaking and listening,
become drowned in the ocean of being, Zinda-Rud.

Zinda- Rud

I know so little-what is this business of Love? 2365
Is it the joy of beholding? Then what is beholding?

Hallaj

The meaning of beholding that Last of Time
is to make his rule binding on oneself.
Live in the world like the Apostle of men and jinn
that like him you may be accepted by men and jinn 2370
Then behold yourself-that is the same as beholding him;
his Sunna is a secret of his secrets.

Zinda-Rud

What is the beholding of the God of the nine spheres,
of Him without whose command moon and sun do not revolve?

Hallaj

First, to implant on one’s soul the image of God, 2375
then next to implant it on the world;
when the soul’s image is perfected in the world,
to behold the commons is to behold God.
Blessed is the man whose single sigh
causes the nine heavens to circle about his dwelling; 2380
woe to the dervish who, having uttered a sigh,
then closes his lips and draws back his breath!
Such a one never made God’s rule to run in the world;
he ate barley-bread, but never fought like Ali;
he sought a convent and fled from Khaibar, 2385
he practised monkhood and never saw royal power.
Do you possess God’s image? The world is your prey;
destiny shares the same reins as your design.
The present age seeks to war with you;
imprint God’s image on this infidel’s tablet! 2390

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, 2395
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. 2400

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, 2405
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? 2410

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, 2415
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. 2420
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, 2425
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.