TASIN OF ZOROASTER
Ahriman Tempts Zoroaster
Ahriman
| Because of you my creatures complain like a reed-pipe, | 795 |
| because of you our April has become like December; | |
| you have made me humbled and dishonoured in the world, | |
| you have stained your image with my blood. | |
| Truth lives through the epiphany of your Sinai, | |
| death for me dwells within your White Hand. | 800 |
| It is folly to rely on a covenant with God, | |
| to travel the road to His desire is to lose the way; | |
| poisons lurk within His rose-tinted wine. | |
| saw, worm and cross-these are His gifts. | |
| Noah had no other resource but prayer, | 805 |
| but the words of that hapless man were of no avail. | |
| So abandon the city and hide yourself in a cave, | |
| choose the company of the cavalcade of the creatures of light; | |
| with one glance make the dust a philosopher’s stone, | |
| set fire to the heavens with a single prayer; | 810 |
| become a wanderer in the mountains like Moses, | |
| be half-consumed in the fire of vision; | |
| but you must certainly give up prophecy, | |
| you must give up all such mullah-mongery. | |
| By associating with nobodies, a somebody becomes a nobody, | 815 |
| though his nature be a flame, be becomes a chip of wood. | |
| So long as prophethood is inferior to sainthood | |
| prophecy is a veritable vexation to love. | |
| Now rise, and nestle in the nest of Unity, | |
| abandon manifestation and sit in retirement! | 820 |
Zoroaster
| Light is the ocean, darkness is but its shore; | |
| no torrent like me was ever born in its heart. | |
| My breast is swarming with restless waves; | |
| what should the torrent do but devastate the shore? | |
| The colourless picture, which no man has ever seen, | 825 |
| cannot be painted save with the blood of Ahriman. | |
| Self-display-that is the very secret of life, | |
| life is to test out one’s own striking-power. | |
| The Self becomes more mature through suffering | |
| until the Self rends the veils that cover God. | 830 |
| The God-seeing man sees himself only through God; | |
| crying ‘One God’, he quivers in his own blood. | |
| To quiver in blood is a great honour for love, | |
| saw, stave and halter-these are love’s festival. | |
| Upon the road of love, whatever betides is good; | 835 |
| then welcome to the unloving kindnesses of the Beloved! | |
| Not my eye only desired the manifestation of God; | |
| it is a sin to behold beauty without a company. | |
| What is solitude? Pain, burning and yearning; | |
| company is vision, solitude is a search. | 840 |
| Love in solitude is colloquy with God; | |
| when love marches forth in display, that is to be a king! | |
| Solitude and manifestation are the perfection of ardour, | |
| both alike are states and stations of indigence. | |
| What is the former? To desert cloister and church; | 845 |
| what is the latter? Not to walk alone in Paradise! | |
| Though God dwells in solitude and manifestation, | |
| solitude is the beginning, manifestation the end. | |
| You have said that prophecy is a vexation: | |
| when love becomes perfect, it fashions men. | 850 |
| It is delightful to go on God’s road by caravan, | |
| it is delightful to go in the world free as the soul. |