[Sunlight] "Wholly devoted"

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Today's offering includes a Persian transliteration, as well as a link to a mixed media page with the Persian, to be found at the end of the post.

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The interpretation of a sacred text is true
if it stirs you to hope, activity, and awe;
and if it makes you slacken your service, know the real truth to be
this:
that it's a distortion of the sense of the saying, not a true
interpretation.
This saying has come down to inspire you to serve--
that God may take the hands of those who have lost hope
and deliver them.
Ask the meaning of the Qur'an from the Qur'an alone,
and from that one who has set fire to his idle fancy and extinguished
it,
and has become a sacrifice to the Qur'an, bowing low in humbleness,
so that the Qur'an has become the essence of his spirit.
That essential oil has wholly devoted itself to the rose--
you can smell either that oil or the rose, as you please.

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Haqq bovad ta'vil k-ân garmet konad
por-e omid o chost o bâ sharmet konad
Var konad sostet haqiqat in be-dân
hast tabdil o nah ta'vilast ân
In barâ-ye garm kardan âmadast
tâ be-girad nâ-omidân-râ do dast
Ma`nâ-ye Qor'ân ze Qor'ân pors o bas
vaz kasi k-âtesh zadast andar hus
Pish-e Qor'ân gasht qorbâni o past
tâ keh `ayn-e ruh-e u Qor'ân shodast
Rawghani ku shod fedâ-ye gol be-koll
khvâh rawghan bui kon khvâhi to gol

-- Mathnawi V: 3125-3130
Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski
"Rumi: Jewels of Remembrance"
Threshold Books, 1996
Persian transliteration courtesy of Yahyá Monastra

Media Page: http://tinyurl.com/m5-3125

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[Sunlight] "Wholly devoted"