[Sunlight] Open a window to God

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Listen, open a window to God
and begin to delight yourself
by gazing upon Him through the opening.

The business of love is
to make that window in the heart,
for the breast is illumined
by the beauty of the Beloved.

Gaze incessantly on the face of the Beloved!
Listen, this is in your power, my friend.

-- Mathnawi VI, 3095-3097
Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski
"Rumi: Jewels of Remembrance"
Threshold Books, 1996

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[Sunlight] Open a window to God

[Sunlight] "The Pleiades" -- Ghazal 2949

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"The Pleiades"

In absence, aloe wood burns fragrant.
The love we feel is smoke from that.

Existence gets painted with non-existence,
its source, the fire behind the screen.

Smoke born of this fire hides the fire!
Pass through the smoke. Soul, a moving

river; body, the riverbed. Soul can
break the circle of fate and habit.

Take hold the hand of absence and let
it draw you through the Pleiades,

giving up wet and dry, hot and cold.
You become a confidante of Shams Tabriz.

You see clearly the glory of nothing
and stand, inexplicably, there.

-- Ghazal (Ode) 2949
Version by Coleman Barks, with Nevit Ergin
"The Glance"
Viking-Penguin, 1999

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[Sunlight] "The Pleiades" -- Ghazal 2949

[Sunlight] Other wakefulness

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The more awake one is to the material world,
the more one is asleep to spirit.
When our soul is asleep to God,
other wakefulness closes the door of Divine grace.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Har keh bidârast dar khvâb-tar
hast bidâriyesh az khvâbash batar
Chun ba-Haqq bidâr na-bud jân-e mâ
hast bidâri cho dar bandân-e mâ

-- Mathnawi I:409-410
Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski
"Rumi: Daylight"
Threshold Books, 1994
Persian transliteration courtesy of Yahyá Monastra

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[Sunlight] Other wakefulness

[Sunlight] Love is a Stranger -- Ghazal 1769

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"Love is a Stranger"

Heart came on solid footing with breath refined
to warn the best of communities.
Heart placed your head
like a pen on the page of love.

We are joyous pennants in your just wind.
Master, to where do you dance?

"Toward the land of liberation,
toward the plain of non-existence."

Master, tell us which non-existence you mean.
"The ear of eternity knows the letter of eternity."

Love is a stranger with a strange language,
like an Arab in Persia. I have brought a story;
it is strange, like the one who tells it.
Listen to your servant.

Joseph's face enlightened the well in which he was suspended.
His imprisonment became a palace
with orchards and meadows, a paradise,
a royal hall, and a chamber of sanctity.

Just as you toss a stone into the water,
the water at that very moment parts to receive it.
Just as a cloudy night is dispelled by a clear dawn,
from his humiliation and loss he views high heaven.

Reason, do not envy my mouth.
God witnesses the blessings.
Though the tree drinks from hidden roots,
we see the display of its branches.
Whatever the earth took from heaven,
it yields up honestly in spring.

Whether you have stolen a bead or a jewel,
whether you have raised a flag or a pen,
the night is gone and the day has arrived
and the sleeper shall see what he has dreamed.

-- Ghazal (Ode) 1769
Version by Kabir Helminski
"Love is a Stranger"
Threshold Books, 1993

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[Sunlight] Love is a Stranger -- Ghazal 1769

[Sunlight] If you have newly become a lover -- Ghazal 742

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Out of jealousy, Love makes the lover appear
like everyone's enemy. Once it has made people reject him, he
turns to It.
He who is worthy of the creatures is not worthy
for Love -- only the whore's soul marries a hundred husbands.
Since the lover is not suited for "others," let
them all reject him -- then the King of Love will make him His
sitting companion.
When the creatures drive him from themselves,
he cuts himself off from their company; he accustoms his
outward and inward to sweet-natured Love.
But when the creatures accept him, his mind
drags him in their direction and his heart turns furtively this
way and that toward anyone's love.
When Love sees this It says, "My tresses have
thrown a shadow, so the lover smells there the fragrance of
musk and ambergris.
I will make these two scents the enemy of his
mind and brain -- he will have to abandon both.
Though the lover has sniffed the musk in
remembrance of Me, only a beginner on the Path wanders like
a child saying, 'Where? Where?'
Once he has left childhood, he will open the
eye of knowledge -- why should he run to and fro on the river
bank looking for water?"
If you have newly become a lover, take the
bitter medicine and drink it, so that Shirin may make you
sweeter than Khusraw's honey.*
Perhaps Shams-I Tabrizi will intoxicate you
from beyond the two worlds and remove you from
yourself!

-- Ghazal (Ode) 742
Translation by William C. Chittick
"The Sufi Path of Love"
SUNY Press, Albany, 1983

* King Khusraw and Shirin are a pair of lovers often
celebrated in Persian verse. Khusraw I or "royal" honey
was a famous kind of exquisite honey. Shirin, whose
name literally means "sweet," of course represents the
Beloved.

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[Sunlight] If you have newly become a lover -- Ghazal 742