What Excuses Have you to Offer, My Heart? – Abdur Rahman’s Corner
Peace, one and all…
What excuses have you to offer, my heart, for so many short
comings? Such constancy on the part of the Beloved, such un
faithfulness on your own!
So much generosity on his side, on yours such niggling contrariness! So many graces from him, so many faults committed by you!
Such envy, such evil imaginings and dark thoughts in your
heart, such drawing, such tasting, such munificence by him!
Why all this tasting? That your bitter soul may become
sweet. Why all this drawing? That you may join the company
of the saints.
You are repentant of your sins, you have the name of God
on your lips; in that moment he draws you on, so that he may
deliver you alive.
You are fearful at last of your wrongdoings, you seek desperately a way to salvation; in that instant why do you not see by
your side him who is putting such fear into your heart?
If he has bound up your eyes, you are like a pebble in his
hand; now he rolls you along like this, now he tosses you in
the air.
Now he implants in your nature a passion for silver and gold
and women; now he implants in your soul the light of the form
of Mustafa.
On this side drawing you towards the lovely ones, on that
side drawing you to the unlovely; amid these whirlpools the
ship can only pass through or founder.
Offer up so many prayers, weep so sorely in the night season,
that the echo may reach your ears from the sphere of the seven
heavens.
When Shu‘aib’s groaning and lamentation and tears like
hailstones passed beyond all bounds, in the morning a proclamation came to him from heaven:
“If you are a sinner, I have forgiven you and granted you
pardon for your sins. Is it paradise you seek? Lo, I have given it
to you; be silent, cease these petitions!”
Shu‘aib retorted, “I seek neither this nor that. What I desire
is to see God face to face; though the seven seas all turn to fire,
I will plunge therein if only I may encounter Him.
But if I am banished from that spectacle, if my tear-stained
eyes are shut against that vision, I am more fit to dwell in hell
fire; paradise becomes me not.
Without His countenance, paradise for me is hateful hell. I
am consumed by this hue and scent of mortality; where is the
splendour of the lights of immortality?”
They said, “At least moderate your weeping, lest your sight
be diminished, for the eye becomes blind when weeping passes
beyond bounds.”
Hesaid, “If my two eyes in the end should be seeing after
that fashion, every part of me will become an eye: why then
should I grieve over blindness?
But if in the end this eye of mine should be deprived forever,
let that sight indeed become blind which is unworthy to behold
the Beloved!”
In this world, every man would become a ransom for his be
loved; one man’s beloved is a bag of blood, another’s the sun
in splendour.
Since every man has chosen a beloved, good or bad, as suits
his own nature, it would be a pity if we should annihilate our
selves for the sake of nothing!
One day a traveller was accompanying Bayazid on a certain
road. Presently Bayazid said to him, “What trade have you
chosen, you rogue?”
The man replied, “I am an ass-driver.” Bayazid exclaimed,
“Be gone from me!—Lord, grant that his ass may die, that he
may become the slave of God!”
Hz. Mevlana, Ghazal 3, Divan-i Shems-i Tabriz, trans. AJ Arberry
