The Masnavi, Book One (Oxford World's Classics)

Suppress your rage,
* don’t spew it out like this!
You’ll be rewarded with the sweetest bliss.
He had no patience, so he grew irate,
Saying, ‘Where are you, bastard? You just wait!
I’ll ram your words back down your throat again,
3395
My lion-like consciousness was sleeping then.
Visiting sick men is to bring relief,
Not to antagonize and pile on grief;
You wanted just to see your foe distressed
So that your 
filthy mind could find some rest.’
In acts of worship many go astray
With thoughts of their rewards on Judgment Day.
Truly, their worship’s just sin in disguise
Although their vileness seems pure to your eyes.
The deaf man thought he’d done a righteous act
3400
But it led to the opposite in fact,
Content, he thought, ‘I did well, I feel thrilled!
My duty to my neighbour I’ve ful
filled.’
But as we’ve seen a 
fire was made to start––
He burnt himself thus in his sick friend’s heart:
Beware of ever kindling such a 
fire,
The sum of all your sins will just rise higher!
The Prophet told pretentious men one day,
‘
Repeat your prayers –– you didn’t truly pray!’
Our remedy for such pretentiousness
3405
Is begging Him in every prayer ‘
Guide us!
*
Dear God, don’t mix this prayer of ours today
With those of show-o
ffs who have gone astray!’
The Prophet’s Scribe Becomes an Apostate
207

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Due to the reasoning this deaf man applied
His ten-year friendship with his neighbour died.
Your temporal reasoning’s powers are un
fit
For revelation, which is in
finite,
For if your ears still savour every word,
This means your inner ear has still not heard.
The
first person to apply analogical reasoning to
revelation was Satan
Analogy and logic was used 
first
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Before God’s light by Satan, who was cursed:
‘Mere clay’s not worth as much as 
fire,’ he’d say,
‘I’m made of 
fire while Man’s just made of clay;
And judging just by origins, it’s right
To say he’s darkness while I’m radiant light.’
‘
There shall be no more kinship then’
* God said;
Struggle and piety earns grace instead ––
Since it’s beyond the world that’s temporal,
Kinship can’t win you what is spiritual;
This heritage is from God’s messengers,
3415
Souls of the pure are sole inheritors,
Bu Jahl’s son found true faith a later day
While Noah’s son joined up with those astray:
*
The earthling turns just like a moon, so bright,
You’re made of 
fire and dark with shame like night.
At night, by reasoning and by calculation
Scholars work out the qebla’s
* right location,
But when by day the Kaaba is in sight
To make such calculations isn’t right ––
Don’t claim you still can’t see, or turn away
3420
Due to your reasoning ––
God knows best the way!
If you should hear a message from God’s bird,
*
As an example you would learn that word,
Then you’d apply to it your reasoning
To make from just one thought a concrete thing.
But those expressions God’s élite saints say
Are far beyond what language can convey:
The Prophet’s Scribe Becomes an Apostate
208

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Although you learn 
the bird’s tongue through one sound
And through analogies that can be found,
You injure saints’ hearts like that poor sick friend
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And, like the deaf man, think you comprehend.
The Prophet’s scribe, on hearing from that bird,
Thought he was that bird’s equal since he’d heard,
The bird then blinded him and 
flapped a wing
To shove him down death’s well of su
ffering.
By thoughts or what re
flects from revelations
Don’t fall back down from heaven’s lofty stations,
Harut and Marut though you be, or more
Than
those who stand in ranks
* outside His door.
Have mercy on bad people’s wickedness,
3430
And curse instead your own self-centredness!
Beware lest God’s possessiveness should hit
And make you fall head-
first inside earth’s pit!
Both said, ‘God, Yours is the command, for sure,
Without your care how can one feel secure?’
This pair of angels hadn’t understood:
‘How can our deeds be bad when we are good?’
The pair’s distracting itch would not subside
Until it sowed the seed of sel
fish pride.
They then said, ‘Foolish, base humanity
3435
Knows not of spiritual kings’ purity;
We’ll draw the curtains over all the sky
Then land on earth and raise a screen so high,
To grant all justice and bring worship’s light,
While
flying home to heaven every night,
So that as wonders of the age we’ll be
Renowned for bringing earth security.’
This view of earth and heaven isn’t right,
There’s something missing here that’s kept from sight.
The Prophet’s Scribe Becomes an Apostate
209

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