eternal wounds. How can one who cannot save himself from death be an object of worship?
Indeed, being obsessed with externals, the human reason cries out despairingly at seeing the deaths of the things it worships in the universe, and the spirit, which seeks for an eternal beloved, utters the cry: “I love not those that set.”
I don’t want separation, I don’t desire separation, I can’t abide separation.
Meetings followed immediately by separation are not worth sorrow and grief, they are not worthy of being longed for. For just as the passing of pleasure is pain, imagining the passing of pleasure is pain. The works of all the metaphorical lovers, that is, the works of poetry on love, are all cries at the pain arising from imagining such passing. If you were to constrain the spirit of all the works of poetry, these grievous cries would flow from each.
It is due to the pain and tribulations of meetings stained with transitoriness, those sorrowful, metaphorical loves, that my heart weeps and cries through the weeping of, “I love not those that set.”
If you want permanence in this transitory world, it proceeds from transitoriness. Find transience with regard to your evil-commanding soul that you may be enduring.
Divest yourself of bad morals, the basis of worship of this world. Be transitory! Sacrifice your goods and property in the way of the True Beloved. See the ends of beings, pointing to non-existence, for the way leading to permanence in this world starts from transitoriness.
The human mind plunges into causes, so is bewildered at the upheavals of the passing world, and laments despairingly. While the conscience desires true existence, so severs the tie with metaphorical beloveds and transient beings by crying like Abraham, “I love not those that set,” it binds itself to the Truly Existent One, the Eternal Beloved.
O my ignorant soul! Know that the world and its beings are surely ephemeral, but in each ephemeral thing you may find two ways leading to permanence, and may see two flashes, two mysteries, of the manifestations of the Undying Beloved’s beauty. But only if renounce yourself and those ephemeral things.
Yes, within the bounty the bestowal is to be seen and the Most Merciful’s favour perceived. Passing from bounty to bestowal, you will find the Bestower. Also, like a missive, each work of the Eternally Besought One makes known the All-Glorious Maker’s names. If you pass from the decoration to the meaning, by way of His names you will find the One signified. Since you can find the kernel, the essence, of these ephemeral beings, obtain it. Then without pity you can throw away their meaningless shells and externals onto the flood of ephemerality.