Attar of Nishapur - The Conference of the Birds (1177)

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A man whose eyes love opens risks his soul - His dancing breaks beyond the mind's control.

Attar of Nishapur
All things are but masks at God's beck and call,
They are symbols that instruct us that God is all.

Attar of Nishapur
Come you lost Atoms to your Centre draw,
And be the Eternal Mirror that you saw:
Rays that have wander'd into Darkness wide
Return and back into your Sun subside.

Attar of Nishapur
All you have been, and seen, and done, and thought,
Not You but I, have seen and been and wrought:
I was the Sin that from Myself rebell'd:
I the Remorse that tow'rd Myself compell'd...

Attar of Nishapur
The home we seek is in eternity; The Truth we seek is like a shoreless sea, Of which your paradise is but a drop. This ocean can be yours; why should you stop Beguiled by dreams of evanescent dew? The secrets of the sun are yours, but you Content yourself with motes trapped in its beams. Turn to what truly lives, reject what seems — Which matters more, the body or the soul? Be whole: desire and journey to the Whole.

Attar of Nishapur
A thousand for his love expired each day, And those who saw his face, in blank dismay Would rave and grieve and mourn their lives away- To die for love of that bewitching sight Was worth a hundred lives without his light. None could survive his absence patiently, None could endure this king's proximity- How strange it was that man could neither brook The presence nor the absence of his look!

Attar of Nishapur
Sin and Contrition — Retribution owed,
And cancell'd — Pilgrim, Pilgrimage, and Road,
Was but Myself toward Myself: and Your
Arrival but Myself at my own Door...

Attar of Nishapur
The fruit of love's great tree is poverty; Whoever knows this knows humility.

Attar of Nishapur
When first you enter Wisdom's sea, beware-A wave of indecision floods you there.

Attar of Nishapur
This was no friendship, to forsake your friend, To promise your support and at the end Abandon him-this was sheer treachery. Friend follows friend to hell and blasphemy- When sorrow comes one's true friends are found; In times of joy ten thousand gather round.

Attar of Nishapur