the next level

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Permalink Reply by Lesley Collier on February 17, 2010 at 10:37am

I am in this and yet still I look for the old to cling to, like a mother's apron strings. I'm reaching up and out and find no-thing. This is where I am. There has been, since a child, a sense that there is no place for me to look for. I feel my lack of identity yet still I look. Old teachings tell me I am looking outside for something that is already here, inside. I feel lost yet with a sense of arrival. In my life I have lost, found and lost and found all over again. Everything falls away. "...trust that all is love". What is 'love'?

Permalink Reply by Lesley Collier on February 17, 2010 at 11:37am

The Dullard Sage
By
Farid ud-Din Attar (1120-1220?)

[English version by Peter Lamborn Wilson & Nasrollah Pourjavady]


Lost in myself
I reappeared
I know not where

a drop that rose
from the sea and fell
and dissolved again;

a shadow
that stretched itself out
at dawn,

when the sun
reached noon
I disappeared.

I have no news
of my coming
or passing away—

the whole thing
happened quicker
than a breath;

ask no questions
of the moth.
In the candle flame

of his face
I have forgotten
all the answers.

In the way of love
there must be knowledge
and ignorance

so I have become
both a dullard
and a sage;

one must be
an eye and yet
not see

so I am blind
and yet I still
perceive,

Dust
be on my head
if I can say

where I
in bewilderment
have wandered:

Attar
watched his heart
transcend both worlds

and under its shadow
now is gone mad
with love.