“I have described the Way”

Here are a couple of passages that I like from Farid al-Din ‘Attar’s twelfth-thirteenth century Persian mystical poem The Conference of the Birds:

The wretches damned in hell will cry

To those in paradise: “O, testify

To us the nature of your happiness;

Describe the sacred joys which you possess!”

And they will say: “Ineffable delight

Shines in the radiance of His face; its light

Draws near us, and this vast celestial frame –

The eightfold heaven – darkens, bowed by shame.”

And then the tortured souls in hell will say:

“From joys of paradise you turn away;

Such lowly happiness is not for you –

All that you say is true, we know how true!

In hell’s accursèd provinces we reign

Clothed head to foot in fire’s devouring pain;

But when we glimpse that radiant face and know

That we must live for ever here below,

Cut off through all eternity from grace –

Such longing seizes us for that far face,

Such unappeasable and wild regret,

That in our anguished torment we forget

The pit of hell and all its raging fire;

For what are flames to comfortless desire?”

And this one, describing — but, importantly, not describing — the ultimate end of the mystic’s quest, union with the divine, reminds me of the apostle Paul’s remark in 2 Corinthians 12:1-5 about it being impossible and/or unlawful to talk about his experience in paradise and in the third heaven:

They knew the state of which no man can speak;

This pearl cannot be pierced; we are too weak. . . .

No stranger followed them, or could unfold

The secrets they to one another told –

Alone at last, together they conferred;

Blindly they saw themselves and deaf they heard –

But who can speak of this?  I know if I

Betrayed my knowledge I would surely die;

If it were lawful for me to relate

Such truths to those who have not reached this state,

Those gone before us would have made some sign;

But no sign comes, and silence must be mine.

Here eloquence can find no jewel but one,

That silence when the longed-for goal is one.

The greatest orator would here be made

In love with silence and forget his trade,

And I too cease: I have described the Way –

Now, you must act – there is no more to say.  

Posted from Park City, Utah