NINE SAYINGS
OF THE INDIAN SAGE
1
| This world is not a veil over the Essence of God; | |
| the image in the water is no barrier to plunging in. |
2
| It is delightful to be born into another world, |
| so that another youth may thereby be attained. |
3
| God is beyond death, He is the very essence of life; | |
| when His servant dies, He knows not what is happening. | |
| Though we are birds without wings or feathers, | |
| we know more of the science of death than God., |
4
| Time? It is a sweet mingled with poison, | |
| a general compassion mingled with vengeance; | |
| you see neither city nor plain free of its vengeance— | |
| its compassion is that you may say, ‘It has passed.’ |
5
| Unbelief is death, my enlightened friend; | |
| how beseems it a hero to wage holy war on the dead? | |
| The believer is living, and at war with himself, | |
| he falls upon himself like a panther on a deer. |
6
| The infidel with a wakeful heart praying to an idol |
| is better than a religious man asleep in the sanctuary. |
7
| Blind is the eye that sees sin and error; |
| never does the sun behold the night. |
8
| Association with the mire makes the seed a tree; |
| man by association with the mire is brought to shame. |
| The seed receives from the mire twisting and turning |
| that it may make its prey the rays of the sun. |
9
| I said to the rose, ‘Tell me, you with your torn breast, | |
| how do you take colour and scent from the wind and the dust?’ | |
| The rose said, ‘Intelligent man bereft of intelligence, | |
| how do you take a message from the silent electric ray? | |
| The soul is in our body through the attraction of this and that; | |
| your attraction is manifest. whereas ours is hidden.’ |
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