TASIN OF ZOROASTER
Ahriman Tempts Zoroaster
Ahriman
Ahriman Tempts Zoroaster
Ahriman
Because of you my creatures complain like a reed-pipe, | |
because of you our April has become like December; | |
you have made me humbled and dishonoured in the world, | |
you have stained your image with my blood. | |
Truth lives through the epiphany of your Sinai, | |
death for me dwells within your White Hand. | |
It is folly to rely on a covenant with God, | |
to travel the road to His desire is to lose the way; | |
poisons lurk within His rose-tinted wine. | |
saw, worm and cross-these are His gifts. | |
Noah had no other resource but prayer, | |
but the words of that hapless man were of no avail. | |
So abandon the city and hide yourself in a cave, | |
choose the company of the cavalcade of the creatures of light; | |
with one glance make the dust a philosopher’s stone, | |
set fire to the heavens with a single prayer; | |
become a wanderer in the mountains like Moses, | |
be half-consumed in the fire of vision; | |
but you must certainly give up prophecy, | |
you must give up all such mullah-mongery. | |
By associating with nobodies, a somebody becomes a nobody, | |
though his nature be a flame, be becomes a chip of wood. | |
So long as prophethood is inferior to sainthood | |
prophecy is a veritable vexation to love. | |
Now rise, and nestle in the nest of Unity, | |
abandon manifestation and sit in retirement! |
Zoroaster
Light is the ocean, darkness is but its shore; | |
no torrent like me was ever born in its heart. | |
My breast is swarming with restless waves; | |
what should the torrent do but devastate the shore? | |
The colourless picture, which no man has ever seen, | |
cannot be painted save with the blood of Ahriman. | |
Self-display-that is the very secret of life, | |
life is to test out one’s own striking-power. | |
The Self becomes more mature through suffering | |
until the Self rends the veils that cover God. | |
The God-seeing man sees himself only through God; | |
crying ‘One God’, he quivers in his own blood. | |
To quiver in blood is a great honour for love, | |
saw, stave and halter-these are love’s festival. | |
Upon the road of love, whatever betides is good; | |
then welcome to the unloving kindnesses of the Beloved! | |
Not my eye only desired the manifestation of God; | |
it is a sin to behold beauty without a company. | |
What is solitude? Pain, burning and yearning; | |
company is vision, solitude is a search. | 840 |
Love in solitude is colloquy with God; | |
when love marches forth in display, that is to be a king! | |
Solitude and manifestation are the perfection of ardour, | |
both alike are states and stations of indigence. | |
What is the former? To desert cloister and church; | 845 |
what is the latter? Not to walk alone in Paradise! | |
Though God dwells in solitude and manifestation, | |
solitude is the beginning, manifestation the end. | |
You have said that prophecy is a vexation: | |
when love becomes perfect, it fashions men. | 850 |
It is delightful to go on God’s road by caravan, | |
it is delightful to go in the world free as the soul. |
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