A Thousand Hearts (Attar)

[Guest guest]

But if you look at things with the eye of ordinary reason you will

never understand how necessary it is to love. Only a man who has been

tested and is free can feel this. He who undertakes this journey

should have a thousand hearts so that he can sacrifice one at every

moment.

--Farid uddin Attar

from The Conference of the Birds

(C. S. Nott rendition}

*****

No traveller has seen the limit of this journey neither has he found a

remedy for love. If you halt you are petrified, or you may even die;

if you continue on your way, always advancing, you will hear until

eternity the cry: " Go still further. " You can neither go nor stay.

It is of no advantage either to live or die.

--Farid uddin Attar

(C. S. Nott rendition}

*****

In this Fourth Valley the lightning of power, which is the discovery

of your own resources, of self-sufficiency, blazes up so that the heat

consumes a hundred worlds. Since hundreds of worlds are reduced to

powder is it strange that yours will also disappear?

--Farid uddin Attar

C. S. Nott rendition

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