The Second Station of the Seventeenth Word

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate

• Cry not out at misfortune, O wretch, come, trust in God!
  For know that crying out compounds the misfortune and is a great error.
• Find misfortune’s Sender, and know it is a gift within gift, and pleasure.
  So leave crying out and offer thanks; like the nightingale, smile through your tears!
• If you find Him not, know the world is all pain within pain, transience and loss.
  So why lament at a small misfortune while upon you is a worldful of woe?
  Come trust in God!
• Trust in God! Laugh in misfortune’s face; it too will laugh.
  As it laughs, it will diminish; it will be changed and transformed.
• Know, O arrogant one, happiness in this world is in abandoning it.
  To know God is enough. Abandon the world; all things will be for you.
• To be arrogant is total loss; whatever you do, all things will be against you.
  So both states demand abandoning the world here.
• Abandoning the world is to regard it as God’s property, with His permission,
  in His Name...
  If you want to do trade, it lies in making this fleeting life eternal.
• If you seek yourself, it is both rotten and without foundation.If you seek the world outside, the stamp of ephemerality is upon it.
• That means there is no value in taking it; the goods in this market are all rotten.
  So pass on... the sound goods are all lined up beyond it....

NOTE: The pieces in this Second Station resemble poetry, but they are not poetry. They were not put into verse intentionally. They rather took on that form to a degree due to the perfect order of the truths they express.

BEDİÜZZAMAN