A SUPPLICATION WHICH OCCURRED TO ME IN PERSIAN

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate

O my Sustainer! Heedlessly not trusting in You but in my own power and will, I cast an eye over ‘the six aspects’ searching for a cure for my ills. Alas, I could find no cure for them, and I understood it was being said to me: “Are your ills not sufficient as cure for you?”

In heedlessness I looked to past time on my right to find solace, but I saw that yesterday appeared to be my father’s grave and past time as the huge tomb of all my forbears. It filled me with horror rather than consolation.(*)

(*) Belief shows that horrific vast grave to be a familiar and enlightened meeting and a gathering of friends.

Then I looked to the future on the left, but again I could find no cure. For tomorrow appeared as my grave and the future as the vast tomb of my contemporaries and the forthcoming generations; it afforded not a feeling of familiarity, but one of fright.(*)

(*) Belief and the peace of belief shows that terrible huge grave to be a feast of the Most Merciful in delightful palaces of bliss.

Since no good appeared from the left either, I looked at the present day, and I saw that it resembled a bier; it was bearing my desperately struggling corpse.(*)

(*) Belief shows the bier to be a place of trade and a glittering guest-house.

Thus, I could find no cure from this aspect either, so I raised my head and looked at the top of the tree of my life. But I saw that its single fruit was my corpse; it was looking down on me from the tree-top.(*)

(*) Belief shows the tree’s fruit to be not the corpse, but the worn out home of my spirit, which will manifest eternal life and is destined for everlasting happiness, from which it has departed in order to travel among the stars.

Despairing of that aspect too, I lowered my head. I looked and saw that the dust of my bones underfoot had mixed with the dust of my first creation. It afforded no cure, but added further pain to my ills.(*)

(*) Belief shows the dust to be the door leading to mercy and a curtain before the halls of Paradise.

I turned away from that too and looked behind me, where I saw a transient world without foundation revolving and departing in the valleys of nothingness and the darkness of non-existence. It was no salve for my ills, it rather added the poison of horror and fright.(*)

BEDİÜZZAMAN