The Rose-Garden of Mystery

سؤال ۱۴

Question 14

What is the meaning of wine and candle and the beautiful one (shāhid)? And what, after all, is the claim of becoming a tavern-haunter?

جواب ۱۴

Answer 14

Wine and candle and the beautiful one are the very meaning, for in every form He has self-disclosure.

Wine and candle are the light and the taste of gnosis; see the beautiful one, who is hidden from no one.

Whinfield's margin. Hammer-Purgstall (1838) reads وسکر.

Here the wine is the glass, the candle the lamp [Q 24:35]; the beautiful one is the radiance of the light of spirits.

From the beautiful one a spark fell on the heart of Moses: his wine was fire and his candle the tree [Q 20:10; 28:30].

The wine and candle of the soul are that light of the Night Journey [Q 17:1]; but the beautiful one is those very greatest signs [Q 53:18].

Whinfield's margin. Other manuscripts reads اشراست for اسری است.

Wine and candle and the beautiful one are all present: do not, after all, be heedless of the game of love with the beautiful one.

Drink down the wine of selflessness for a while: perhaps you will find safety from your own hand.

Whinfield's margin. Hammer-Purgstall (1838) reads آمانی for امانی.

Drink wine, so that it frees you from yourself and brings the being of the drop to the sea.

Drink a wine whose cup is the face of the Friend; the goblet is His drunken, wine-drinking eye.

Seek a wine without goblet or cup: a wine that is itself the wine-drinker, and that drinks up the cupbearer.

Whinfield's margin. Hammer-Purgstall (1838) omits this couplet.

Drink a wine from the cup of the abiding Face [cf. Q 55:27]: "their Lord gave them to drink" [Q 76:21]; He is its cupbearer.

"Pure" [Q 76:21] is the wine that gives you purity from the defilement of being, in the time of drunkenness.

Whinfield's margin. Hammer-Purgstall (1838) omits می.

Drink wine, free yourself from coldness, for bad drunkenness is better than good behaviour.

For one who falls far from the threshold of the Real, the veil of darkness is better than [the veil of] light [cf. the hadith of the veils of light and darkness].

Since Adam had a hundred helps from darkness, from light Iblīs became accursed forever.

Whinfield's margin. The Midnapore MS reads گر for چو.

If he has polished the mirror of the heart, what is the profit of it, when he sees himself in it?

When a ray from His face fell upon the wine, many bubble-shapes rose upon it.

World and soul in it have the shape of a bubble; its bubble is the dome for "My saints" [hadith: My saints are beneath My domes].

Whinfield's margin. Hammer-Purgstall (1838) omits و.

The universal intellect has been made bewildered and dazed by it; the universal soul has fallen [into its service], a ring in its ear.

Whinfield's margin. Hammer-Purgstall (1838) reads در حلقهٔ گوش for را حلقه در گوش.

The whole world is like a single wine-house of His; the heart of every atom is His measuring-cup.

Intellect is drunk, the angels drunk, the soul drunk; the air drunk, the earth drunk, the heaven drunk.

Whinfield's margin. Hammer-Purgstall (1838) omits و.

The sphere, giddy from it, is ever on the run; the air holds in its heart the hope of a single scent [of it].

The angels drank the clear [wine] from the pure jug; with a draught they poured the dregs upon this earth.

Whinfield's margin. Hammer-Purgstall (1838) reads دروی for دردی.

The elements, made merry by that one draught, have fallen now into water, now into fire.

From the scent of a draught that fell upon the earth, man rose up until he reached the heavens.

Whinfield's margin. Hammer-Purgstall (1838) reads افتاده for کافتاد.

From its reflection the withered body became soul; from its warmth the frozen soul began to flow.

A world of creatures is forever giddy from it, forever turned away from house and home.

Whinfield's margin. Hammer-Purgstall (1838) reads جهان for جهانی.

One, from the scent of its dregs, became wise; one, from the colour of its clear [wine], became a transmitter (nāqil).

One, from half a draught, became sincere; one, from a single flask, became a lover.

Another swallowed down at one go the jar and the wine-house, the cupbearer and the wine-drinker.

Whinfield's margin. Hammer-Purgstall (1838) reads می for خم.

He drank it all, and his mouth is still open: what a sea-hearted, head-high rind!

Whinfield's margin. Hammer-Purgstall (1838) reads ماند دهان for مانده دهن.

He has drunk up being at one go; he has found freedom from affirming and denying.

He has become free of dry asceticism and of wild sayings (ṭāmāt), and taken hold of the hem of the elder of the tavern.

اشارت بخراباتیان

Indication: the tavern-haunters

🎙Listen on Ganjoor ↗ · read by فاطمه زندی · vv. 839–864

To become a tavern-haunter is release from self; selfhood is unbelief, even if it is piety.

Whinfield's margin. Hammer-Purgstall (1838) reads پارسا نیست for پارسائیست.

They have given you a sign of the tavern: "Unity is the dropping of relations".

The tavern (kharābāt, lit. the ruins) is of the world without likeness; it is the station of lovers who care for nothing.

The tavern is the nest of the bird of the soul; the tavern is the threshold of placelessness.

The tavern-haunter is a ruin within a ruin, for in his desert the world is a mirage.

Whinfield's margin. Hammer-Purgstall (1838) reads و for در.

It is a tavern without limit or end: no one has seen its beginning, nor its end.

Were you to hasten through it for a hundred years, you would find again neither yourself nor anyone else.

Whinfield's margin. Hammer-Purgstall (1838) reads کش for کس.

In it is a company without foot or head, none of them believers and none unbelievers either.

They have taken the wine of selflessness into their heads; they have given up all good and evil.

Each has drunk a wine without lip or palate (?), and is free of shame and of name.

Doubtful reading. Printed گام, "step"; the Lahore lithograph (1347/1928–29) reads کام, "palate", which the sense (drinking without lip or palate) requires.

Talk of what has passed, of ecstatic utterance (shaṭḥ) and extravagant claims (ṭāmāt), fancies of seclusion, of lights and of miracles:

they have let [all] go for the scent of a dreg [of wine], and from the taste of non-being have fallen drunk.

Staff and water-flask, rosary and tooth-stick, they have pawned them all, clean, for a dreg.

Whinfield's margin. Hammer-Purgstall (1838) reads زنار for مسواک; Hammer-Purgstall (1838) reads کزد for کرده; Hammer-Purgstall (1838) reads یکبار for پاک.

Between water and clay, falling and rising, they shed blood from their eyes instead of tears.

One moment, from high spirits, in the world of coquetry (nāz) they have become like the runners who carry their necks high;

Whinfield's margin. The Midnapore MS reads گهی for دمی; Hammer-Purgstall (1838) reads راز for ناز.

at times, from shame of face, they turn their faces to the wall; at times, from honour of face, [they are] on the gallows.

At times, in the audition (samāʿ) of longing for the Beloved, they have become without foot or head, turning like the heavens.

With every melody they have heard from the minstrel an ecstasy has come to them from that world.

The audition of the soul is not, after all, sound and letter: in every mode [of music] lies a wondrous secret.

They have pulled off over their heads the patched cloak of ten folds, and have become bare of every colour and every scent.

Whinfield's margin. Hammer-Purgstall (1838) reads تو for توی; Hammer-Purgstall (1838) reads بو for بوی.

They have washed away, with that clear and strained [wine], every colour, black and green and blue.

They have drunk a measure of the clear wine and from it have become Sufis purified of attributes.

With their souls they have swept the dust of the dunghills clean; of all they have seen they have not told one in a hundred.

They have taken hold of the skirt of the wine-seller's rinds (rindān); they have grown weary of being shaykh and disciple.

What place is there for asceticism and piety? What bond is this? What is being shaykh and disciple? What deceit is this?

Whinfield's margin. The Midnapore MS transposes the lines of this couplet.

If your face is turned to the great and the small, the idol (but), the girdle (zunnār) and Christianity (tarsāʾī) are better for you.

Whinfield's margin. Hammer-Purgstall (1838) here repeats couplets 761 and 762.