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A Series of Lessons on the Inner Teachings of the Philosophies and Religions of India1286
“By Thy grace I keep fixed on Eternity my amorous gaze.”
The poet from whose verses we have above made a few quotations,
when quite a young man, once advised singing and dancing at the funeral
of a friend. When remonstrated with by the horror-stricken and indignant
mourners, he replied: “When the human spirit, after years of confinement in
the cage and dungeon of the body, is at length set free, and wings its flight
to the Source whence it came—is not this an occasion for rejoicing, thanks,
and dancing?”
Jami, another Sufi poet, hath sung of the Divine Love of the Divine:
“Gaze, till Gazing out of Gazing, grew to Being Her I gaze upon,
She and I no more, but in One Undivided Being blended.
All that is not One must ever suffer with the Wound of Absence;
And whoever in Love’s City enters, finds but Room for One,
And but in Oneness, Union.”
Omar Khayyam, whose “Rubaiyat” is well known in the West by reason
of the popularity of Fitzgerald’s translation, had much to say of Love, the
Beloved and the Lover, but beyond the few verses quoted by us in the first
part of the lesson, Fitzgerald gives us but few touching upon this subject,
leaving the balance untranslated and unused, seemingly preferring to give
prominence to those using the figurative symbols of “the Wine.” But still
Fitzgerald included many showing that old Omar understood the doctrine,
and taught the philosophy. The following quotations will show this:
“Some for the Glories of this World; and some
Sigh for the Prophet’s Paradise to come;
Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go,
Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum.”