Inspirations

The demon fashions bowls ‘like water-troughs’.

He does not dare refuse or answer back.

See how you are atremble out of fear;

be sure non-being’s also ever-trembling.

And if you’re striving after high position,

it’s just the fear your spirit is in turmoil.

For all except the love of God most fair

is turmoil, even if it’s sugar-coated.

So what is turmoil? Going towards death,

not having plunged into the living water.

The people’s eyes are cast on earth and death;

they doubt life’s water with a hundred doubts.

Strive to reduce your hundred doubts to ninety;

be gone by night or, if you sleep, night goes.

By night’s obscurity seek out that day

and find that darkness-burning intellect.

In evil-coloured night there is much goodness;

the living water is the bride of darkness.

Yet who can lift his head up out of sleep

and sow these hundred seeds of inattention?

The deadly sleep and deadly food befriend you.

The master slept; the night thief went to work.

Do you not recognize your enemies?

The fiery ones are foes of those of earth.

Fire is the foe of water and her children

as water is the rival of his spirit.

The water will extinguish fire because

it is the enemy of water’s children.

And so the fire’s the fire of human lust

in which there lies the root of sin and error.