Cry not out at misfortune, O wretch, come, trust in Allah! 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 Allah!
* * *
Trust in Allah! 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 Allah 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 of the states demand abandoning the world here.
* * *
Abandoning the world is to regard it as Allah’s property, with His permission,
in His Name…
If you want to do trade, it is 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.
* * *
Source: The Second Station of the 17th Word,1
1 The pieces in this Second Station resemble poetry, but they are not poetry. They rather took on that form to a degree due to the perfect order of the truths they express. 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.