A pauper fell in love with a famous Egyptian king. When news of it reached the royal ear, the king summoned the deluded lover. “Since you have fallen in love with a king,” he said, “you have but two choices. Either leave this town and country, or give up your head for my love. Which do you choose: exile or decapitation?” The pauper in love was not a resolute man, so he chose banishment. When that indignant, penniless man left the royal presence, the king immediately commanded: “Cut off his head.” A courtier said: “But your highness, the man is innocent; why do you order his death?” The king replied: “Because he loved me with insincerity. If he were a man truly in love, he would have chosen to stay and lose his head. If you value your head more than your love, then for you the practice of love is a crime. If the beggar had chosen execution, I would have bestowed upon him honours and would have myself put on the garb of servitude for him. In the face of such devotion even the world’s monarch must become a slave to such a lover. However, since the beggar wavered in his love, his claim to love was false. He was double-dealing in love; beheading is what he deserves. If you say, ‘I love’ and then follow it with, ‘but I want to keep my head too,’ you are a liar and pretender. Let my subjects beware, so that no one dares to boast falsely of true love for me.”
Leaving your self is annihilation.
When awareness of this annihilation
is annihilated, you’ll find eternal life.
If your heart is anxious and panics
when it must cross the bridge over raging fire,
don’t worry because that fire
is only a lamp’s flame,
smoking soot, shadowy as a crow’s feather.
When the oil burns, it loses itself,
and so emerges from its own self.
Yes, it burns, but it also yields charcoal
for ink to write the words of the Beloved.
Translated from Persian by Sholeh Wolpé