The Drowned Book

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BLUE ROBE 23

Show the true way. (Qur'an 1:6)24

I have been given a taste for what is beautiful. Like milkrunning through my body, the gates open. I wear a blue robewoven of six directions with watercolor images flowing overthe cloth, a thousand kinds of flowers, yellow jasmine, wildiris. Orchard corridors, handsome faces on the street, I amcomposed of this beauty, the attar of pressed plants, rose oil,resinous balsam: live essence, I am the intelligent juice offlowers.

ONE OF THE WAYS GOD TASTES

In the middle of praying I was thinking about the nymphs ofparadise again, said to be half-camphor, half-saffron, withtheir hair of pure musk.

Then I remembered the old saying about such and suchwhose head is soaked in shame, with his foot bound tight intruthfulness.

Then I recalled the qualities of God: compassion, generosity,elegant intricacy, luminous wisdom, mercy, beauty. I becamegrateful that I know the taste of some of these qualities,according to my limited capacity, and even beyond it.

I see a long table spread with a tablecloth. On it are thepowers and qualities and creations, the seven stars from whichflow our pleasure here. Even in my unconsciousness, God entersmy desire and my soul with the taste of those qualities.

I feel myself becoming one of the ways God tastes.

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Excerpted from The Drowned Book: Ecstatic and Earthy Reflections of Bahauddin, the Father of Rumi by Coleman Barks, John Moyne
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