Original content

English translation

This should know whoever is of inward awareness: the absent horizons are present to him. Before Mary there comes present in vision the mother of Yahya, though she is far from bodily sight. With the eyes closed, he sees the Friend, when he has made the skin like a lattice. And if you have not seen him, neither from without nor from within, take the meaning from the story, O lowly one. Not like one who has heard fables and has clung to their depicted form like the letter shin to its written shape, so that he keeps saying: How did that tongueless Kalila drink in speech from Dimna without speech? And if they understood one another's tones, how could a speechless human understand that? How did Dimna, between the lion and the bull, become a messenger and recite spells over both? How did the noble bull become the lion's vizier? How did the elephant become frightened by the moon's reflection? This Kalila and Dimna is all fabrication; otherwise, when would a stork have a quarrel with a crow? Brother, a story is like a measuring vessel; the meaning within it is like grain. The man of intellect takes the grain of meaning and does not look at the vessel, once it has been conveyed. Listen to the tale of the nightingale and the rose, though speech there is not manifest.