Original content

English translation

Abu Sa'id al-Kharraz — may God sanctify his secret — says: In the early days of my spiritual aspiration, I used to guard the secret of my present state. One day I came out into a desert and was walking, when from behind me arose the sound of something. I held my heart back from turning toward it and kept my eye from looking at it.

It came toward me until it drew near to me; I saw that two great beasts of prey climbed up onto my shoulders. I did not look at them, neither at the time of their climbing up nor at the time of their coming down.

Do you know who is the Sufi, pure from the color of dispersion? He who turns his face toward oneness in this two-colored palace.

The end of the thread of his secret does not break from the Beloved, even if, suppose, A lion should block his path on one side and a leopard on the other.

And he also said — may his secret be sanctified: Whoever has supposed that one can arrive through striving has borne a pain in vain, and whoever has imagined that one can arrive without striving has trodden nothing but the road of vain desire.

Through toil no one reached the treasure of Your union; And the wonder is this, that without toil no one saw that treasure.

Not everyone who ran caught the wild ass in the plain; Yet none caught the wild ass except the one who ran.