the evil blood inside my veins

".........."

From that surreptitious look which we took in sin
Thousands of pains and calamities we endured away from thee.
We passionately transgressed all inhibitions
Once you sold love and we purchased it.

Sanai (d. 1131)

The world caters to the good and the evil,
Much of its goods and evils are all around and upon us.
Day and night from behind this dark curtain,
Much colorful plays the world puts on stage.
Should I stage that delightful act of a play,
That too, consider it a play by the world itself.
From the treacheries of this aged stage
I have become hallucinatory, how could I not imagine things?
Now I determined to clear the stage
And cast upon it a magical play.
Throw in a character of such imagination
That no actor would know how to play.

Nizami (d. 1209)

And let me speak to the yet unknowing world
How these things came about. So shall you hear
Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts;
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters;
Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause;
And, in this upshot, purposes mistook
Fall’n on the inventors’ heads. All this can I
Truly deliver.

Hamlet

From a dervish textbook

Question: If one small prayer can bring comfort, as we know it does, does continuous prayer, as practiced by some ascetics, not give even more?

Answer: There was once a poor old half-blind woman. She stumbled in a crowded street market, and her iron-tipped stick tore the hem of the robe of a courtier who had paused beside a shop.

A crowd gathered as the nobleman’s servants berated the old lady.

But the aristocrat was kindly, compassionate. Saying, “Accidents will happen, Mother”, he gave the woman a gold piece and went on his way.

It happened that there was an idiot in the crowd.  “A gold piece for a tear in a robe!” he exclaimed to himself.  “This really is something to follow up.”

As idiots will, he made his plan, based on his own conception of the situation.

The next time he saw the rich man in the market, the idiot ran up to him, tore off the brocade robe and, ripping it to pieces, cried, “Torn ten times! You owe me ten pieces of gold…”

The old lady had been innocent and contrite; the idiot was foolish and greedy. What you do not see may be the determining factor in an occasion or other matter. Effects will depend upon your own inner state just as much as upon anything else.

The purpose of Sufism’s preparation is to become attuned to higher, subtle things: not to try to impose formulas upon a mind which still contains too much greed and also mistakes it for legitimate aspirations.

Hyun Jun: l can't die with all this noise.

Jin Young: Don't. Please don't.

Hyun Jun: You know what the greatest energy that moves people is?

Hyun Jun: l can't bring myself to say it.

The professors in the academy say, “Do not make the model more beautiful than she is,” and my soul whispers, “O if you could only paint the model as beautiful as she really is.

Gibran

Thursday nights

O man! If you only knew how many of the false fantasies of the imagination were nearer to the Truth than the careful conclusions of the cautions. And how these truths are of no service until the imaginer, having done his work with the imagination, has become less imaginative.

She said, “What blasphemy! Do you think that anything which isn’t beautiful must necessarily be ugly?”
“I certainly do.”
“And must anything that isn’t wise be ignorant? Haven’t you realized that there’s something between wisdom and ignorance?”
“What is it?”
“It’s having right opinions without being able to give reasons for having them. Don’t you realize that this isn’t knowing, because you don’t have knowledge unless you can give reasons; but it isn’t ignorance either, because ignorance has no contact with the truth? Right opinion, of course, has this kind of status, falling between understanding and ignorance.”
“You’re right,” I said.
“Then don’t think that what isn’t beautiful must be ugly, and that what isn’t good must be bad.

Plato, The Symposium

(Source: verkur)