be easier with your plans | Bahauddin Valad

I was wondering what sort of learning I should take up next, and my consideration became tedious and exhausting. I turned to the verse: Say The enjoyment of this world is shortlived (Quran 4:77), which tells me I should keep up whatever comes next without puzzling how it arrived or what the possible consequences might be.

Accept the pleasures given, and don't try to keep them with you. That's addiction.

The intellect's interest and pleasures are running water flowing from the east and from the west. Taste and let them go.

When grief arrives, don't try to think of ways to prevent it happening again. It will. Sorrow masses overhead like cloudcover, rains down pain, breaks up, and moves on.

And don't divide your sustainance into strict daily allotments. Be easier with planning with your life, less rational.

When you were sucking your mother's breast, did you count the hole in her nipples? Milk came as needed.

- Maarif, Bahauddin Valad (1152-1231)

The Drowned Book | ecstatic and earthly reflections of Bahauddin, the father of Rumi | translation: Coleman Barks and John Moyne