The Words | 17. Word - Second Station | 222
(222-238)

                   The Second Station 
                       of the Seventeenth Word 5

Cry not out at misfortune, O wretch, come, trust in God!

For know that crying out compounds the misfortune and is a great error.

* * *

Find misfortune's Sender, and know it is a gift within gift, and pleasure.

So leave crying out and offer thanks; like the nightingale, smile through your tears!

* * *

If you find Him not, know the world is all pain within pain, transience and loss. So why lament at a small misfortune while upon you is a worldful of woe?

Come trust in God!

* * *

Trust in God! Laugh in misfortune's face; it too will laugh.

As it laughs, it will diminish; it will be changed and transformed.

* * *

Know, O arrogant one, happiness in this world is in abandoning it.

To know God is enough. Abandon the world; all things will be for you.

* * *

To be arrogant is total loss; whatever you do, all things will be against you.

So both states demand abandoning the world here.

* * *

Abandoning the world is to regard it as God's property, with His permission,

in His Name...

If you want to do trade, it lies in making this fleeting life eternal.

* * *

If you seek yourself, it is both rotten and without foundation.

If you seek the world outside, the stapip of ephemerality is upon it.

* * *

That means there is no value in taking it; the goods in this market are all rotten. So pass on... the sound goods are all lined up beyond it.



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5. The pieces in this Second Station resemble poetry, but they are not poetry. They were not put into verse intentionally. They rather took on that form to a degree due to the perfect order of the truths they express.

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