(*dc) two friends

two friends

A certain person came to the Friend's door
and knocked.
"Who's there?"
"it's me."

The Friend answered, "Go away. There's no place
for raw meat at this table."

The individual went wandering for a year.
Nothing but the fire of separation
can change hypocrisy and ego. The person returned
completely cooked,
walked up and down in front of the Friend's house,
gently knocked.
"Who is it?"

"You."

"Please come in, my self,
there's no place in this house for two.
The doubled end of the thread is not what goes through
the eye of the needle.
It's a single-pointed, fined-down, thread end,
not a big ego-beast with baggage."

But howcan a camel be thinned to a thread?
With the shears of practices, with doing things.

And with help from the one who brings
impossibilitites to pass, who quiets willfulness,
who gives sight to one blind from birth.

Every day that one does something.
Take that as your text.

Every day God sends forth three powerful energies:
One, from the sperm of the father into the mother,
so growth may begin.
Two, a birth from the womb of the ground,
so male and female may spring into existence.
Three, there's a surge up from the surface
into what is beyond dying, that the real beauty
of creating can be recognized.

There's no way to ever say this.

Let's return to the two friends whose thread
became single,
who spell with their two letters
the original word,
B E.

B and E tighten around sugjects and objects
that one knot may hold them. Two scissor blades
make one cut.
And watch two men washing clothes.
One makes dry clothes wet. The other makes
wet clothes dry. They seem to be thwarting each other,
but their work is a perfect harmony.

Every holy person seems to have a different doctrine
and practice, but there's really only one work.

Someone listening to a millstone falls asleep.
No matter. The stone keeps turning.

Water from the mountain
far above the mill keeps flowing down.l
The sleepers will get their bread.

Underground it moves, without sound, and without
repetition. Show us where that source of speech is
that has no alphabet. That spaciousness.

Where we are now is a narrow fantasy
that comes from there, and the actual, outside world
is even narrower. Narrowness is pain,
and the cause of narrowness is manyness.

Creation was spoken with one sound, BE.
The two letters, B and E,
to record it
came after.
The meaning of the sound
and its resonance
are one.

There's no way to ever say this,
in so many words! And no place
to stop saying it.

Meanwhile, a lion and a wolf were fighting . . . .


-Rumi