The duck came timidly out of the water; he went to the assembly of the birds, clad in his finest robe, and said: “No one in either world has spoken of a lovely creature purer than I. I perform the ritual ablution regularly, and at every hour; then I spread the prayer rug upon the water. Who is it that stands upon the water as I do? for I surely possess a wondrous power. Among the birds, I am a penitent of pure vision, pure raiment, and an ever-pure dwelling. Nothing seems profitable to me save water, for my food and my home are in the water. However great the sorrow I feel, I wash it away at once in the water, which I never leave. The stream where I dwell must always be fed by water, for I have no love for dry land. It is only with water that I have to do; how could I leave it? All that lives by water cannot possibly do without it. How could I cross the valleys and fly to the Simurgh? How can one who is content, like me, with the surface of the water, feel a desire to behold the Simurgh?”
The hoopoe answered him: “O thou who delightest in water! thou whose life is surrounded by water, as it would be by fire! thou sleepest softly upon the water, but a wave comes and carries thee away; water is good only for those whose faces are not clean. If thou art such, thou dost well to seek water; but how long wilt thou remain as pure as water, since thou must see the faces of all those whose faces are not clean and who come to bathe?”
Someone asked a religious madman: “What are the two worlds that occupy all our thoughts?” He replied: “The upper world and the lower world are like a drop of water, which either is or is not.”
In the beginning, a drop of water appeared, and clothed itself in the fairest forms; but every form that is upon the water, though it be of iron, shall perish. There is nothing harder than iron, and yet know well that water is its source. But all that has water for its foundation, though it be of iron, is no more real than a dream. No one has ever regarded water as anything stable. Could a building be solid upon water?
Someone asked a religious madman: “What are the two worlds that occupy all our thoughts?” He replied: “The upper world and the lower world are like a drop of water, which either is or is not.”
In the beginning, a drop of water appeared, and clothed itself in the fairest forms; but every form that is upon the water, though it be of iron, shall perish. There is nothing harder than iron, and yet know well that water is its source. But all that has water for its foundation, though it be of iron, is no more real than a dream. No one has ever regarded water as anything stable. Could a building be solid upon water?