from him a man in God’s way. Respect is the root of success.
Chapter One Hundred and Eighty-Two: Knowing the Station of Listening
Receive this counsel from one who cares:
listening is only unrestricted listening.
Beware of restricting it, for that
is a statement every realizer refutes.
Listening from the Book is what
every teacher and one bowing his head knows.
Melodious recitation of the Qur’an is our listening;
the Real speaks whenever speech occurs.
God hears what His servants say
from His speech; His hearing is through my realization.
Our listening to “Be” is existence’s root;
through it we come to be, and are speech itself.
Consider its precedence in a verse:
you will find noble knowledge that lays low.
Notes
Translator’s note TN4797-1: Listening renders technical samāʿ, distinguished from the hearing faculty, samʿ. The poem’s unvowelled m-n-ṭ-q is read as manṭiq, speech; munṭiq, one causing speech, is another possibility. “One bowing his head” follows muṭriq. Muzhiq in the final line has a force of making vanish or laying low; the object is unstated.
