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You may be tired by ten cycles of prayer;
I may not be worn out by five hundred.
One goes barefoot all the way to the Ka`bah,
and another is totally exhausted
just going as far as the mosque.
One in utter self-devotion gives away his life,
while another agonizes over the gift of a loaf.
This middle way belongs to the realm of the finite,
for that finite has a beginning and an end.
A beginning and end are necessary
to conceive of the middle point.
As the Infinite doesn't have limits,
how can you apply a mean to it?
Mathnawi II: 3537-3542
Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski
"Rumi: Daylight", Threshold Books, 1994
I may not be worn out by five hundred.
One goes barefoot all the way to the Ka`bah,
and another is totally exhausted
just going as far as the mosque.
One in utter self-devotion gives away his life,
while another agonizes over the gift of a loaf.
This middle way belongs to the realm of the finite,
for that finite has a beginning and an end.
A beginning and end are necessary
to conceive of the middle point.
As the Infinite doesn't have limits,
how can you apply a mean to it?
Mathnawi II: 3537-3542
Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski
"Rumi: Daylight", Threshold Books, 1994
