The Masnavi
A tiny ant sees a pen moving on paper and tries
to tell the mystery to another ant.
“It was wonderful how that pen point made
pictures of basil leaves and beds of roses and lilies.”
Another ant suggests,
“The real artist, though, is the finger. The pen
is only an instrument.”
A third ant,
“But consider. There’s an arm above whose
strength controls the fingers. . . .”
The argument goes on, up and up, until the chief
ant says,
”Do not regard any accomplishment as proceeding
from material form, all living shapes become unconscious in
sleep and death. Form is just the clothes of spirit.”
But even the wise ant neglects to say what flows
inside that.
He never mentions God, without whom
all intelligence and love and spirit are inert.
Rumi
Book IV, THE SOUL OF RUMI
