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No tongue can tell Your secret by Hakim Sanai (1044? - 1150?) Timeline English version by Priya Hemenway Original Language Persian/Farsi Muslim / Sufi 11th Century No tongue can tell Your secret for the measure of the word obscures Your nature. But the gift of the ear is that it hears what the tongue cannot tell.     -- from The Book of Everything: Journey of the Heart's Desire, by Hakim Sanai Al-Ghaznavi / Translated by Priya Hemenway Amazon.com   / Photo by jordanfischer /	Recommended Books The Book of Everything: Journey of the Heart's Desire, by Hakim Sanai Al-Ghaznavi / Translated by Priya Hemenway The Drunken Universe: An Anthology of Persian Sufi Poetry, Translated by Peter Lamborn Wilson / Translated by Nasrollah Pourjavady The Hand of Poetry: Five Mystic Poets of Persia, with Lectures by Inayat Khan, Translated by Coleman Barks Islamic Mystical Poetry: Sufi Verse from the Early Mystics to Rumi, Translated by Mahmood Jamal Love's Alchemy: Poems from the Sufi Tradition, Translated by David Fideler / Translated by Sabrineh Fideler More >>
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Commentary by Ivan M. Granger

This verse has an elegant subtlety, and trimmed with a thin edge of wit. Here Sanai is playing with the mystic's dilemma of words.

"No tongue can tell Your secret / for the measure of the word obscures Your nature." The direct encounter with the Divine can't truly be put into words. Words are a creation of the limited mind, powerful, certainly, but limited. Words, even when masterfully wielded, can only describe limited aspects of limited reality. Words imply a fracturing of reality into countless objects, an impassible duality of observer and observed, describer and described. How can words properly convey the undivided Wholeness?

(There is really no 'encounter' the way I just phrased it, because that implies two separates meeting, when there is really only the profound recognition of unity. Words fail the Wholeness.)

Seeing this limitation, some teachers construct complex frameworks of descriptions. Some hint and suggest and riddle. Some fall silent. What is said and what is left unsaid... a fascinating game. But it is only the encounter (which is not really an encounter) that conveys the truth of all this.

The "tongue cannot tell" these things properly. "But the gift of the ear / is that it hears" anyway. That is, when we truly and openly listen, an inner whisper begins to draw the awareness beyond the descriptions, the suggestions, the silences. And suddenly there we stand, outside of all words and concepts that obscure while they define. There we stand, witnessing, participating in the living Wholeness that is the divine nature of undivided Reality.

I like the game of words, perhaps too much. But it is time for my tongue to rest and let the ear enjoy its gift...

Ivan M. Granger's original poetry, stories and commentaries are Copyright © 2002 - 2011 by Ivan M. Granger.
All other material is copyrighted by the respective authors, translators and/or publishers.