The Three Brothers and the Chinese Princess

There was a king who had three
equally accomplished sons.

Each was generous and wise, and fiercely
decisive when the need arose.

They stood like three strongly burning candles
before their father, ready to set out on a journey
to distant parts of his kingdom to see
if they were being administered fairly and well.

Each kissed the king's hand as a sign
of farewell and obedience.

"Go wherever you are drawn to go," said the king,
"and dance on your way.
                                    You are protected.
I only warn you not to enter one particular
castle, the one called The Fortress
That Takes Away Clarity.

That castle has a gallery of beautiful pictures
which causes great difficulty for the royal family.
It's like the chamber Zuleikha decorated to trap Joseph,
where her picture was everywhere.
                                                   He could not avoid
looking at her. Stay away from that one place."

Of course, as it happens, the three princes
were obsessed with seeing that castle, and in spite
of their father's admonition they went
into it.
          It had five gates facing the land and five
facing the ocean, as the five external senses
take in the color and perfume of phenomena
and the five inner senses open onto the mystery.

The thousands of pictures there made the princes
restless. They wandered the hallways drunkenly,
until they came,
                        all three at the same time,
to stand before a particular portrait,
                                                    a woman's face.
They fell hopelessly in love. "This is what our father
warned us of. We thought we were strong enough
to resist anything, as one who has phthisis
thinks he's well enough to go on,
                                                but we're not!
Who is this?"
                    A wise sheikh revealed to them, "She
is the Chinese princess, the hidden one.
The Chinese king has concealed her as the spirit
is wrapped in an embryo. No one may come
into her presence.
                           Birds are not even allowed
to fly over her roof. No one can figure a way in.
She can't be won by contriving. Give up on that!"

The princes put their heads together anyway,
comrades in one sighing passion.

The oldest said, "We've always been bold
when we gave counsel to others, but look at us!
We used to say, Patience is the key, but the rules
we made for others are no help now. We advised, Laugh!
Why are we so quiet? Where is our strength?"
                                                                   In despair
they set out for China, not with any hope for a union
with the princess, but just to be closer to her.

They left everything and went toward the hidden beloved.
They lived disguised in the capital, trying
to devise some way into the palace.
Finally the eldest, "I can't wait like this.
I don't want to live if I have to live separated
from the beloved. This is the one
I've been beating the drum for my entire life.

What does a duck care about a shipwreck?
Just the duck's feet in ocean water is ship enough.
My soul and my body are married to this boasting.
I am dreaming but I'm not asleep.
I brag but I do not lie.
                                 I'm a candle.
Pass the knife through my neck a hundred times,
I'll burn just as brightly.
                                   The haystack of my existence
has caught on both sides. Let it burn all night
down to nothing.
                         On the road the moon gives
all the light I need. I'm going to confront the king
with my desire."
                        His brothers tried to persuade him
not to, but they couldn't. He sprang up
and came staggering into the presence of the Chinese
king, who knew what was happening, though
he kept silent.
                     That king was inside the three
brothers, but he pretended to be unfamiliar
with them.
                The fire under the kettle is the appearance.
The boiling water is the reality.
                                             The beloved
is in your veins though he or she may seem
to have a form outside you.
                                        The prince knelt
and kissed the king's feet, and stayed there,
bowed down.
                    "This young man will have everything
he seeks, and twenty times that which he left
behind. He gambled and flung off his robe
in ecstasy. Such love is worth a thousand robes.

This one is an ambassador from that love,
and he is doing his work well.''
                                             The prince heard this
and could not speak, but his soul spoke constantly
with that soul. The prince thought, "This is
reality, this waking, this melting away."
He stayed bowed down with the king a long time,
cooking. "Execution is one thing,
                                                but I am being executed
again and again every moment! Poor in wealth,
but rich in lives to sacrifice.
                                        No one can play
the game of love with just one head!"
                                                      This joyful waiting
consumed the prince. The form of the beloved
left his mind and he found union.
"The clothes of the body were sweet silk,
but this nakedness is sweeter."
                                             This subject can go
no further. What comes next must stay hidden.
                                                                    One rides
to the ocean on horseback, but after that
the wooden horse of mystical silence
must carry you.
                       When that boat sinks,
you are the fish, neither silent nor speaking,
a marvel with no name.
                                   So the oldest brother died,
and the middle brother came to the funeral.
                                                                "What's this?
A fish from the same sea!" mused the king. The chamberlain
called out, "A son of the same father, the brother
next in age to the deceased."
                                           The king, "Yes, a keepsake
from that one to me."
                                So the sublime kindnesses
descended again, and the courtyard seemed split apart
like a pomegranate laughing, with all the forms
of the universe opening their tent flaps,
new creations every second.
                                          He had read about such
revelations in books. Now it was his. He kept saying,
"Is there more? Is there more?" Fed from the king's nature,
he felt a satisfaction he'd never felt before,
and then there came a pride.
                                           "Am I not also a king,
the son of a king? Why is this one controlling me?
I should open my own shop, independent of him."
The king thought, "I give you pure light,
and you throw dirt in my face!"
                                              The middle brother
suddenly realized what he had inwardly done,
but it was too late.
                            His magnificence
was stripped away. No longer a garden peacock,
he flew like a lonely owl in the wilderness,
like Adam plowing an ox far from Eden.
                                                         He came to himself
and asked forgiveness, and with his repentance
he combined something else, the deep pain
that comes from losing the union.
                                                 This story must be
shortened. After a year when the king came out
of his own self-effacement, he found one arrow missing
from his quiver and the middle brother dead,
shot through the throat.
                                   The king wept, both slayer
and chief mourner. Yet all was well. The middle brother too
had gone to the beloved through the killing eye
that blasted his conceit.

It was the third brother,
who had been ill up until now,
who received the hand of the princess.

He lived the marriage of form and spirit,
and did absolutely nothing
to deserve it.