Have you ever known a name without the reality denoted by the name?
Or have you ever plucked a rose just from the letters R, O, S, E?🤔🧐

You have pronounced the name; now go and seek the reality it points to.
Know that the moon is on high, not in the water of the stream!

If you aspire to pass beyond mere names and letters,
make yourself entirely purged of your ‘self.’

Like polished iron, lose the ferruginous colour;
Become in your ascetic discipline like a mirror without rust.

Make yourself pure from the attributes of self,
in order to see your own pure untarnished essence.

Behold then in your own heart all the knowledge of the prophets…
without book, without preceptor, and without master.

― Rumi (Translated by Hamid Homayouni)