282 The Lover went one day into a cloister, and the monks inquired of him if he, too, were a religious. ‘Yea,’ he answered, ‘of the order of my Beloved.’ ‘What rule dost thou follow?’ He answered: ‘My Beloved’s.’ ‘To whom art thou vowed?’ He said: ‘To my Beloved.’ ‘Hast thou thy will?’ He answered: ‘Nay, it is given to my Beloved.’ ‘Hast thou added aught to the rule of thy Beloved?’ He answered: ‘Naught can be added to that which is already perfect. And why,’ continued the Lover, ‘do not you that are religious take the Name of my Beloved? May it not be that, as you bear the name of another, your love may grow less, and, hearing the voice of another, you may not catch the voice of the Beloved?’ 283 The trials and tribulations that the Lover endured for love’s sake made him weary and apt to be impatient; and the Beloved reproved him, saying that he whom either trouble or happiness affected thus knew but little of love. So the Lover was contrite and wept, and he begged his Beloved to restore his love again. 284 ‘Say, O Fool, what is love?’ He answered: ‘Love is that which throws the free into bondage, and to those that are in bonds gives liberty.’ And who can say whether in love there is more of liberty or of bondage? 285 The Beloved called His Lover, and he answered Him, saying: ‘What wilt Thou, O my Beloved, Thou who art the sight of my eyes, thought of my thoughts, love of my love and sum of my perfections,--yea, and the source of all my beginnings?’ 286 ‘O my Beloved,’ said the Lover, ‘I come to Thee, I walk in Thee, for Thou dost call me. And I greet Thee with Thine own Sign, by which I hope for eternal life and eternal blessing.’ 287 The Lover cried aloud and said: ‘Fire gives warmth, its heat gives lightness, and that lightness draws on high. And in like manner love inflames the thoughts, gives lightness and draws on high. And one love unites three things, binding them securely the one to the others.’ 288 They asked the Lover: ‘What is the world?’ He answered: ‘It is a book for such as can read, in which is revealed my Beloved.’ They asked him: ‘Is thy Beloved, then, in the world?’ He answered: ‘Yea, even as the writer is in his book.’ ‘And wherein consists this book?’ He answered: ‘In my Beloved, since my Beloved contains it all, and therefore is the world in my Beloved rather than my Beloved in the world.’ 289 ‘Say, O Lover, who is he that loves and seems to thee as a fool?’ The Lover answered: ‘He that loves the shadow and makes no account of the truth.’ ‘And whom dost thou call rich?’ ‘He that loves truth.’ ‘And who is poor?’ ‘He that loves falsehood.’ 290 They asked the Lover: ‘Is the world to be loved?’ He answered: ‘Truly it is, but as a piece of work, for its artificer’s sake, or as the night by reason of the day which follows it.’