In his great work, Jalal ad-Din returned again and again to the mystery of sacrifice:
"The chickpea leaps in the pot and cries: 'Why do you boil me? You lifted me from the garden, soaked me in water, and now you subject me to fire!'
"The cook strikes it with her ladle and says: 'Be patient! I do not boil you because I hate you. I boil you so that you may acquire taste, so that you may be absorbed into the body and become spirit. This suffering is not rejection but transformation.'
"So too with the soul. The fires of this world — the losses, the betrayals, the deaths of those we love, the death of our own hopes — these are not punishments but purifications. The cook is kind, though the chickpea cannot see it.
"I have lived through my own boiling. I have cried out in my own pot. And now I tell you: every flame was mercy. Every loss was liberation. What I thought was destruction was the only possible path to what I have become."
And Jalal ad-Din spoke of martyrdom:
"The martyr does not die. The martyr wakes up.
While others sleep in the dream of this world, the martyr opens eyes in the Real.
What looks like death from within the dream is birth when seen from outside it.
"Do not weep for the martyrs. They have escaped the prison you still inhabit. Weep instead for yourself, still dreaming, still believing the walls are real.
"But know this also: the martyr's death is not wasted. Every such death tears the fabric of the dream. Every such death lets light through. The martyrs die not only for themselves but for all of us who remain sleeping, that we might have one more crack through which to glimpse the dawn."
Teaching 6
Those who die for truth do not die in vain. They tear holes in the veil of illusion through which others may see.