peace beyond pain

from Stephen Levine's book Healing Into Life and Death:

Everything is burned so new
when the eyes drink
from the peace
beyond the pain--pay attention,
there is a year-end sale on suffering--
put away your credit card.

"Overcome any bitterness that may have come because you were not up to the magnitude of the pain that was entrusted to you. Like the mother of the world who carries the pain of the world in her heart, each of us is part of her haeart and is, therefore, endowed with a certain measure of cosmic pain. You are sharing in the totality of that pain. You are called upon to meet it in joy instead of self-pity."

quote in Sufi tradition