And she adds further:

Although it seems that the time of learning might now draw to a close, yet I understand that every moment—even the most unpleasant one—teaches me something and that every experience should be incorporated into my life to enrich it. For there is no end to learning as there is no end to life, and when Iqbal says in a daring formulation: “Heaven is no holiday!” he expresses the view, dear to Goethe and other thinkers, that even eternal life will be a constant process of growing, and, that is, of learning—learning in whatever mysterious way something about the unfathomable mysteries of the Divine, which manifests itself under various signs. Suffering, too, is part of it; and the most difficult task in life is to learn patience.

Learning is, to me, transforming knowledge and experience into wisdom and love, to mature—as according to Oriental lore, the ordinary pebble can turn into a ruby provided it patiently takes into itself the rays of the sun, shedding its own blood in a supreme sacrifice. Perhaps a few lines which I once wrote after visiting Maulana Rumi’s mausoleum in Konya can express what learning means to me:

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