"Rumi’s poetry is divided into various categories: the Quatrains (rubayat) and Odes (ghazalyat) lyrical love poems dedicated to his mystical lover and Sufi master, Shams of Tabriz in his Divan or Diwan, and the highly mystical and spiritual Rhymed Couplets in the six books of his magnum opus, Masnavi or Mathnawi. Rumi's prose works are divided into the Discourses, the Letters, and the Seven Sermons.
"Rumi’s poetry and prose writings have a spiritual content that is the universal language of the human soul. They speak of the spiritual journey of Man’s ascent through the mind and soul toward the Perfection (God). It is often said that the teachings of Rumi are ecumenical in nature. For Rumi, religion was mostly a personal experience and not limited to logical and dogmatic arguments or perceptions of the senses. Rumi believes that creative love, or the urge to rejoin the spirit to divinity, is the ultimate goal towards which a believer moves.
Love, compassion, tolerance, respect for, openness to, acceptance of the other in his or her otherness; and interfaith dialogues are fundamentals of Rumi's thought and practice.
The universal message of Rumi is a hopeful alternative to the ignorance and lack of spirituality in modern times. Rumi's writings of the thirteenth century advocate an understanding that there is something beyond religion and scholarly learning that can open our eyes to the reality beyond this existence; for Rumi we must climb a spiritual ladder of love. Furthermore, Rumi envisioned a universal faith, embodying all religions, because he understood that the cause of every religious conflict is ignorance. Rumi implies that religiosity consists in something other than outward religions. Real belief is apparent only on the inside of a person, which is not visible. Therefore, Rumi makes it clear that the religion of love involves loving the eternal and invisible source of existence."
The vast majority of Rumi's poems below are translated by the eminent American scholar of Rumi, Coleman Barks who has single-handedly introduced and popularized Maulana Jalaluddin Muhammad Balkhi better known simply as Rumi here in our beloved America. In the Introduction to “Rumi: The Big Red Book: The Great Masterpiece Celebrating Mystical Love and Friendship,” Coleman Barks writes in part:
“Rumi is one of the great souls, and one of the great spiritual teachers. He shows us our glory. He wants us to be more alive, to wake up.…He wants us to see our beauty, in the mirror and in each other. Rumi’s message can be stated in many ways. It is the core of the core of every religion. It is the longing in a human being to live in unlimited freedom and joy, to move inside beauty, that most profound need of the human soul to flow with the namelessness that animates, lxuriates, burns, and transpires through form, enlivening what is as steam, mist, torrent, saliva, blood, ocean, cloud, coffee, wine, butterfly, tiger, hummingbird, energy, and delight...
Rumi teaches the opening heart. Rumi says that whatever was said to the rose was said to me here in my chest. The implication being that for something to open into its own beauty and handsomeness, it has to be talked to. And so that idea of a human being as a dialogue maybe an inaudible dialogue is part of his model for what a human being is. Rumi says we are a conversation between the one who takes bodily form and something else that is flowing through that was never born and doesn't die. So that intersection, that conversation is what a human being is. I just love that, because it's like we're both parts of the synapse...
I feel blessed to have spent much of the second half of my life working on the poetry of Rumi. I am 73 now in 2010. I began when I was 39 in 1976 at Robert Bly’s Great Mother Conference in Ely, Minnesota...He got me started on this path, when in June of 1976, he handed me a copy of Arberry's translation of Rumi and said, "These poems need to be released from their cages," by which he meant they needed to be translated out of their scholarly idiom into the lively American free verse tradition of Whitman. Hence this book. It is not all that I have done the last three decades, but I did spend some time, almost every day, with Rumi's poetry. I do not regret it. Something about the practice keeps unfolding..."
You can also enjoy Professor Coleman Barks' truly heartwarming Rumi recitations- with his charming Southern drawl and over two hours long- embedded below...it's a joy to watch and A MUST SEE, if you are a Rumi aficionado. My all time favorite Rumi translation by Coleman Barks is this one:
~ Poetry by Rumi ~
Translated & Recited by Coleman Barks
Click Play...Sit Back and Simply Enjoy...
Who Says Words With My Mouth?
~ Rumi ~ Translated by Coleman Barks ~
Published in The Essential Rumi
All day I think about it, then at night I say it.
Where did I come from,
and what am I supposed to be doing?
I have no idea.
My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that,
and I intend to end up there.
This drunkenness began in some other tavern.
When I get back around to that place,
I'll be completely sober. Meanwhile,
I'm like a bird from another continent,
sitting in this aviary.
The day is coming when I fly off,
but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?
Who says words with my mouth?
Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?
I cannot stop asking.
If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn't come here of my own accord,
and I can't leave that way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.
This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say.
I don't plan it.
When I'm outside the saying of it,
I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.
Shams Tabriz,
if you would show your face to me again,
I could flee the imposition of this life.
~ Rumi ~ Translated by Coleman Barks ~
Published in The Essential Rumi
"Rumi’s poetry and prose writings have a spiritual content that is the universal language of the human soul. They speak of the spiritual journey of Man’s ascent through the mind and soul toward the Perfection (God). It is often said that the teachings of Rumi are ecumenical in nature. For Rumi, religion was mostly a personal experience and not limited to logical and dogmatic arguments or perceptions of the senses. Rumi believes that creative love, or the urge to rejoin the spirit to divinity, is the ultimate goal towards which a believer moves.
Love, compassion, tolerance, respect for, openness to, acceptance of the other in his or her otherness; and interfaith dialogues are fundamentals of Rumi's thought and practice.
The universal message of Rumi is a hopeful alternative to the ignorance and lack of spirituality in modern times. Rumi's writings of the thirteenth century advocate an understanding that there is something beyond religion and scholarly learning that can open our eyes to the reality beyond this existence; for Rumi we must climb a spiritual ladder of love. Furthermore, Rumi envisioned a universal faith, embodying all religions, because he understood that the cause of every religious conflict is ignorance. Rumi implies that religiosity consists in something other than outward religions. Real belief is apparent only on the inside of a person, which is not visible. Therefore, Rumi makes it clear that the religion of love involves loving the eternal and invisible source of existence."
The vast majority of Rumi's poems below are translated by the eminent American scholar of Rumi, Coleman Barks who has single-handedly introduced and popularized Maulana Jalaluddin Muhammad Balkhi better known simply as Rumi here in our beloved America. In the Introduction to “Rumi: The Big Red Book: The Great Masterpiece Celebrating Mystical Love and Friendship,” Coleman Barks writes in part:
“Rumi is one of the great souls, and one of the great spiritual teachers. He shows us our glory. He wants us to be more alive, to wake up.…He wants us to see our beauty, in the mirror and in each other. Rumi’s message can be stated in many ways. It is the core of the core of every religion. It is the longing in a human being to live in unlimited freedom and joy, to move inside beauty, that most profound need of the human soul to flow with the namelessness that animates, lxuriates, burns, and transpires through form, enlivening what is as steam, mist, torrent, saliva, blood, ocean, cloud, coffee, wine, butterfly, tiger, hummingbird, energy, and delight...
Rumi teaches the opening heart. Rumi says that whatever was said to the rose was said to me here in my chest. The implication being that for something to open into its own beauty and handsomeness, it has to be talked to. And so that idea of a human being as a dialogue maybe an inaudible dialogue is part of his model for what a human being is. Rumi says we are a conversation between the one who takes bodily form and something else that is flowing through that was never born and doesn't die. So that intersection, that conversation is what a human being is. I just love that, because it's like we're both parts of the synapse...
I feel blessed to have spent much of the second half of my life working on the poetry of Rumi. I am 73 now in 2010. I began when I was 39 in 1976 at Robert Bly’s Great Mother Conference in Ely, Minnesota...He got me started on this path, when in June of 1976, he handed me a copy of Arberry's translation of Rumi and said, "These poems need to be released from their cages," by which he meant they needed to be translated out of their scholarly idiom into the lively American free verse tradition of Whitman. Hence this book. It is not all that I have done the last three decades, but I did spend some time, almost every day, with Rumi's poetry. I do not regret it. Something about the practice keeps unfolding..."
You can also enjoy Professor Coleman Barks' truly heartwarming Rumi recitations- with his charming Southern drawl and over two hours long- embedded below...it's a joy to watch and A MUST SEE, if you are a Rumi aficionado. My all time favorite Rumi translation by Coleman Barks is this one:
In your light, I learn how to love
in your beauty, how to make poems.
in your beauty, how to make poems.
You dance inside my chest
where no one sees you,
but sometimes I do
and that sight becomes this art.
"Noted translator and poet Coleman Barks, a Distinguished Visiting Fellow in the UCSB College of Creative Studies, presents the poetry of 13th century Afghan-born Sufi mystic and poet, Jalaluddin Rumi. Bark's intense and artful translations convey Rumi's insights into the human heart and its longing for passion and daring. Barks performs the words of Rumi, accompanied by musicians Barry and Shelly Phillips."
Click Play...Sit Back and Simply Enjoy...
~ Poetry by Rumi ~
Translated & Recited by Coleman Barks
Click Play...Sit Back and Simply Enjoy...
Who Says Words With My Mouth?
~ Rumi ~ Translated by Coleman Barks ~
Published in The Essential Rumi
All day I think about it, then at night I say it.
Where did I come from,
and what am I supposed to be doing?
I have no idea.
My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that,
and I intend to end up there.
This drunkenness began in some other tavern.
When I get back around to that place,
I'll be completely sober. Meanwhile,
I'm like a bird from another continent,
sitting in this aviary.
The day is coming when I fly off,
but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?
Who says words with my mouth?
Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?
I cannot stop asking.
If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn't come here of my own accord,
and I can't leave that way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.
This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say.
I don't plan it.
When I'm outside the saying of it,
I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.
Shams Tabriz,
if you would show your face to me again,
I could flee the imposition of this life.
~ Rumi ~ Translated by Coleman Barks ~
Published in The Essential Rumi
"Coleman Barks has played a central role in making the Sufi mystic Rumi the most popular poet in the world. If Rumi is the most-read poet in America today, Coleman Barks is in good part responsible. His ear for the truly divine madness in Rumi's poetry is truly remarkable. No translator could do greater justice to the gorgeous simplicity of Rumi's poetry than Coleman Barks has done. Barks' exquisite renderings of the 13th-century Persian mystic's words into American free verse capture all the "inner searching, the delicacy, and simple groundedness" that characterize Rumi's poetry while remaining faithful to the images, tone, and spiritual message of the originals.
While Barks's stamp on this collection is clear, it in no way interferes with the poems themselves; Rumi's voice leaps off these pages with an ecstatic energy that leaves readers breathless. There are poems of love, rage, sadness, pleading, and longing; passionate outbursts about the torture of longing for his beloved and the sweet pleasure that comes from their union; amusing stories of sexual exploits or human weakness; and quiet truths about the beauty and variety of human emotion. More than anything, Rumi makes plain the unbridled joy that comes from living life fully, urging us always to put aside our fears and take the risk to do so. As he says:
They way of love is not a subtle argument.
The door there is devastation.
Birds make great sky-circles of their freedom.
How do they learn it?
They fall, and falling, they're given wings."
They way of love is not a subtle argument.
The door there is devastation.
Birds make great sky-circles of their freedom.
How do they learn it?
They fall, and falling, they're given wings."
Friends,
look at love
how it tangles with the one fallen in love.
how it tangles with the one fallen in love.
Look at spirit
how it fuses with earth giving it a new life.
Why think separately
of this life and the next
when one is born from the last?
Why talk about all
the known and the unknown?
See how the unknown merges into the known.
how it fuses with earth giving it a new life.
Why think separately
of this life and the next
when one is born from the last?
Why talk about all
the known and the unknown?
See how the unknown merges into the known.
Why are you so busy
with this or that, or good or bad?
Pay attention to how things blend.
Be like sugarcane, sweet yet silent,
don't get entangled with bitter words.
You too must mingle, my friends,
since the earth and the sky
are mingled just for you and me.
You too must mingle, my friends,
since the earth and the sky
are mingled just for you and me.
Remember friends,
if you're seeking closeness to the Beloved,
then love one another.
Whether in their presence or absence,
see only their good.
Friends,
If you want to be as clear and refreshing
as the breath of the morning breeze,
or like the sun having nothing but warmth and light,
then love one another.
Friends,
There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled.
There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled.
You feel it, don't you?
You feel the separation from the Beloved.
Invite Him to fill you up, embrace the fire.
Remind those who tell you otherwise that
Love comes to you of its own accord,
and the yearning for it cannot be learned in any school.
Friends,
How long can you beg and bargain
for material things of this world
while love is waiting?
How long before you can rise beyond
how I am or what I am?
Are you fleeing from love
because of a single setback?
Except knowing how to spell the word,
Except knowing how to spell the word,
what else do you really know about love?
How can you talk about love
How can you talk about love
if you haven't really heard about love
even from the lovers themselves?
Love is neither a tale nor a game.
Love is such a powerful torrent
that no one can stand in front of it.
Love is such a blazing fire which, when it blazes up,
burns away everything except the Beloved.
Love is the soul of the soul of the soul of the universe.
Love is the beginning and the end.
Love is eternal, infinite and everlasting.
Love is the energizing elixir of the universe.
Love is the cause and effect of all harmonies.
Love is the alchemy of transformation.
Love is the cure.
Love is the power.
Love is the magic of changes.
Love is the life-giving garden of this world.
Love is the water of life.
Love is the ocean of grace.
Love is the way messengers from the Mystery tell us things.
Love is the astrolabe of God's mysteries.
Love is the stranger with a strange language.
Love is the language that cannot be said or heard.
Love is the bridge between you and everything.
Love is fearless in the midst of the sea of fear.
Love is a strong emotion.
Love is not just an emotion; Love your very existence.
Love is unselfish and benevolent.
Love is the sheer abundance of good fortunes.
Love is the total openness of the heart.
Love is the mirror of divine beauty.
Love is the eternal divine blessings.
Love is the righteous divine guidance.
Love is the religion.
Love is the holy book.
Love is the path and direction.
Love is the master.
Love is the one who masters all things.
Love is our mother; we are all born of Love.
Love is neither a fairy tale nor a book.
Love is neither a signature on a paper
nor what a couple say of each other.
Love is a tree with branches
reaching far beyond time into eternity,
and roots set deep in the eternal life.
Love is an open secret.
Love is the most obvious thing in the world
and also the most hidden,
with no why to how it keeps its mystery.
Love is the ark appointed for the righteous,
which annuls the danger and provides
a way of escape.
burns away everything except the Beloved.
Love is the soul of the soul of the soul of the universe.
Love is the beginning and the end.
Love is eternal, infinite and everlasting.
Love is the energizing elixir of the universe.
Love is the cause and effect of all harmonies.
Love is the alchemy of transformation.
Love is the cure.
Love is the power.
Love is the magic of changes.
Love is the life-giving garden of this world.
Love is the water of life.
Love is the ocean of grace.
Love is the pearl lost on the ocean floor.
Love is the gold mine.
Love is the hidden treasure.
Love is the fire that never stops burning.Love is the gold mine.
Love is the hidden treasure.
Love is the way messengers from the Mystery tell us things.
Love is the astrolabe of God's mysteries.
Love is the stranger with a strange language.
Love is the language that cannot be said or heard.
Love is the bridge between you and everything.
Love is fearless in the midst of the sea of fear.
Love is a strong emotion.
Love is not just an emotion; Love your very existence.
Love is unselfish and benevolent.
Love is the sheer abundance of good fortunes.
Love is the total openness of the heart.
Love is the mirror of divine beauty.
Love is the eternal divine blessings.
Love is the righteous divine guidance.
Love is the religion.
Love is the holy book.
Love is the path and direction.
Love is the master.
Love is the one who masters all things.
Love is our mother; we are all born of Love.
Love is neither a fairy tale nor a book.
Love is neither a signature on a paper
nor what a couple say of each other.
Love is a tree with branches
reaching far beyond time into eternity,
and roots set deep in the eternal life.
Love is an open secret.
Love is the most obvious thing in the world
and also the most hidden,
with no why to how it keeps its mystery.
Love is the ark appointed for the righteous,
which annuls the danger and provides
a way of escape.
Love is reckless; not reason.
Reason seeks a profit.
Having died of self-interest,
Love risks everything and asks for nothing.
Love comes on strong,
Having died of self-interest,
Love risks everything and asks for nothing.
Love comes on strong,
consuming herself, unabashed.
Love comes with a knife,
not some shy question,
not some shy question,
and not with fears for its reputation.
Love is a madman,
working his wild schemes,
tearing off his clothes,
running through the mountains,
drinking poison,
and then quietly choosing annihilation.
Love is like the musk. It attracts attention.
Love is a madman,
working his wild schemes,
tearing off his clothes,
running through the mountains,
drinking poison,
and then quietly choosing annihilation.
Love is like the musk. It attracts attention.
Love is a tree, and the lovers are its shade.
Love has nothing to do with the five senses
and the six directions.
Love's goal is only to experience
the attraction exerted by the Beloved.
Love is the diamond, Beloved is the mine.
Love and Beloved are like body and soul.
They've been together since the beginning of time,
side by side, step by step.
Love has nothing to do with the five senses
and the six directions.
Love's goal is only to experience
the attraction exerted by the Beloved.
Love is the diamond, Beloved is the mine.
Love and Beloved are like body and soul.
They've been together since the beginning of time,
side by side, step by step.
Love is the purest wine.
Kings would give away their thrones
for just the smell of that special wine of love
which lovers drink at the assembly of heart.
Love is a cloud that scatters pearls.
Love is a shining light, illuminating and exalted.
Love is a secret river, purified and ever-flowing.
Love is a burning fire that never gets extinguished.
Love is not the work of the tender and the gentle;
Love is the work of the seasoned wrestlers.
The lover who becomes a servant of love,
is in reality a fortunate sovereign.
Love is not being attached to this material world,
Love is giving up on both worlds.
Love is not wishing for union with the Beloved,
Love is first getting burned and consumed
In the shining bright flames of separation.
Love is not written on a paper,
for paper can be erased.
Love is not etched on a stone,
for stone can be broken.
Love is inscribed on a heart,
and there it shall remain forever.
Can you possibly grasp what love means
without becoming a lover first?
Love cannot be explained.
Love can only be experienced.
Love cannot be explained,
yet love explains everything.
The quest for love changes you.
There is no seeker of love
who has not matured on the way of love.
The moment you start looking for love,
you start to change within and without.
Love is from the infinite,
and will remain so until eternity.
The seeker of love escapes
the chains of birth and death.
In front of the shining candle of love,
the lover circles like a helpless moth.
Those burning marks on the moth
are for the sake of an everlasting love.
Love is the only food for a starving lover.
Every moment is made glorious by the light of love.
Both light and shadow are the dance of love.
Love and lover are inseparable and timeless.
Remember: The way you make love
is the way God will be with you.
You have within you more love
than you could ever understand.
There is a place within your heart
which is brimming over with love.
Sow the seed of love and you'll be rewarded
with the most incredible feeling of love
dancing in your heart.
When love comes suddenly and taps
on your window, run and let it in,
but first shut the door of your reason,
even the smallest hint chases love away,
like smoke that drowns the freshness
of the morning breeze.
To reason, love can only say:
'The way is barred, you can’t pass through.'
But to lover, love offers a hundred blessings.
Before the mind decides to take a step,
Love has reached the seventh heaven.
Love has climbed the holy mountain.
I must stop this talk now and let
Love speak from its nest of silence.
Love sickness is different
from all other sicknesses.
Love is the astrolabe of God's Mysteries.
The deeper is the grief,
the more radiant the love.
Love goes together with pain and suffering,
Love is not the work of the tender and the gentle;
Love is the work of the seasoned wrestlers.
The lover who becomes a servant of love,
is in reality a fortunate sovereign.
Love is not being attached to this material world,
Love is giving up on both worlds.
Love is not wishing for union with the Beloved,
Love is first getting burned and consumed
In the shining bright flames of separation.
Love is not written on a paper,
for paper can be erased.
Love is not etched on a stone,
for stone can be broken.
Love is inscribed on a heart,
and there it shall remain forever.
Can you possibly grasp what love means
without becoming a lover first?
Love cannot be explained.
Love can only be experienced.
Love cannot be explained,
yet love explains everything.
The quest for love changes you.
There is no seeker of love
who has not matured on the way of love.
The moment you start looking for love,
you start to change within and without.
Love is from the infinite,
and will remain so until eternity.
The seeker of love escapes
the chains of birth and death.
In front of the shining candle of love,
the lover circles like a helpless moth.
Those burning marks on the moth
are for the sake of an everlasting love.
Love is the only food for a starving lover.
Every moment is made glorious by the light of love.
Both light and shadow are the dance of love.
Love and lover are inseparable and timeless.
Remember: The way you make love
is the way God will be with you.
You have within you more love
than you could ever understand.
There is a place within your heart
which is brimming over with love.
Sow the seed of love and you'll be rewarded
with the most incredible feeling of love
dancing in your heart.
When love comes suddenly and taps
on your window, run and let it in,
but first shut the door of your reason,
even the smallest hint chases love away,
like smoke that drowns the freshness
of the morning breeze.
To reason, love can only say:
'The way is barred, you can’t pass through.'
But to lover, love offers a hundred blessings.
Before the mind decides to take a step,
Love has reached the seventh heaven.
Love has climbed the holy mountain.
I must stop this talk now and let
Love speak from its nest of silence.
Love sickness is different
from all other sicknesses.
Love is the astrolabe of God's Mysteries.
The deeper is the grief,
the more radiant the love.
Love goes together with pain and suffering,
but being in love is the greatest of all feelings.
Love is the cure,
for your pain will keep giving birth to more pain
until your eyes constantly exhale love
as effortlessly as your body yields its scent.
Love is the remedy of our pride and our vanity.
Love is the physician who heals all our diseases.
Love is our Plato and our Galen.
The hangovers always come with love,
yet love is the best cure for all our hangovers!
Learned theologians do not teach love.
Love is nothing but gladness and kindness.
The ideas of right and wrong
operate in us until we die.
Love does not have those limits.
When you see a scowling face,
it is not a lover’s.
In love, there is no low or high point,
neither consciousness nor the lack of it.
There is no leader, no master and no follower,
but there are hidden ways, sleight
of hand, and revelry.
The lover is a mountain,
not flecks of dead grass blown about.
The lover is a flock of gnats
alive and lost inside the wind.
If it is true that rules rise from love,
it is also true that lovers
pay no attention to rules!
Someone asked me, 'What is love?'
I said, 'Do not look for an explanation.
Dissolve into me, and you will know
when it calls. Respond!'
Friends,
Love is the cure,
for your pain will keep giving birth to more pain
until your eyes constantly exhale love
as effortlessly as your body yields its scent.
Love is the remedy of our pride and our vanity.
Love is the physician who heals all our diseases.
Love is our Plato and our Galen.
The hangovers always come with love,
yet love is the best cure for all our hangovers!
Learned theologians do not teach love.
Love is nothing but gladness and kindness.
The ideas of right and wrong
operate in us until we die.
Love does not have those limits.
When you see a scowling face,
it is not a lover’s.
In love, there is no low or high point,
neither consciousness nor the lack of it.
There is no leader, no master and no follower,
but there are hidden ways, sleight
of hand, and revelry.
The lover is a mountain,
not flecks of dead grass blown about.
The lover is a flock of gnats
alive and lost inside the wind.
If it is true that rules rise from love,
it is also true that lovers
pay no attention to rules!
Someone asked me, 'What is love?'
I said, 'Do not look for an explanation.
Dissolve into me, and you will know
when it calls. Respond!'
Friends,
Don't ask anyone about love,
ask only love about love.
ask only love about love.
Love is the whole thing, we are only pieces.
Love is the sea of no end, we are just a drop of it.
Let yourself be drawn
by the stronger pull of what you truly love.
Wherever you are and whatever you do,
be always in love.
Without love,
all worship is a burden,
all dancing is a chore,
all music is mere noise.
All the rain of heaven
may fall into the sea.
Without love,
not one drop could become a pearl.
Without love,
Let yourself be drawn
by the stronger pull of what you truly love.
Wherever you are and whatever you do,
be always in love.
Without love,
all worship is a burden,
all dancing is a chore,
all music is mere noise.
All the rain of heaven
may fall into the sea.
Without love,
not one drop could become a pearl.
Without love,
even the shining brightest stars
get burned out, eclipsed and extinguished.
Love boils the oceans like the boiling pots.
Love pulverizes the mountains like grinding sands.
Love drills a hundred holes through the sky.
Love trembles the earth like a devastating quake.
From love, bitter becomes sweet.
From love, thorns become flowers.
From love, vinegar becomes wine.
From love, fire becomes light.
From love, devil becomes angel.
From love, sorrow becomes joy.
From love, sickness becomes health.
From love, fury becomes mercy.
From love, dead becomes alive.
From love, king becomes servant.
Love knows a hundred ways of showing off.
Love flirts with a lover all the time.
Knowing how to flirt back with love,
that's how you get your hands on love!
You may try a hundred things,
but only love can release you from your self.
Unless your chest gets that burning feeling
every time love is mentioned,
you are not yet ready to conquer love.
You may try a hundred things,
but only love can release you from your self.
Unless your chest gets that burning feeling
every time love is mentioned,
you are not yet ready to conquer love.
Love is always loyal.
Love demands your absolute loyalty.
Love won't even look at a disloyal lover.
Love is the only food for a starving lover.
Without love, you're just a meaningless facade.
A person without love
is not a living human being.
He or she is just a lonely
and lifeless walking corpse.
If you are not still in love
A person without love
is not a living human being.
He or she is just a lonely
and lifeless walking corpse.
If you are not still in love
hurry and find the love of your life.
Quench your thirst for love
the beloved is also thirsty for a lover.
You are but scraps of iron.
Love is the magnet that draws you near.
Why should you even have to seek?
All you need to do is love.
The truth is, you do not know
where you are. A master of love
is the only sign you need.
You are but scraps of iron.
Love is the magnet that draws you near.
Why should you even have to seek?
All you need to do is love.
The truth is, you do not know
where you are. A master of love
is the only sign you need.
Any lover who's truly in love
cannot be bound to a loveless way of life.
Put your full trust only in love
because love is your only salvation.
Friends,
don't just look for love,
look for the one who is also looking for love.
But why do you even have to look?
Love is not lost, love is right here,
closer than your own arteries and veins,
It's you who always sets up barriers
between yourself and love.
Your task is not to seek for love,
but merely to seek and find
all the barriers within yourself
that you have built against love.
Your task is not to seek for love,
but merely to seek and find
all the barriers within yourself
that you have built against love.
Friends,
if you could get rid
of yourself just once,
the secret of secrets
would open to you.
The face of the unknown,
hidden beyond the universe
would appear on the
mirror of your perception.
If you could distance yourself
from your selfish self,
all heavenly spirits
would stand ready to serve you.
If you could finally hunt down
your own beastly self,
you have the right
to claim Solomon's kingdom.
You are that blessed soul who
belongs to the garden of paradise,
is it fair to let yourself
fall apart in a shattered house?
You are the bird of happiness
in the magic of existence,
what a pity! Why you let
yourself be chained and caged?
Break free!
Break free from this dark prison
called material world,
soon you will see
you are the sage and the fountain of life.
Friends,
don’t be discouraged
compassion always comes after trouble.
Don’t put on any dress but love
don’t cover yourself with any garment but love.
Love will open your heart,
start walking towards love
Your legs will get heavy and tired
then comes a moment of feeling
the wings you've grown, lifting.
Love rests on no foundation
Love is an endless ocean,
with no beginning or end.
Imagine, a suspended ocean
riding on a cushion of ancient secrets.
When in love,
body, mind, heart, and soul don't even exist.
Become this: fall in love,
and you will not be separated again.
If love slips out of your hand
don’t fall into despair,
keep on searching, keep on fighting
until you find love again.
Knock,
Love will open the door.
Vanish,
Love will make you shine like the sun.
Fall,
Love will raise you to the heavens.
Become nothing,
Love will turn you into everything.
Get your own self annihilated in love.
Crush your own selfish ego for love.
There is no bigger mistake in your life
than still clinging on to your loveless existence.
Set your life on fire in the burning flames of love.
It's time you start annihilating your loveless existence.
In the village of love,
lovers are busy burning themselves in the fire of love.
In the burned out village of lovers,
every single tent shows visible burn marks of love.
I wish I could give you a taste of the burning fire of love.
There is a fire blazing inside of me.
If I cry about it, or if I don’t,
the fire is at work, night and day.
People make clothing to cover their intellect,
but the heart of a lover is a shroud,
inflamed in golden hues of love.
Love came and became like blood in my body.
It rushed through my veins and encircled my heart.
Everywhere I looked, I saw one thing:
Love's name written on my limbs,
on my left palm, on my forehead,
on the back of my neck, on my right big toe...
Oh, my friends,
all that you see of me is just a shell,
the rest belongs to love.
Filled with love,
I now hear the pure voice of love
and the intimate whispers of lover and beloved.
Filled with love,
I now feel my joyous heart gliding
upon the water of its own melting.
Filled with love,
Everything I touch and see becomes the fire of love.
I am now in love with love
and love is in love with me.
My body is in love with the soul
and the soul is in love with my body.
I opened my arms to love
and love embraced me like a lover.
Love whispers to my ear:
'Better be a prey than a hunter.
Make yourself my fool.
Stop trying to be the sun, become a speck!
Dwell at my door and be homeless.
Don't pretend to be a candle, be a moth.
So you may taste the savor of Life.
So you may know the power hidden in love.'
My heart is expanding a thousand fold.
Every cell, taking wings,
flies about the world.
All seek separately
the many faces of my love.
Behind the veils
intoxicated with love
I too dance the rhythm
of this moving world.
I have lost all my senses
in my world of lovers.
If you seek love, then fulfill all your love duties.
No seeker of love can journey upon the path of love
without first fulfilling all the love-required duties.
Once your heart and soul are filled with love,
then you'll be able to relay your messages of love
even without words and in complete silence.
Get your own self annihilated in love.
Crush your own selfish ego for love.
There is no bigger mistake in your life
than still clinging on to your loveless existence.
Set your life on fire in the burning flames of love.
It's time you start annihilating your loveless existence.
In the village of love,
lovers are busy burning themselves in the fire of love.
In the burned out village of lovers,
every single tent shows visible burn marks of love.
I wish I could give you a taste of the burning fire of love.
There is a fire blazing inside of me.
If I cry about it, or if I don’t,
the fire is at work, night and day.
People make clothing to cover their intellect,
but the heart of a lover is a shroud,
inflamed in golden hues of love.
Love came and became like blood in my body.
It rushed through my veins and encircled my heart.
Everywhere I looked, I saw one thing:
Love's name written on my limbs,
on my left palm, on my forehead,
on the back of my neck, on my right big toe...
Oh, my friends,
all that you see of me is just a shell,
the rest belongs to love.
Filled with love,
I now hear the pure voice of love
and the intimate whispers of lover and beloved.
Filled with love,
I now feel my joyous heart gliding
upon the water of its own melting.
Filled with love,
Everything I touch and see becomes the fire of love.
I am now in love with love
and love is in love with me.
My body is in love with the soul
and the soul is in love with my body.
I opened my arms to love
and love embraced me like a lover.
Love whispers to my ear:
'Better be a prey than a hunter.
Make yourself my fool.
Stop trying to be the sun, become a speck!
Dwell at my door and be homeless.
Don't pretend to be a candle, be a moth.
So you may taste the savor of Life.
So you may know the power hidden in love.'
My heart is expanding a thousand fold.
Every cell, taking wings,
flies about the world.
All seek separately
the many faces of my love.
Behind the veils
intoxicated with love
I too dance the rhythm
of this moving world.
I have lost all my senses
in my world of lovers.
.
Friends,
Don't go astray from the righteous path of love.Friends,
If you seek love, then fulfill all your love duties.
No seeker of love can journey upon the path of love
without first fulfilling all the love-required duties.
Once your heart and soul are filled with love,
then you'll be able to relay your messages of love
even without words and in complete silence.
Be wild and crazy and drunk with love.
If you are too careful,
love will not find you.
Be drunk with love,
because love is all that exists.
Where is intimacy found
if not in the give and take of love.
Drink enough wine
so that you stop talking.
You are a lover, and love is a tavern
where no one makes much sense.
Love pours you the wine that changes
darkness into vision,
cruelty into compassion,
and dust into precious incense.
Do what must be done
to this love that has no fear
and no sense of being safe.
No more holding back.
Be reckless.
Tell your love to everybody.
The sky itself reels with love.
There is one being inside
all of us, one peace.
Walk the lovers’ road with truth
and humility. Those two will take
your hand and sit you down by love.
Embark on the journey of Love.
It'll take you from yourself to your own Self.
Love is your steady guide on this road full of hardships.
When you seek love with all your heart,
You will find its echoes in the universe.
Fall in love.
Fall in love in such a way
that love frees you from any connecting.
Whoever finds love beneath hurt and grief
disappears into emptiness
with a thousand new disguises.
Come out of the circle of time
and jump into the circle of love.
This is how you must dissolve into love:
as pieces of cloud dissolve into sunlight.
Love holds everything together,
and it is the everything also.
Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.
Let yourself be silently drawn
by the strange pull of what you really love.
Go deep to the well of love that's inside of you.
crazy, absentminded.
Someone sober
will worry about things going badly.
Let the lover be.
Seek the essence of your life in love.
Search for your inner treasures in love.
Love is the alchemy of all things.
Even worthless copper touched by love,
transforms into the shining solid gold.
Drink enough wine
so that you stop talking.
You are a lover, and love is a tavern
where no one makes much sense.
Love pours you the wine that changes
darkness into vision,
cruelty into compassion,
and dust into precious incense.
Do what must be done
to this love that has no fear
and no sense of being safe.
No more holding back.
Be reckless.
Tell your love to everybody.
The sky itself reels with love.
There is one being inside
all of us, one peace.
Walk the lovers’ road with truth
and humility. Those two will take
your hand and sit you down by love.
Embark on the journey of Love.
It'll take you from yourself to your own Self.
Love is your steady guide on this road full of hardships.
When you seek love with all your heart,
You will find its echoes in the universe.
Fall in love.
Fall in love in such a way
that love frees you from any connecting.
Whoever finds love beneath hurt and grief
disappears into emptiness
with a thousand new disguises.
Come out of the circle of time
and jump into the circle of love.
This is how you must dissolve into love:
as pieces of cloud dissolve into sunlight.
Love holds everything together,
and it is the everything also.
Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.
Let yourself be silently drawn
by the strange pull of what you really love.
Go deep to the well of love that's inside of you.
Let love fill your golden cup
like sunbeams showering the earth.
Let love flow to every corner of your soul.
Let love tear up the gnarled roots of regret
and nourish the tender seeds of your hope.
Let the lover be disgraceful, like sunbeams showering the earth.
Let love flow to every corner of your soul.
Let love tear up the gnarled roots of regret
and nourish the tender seeds of your hope.
crazy, absentminded.
Someone sober
will worry about things going badly.
Let the lover be.
Seek the essence of your life in love.
Search for your inner treasures in love.
Love is the alchemy of all things.
Even worthless copper touched by love,
transforms into the shining solid gold.
If they ask you what love is,
say: the sacrifice of will.
If you haven't already left your will behind,
you have no will at all.
If they ask you what you have produced,
Say: except for love,
what else can a lover produce?
A lover is the king of kings
If they ask you what you have produced,
Say: except for love,
what else can a lover produce?
A lover is the king of kings
with both worlds beneath him;
and a king does not regard
what lies at his feet.
Only love and the lover
can resurrect beyond time.
Give your heart fully to love;
the rest is second-hand.
In the gathering of lovers,
there is no high, no low,
no smart, no ignorant, no special assembly,
no grand discourse, no proper schooling required.
There is no master, no disciple.
This gathering is more like a drunken party,
full of tricksters, fools, mad men and mad women.
This is a gathering of lovers.
In the house of lovers,
the music never stops.
The walls are made of songs
and the floor dances.
In the gathering of lovers,
there is no high, no low,
no smart, no ignorant, no special assembly,
no grand discourse, no proper schooling required.
There is no master, no disciple.
This gathering is more like a drunken party,
full of tricksters, fools, mad men and mad women.
This is a gathering of lovers.
In the house of lovers,
the music never stops.
The walls are made of songs
and the floor dances.
Reason is powerless in the expression of love.
Love alone is capable of revealing
the truth of love and being a lover.
The way of love is not a subtle argument.
The door there is devastation.
The way of love is not a subtle argument.
The door there is devastation.
If you want to live, die in love.
Die in love if you want to remain forever alive.
The agony of lovers
burns with the fire of passion.
Lovers leave traces of where they've been.
The wailing of a lover's broken heart
is the doorway to the Beloved.
Lovers weave baskets of love
even with their hands already cut off.
It is in the non-existence
where lovers pitch their tents of love.
Lovers find secret places
inside this violent world
where they make transactions with beauty.
Lovers are already drowned
in the sweet waters of love.
So for the already sweetened lovers,
it doesn't really matter
if more sugar is brought in
from Egypt, China, India or wherever!
Lovers find secret places
inside this violent world
where they make transactions with beauty.
Lovers are already drowned
in the sweet waters of love.
So for the already sweetened lovers,
it doesn't really matter
if more sugar is brought in
from Egypt, China, India or wherever!
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere
They are in each other all along.
Let your song of love be always heard
This is the final message of Sufi mystics:
When you find love, you will find yourself.
When you have the knowledge of love,
you will then feel peace in your heart.
Stop searching here and there,
the Jewels are inside you.
This, my friends, is the holy meaning of love.
When you find love, you will find yourself.
When you have the knowledge of love,
you will then feel peace in your heart.
Stop searching here and there,
the Jewels are inside you.
This, my friends, is the holy meaning of love.
"Who is at My Door?"
God said, "Who is at My Door?"
I said, "Your humble servant."
God said, "What business do you have?"
I said, "To greet You, O my Lord."
God said, "How long will you journey on?"
I said, "Until You decide to stop me."
God said, "How long will you boil in the fire?"
I said, "Until I am completely purified."
God said, "Have you taken an oat of love?"
I said, "Yes my Lord, this is my oath of love:
For the sake of Your Love,
I've given up on wealth and position."
God said, "You have pleaded your case,
but you have no witness."
I said, "My tears are my witness,
the pallor of my face is my proof."
God said, "Your witness has no credibility,
your eyes are too wet to see."
I said, "By the splendor of Your presence,
my eyes are clear and faultless."
God said, "What do you seek?"
I said, "To have You as my constant Friend."
God said, "What do you want from Me?"
I said, "Your abundant Grace."
God said, "Who was your companion on the journey?"
I said, "The thought of You, O my King."
God said, "What called you here?"
I said, "The fragrance of Your Divine Wine."
God said, "What brings you the most fulfillment?"
I said, "Your lifelong company, O Companion of my soul."
God said, "What do you wish to find here?"
I said, "A hundred miracles."
God said, "Why is the palace deserted?"
I said, "They all fear the thief."
God said, "Who is the thief?"
I said, "The one who keeps me away from You."
God said, "Where do find safety?"
I said, "In service and renunciation."
God said, "What is there never to renounce?"
I said, "The hope of salvation."
God said, "Where you do find salvation?"
I said, "In the presence of Your Love."
God said, "How do you benefit from this life?"
I said, "By standing firm in my faith. By keeping true to myself."
Now it is time for silence, my friends.
If I told you more about God's True Essence,
You would fly from your Self and be gone,
and neither door nor roof could hold you back!
To Love Is To Reach God.
Never will a lover's chest
feel any sorrow.
Never will a lover's robe
be touched by mortals.
Never will a lover's body
be found buried in the earth.
To Love Is To Reach God.
I saw my good and beautiful King,
That Witness of the heart’s light,
That Comforter and Friend of the soul,
That Spirit of all the world.
I saw the One who gives
Wisdom to the wise, purity to the pure;
The One adorned by the moon and stars,
The One towards whom all saints bow.
Every cell of my body called out:
Praise Be To The Lord! Glory To God!
My crippled poetry began to dance
with the light of God’s Name.
His Name brought the angel of words
into the house of my mind.
In every verse a thousand maidens give birth,
yet like Mary, each remains a virgin.
The Man of God is drunken without wine.
The Man of God is distraught and bewildered.
The Man of God is bound to no food or sleep.
The Man of God is full without meat.
The Man of God is a king beneath a dervish-cloak.
The Man of God is a treasure in a ruin.
The Man of God is neither of air nor of earth.
The Man of God is neither of fire nor of water.
The Man of God is the sea without a shore.
The Man of God rains pearls without a cloud.
The Man of God is made wise by the Truth.
The Man of God is not learned from book.
The Man of God is beyond infidelity and religion,
The Man of God is beyond right and wrong.
The Man of God is stationed in realm of Not-being.
The Man of God is gloriously attended high up above.
The Man of God is the concealed, Shams al-Din.
The Man of God is for you to seek and find!
I cried in the middle of the night.
God said, "It is I, but what are all these images
that fill your house?"
I said, "They're the reflection of Your beautiful face."
God asked, "But what is this image full of pain?"
I said, "it is me lost in the sorrows of life,"
and showed God my soul full of wounds.
God offered me one end of a thread and said,
"Take it so I can pull you back,
but do not break the delicate string."
I reached towards it but He struck my hand.
I asked, "Why the harshness, O my Lord?"
God said, "To remind you that those who come
to My holy space proud and full of themselves,
will be sent away.
Look at your God with the eyes of your heart."
I went to my Beloved's House
And knocked on His Door.
God said, 'Who is it?'
I said, 'It is I.'
God said, 'There is no room here for I and You.
Go away!'
God shut the door hard in my face.
I went ahead and began my lifelong journey
Toward the total annihilation of 'I' and Self.
After years of annihilating my own Self into non-existence,
I finally reached the exalted state of non-being.
I went back to my Beloved and knocked.
God said, 'Who is it?'
I said: 'It is You.'
God opened His Door wide for me!
The sensuous eye is a horse,
and the Light of God is the rider:
without the rider the horse is useless.
The Light of God rides the sensuous eye,
and then the soul yearns for God.
How can a riderless horse
recognize the signs of the road?
God’s Light enhances the senses:
this is the meaning of ‘Light Upon Light’.
Although God scatters Light upon all souls,
only the souls who are fully aware of Him
are fortunate enough to have held up
their robes to receive it, and have turned
their faces from anything but God.
Those unaware of the robe of love, end up
without a share of that scattering of Light of God.
There are stars beyond the visible stars where
there is no risk of burning up or colliding.
These stars have inherited the shining Light of God.
Held between the two Fingers of God,
they emanate Divine Light that is unaffected
by disharmony and darkness.
"Everything perishes except the Face of God."
Empty yourself of your own Self
and contemplate the words that spring
from the Silence of God.
Unless you see the Face of God,
do not seek to exist in this material world.
'Everything perishes' no longer applies to the one
who has passed away without seeing God's Face,
because he is in but god and has gone beyond no god.
Whoever is in but God, has not passed away.
Whoever is saying "I" and "we" at the Door,
has turned his back on the Door of God
and remains in no god.
Consider carefully, after no god, what remains?
There remains but God, the rest has gone.
A naked man jumps in the river,
hornets swarming above him.
The water is the Zikr, remembering:
'There is no reality but God. There is only God.'
The hornets are his sexual memories,
this woman, that, or if a woman, this man, that.
The head comes up. They sting.
Breathe water. Become river head to foot.
Hornets leave you alone then.
Even if you’re far from the river,
they pay no attention.
No one looks for stars when the sun’s out.
A person blended into God does not disappear.
He or she is just completely soaked
in God’s qualities.
The shining light of Zikr -
Repeatedly Remembering God -
illuminates the darkest night skies.
Remembrance of God,
brings a believer gone astray
back upon the Path of Truth.
Make this mantra part of your daily prayer:
'There is nothing but God. He, God Alone Exists.'
Remember God so much that you are forgotten.
Let the caller and the called disappear;
be lost in the Call.
He is the First, He is the Last,
He is the Outward, He is the Inward.
I know none other except "YA HU" [Yahweh]
and "YA MAN HU" ["O He Who Is"].
HU......HU......HU......HU......HU......
I am chanting and intoxicated with God's Cup,
HU......HU......HU......HU......HU......
I am chanting and intoxicated with God's Cup,
the two worlds have passed out of my ken;
I have no business save carouse and revelry.
If once in my life I spent a moment without Him,
From that time and from that hour I repent of my life.
If once in this world I win a moment with Him,
I will trample on both worlds, and
I will dance in triumph for ever and ever.
Those who know the secret power of the whirling,
Live in God. Love is slaying and reviving them,
They know it . . .HU.....HU…...HU......HU......
Hand out food in the name of God,
and God shall give you even more food.
Help the poor in the name of God,
and God shall make you even more wealthy.
Reach out to the needy and helpless, and
God shall make you successful in everything you do.
Give up your material life in the name God,
and God shall give you a brand new life.
Even if you lose all your wealth and possessions,
and fall on hard times one day,
has God ever denied you His eternal grace?
Hold your greedy ego under the knife,
and strive to achieve a caring, charitable,
and selfless soul like an embracing ocean.
This material-worshiping world of ours
is full of selfish and greedy God-deniers.
Keep on doing your charity woks.
Keep on searching for the Truth of God.
Your outer Self is just an empty shell,
keep on searching for God in your inner Self.
There’s a hidden sweetness in the stomach’s emptiness.
We are lutes, no more, no less.
If the sound box is stuffed full of anything, no music.
If the brain and the belly are burning clean with fasting,
every moment a new song comes out of the fire.
The fog clears, and a new energy makes you
run up the steps in front of you.
Be emptier and cry like reed instruments cry.
Emptier, write secrets with the reed pen.
When you’re full of food and drink,
Satan sits where your spirit should,
an ugly metal statue in place of the Kaaba.
When you fast, good habits gather
like friends who want to help.
Fasting is Solomon’s ring.
Don’t give it to some illusion and lose your power.
But even if you've lost all will and control, they come
back when you fast, like soldiers appearing out
of the ground, pennants flying above them.
A table descends to your tent, Jesus’s table.
Expect to see it, when you fast,
this table spread with other food better than
the broth of cabbages.
Those who know the secret power of the whirling,
Live in God. Love is slaying and reviving them,
They know it . . .HU.....HU…...HU......HU......
Hand out food in the name of God,
and God shall give you even more food.
Help the poor in the name of God,
and God shall make you even more wealthy.
Reach out to the needy and helpless, and
God shall make you successful in everything you do.
Give up your material life in the name God,
and God shall give you a brand new life.
Even if you lose all your wealth and possessions,
and fall on hard times one day,
has God ever denied you His eternal grace?
Hold your greedy ego under the knife,
and strive to achieve a caring, charitable,
and selfless soul like an embracing ocean.
This material-worshiping world of ours
is full of selfish and greedy God-deniers.
Keep on doing your charity woks.
Keep on searching for the Truth of God.
Your outer Self is just an empty shell,
keep on searching for God in your inner Self.
There’s a hidden sweetness in the stomach’s emptiness.
We are lutes, no more, no less.
If the sound box is stuffed full of anything, no music.
If the brain and the belly are burning clean with fasting,
every moment a new song comes out of the fire.
The fog clears, and a new energy makes you
run up the steps in front of you.
Be emptier and cry like reed instruments cry.
Emptier, write secrets with the reed pen.
When you’re full of food and drink,
Satan sits where your spirit should,
an ugly metal statue in place of the Kaaba.
When you fast, good habits gather
like friends who want to help.
Fasting is Solomon’s ring.
Don’t give it to some illusion and lose your power.
But even if you've lost all will and control, they come
back when you fast, like soldiers appearing out
of the ground, pennants flying above them.
A table descends to your tent, Jesus’s table.
Expect to see it, when you fast,
this table spread with other food better than
the broth of cabbages.
The Prophet said, "My ascension is not to be
declared as being superior to that of Jonah.
My ascension was up to heaven and his was
down below in the belly of a fish,
because closeness to God is beyond reckoning.
Proximity to God is not to go up or down.
Proximity to God comes when you escape
from the prison of your own existence.
What place is there for 'up' and 'down'
in non-existence?
There is no 'soon' or 'far' or 'late'
in non-existence.
The lovers of God have three spiritual states:
Attaining knowledge of God, seeing God, and
being in the presence of God.
A single spark of God's Mercy,
can turn poison into spring-water.
Where there is doubt, God establishes certainty."
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God is "what is nearer to you than your neck-vein,"
You have cast the arrow of speculation afar off.
O you, who have made ready your bow and arrows,
The game is close to you, and you shoot too far off.
The further you shoot, the further off you are,
And the more removed from the treasure you seek.
The philosopher kills himself with thinking,
Tell him that his back is turned to that treasure;
Tell him that the more he runs to and fro,
The further he is removed from his heart's desire.
God Almighty says, "Make efforts in My Way,"
Not "Make efforts away from Me," O restless one.
God is working everywhere His Master Plan,
How can we pretend to act on our own?
What is any of us but a straw in a storm?
Can any of us make a pact with a hurricane?
Can any of us claim of already knowing the future?
In the hand of God, I am like a cat in a sack;
Sometimes God hoists me into the air,
Sometimes He flings me into the air,
God swings me round and round His head;
I have no peace, in this world or any other.
The lovers of God have fallen in a furious river;
They have completely surrendered themselves
To God's Will and Commands.
The world of created beings is like
Pure transparent water in which
Shines the Attributes of God:
Mercy, Grace, Redemption, and Justice
Reflect in that water as the stars of heaven.
Time and people change, generations upon
Generations pass, yet the essence of
God's Attributes remains the same.
The beautiful lovers mirror God's Beauty,
And to love beauty is to love God.
God was jealous of His Face
So He created the splendor of morning.
When the spirit awoke in that light, it said,
'To grasp God’s Amazing Beauty,
You must become God.'
Look in your own eyes and you will see
God's Amazing Beauty and Truth.
God sees His Beauty reflected in us,
But do not speak of this secret
For He will spill your blood!
You must become God.'
Look in your own eyes and you will see
God's Amazing Beauty and Truth.
God sees His Beauty reflected in us,
But do not speak of this secret
For He will spill your blood!
In love,
aside from sipping the wine of timelessness,
nothing else exists.
There is no reason for living
except for giving one's life.
I said,
"First I know You O my Lord, then I die."
God said,
"For the one who knows Me, there is no dying."
O Lord,
No tongue is capable of expressing thanks to You.
There is no shore to the Ocean of Your Divine Grace.
The mystery of Your Reality is not revealed to anyone.
Lead us on the path to our ultimate reunion with You.
If the night of separation is dark, we still rejoice,
For the morning of our reunion shall be bright.
O Lord,
You are the comfort of my soul
In the season of sorrow.
You are the wealth of my spirit
In the heartbreak of loss.
The unimaginable, the unknowable
That is what You give my soul
When it moves in Your direction.
O Lord,
If my body is a sinner, my heart is obedient.
If I am an evil-doer, Your Mercy is my intercessor.
You cast pearls of purity into Adam's lap.
You smeared the dust of rebellion on Satan's brow.
These two natures, You mingled together.
We humbly confess that we have done wrong.
O Lord,
In our hearts, plant only the seeds of Love for You.
For our souls, destine only Your Grace and Favor.
Send down on Your lovers only the rain of Mercy.
Smear our brows with the dust of shame,
But let us not be chastised with Your affliction.
By Your Grace, my eyes have looked upon eternity.
O my King, how could this crumbling empire
Ever take me away from You?
The voice that sings Your Name,
Is sweeter than midnight sleep,
And more graceful than the song of a royal poet.
When deep in prayer,
My faith is bound by the thought of You,
Not the seven verses of my Faith.
O Lord,
There is no limit to Your Grace.
There is no tongue capable of uttering thanks to You.
You are the Ever-Present. Why then should I search?
You are Ever-Mindful. What then should I say?
What Grace is this You've bestowed upon your lovers?
Whoever recognizes You, finds Your Divine Grace,
And whoever finds You, recognizes own inner Self.
O Lord,
I may not be among Your Saints,
But like the dog of the 'Sleepers of the Cave',
I am always patiently waiting by Your Gate.
The rose of the garden is a thorn in the feet of the mystics.
What cares he for the garden who is searching for You?
Your beggar is happy in what he does,
Because Your beggar is a king in this world and the next.
O Lord,
When there comes a trace of Your Love,
All other love fade away.
Everybody fears the Day of Judgment,
But I fear the Day of Pre-Eternity.
Because what You decreed in the beginning
Will never be changed in the end.
O Lord,
Take me by the hand, for I have nothing to present to You.
Accept me as I am, for I am unable to flee my doubts.
Open a door for me, for You open all the doors.
Show me the way, for You show all the ways.
I give my hand to no helper, for all are transitory.
Only to You who abides forever and ever.
O Lord,
Grant us protection so that
We may dwell in the house of Your Love.
Grant us a tongue so with which
We may render You infinite thanks.
Everything depends on Your Favor,
The rest is just Man-made pretext.
O the One who needs nothing form us,
Have Mercy upon those of us who do need You.
O Lord,
You are the aim of the call of the sincere,
You enlighten the souls of all your lovers.
You are the comfort of the hearts of the travelers,
Because You are present in the very soul.
You greet sinners with mercy.
You melt stone hearts with love.
If I were offered a kingdom, and
The world’s riches were placed at my feet,
I would simply push them away with my feet,
I would bow with my face low and say,
These do not compare to my Beloved's Love!
O Lord,
In this house of despair that we call life,
no one has endured the kind of death I endure:
I live to die without You, O my Friend.
O Lord,
Place your Divine Light into my eyes.
Compensate my lifelong waiting for you,
with a glimpse of your Divine Face.
I am neither colored with the joy of life
nor tasting the fresh fruits of the harvest.
I am completely lost in Your Divine Garden.
O Lord,
Except for my bewilderment before You,
what else can be the intercessor
for the offenses of the ones like me
who are separated from You?
O Lord,
You are the Life of the soul.
You are the Rule of the speech.
You are Your own interpreter.
For the sake of Your obligation to Yourself,
Do not make us wait any longer,
Help us reach the cherished union with You.
O Lord,
Hand me my own mirror.
Don't make me wait any longer
Make true my lifelong wish:
Show me Your Divine Face.
when purity arrives, corruption quickly leaves.
Opposites flee from each other,
night flees when the light dawns.
When the pure Name enters the mouth,
neither impurity nor sorrow remain.
Your awe and love are the robe
to catch the Gifts of God.
Beneath every cry of "Oh Lord" of yours,
is many "I Am Right Here" from God.
Flood me completely,
with the fire of Love's burning,
for now I can bear it and not burn away.
For now in certainty, my soul is free,
and all of earth's sadness has dissolved
in earth's clay.
All praise be to God!
O chalice overflowing,
poured out for these thirsty words,
we thank you, we bless you,
and drink while we pray.
All praise be to God!
Parting is forever parted,
separation is severed at last, and
union is united with no more delay.
All praise be to God!
As we waited, we were longing for
Spring's sun to renew this life of ours.
Today, Jalaluddin's warm breath arrived from the East.
All praise be to God!
O Lord,
You are the Graceful and the Beautiful.
You are the Highest Love.
You are the Giver of life.
What misery and hardship comes
To those who turn away from You!
The soul that hasn't received
peace and love from God,
what a helpless and lost soul that is!
With whom are you going to be in love?
Be thankful to God that your punishment
came from temporary side of love.
But leave the temporary love,
because real love is God's Love.
By day I praised You and never knew it.
By night I stayed with You and never knew it.
I always thought that I was me, but no,
I was You and never knew it.
As I enter the solitude of prayer
I put these matters to Him, for God knows
That's my prayer-time habit, to turn and talk
That's why it's said "My heart delights in prayer"
Through pureness a window opens in my soul
God's message comes immediate to me
Through my window the Book, the rain and light
all pour into my room from gleaming source
Hell's the room in which there is no window
To open windows, that's religion's goal.
Pray the prayer that is the essence of every ritual:
"God, I have no hope. I am torn to shreds.
You are my First, my Last and my only Refuge."
Do not do daily prayers like a bird,
pecking its head up and down.
Prayer is an egg.
Hatch out the total helplessness inside.
During prayer, I'm accustomed to turn to God like this
and recall the meaning of the words of the Tradition,
“the delight felt in the ritual prayer.”
The window of my soul opens,
and from the purity of the unseen world,
the Book of God comes to me straight.
The Book, the rain of Divine Grace, and the Light
are falling into my house through a window
from my real and original source.
The house without a window is hell;
to make a window is the essence of true religion.
Don't thrust your ax upon every thicket;
come, use your ax to cut open a window.
The human being resembles a tree;
its root is a covenant with God,
that root must be cherished with all one's might.
God is the Possessor of the Kingdom.
Whoever lays his head before Him,
receives a hundred kingdoms without the terrestrial world.
The inward savor of a single prostration before God
will be sweeter to you than a hundred empires.
Then you will cry in humble entreaty,
“I desire not kingdoms,
commit unto me the kingdom of that prostration.”
You do not hear God talking to you?
You pray instead.
That is prayer without worship, brother.
You must bow completely down
To hear Him speak very clearly to you.
I put these matters to Him, for God knows
That's my prayer-time habit, to turn and talk
That's why it's said "My heart delights in prayer"
Through pureness a window opens in my soul
God's message comes immediate to me
Through my window the Book, the rain and light
all pour into my room from gleaming source
Hell's the room in which there is no window
To open windows, that's religion's goal.
Pray the prayer that is the essence of every ritual:
"God, I have no hope. I am torn to shreds.
You are my First, my Last and my only Refuge."
Do not do daily prayers like a bird,
pecking its head up and down.
Prayer is an egg.
Hatch out the total helplessness inside.
During prayer, I'm accustomed to turn to God like this
and recall the meaning of the words of the Tradition,
“the delight felt in the ritual prayer.”
The window of my soul opens,
and from the purity of the unseen world,
the Book of God comes to me straight.
The Book, the rain of Divine Grace, and the Light
are falling into my house through a window
from my real and original source.
The house without a window is hell;
to make a window is the essence of true religion.
Don't thrust your ax upon every thicket;
come, use your ax to cut open a window.
The human being resembles a tree;
its root is a covenant with God,
that root must be cherished with all one's might.
God is the Possessor of the Kingdom.
Whoever lays his head before Him,
receives a hundred kingdoms without the terrestrial world.
The inward savor of a single prostration before God
will be sweeter to you than a hundred empires.
Then you will cry in humble entreaty,
“I desire not kingdoms,
commit unto me the kingdom of that prostration.”
You do not hear God talking to you?
You pray instead.
That is prayer without worship, brother.
You must bow completely down
To hear Him speak very clearly to you.
When you begin to love God; God is loving you.
A clapping sound does not come from one hand.
Lightning from here strikes there.
No lover wants union with the Beloved
without the Beloved also wanting the lover.
Love makes the lover weak,
while Beloved always remains strong.
A thirsty man calls out,
'Delicious water, where are you?'
while the water moans,
'Where is the water drinker?'
The thirst in our souls is the attraction
put out by the Water itself.
We belong to Him, and He to us.
God's wisdom made us lovers of one another.
In fact, all the particles of the world
are in love and looking for lovers.
And the Holy Spirit helps with everything,
like a young man trying to support a family.
We, like the man's young wife, stay home,
taking care of the house, nursing the children.
Spirit and matter work together like this,
in a division of labor.
Remember what the soul wants,
because in that, eternity is wanting our souls.
God fixes a passionate desire in you,
and then disappoints you.
God does that a hundred times.
God breaks the wings of one intention
and then gives you another,
cuts the rope of contriving,
so you'll remember your dependence.
Don't be presumptuous and say one or the other.
Close your lips.
The mystery of loving is God's sweetest secret.
Your prayer should always be:
Break the legs of what I want to happen.
Humiliate my ego.
It's Spring and finally I have no will.
What is the secret?
"God is One."
The sunlight splits when entering
the windows of the house.
the windows of the house.
This multiplicity exists in the cluster of grapes;
It is not in the juice made from the grapes.
For he who is living in the Light of God,
The death of the carnal soul is a blessing.
Regarding him, say neither bad nor good,
For he is gone beyond the good and the bad.
Fix your eyes on God and
do not talk about what is invisible,
do not talk about what is invisible,
So that he may place another look in your eyes.
It is in the vision of the physical eyes
That no invisible or secret thing exists.
But when the eye is turned toward the Light of God
What thing could remain hidden under such a Light?
Although all lights emanate from the Divine Light
Don't call all these lights "the Light of God";
It is the eternal light which is the Light of God,
The ephemeral light is an attribute of
the body and the flesh.
the body and the flesh.
O God who gives the grace of vision,
The bird of vision is flying towards You
with the wings of desire.
with the wings of desire.
God said to the mind,
“Return from where you came.”
God said to the hand of death,
“Grab hold of worldly Man.”
God said to the soul,
“Fly to the Unseen.
Take all the treasure you can carry
and cry no more.”
My soul wants to fly away
When Your presence calls it so sweetly.
My soul wants to take flight
When You whisper, “Arise.”
A fish wants to dive from dry land into the ocean
when it hears the roaring waves.
A falcon wants to return from the forest to the King’s wrist
when it hears the drum beating “Return.”
A Sufi, shimmering with light,
wants to dance like a sunbeam
when darkness surrounds him.
O bird, fly back to your native land.
You have broken free from your cage;
Your wings are eager for flight.
Fly from the brackish puddle
toward the flowing waters of life!
Leave the room where they put the dirty sandals
and return to the royal seat of the soul!
O soul, leave behind this world of separation
and come with us to the world of union.
How long will you play in this dusty world
like a child filling his skirt with worthless stones?
Cast away the burdens of the earth
and fly upward toward heaven!
Put away your childish care
and join the royal banquet.
Behold the countless ways this body
has entrapped you! Break its deadly hold.
Rise up, lift your head clear of this delusion.
Reach for the Holy Book with your right hand
You are not like a child who doesn't know
right from left.
You ask, “Who is the King?”
Tell the world that you are the King!
Your knowledge has brought the question,
And your grace has given the answer.
Do not despair, if God pushes you away.
If God pushes you away today,
it’s only so He can draw you back tomorrow.
If God closes the door on your face,
don’t leave, wait!
You’ll soon be by His side.
If God bars every passage, don’t lose hope!
He’s about to show you
a secret way that nobody knows.
A butcher cuts off a sheep’s head for food,
not just to throw away.
When the sheep no longer has breath
the butcher fills it with his own breath.
O what life, God’s breath will bring to you!
But the likeness ends here.
For God’s bounty is much greater than the butcher’s.
God’s blows don’t bring death but eternal life.
God gives the wealth of Solomon to a single ant.
God gives the treasure of both worlds to all who ask.
God gives and gives,
yet does not startle a single heart.
I've traveled to all ends of the earth
and have not found anyone like Him.
Who can match Him?
Who can hold a candle to His glory?
Silence already!
God gives us the wine to taste,
not to talk about. . . .
He gives to taste.
He gives to taste.
He gives to taste.
If God pushes you away today,
it’s only so He can draw you back tomorrow.
If God closes the door on your face,
don’t leave, wait!
You’ll soon be by His side.
If God bars every passage, don’t lose hope!
He’s about to show you
a secret way that nobody knows.
A butcher cuts off a sheep’s head for food,
not just to throw away.
When the sheep no longer has breath
the butcher fills it with his own breath.
O what life, God’s breath will bring to you!
But the likeness ends here.
For God’s bounty is much greater than the butcher’s.
God’s blows don’t bring death but eternal life.
God gives the wealth of Solomon to a single ant.
God gives the treasure of both worlds to all who ask.
God gives and gives,
yet does not startle a single heart.
I've traveled to all ends of the earth
and have not found anyone like Him.
Who can match Him?
Who can hold a candle to His glory?
Silence already!
God gives us the wine to taste,
not to talk about. . . .
He gives to taste.
He gives to taste.
He gives to taste.
I merged so completely with my Lord,
and was so fused with Him,
that I became God and He became me.
That way, I was saved from instigation,
trials and tribulations.
Yes, through mystical union with God,
Man becomes stranger to his or her own Self.
To live in this world and call nothing my own.
I looked inward,
and the beauty of my own emptiness
filled me till dawn.
It enveloped me like a mine of rubies.
Its hue clothed me in red silk.
Within the cavern of my soul
I heard the voice of a lover crying,
“Drink now! Drink now!”
I took a sip and saw the vast ocean
wave upon wave caressed my soul.
The lovers of God dance around
And the circle of their steps
becomes a ring of fire round my neck.
Heaven calls me with its rain and thunder
a hundred thousand cries
yet I cannot hear....
All I hear is the Call of Lord, my Beloved.
You are God's Love and God is such that when
He comes, not a single hair of you will remain.
Before His Glance, a hundred like you are annihilated.
A lover's food is Love for God.
God said, "You've not accomplished the root
of the root of your love and devotion for Me,
what you've done is the branches."
The lover said, "Tell me O Beloved, what is that root?"
God said, "To die in Me and become non-existent."
For ages, O my Beloved, I've beaten Your Love's drum
to Hallaj's tune: "Verily in my death is my life."
Only God can be served for His own sake.
Therefore, only God is truly loved.
Love for all else ends in God.
So, love a thing only for God,
and seek a thing only for God,
until in the end you come to God,
and love Him for Himself.
Is there a human mouth that does not give out soul sound?
Is there love, a drawing together of any kind,
that is not sacred?
Every natural dog sniffs God in the stew.
The lion’s paw trembles like the rose petal.
He senses the ultimate spear coming.
In the shepherd’s majesty
wolves and lambs tease each other.
Look inside your mind.
Do you hear the crowd gathering?
Help coming, every second.
Still you cover your eyes with mud.
Watch the horned owl. Wash your face.
Anyone who steps into an orchard
walks inside the orchard keeper.
Millions of love-tents bloom on the plain.
A star in your chest says,
None of this is outside you.
Close your lips and let the maker of mouths talk,
the one who says things.
Lord of Mercy, Lord of Grace,
Enter my soul like the one who enters
a garden in bloom.
One glance from You and stones turn to rubies.
One hint from You and every goal is within reach.
Come, You are the life and salvation of Man.
Come, You are the eye and light of Joseph.
Touch my head, for Your touch removes
the darkness of the body.
Come, for You bestow beauty and grace.
Come, for You are the cure of a thousand ills.
Come, even though You have never left,
come and hear some of my poetry.
Sit in the place of my soul,
for You are a thousand souls of mine.
Come, for You are my Beloved.
Lord of Mercy, Lord of Grace,
We are joyous and alive by Your breath.
We move by the power of Your love.
Everything You touch will reach its goal.
We fly with the wings of an angel,
But wings cannot carry us to You.
Like the mule that carried Jesus,
Only love can carry us towards You.
Enter my soul like the one who enters
a garden in bloom.
One glance from You and stones turn to rubies.
One hint from You and every goal is within reach.
Come, You are the life and salvation of Man.
Come, You are the eye and light of Joseph.
Touch my head, for Your touch removes
the darkness of the body.
Come, for You bestow beauty and grace.
Come, for You are the cure of a thousand ills.
Come, even though You have never left,
come and hear some of my poetry.
Sit in the place of my soul,
for You are a thousand souls of mine.
Come, for You are my Beloved.
Lord of Mercy, Lord of Grace,
We are joyous and alive by Your breath.
We move by the power of Your love.
Everything You touch will reach its goal.
We fly with the wings of an angel,
But wings cannot carry us to You.
Like the mule that carried Jesus,
Only love can carry us towards You.
On the Judgment Day,
God will say, "What did you do with the strength
and the energy that I gave you on Earth?
and the energy that I gave you on Earth?
How did you use your eyes?
What did you make with your five senses
while they were dimming and playing out?
I gave you hands and feet as tools
for preparing the ground for planting.
Did you, in the health I gave, do the plowing?"
You will not be able to stand when
you hear those questions.
you hear those questions.
You will bend double with shame,
and finally acknowledge the glory.
Then you will turn to the right
looking to Prophets for help, as though to say,
looking to Prophets for help, as though to say,
I am stuck in the mud of my life. Help me out of this!
And they'll answer, "The time for helping is past.
The plow stands there in the field.
You should have used it."
Then you'll turn to the left, where your family is,
and they will say, "Don't look at us!
and they will say, "Don't look at us!
This conversation is between you and your Creator!"
Be a glass for the wine of God's Love,
in order to deserve the Beloved.
Be pure soul, give up life
for the sake of God's Love.
The knots of your life cannot be untied
without a touch of God's Love.
God has made existence magnificent,
He has made it through nonexistence.
God has concealed the sea
And exposed the foam,
Concealed the wind and displayed the dust.
The whirling dust flies like a dancer,
The wind is invisible, known only by trust,
The foam moves all about you,
But without the sea no whirling takes place.
Thought is hidden, speech is manifest.
The sheaf-stack belongs to God.
Human beings are gleaners.
Rays from the sun.
The earth-colored glass
makes everything seem diverse,
but that glass eventually shatters.
Your lamp was lit from another lamp.
All God wants is your gratitude for that.
Lend, is the divine command.
Make God a loan of your existence,
and see what fortunes accumulate!
Giving thanks to God for your riches of life
is worthier than all your accumulated wealth.
If you wish to live a life full of gratitude,
stay away from accumulating excessive wealth.
Giving thanks to God is the soul of all your riches,
your material possessions are just a meaningless facade.
It is your sincere gratitude to God
that'll take you to the His divine realms.
Money brings you carelessness and neglect.
Gratitude brings you awakening and remembrance.
Hunt for the divine treasures which are hidden
deep inside the thankfulness snare of the Hunter (God).
Giving thanks to God for all your riches of life
will make you feel fully fulfilled and content.
Go on and bestow more of your material wealth
upon the poor and needy souls of this world.
Then God shall feed you sweet candies and divine food.
Then you shall be able to finally get rid of
all your accumulated bitterness and greed.
Give thanks and praises to Lord Almighty
Who always unties all our tight knots.
As I wrapped myself in thanksgiving to Him,
Almighty untied all my tightly jammed knots.
There are hundreds of hidden pathways inside a heart,
all unknown and firmly closed to His mortal creatures.
Only God knows how to open the pathway
To a true believer's heart.
From His shining heavenly abode high up above -
with the Sun and the Moon serving as its chandeliers -
God sends down rays of divine light inside our hearts.
God asked His creatures: "Am I Not Your Lord?"
"YES Indeed You Are, We Do Testify,"
All God believing souls responded.
Give thanks and praises to Lord Almighty.
Because for His true believers,
He always blocks the path of misfortune,
and opens wide the path of divine blessings.
Lovers share a sacred decree:
to seek God, the Beloved.
They roll head over heels,
rushing toward the Beautiful One
like a torrent of water.
In truth, everyone is a shadow of God -
Our seeking is His seeking,
Our words are His words.
At times we flow toward God
like a dancing stream.
At times we are still water held in His pitcher.
At times we boil in a pot turning to vapor -
that is the job of the Beloved.
God breathes into my ear
until my soul takes on His fragrance.
God is the Soul of my soul -
How can I escape?
But why would any soul in this world
want to escape from the Beloved?
God will melt your pride
making you thin as a strand of hair,
Yet do not trade, even for both worlds,
One strand of His hair.
We search for God here and there
while looking right at Him.
Sitting by His side we ask,
"O Beloved, where is the Beloved?"
Enough with such questions! -
Let silence take you to the core of life.
All your talk is worthless
When compared to one whisper
of the Beloved.
To follow one's own desires is to flee from God
and to spill the blood of spirituality
in the presence of His Justice.
This world is a trap, and desire its bait,
escape the traps of this material world,
and quickly turn your face toward God.
When you follow God's Way,
you enjoy a hundred blessings.
When you go the opposite way,
you end up faring badly.
The Prophet said, "Consult your own hearts,
even though the religious judge advises you
about worldy affairs."
Abandon desire and reveal His Mercy.
Learn by experience the sacrifices He requires.
Since you can't escape Him, be God's servant.
Go from His Prison into His Rose Garden.
When you keep watch over your thoughts and actions,
you always see His Justice and Mercy.
Though heedlessness may shut your eyes,
still, that doesn't stop the sun from shining.
One dervish to another,
'What was your vision of God's presence?'
I haven't seen anything.
But for the sake of conversation, I'll tell you a story.
God's presence is there in front of me,
a fire on the left, a lovely stream on the right.
a fire on the left, a lovely stream on the right.
One group walks toward the fire, into the fire,
another toward the sweet flowing water.
another toward the sweet flowing water.
No one knows which are blessed and which not.
Whoever walks into the fire
appears suddenly in the stream.
appears suddenly in the stream.
A head goes under on the water surface,
that head pokes out of the fire.
Most people guard against going into the fire,
and so end up in it.
Those who love the water of pleasure and
make it their devotion, are cheated with this reversal.
make it their devotion, are cheated with this reversal.
The trickery goes further.
The voice of the fire tells the truth, saying I am not fire.
I am fountainhead.
Come into me and don't mind the sparks.
Come into me and don't mind the sparks.
If you are a friend of God, fire is your water.
You should wish to have a hundred thousand
sets of mothwings,
so you could burn them away, one set a night.
sets of mothwings,
so you could burn them away, one set a night.
The moth sees light and goes into fire.
You should see fire and go toward light.
Fire is what of God is world-consuming.
Water, world-protecting.
Somehow each gives the appearance of the other.
To these eyes you have now
what looks like water burns.
What looks like fire is a great relief to be inside.
You've seen a magician make a bowl of rice
seem a dish full of tiny, live worms.
Before an assembly, with one breath he made
the floor swarm with scorpions that weren't there.
the floor swarm with scorpions that weren't there.
How much more amazing God's tricks.
Generation after generation lies down,
defeated, they think, but they're
like a woman underneath a man, circling him.
One molecule-mate-second thinking of
God's reversal of comfort and pain
is better than any attending ritual.
That splinter of intelligence is substance.
The fire and water themselves:
Accidental, done with mirrors.
Since the Saints are consumed in God,
Their actions are God’s Actions.
The Saint of God is not called a wrongdoer.
There is a Water that flows down from Heaven
To cleanse the world of sin by Grace Divine.
This Water is the Spirit of the Saints,
Which ever sheds, until itself is beggared,
God's balm on the sick soul; and then returns
To Him who made the purest light of Heaven.
in His presence.
Then God bends and whispers in his or her ear,
“Beggar, spread out your robe. I’ll fill it with gold.
I've come to protect your consciousness.
Where has it gone? Come back!”
This fainting is because lovers want so much.
A chicken invites a camel into her hen-house,
and the whole structure is demolished.
A rabbit nestles down with its eyes closed
in the arms of a lion.
There is an excess in spiritual searching
that is profound ignorance.
that is profound ignorance.
Let that ignorance be our teacher!
God breathes into one who has no breath.
A deep silence revives the listening
of those two who meet on the riverbank.
Like the ground turning green in a spring wind,
like birdsong beginning inside the egg,
like this universe coming into existence,
the lover wakes and whirls in a dancing joy,
then kneels down in praise.
Imagine a man selling his donkey
To be with Jesus.
Now imagine him selling Jesus
To get a ride on a donkey.
This does happen.
Jesus can transform a drunk into gold
If the drunk is already golden,
He can be changed into pure diamond.
If already that, he can become the circling
Planets, Jupiter, Venus, the moon.
Never think that you are worthless.
God has paid an enormous amount for you.
And the gifts keep arriving.
The gifts come through the Unique One.
His palm open without conditions.
That union cannot be said.
Wealthy people bring money.
God says, "Bring devotion to one
whose loving mixes with Mine."
That love is what God wants.
That love is a mother and a father to us,
and is the origin of every creature.
You might say,
"Lord, I have brought this heart-love."
One who has that love is a six sided mirror,
through which God can look at us, here.
There is something in us
That has nothing to do with night and day,
Grapes that never saw a vineyard.
God has given us a dark wine so potent that,
drinking it, we leave the two worlds.
God has put into the form of hashish a power
to deliver the taster from self-consciousness.
God has made sleep so that it erases every thought.
God made Majnun love Layla so much
that just her dog would cause confusion in him.
There are thousands of wines
that can take over our minds.
Don’t think all ecstasies are the same!
Jesus was lost in his love for God.
His donkey was drunk on barley.
Drink from the presence of saints,
not from those other jars.
Every object, every being,
is a jar full of delight.
Be a connoisseur, and taste with caution.
Any wine will get you high.
Judge like a king, and choose the purest,
the ones unadulterated with fear,
or some urgency about “what’s needed.”
Drink the wine that moves you
as a camel moves when it’s been untied,
and is just ambling about.
The Wine of Divine Grace is limitless
All limits come only from the faults of the cup.
Moonlight floods the whole sky from horizon to horizon.
How much it can fill your room depends on its windows.
Grant a great dignity, my friend, to the cup of your life.
Love has designed it to hold His Eternal Wine.
Before gardner or vine or grape existed in this world,
Our soul was drunk with the Eternal Wine.
We proclaimed “I am the Supreme Reality”
in the Baghdad of spiritual world
Before Al-Hallaj's condemnation and death on the gibbet.
Before the universal soul became the world’s architect,
our life was happy In the wine shop of Divine Realities.
Our soul was like the universe; our soul’s cup like the sun.
The universe was drowned in the light of the soul’s wine.
The grapes of my body can only become wine
After God, the Winemaker tramples me.
I surrender my spirit like grapes to His trampling
So my inmost heart can blaze and dance with joy.
Everyone is a child except the one
who’s intoxicated with God.
who’s intoxicated with God.
God has said,
Knowledge that isn't from Him is a burden.
Knowledge that isn't from Him is a burden.
like a woman’s makeup, it doesn't last.
Be cleansed of the false self’s features,
and see your pure Self:
Know the mirror of the heart is infinite.
Either the understanding falls silent,
or it leads you astray,
because the heart is God, or indeed the heart is He.
Everything, except love of God is really agony.
It’s agony to move towards death
and not drink the water of life.
Fiery lust is not diminished by indulging it,
but inevitably by leaving it ungratified.
Anger is a king over kings,
but anger once bridled may serve.
No joy have I found in the two worlds
apart from You, O my Lord.
Many wonders I have seen,
I have not seen a wonder like You.
Often have I laid the spiritual ear at the window of the heart.
I heard much discourse, but the lips I did not see.
I saw no cause for it, but Your infinite kindness.
Of a sudden You did lavish grace upon Your servant:
O chosen Cup-bearer, O apple of mine eyes,
the like of You never appeared in Persia,
nor in Arabia have I found it.
O Lord,
Pour out wine till I become a wanderer from myself;
For in self-hood and existence I have felt only fatigue.
O You who are my Milk and Sugar,
O You who are my Sun and Moon,
O You who are my Mother and Father,
I have known no Kin but You.
You are both my Stay and my Refuge:
O Indestructible Love, O Divine Minstrel,
a Name equal to You I have not found.
O Lord,
We are pieces of steel,
Your Love is the magnet.
You are the Source of all our aspirations.
'Till You named culture, I knew no culture but You.
In comparison with the Majesty of God,
all mystic sciences, exercises, and acts
of passion and devotions,
are as if someone came to you, bowed once,
performed some perfunctory little service,
and then went away.
If you were to put the entire earth
on your heart in serving God,
it would be the same as bowing
your head once to the ground.
I am not saying this to discourage you,
only to instill in you some sense of proportion
as to the Glory and Majesty of God you love.
Abraham said,
'God is the One who gives and takes life.'
Nimron said,
'I am he who gives life and makes to die.'
What arrogance by that mortal Nimron!
If God wants, the sun will rise in the west,
and the mountains will vanish like smoke
at one rush of His strong wind.
If God wants, all the seas will dissolve in vapor,
and the stars will fall out of the sky in eternal darkness.
This is the Power and the Majesty of God.
This is the Glory of the One we are so in love with.
Never forget this: God, your Lord Is Omnipotent.
The Path to God is littered with the bones of those
who did not remember who they were looking for,
or how great beyond all seeking, concepts,
imaginations and realizations,
He, God Always Is.
We delight in all known science, but they are
only a small bunch from God's Garden.
We hold on to these few bunches because
we have shut ourselves out of the Garden.
Unless you become a lover of God,
you're an echo, a mountain with no voice of its own.
The echo is a reflection from another source
like your speech and feelings.
Speech not inspired by the Divine,
springs from self-will and floats like dust
in the air, like moths in the sunbeam.
In the presence of God's Glory, closely watch your heart so your thoughts won't shame you. For God sees guilt, opinion, and desire as plainly as a hair in pure milk. God alone is the giver of aspiration. When God brings trouble upon an ill-fated person, he ungratefully packs off in flight. When God brings trouble upon a blessed person, he just draws nearer to God. God not only sees where you are, He sees where you can be.
The Prophet said, "God doesn't pay attention
to your outer form, so in your improvising,
seek the owner of the heart.
God says, "I regard you through the owner of the heart,
not because of prostrations in prayer
or the giving of wealth in charity."
The owner of the heart becomes a six-faced mirror,
through him God looks out in all the six directions.
Know the mirror of the heart is infinite.
Either the understanding falls silent,
or it leads you astray,
because the heart is God, or indeed the heart is He.
If the heart is restored to health, and purged of sensuality,
then The Merciful God is seated on the Throne.
After this, He guides the heart directly,
since the heart is with Him.
David said, "O Lord, since You do not need us,
why did you create these two worlds?"
God replied: "O prisoner of time,
I was a secret treasure of kindness and generosity,
and I wished this treasure to be known,
so I created a mirror: its shining face, the heart;
its darkened back, the world.
The back would please you if you've never seen the face.
Has anyone ever produced a mirror out of mud and straw?
Yet clean away the mud and straw, and a mirror
might be revealed.
might be revealed.
Until the juice ferments a while in the cask, it isn't wine.
If you wish your heart to be bright,
If you wish your heart to be bright,
you must do a little work."
My Lord also addressed the soul of my flesh:
"You return just as you left.
Where are the traces of my gifts?
We know that alchemy transforms copper into gold.
This Sun doesn't want a crown or robe from God's grace.
He is a hat to a hundred bald men,
a covering for ten who were naked.
Jesus sat humbly on the back of an ass, my child!
How could a zephyr ride an ass?
Spirit, find your way, in seeking lowness like a stream.
Reason, tread the path of selflessness into eternity.
Remember God so much that you are forgotten.
Remember God so much that you are forgotten.
Let the caller and the called disappear;
be lost in the Call."
Moses heard a shepherd on the road, praying,
"God, where are you? I want to help you,
to fix your shoes and comb your hair.
I want to wash your clothes and pick the lice off.
I want to bring you milk to kiss your little hands and feet
when it's time for you to go to bed.
I want to sweep your room and keep it neat.
God, my sheep and goats are yours.
All I can say, remembering you,
is ayyyy and ahhhhhhhhh."
Moses could stand it no longer.
"Who are you talking to?"
"The One who made us,
and made the earth and made the sky."
"Don't talk about shoes and socks with God!
And what's this with your little hands and feet?
Such blasphemous familiarity sounds like
you're chatting with your uncles.
Only something that grows needs milk.
Only someone with feet needs shoes. Not God!
Even if you meant God's human representatives,
as when God said, `I was sick, and you did not visit Me,'
even then this tone would be foolish and irreverent.
Use appropriate terms.
Fatima is a fine name for a woman,
but if you call a man Fatima, it's an insult.
Body-and-birth language
are right for us on this side of the river,
but not for addressing the Origin, not for Allah."
The shepherd repented and tore his clothes
and sighed and wandered out into the desert.
and sighed and wandered out into the desert.
A sudden revelation then came to Moses.
God's Voice: "You have separated Me from one of My own.
Did you come as a Prophet to unite, or to sever?
Did you come as a Prophet to unite, or to sever?
I have given each being a separate and unique way
of seeing and knowing that knowledge.
What seems wrong to you is right for him.
What is poison to one is honey to someone else.
Purity and impurity, sloth and diligence in worship,
these mean nothing to Me.
I am apart from all that.
Ways of worshiping are not to be ranked as better
or worse than one another.
Hindus do Hindu things.
The Dravidian Muslims in India do what they do.
It's all praise, and it's all right.
It's not Me that's glorified in acts of worship.
It's the worshipers! I don't hear the words
they say. I look inside at the humility.
That broken-open lowliness is the reality,
not the language! Forget phraseology.
I want burning, 'burning'.
Be friends with your burning. Burn up your thinking
and your forms of expression!
Moses, those who pay attention to ways of behaving
and speaking are one sort.
Lovers who burn are another.
Don't impose a property tax
on a burned-out village. Don't scold the Lover.
The "wrong" way he talks is better than a hundred
"right" ways of others.
Inside the Kaaba
it doesn't matter which direction you point
your prayer rug!
The ocean diver doesn't need snowshoes!
The love-religion has no code or doctrine.
Only God.
So the ruby has nothing engraved on it!
It doesn't need markings."
God began speaking deeper mysteries to Moses.
Vision and words, which cannot be recorded here,
poured into and through him.
He left himself and came back.
He went to eternity and came back here.
Many times this happened.
It's foolish of me to try and say this.
If I did say it, it would uproot our human intelligence.
It would shatter all writing pens.
Moses ran after the shepherd.
He followed the bewildered footprints,
in one place moving straight like a castle
across a chessboard. In another, sideways,
like a bishop.
Now surging like a wave cresting,
now sliding down like a fish,
with always his feet
making geomancy symbols in the sand,
recording his wandering state.
Moses finally caught up with him.
"I was wrong. God has revealed to me
that there are no rules for worship.
Say whatever and however your loving tells you to.
Your sweet blasphemy is the truest devotion.
Through you a whole world is freed.
Loosen your tongue and don't worry what comes out.
It's all the light of the spirit."
The shepherd replied,
"Moses, Moses, I've gone beyond even that.
You applied the whip and my horse shied and jumped
out of itself. The divine nature and my human nature
came together.
Bless your scolding hand and your arm.
I can't say what's happened.
What I'm saying now is not my real condition.
It can't be said."
The shepherd grew quiet.
When you look in a mirror,
you see yourself, not the state of the mirror.
The flute player puts breath into a flute,
and who makes the music?
Not the flute. The flute player!
Whenever you speak praise or thanksgiving to God,
it's always like this dear shepherd's simplicity.
When you eventually see
through the veils to how things really are,
you will keep saying again and again,
"This is certainly not like we thought it was!"
We're so powerless compared to God's Power.
How can you expect us to behave and act modest?
How can you expect us to stay at home,
like good little boys?
How can you expect us to enjoy being chained
like a bunch of mad men?
O Lord, O my Beloved,
You will find us every night on Your Street,
with our eyes glued to Your Window,
waiting for a glimpse of Your Radiant Face.
How can you expect us to behave and act modest?
How can you expect us to stay at home,
like good little boys?
How can you expect us to enjoy being chained
like a bunch of mad men?
O Lord, O my Beloved,
You will find us every night on Your Street,
with our eyes glued to Your Window,
waiting for a glimpse of Your Radiant Face.
My head is bursting with the joy of the unknown.
My heart is expanding a thousand fold.
Every cell, taking wings, flies about the world.
All seek separately the Radiant Face of my Lord.
My heart is expanding a thousand fold.
Every cell, taking wings, flies about the world.
All seek separately the Radiant Face of my Lord.
"Wherever you turn, there is the Face of God."
Open a window to God and begin to delight yourself
By gazing upon Him through the opening.
The business of love is to make the window of the heart,
For the chest is illumined by the Beauty of God.
Gaze incessantly on the Face of your Beloved!
Listen, this is in your power my friend!
If you wish to be far from God,
nourish your egoism and drive yourself away.
O travelers on the Way of Love,
May God grant you total soundness,
and may He lift the veils from your eyes,
so you may see the secrets that lie
behind the Golden Veil of God.
King, saint, thief, madman-
Love has grabbed everyone by the neck
and drags us to God by secret ways....
How could I ever have guessed
that God, too, desired us?
Gamble everything for God's Love.
If you are a true human being.
If not, leave this gathering.
Half-heartedness doesn't reach into His Majesty.
You set out to find God, but then you keep stopping
for long periods at mean-spirited roadhouses.
Don't wait any longer. Dive in the Ocean of God,
Leave and let the sea be you.
Silent, absent, walking an empty road with God,
All praise.
The center leads to Love.
Soul opens the creation core.
Hold on to your particular pain.
That too can take you to God.
What is bounty without a beggar?
Generosity without a guest?
Be beggar and guest;
for beauty is seeking a mirror,
water is crying for a thirsty one.
Bring a hundred sacks of gold and
God will say, "Bring the heart."
And if you bring a dead heart carried
like a coffin on your shoulders, God will say,
"Is this a graveyard? Bring the live heart!"
If you haven't any knowledge and only opinions,
have good opinions about God. This is the way.
If you can only crawl, crawl to Him.
If you cannot pray sincerely, offer your dry,
hypocritical, agnostic prayer;
for God in His mercy accepts bad coin.
If you have a hundred doubts about God,
make them into ninety doubts. This is the way.
God has said, "Though you're on high or in the pit,
always consider Me, for I am the Way."
The sea doesn't let the fish escape,
nor does it let in the creatures of the Land.
The fishes swims in its watery home;
the weighty animal plods upon the earth.
Nothing we can do change this.
The lock of Divine destiny is strong,
and the only opener is God.
Cling to surrender and contentment with God's Will.
Though the atoms, one by one, should become keys,
nothing is opened except by Divine Majesty.
When you forget your own scheming,
happiness will come to you from your spiritual guide.
When you forget your own Self,
you are remembered by God.
When you have become His slave,
only then are you set free.
God's slave is a free man.
The real work belongs to the one who desires God.
God says to you, "I'm the sound of water
in the ears of the thirsty; I'm rain falling from heaven.
Spring up, lover, show some excitement!
How can you hear the sound of water and
then fall back asleep?!"
Consider the difference
in our actions and God's actions.
We often ask, "Why did you do that?"
or "Why did I act like that?"
We do act, and yet everything we do
is God's creative action.
We look back and analyse the events of our lives,
but there is another way of seeing,
a backward-and-forward-at-once vision,
that is not rationally understandable.
Only God can understand it.
Satan made the excuse, "You caused me to fall,
whereas Adam said to God, "We did this to ourselves."
After this repentance, God asked Adam,
"Since all is within My foreknowledge,
why didn't you defend yourself with that reason?"
Adam answered, "I was afraid, and I wanted to be reverent."
Whoever acts with respect will get respect.
Whoever brings sweetness will be served almond cake.
Good women are drawn to be with good men.
Honor your friend.
Or treat him rudely,
and see what happens!
Love, tell an incident now
that will clarify this mystery of how we act feely,
and are yet compelled.
One hand shakes with palsy.
Another shakes because you slapped it away.
Both tremblings come from God,
but you feel guilty for the one,
and what about the other?
These are intellectual questions.
The spirit approaches the matter differently.
Ignorance is God's prison
Knowing is God's palace.
We sleep in God's unconsciousness.
We wake in God's open hand.
We weep God's rain.
We laugh God's lightning.
Fighting and peacefulness
both take place within God.
Who are we then
in this complicated world-tangle,
that is really just the single, straight
line down at the beginning of ALLAH?
Nothing.
We are
emptiness.
As the sun goes down in its well,
lovers enter the seclusion of God.
Late at night we meet like thieves
who have stolen gold, our candlelit faces.
A pawn has become king.
We sit secretly inside the presence
like a Turk in a tent among the Hindus,
and yet we are traveling past a hundred watchmen,
night-faring, drowned in an ocean of longing.
Sometimes a body rises to the surface
like Joseph coming out of his well of abandonment
to be the clarity that divides Egypt’s wheat fairly
and interprets the royal dreaming.
Some people say about human beings,
Dust to dust.
But how can that be true of one
who changes road dust to doorway?
The crop appears to be one thing
when it is still in the field.
Then the transformation time comes,
and we see how it is: half chaff, half grain.
The Beauty of God, our Beloved.
Their only book or lesson is
The Face of God.
The Face of God.
They are silent outwardly,
But their penetrating remembrance rises
To the highest Throne of their Friend.
Their only lesson is whirling and trembling,
not the fine points of Jurisprudence!
Someone said to our Master, Shams of Tabriz:
“I've established the existence of God by a logical proof.”
Our Sufi Master, Shams said mockingly,
“The angels shall come down and bless that man, saying,
Praise be to God, someone has logically established
the existence of our God! May God give him long life!"
Oh you naive believers, GOD EXISTS!
God needs no proof. God not only exists,
God is the ground as well as the goal of all existence.
Everything is nothing without God.
Indeed, God's existence is real.
God's existence gives form and color
to everything that a person sees.
Not everyone realizes God and His existence though.
Those who are oblivious of God's presence,
may find color and form in everything and
attribute it to that thing instead of God
Who is indeed the Owner of all attributes.
We can know that God exists,
but we will never understand the nature of God.
Knowing that God exists through rational proof
will not sustain a lasting faith or faithful union.
Reason cannot reveal the nature of God.
Just like that fellow who spoke to our Master,
reason alone can only take you so far.
You must move beyond the limits of reason
to fully accept the irrefutable existence of God.
If you do anything at all, establish yourself
in some rank and station before Him.
Otherwise, how can you share in His Grace?
Nothing exists that does not proclaim His praise.
Say God is Great. Get up.
You think you know what time it is. It’s time to pray.
You've carved so many little figurines, too many.
Don’t knock on any random door like a beggar.
Reach your long hands out to another door,
beyond where you go on the street,
the street where everyone says, “How are you?”
and no one says How aren't you?
Tomorrow you’ll see what you've broken and torn tonight,
thrashing in the dark.
Inside you, there’s an artist you don’t know about.
He’s not interested in how things look different in moonlight.
If you are here unfaithfully with us,
you’re causing terrible damage.
If you've opened your loving to God’s love,
you’re helping people you don’t know
and have never seen.
Is what I say true? Say yes quickly,
if you know, if you've known it
from before the beginning of the universe.
I am Lost in God and God is found in me.
Don‘t think that saying "I am God"
is proclaiming one‘s greatness.
It is actually total humility.
Someone who says, "I am the servant of God"
infers two – God and himself –
whereas someone who says,
"I am God", negates himself.
He relinquishes his own existence.
"I am God" means "I don‘t exist.
Everything is God. Only God exists.
I am nothing. I am utter emptiness".
This is complete humility not arrogance,
but people often misunderstand.
When someone says he is God‘s servant,
he still sees himself as a doer,
albeit in God‘s service.
He is not yet drowned in the Ocean of God.
When he is, there will be no such thing
as 'his actions', only movements of water.
Why am I looking in all directions?
I must look deep inside of me.
I am the Lord and I do you wrong to say
That anyone is Lord or God to me.
Why should I seek God?
I am the same as He.
His Essence speaks through me.
I have been looking for Myself.
Don‘t think that saying "I am God"
is proclaiming one‘s greatness.
It is actually total humility.
Someone who says, "I am the servant of God"
infers two – God and himself –
whereas someone who says,
"I am God", negates himself.
He relinquishes his own existence.
"I am God" means "I don‘t exist.
Everything is God. Only God exists.
I am nothing. I am utter emptiness".
This is complete humility not arrogance,
but people often misunderstand.
When someone says he is God‘s servant,
he still sees himself as a doer,
albeit in God‘s service.
He is not yet drowned in the Ocean of God.
When he is, there will be no such thing
as 'his actions', only movements of water.
People always plot their little plans, but
God’s Will does not consult with the plans of Man.
You should never say, “God has done this to me,
what can I do? It is God’s Will.
If God willed it, I would be shown the way.”
Such words are tantamount to abusing God,
and drawing the sword against God.
Your words would be a sword against God,
not the Sword of God.
People always blame God for their own choices,
but they miserably fail to see the real causes:
The animal-self (ego) and rejection of God's Will.
It's their ego, the 'animal-self' that leads them
to worship the Self instead of God.
It's their ego that makes them obey Self-will
instead of surrendering to God's Will.
Let me dig deeper into this debate of
God's Will versus Man's will:
God is in control of all things and rules over all things.
God is Sovereign over heaven and earth.
Satan and lust exist and act only
in furtherance of God's Will.
The truth is, that whatever occurs
is according to God's Will.
When God desires to chastise someone,
He grants them high rank in the world and a great kingdom,
like Pharaoh, Nimrod, and the rest.
All those eminent positions are like
the gallows from which God hangs people
for others to gaze upon and understand.
For God declares,
“I was a hidden treasure, and I desired to be known.
I created the world to manifest My Reality
through both My Graciousness and My Severity.”
Therefore, God is both Merciful and Wrathful.
But the Wrath of God is an aspect of Love of God.
God is not the kind of King for whom one voice is sufficient.
If every atom in the world became God’s herald,
they would still be unable to properly proclaim His Truth.
Therefore, day and night people are revealing God,
but while some understand this, others are unaware.
In either case, the manifestation of God’s Will is certain.
God created us in His own image, thus our description
has taken instruction from His Description.
God wants you to become pious, so that
you'll leave aside your ego and become His witness.
God possesses nothing in the lofty heavens
and in the earth, more hidden that Man's spirit.
God has disclosed all things, fresh and withered,
but He has sealed the spirit's mysteries
with a command from His heavenly throne.
Have you not read the verse, 'God has set a seal'?
It is God who sets the seal, and it is He who
removes it and lifts up the coverings.
In the two worlds, God gazes upon the heart,
because a king always gazes upon the witness.
God is the Absolute Witness in every quarrel;
so the just Witness is the Beloved's Divine Eye.
God's Love and the mystery of
His 'Contemplation of the witness'
are the foundation of all His veil-making.
God's Judgment rules over good and bad,
but does not the witness rules the Judgment?
God gave you two hands, meaning,
"Grasp My Skirt!"
God gave you an intellect so that
you could follow His Path to Heaven.
Intellect is a shadow, God is the Sun.
How can a shadow stand up to the Sun?
In the Glory and Splendor of God,
you'll find many divine intellectual concepts.
Beside this intellect of yours,
God has many intellects which govern
the intermediate causes of the heavens.
When you sacrifice your intellect in love for God,
He will give you ten like it, or seven hundred.
Surrender yourself entirely to the Lord,
and accept God's Will in whatever happens.
Strive in earnest desire to do God's Will.
God has a Master Plan for your life.
God always fulfills His Plan at His Own Will.
The key to discovering God's Will
is the closeness of your relationship to Him.
a table spread for the people of the heart.
O spiritually sick people of this material world,
haste, haste, go and patiently wait
by the door of Christ's House.
In the early hours of dawn,
the poor, the maimed, the deaf and the blind
would gather by the door of House of Jesus
hoping to be healed by the Breath of Christ.
Jesus would spend the entire morning
praying in solitude and silence.
Holy Jesus would come out around noon
to witness a large multitude of sick and needy
waiting to be cured and healed by him.
Jesus would then address the crowd:
"O my Lord's afflicted ones,
by the infinite kindness and grace of Almighty,
your prayers and wishes had just been answered.
Get up and walk without any pain and suffering,
GET UP!"
By the sheer power of the miracles of Jesus,
they'd all quickly get up, like a bunch of freed camels
whose legs had been tied up in chains for so long,
and rush back happily towards their loved ones
completely healed and cured.
That's how Jesus performed his miracles.
The son of Mary, Jesus,
hurries up a slope
as though a wild animal were chasing him.
Someone following him asks,
'Where are you going?
No one is after you.'
Jesus keeps on, saying nothing,
across two more fields.
'Are you the one who says
words over a dead person,
so that he wakes up?’
"I am."
'Did you not make the clay birds fly?'
"Yes."
'Who then could possibly cause you to run like this?'
Jesus slows his pace.
"I say the Great Name over the deaf and the blind,
they are healed. Over a stony mountainside,
and it tears its mantle down to the navel.
Over non-existence, it comes into existence.
But when I speak lovingly for hours, for days,
with those who take human warmth and mock it,
when I say the Name to them, nothing happens.
They remain rock, or turn to sand,
where no plants can grow.
Other diseases are ways for mercy to enter,
but this non-responding
breeds violence and coldness toward God.
I am fleeing from that."
As little by little air steals water,
so praise is dried up and evaporates with
foolish people who refuse to change.
Like cold stone you sit on,
a cynic steals body heat.
He doesn't feel the sun.
Jesus wasn't running from actual people.
He was teaching in a new way.
The way of Jesus was wrestling with solitude
and not gratifying lust.
The way of Muhammad was to endure the oppression
and agonies inflicted by men and women upon each other.
If you cannot go by the way of Muhammad,
at least go by the way of Jesus,
so you won't remain completely outside the spiritual path.
I do not hesitate asking Jesus
to also perform miracles in my life.
I am fully versed in the knowledge of his religion.
Jesus, son of Mary,
is a spiritual form of Divine Compassion.
From the water of Virgin Mary or
from the breath of Archangel Gabriel,
Jesus, the Spirit and the Word, came to be
in an essence purified of nature.
God has said,
“Jesus is a sign for mankind and a mercy from Me.
And We made the son of Mary and his mother a sign."
Jesus is the Seal of the Saints.
Jesus is the possessor of the highest Divine Knowledge.
Jesus is the example of Service and Sacrifice.
Jesus is the Man of Sorrows.
Jesus is the Prince of Peace.
Jesus is the embodiment of Perfect Man.
Jesus is the Model Sufi; ascetic and pious.
Jesus is the example of detachment from the material world.
Jesus is the symbol of engendering.
Jesus is the Light and Fragrance of God.
Jesus is indeed the Word of God.
Jesus is indeed the Spirit of God.
Jesus is indeed alive and living in the fourth heaven.
Jesus is indeed the promised Messiah.
Jesus raised up the dead and made birds from clay.
Jesus healed the deaf and mute.
Jesus healed the lame and the blind.
God purified Jesus in body and exalted him in spirit.
God made of him a symbol of love and purity.
The first words of Jesus in the cradle were,
“Truly I am the Servant of God.”
Had there not been a meddler in the midst,
Jesus would have revealed the "Mystery"
line by line.
He would have closed the road of the mouth
and opened the secret way.
Jesus would have escaped by one cup of divine wine
from the frenzy of speech.
For Jesus is the Word of God.
The difference lies in the form of the doctrine,
not in the real nature of the Way.
People neither have any perception of the
Unicolority of Jesus,
nor they are dyed in the Tub of Jesus
which would make a hundred colors
as simple and one-colored as the Light.
O people who have faith in Christ,
This epoch is the epoch of Jesus.
Embrace Christ's faith and his miraculous life
with all your heart and with all your soul.
For Jesus' sake, go and yield your life.
Confess myriads of your obligations to Christ.
Don't let grief coming over you,
when you witness that Christ's faith
perishes among those who're ignorant of it.
Thanks be to God and to Jesus
that I've become acquainted with his faith.
I see that the desire of Christ's faith
is purification of Self, and the liberty
from bondage of this material world.
I also see the desire for a sanctuary of the soul,
a blessed portal of unity, and a nest of the Eternal.
God's Spirit, Jesus who proceeds
from the blessed Holy Spirit,
taught this doctrine.
In you is placed a soul
which is a mirror of Jesus' blessed Spirit.
Find release from humanity's carnal desire
and you will enter the Divine Kingdom.
Anyone who's pure and sinless like Jesus
Will be carried up to the fourth heaven.
You should be as Jesus, son of Mary,
on the way of sincerity,
to grasp the value and verity
of the chapters and verses of the Gospel.
If for only a moment you free yourself
from this prison called the material world,
you will be like Jesus, unique in detachment.
Jesus has said, "You must be in the world,
but not of the world;
be of the oppressed and not of the oppressors;
receive abuse and return it not;
let the motive of all your actions be the love of God,
and rejoice in suffering."
Jesus has given me a message:
To be in seclusion and to live in silence.
I wish to be dead so I may sit with Jesus
at the top of the fourth heaven.
Since God has bestowed upon you
a spiritual connection with Himself,
stroke my head with your healing hand,
O Messiah!
With the Sufis, there is the practice of tasawuri:
The perception of Sufi Master being always present,
though he might be long gone.
If a Sufi's perception is on Jesus-the ever-present Master-
then the Sufi begins to walk and breathe like Jesus,
and draws in deep from the divine qualities
that were clearly manifested in Master Jesus.
Then the Sufi becomes Christ-like,
not in a poetic sense, not in an oratorical sense,
but in actual reality.
Then the perception becomes reality.
Jesus never lost his faith in God on the cross
even when he saw his holy virgin mother,
Mary immaculate crying her heart out.
The Light which struck and
crucified Jesus on the cross,
was already deposited
into the immaculate heart of Mary.
Don't try finding Jesus' miracles or healing hands,
while you're ignoring his teachings here on earth.
Once Christ was risen up high into the Heaven,
his miracles touched only those
who truly reached out to him.
Certainly it is right to say that
God honored Jesus and drew him close,
so that whoever serves Jesus has served the Lord,
whoever obeys Jesus has obeyed the Lord,
and whoever loves Jesus has loved the Lord.
The faithful companions of Jesus
saw what Christ had told and seen
with the eye of the heart and the light of
certainty and sincerity of faith.
They sought the other world, abstaining
from the pride and allurements of this world,
and thus being saved from the slavery of
this material world and its lusts.
They put on patched garments and
traveled with Jesus from place to place.
Jesus son of Mary said to his disciples,
"The sign by which you will be known
as being my true companions and followers
is fulfilling this command of mine:
Love one another as I have loved you."
Jesus said also unto his disciples,
"Love God, your Lord with all your heart and with all your soul,
and love your neighbor as you love yourself."
The disciples asked Jesus,
"Explain to us, O Spirit of God,
what is the difference between these two loves?"
Jesus said, "You love your neighbor for yourself,
and you love yourself for your Lord;
so when you are bountiful yourself
you are so toward your Lord."
Christ the promised Messiah,
Walked on water as well as land.
Jesus the Spirit of God,
Danced on the sea like a carefree waterbird.
This miracle occurred as a result of
Jesus' strong faith in God.
Indeed, Jesus is the Miracle of God.
Jesus indeed walked on the water.
Walk with Jesus as he once said,
"Walk on the water of life in my company,
and you will be safe from drowning."
By the sheer power of his life-giving breath and prayers,
Jesus brought the already dead and buried Lazarus
back to life.
Lazarus was revived by the Breath of Jesus,
but he died again as mortal ones would die.
Some question why Lazarus had to die again
if he was delivered from death by Jesus?
Here is why: No one is resurrected into immortality,
except Jesus.
The Antichrist has taken over the world
and plunged it into darkness and tyranny.
But Christ, the promised Messiah,
shall come down from the fourth heaven
to defeat the wrongdoer Antichrist and his armies.
This world belongs to Christ, from end to end.
There is no room here for Antichrist's deceptive tricks.
Look at Jesus, son of Mary,
standing tall in the midst of the battlefield
with his sharp sword drawn for the Final Battle
to slay the Antichrist and defeat his wicked armies.
Open the way for Christ, the promised Messiah.
Keep on blowing the Resurrection Trumpet,
the Judgment Day is quickly approaching.
give up the donkey to buy Jesus.
Those who don't love Christ,
give up Jesus to buy his donkey.
You have to be a real dumbass
to give up Jesus and buy the ass!
Jesus sits before you, but out of sheer stupidity,
you decide to serve his donkey's hooves!
You took the snack which was to serve Jesus-
to the stable and put it in front of his donkey!
O simple man,
How could Jesus eat from the same meal as his donkey?
How could Jesus go up to heaven on back of a donkey?
How could a lover be joined to sensuality?
Even if you take Jesus' donkey to Mecca,it will still be a donkey when it returns!
When you enter the quarter of Jesus,
you don't ask, “Where is your donkey?”
Do You?!
You've abandoned Jesus and nurtured his donkey.
That is why, like a donkey,
you must remain outside the curtain!
Don't buy donkey grain with the Gospel of Jesus!
Don't buy the world's sympathy
by faking you are a man of faith.
Your Jesus is dying of weakness, alas.
You are occupied solely in feeding his donkey!
You have been working yourself to death
by taking loads of hay and straw to Christ's donkey.
You've served his donkey enough;
You carried its grasses and straw.
You cleaned its hooves and washed it.
Now, it's time for you to also serve Jesus!
Love and piety are the good fortunes of Jesus,
not of the ass, O asinine man!
The death of Jesus' donkey was difficult to watch,
but in my case, it was sheer good luck.
Because now that his donkey is gone,
Jesus is standing right beside me!
Jesus, son of Mary went to heaven,
and his donkey remained below.
When Jesus was freed from his donkey,
his prayers were answered.
Jesus turns the drunkard into gold,
and if he be gold, makes him into a jewel;
if a jewel, Jesus makes him better still,
better than the moon and Jupiter.
You are not a Jupiter without worth,
but the Light of God has purchased:
If you have anything of Joseph,
you take the scent of this shirt.
Jesus was once asked, "O Spirit of God,
why do you not get yourself a donkey
to ride upon for your needs?
Jesus answered, "I am more honorable in my
Lord's Sight than that He should provide me
with something which may distract me
from Him."
Follow the shining examples of Jesus,
so you can enjoy the abundant divine meal
being lavishly laid out on your table.
Follow the shining examples of Jesus,
so you can enjoy the cherished company of
the soul of all souls and the king of both worlds.
O Jesus who are ascended
high up there into the heavenly spheres,
take a good look down here upon us,
and pull us high up there alongside with you.
Jesus on the lean donkey,
this is an emblem of how the rational intellect
should control the animal-soul.
Let your spirit be strong like Jesus.
If that part becomes weak,
then the worn-our donkey grows to a dragon.
Be grateful when what seems unkind
comes from a wise person.
Everything you touch will reach its goal
and fly with the wings of an angel. . . .
But wings cannot carry you to God.
Like the donkey that carried Jesus,
Only love can carry you to triumphal entry.
Without the donkey,
Jesus could not ride to Jerusalem,
which is to say that without the body,
the spirit cannot reach its true beloved.
Too often, we put saddlebags on Jesus
and let the donkey run loose in the pasture.
Don't make the body do what the spirit does best,
and don't put a big load on the spirit
that the body could carry easily.
There are thousands of wines
that can take over our minds.
Don't think all ecstasies are the same!
Jesus was lost in his love for God.
His donkey was drunk with barley.
I am not like his donkey
who's drunk with barely.
O friends, Jesus gives me
The red wine of monks!
Son, once you find what's inside,
you don't look at the shell.
Wherever Jesus stands,
you don't look at his donkey.
Do You?!
Be silent like Mary.
Let the one who has the Breath of Jesus talk.
Who told you to be a friend
of Jesus' donkey between your jobs?!
O eye, don't look at the people.
O ear, don't hear good or bad.
O mind, don't act like his donkey,
You are going to finally see Jesus!
Your are the Jesus of time.
Journey without food to the wilderness.
Walk on water like Jesus.
Don't sleep in the mud like his lazy donkey!
Jesus doesn't like people
Who talk a lot, make lots of noise,
who fight and create unnecessary hardships for others.
Jesus doesn't eat halva-sweets in their houses,
because that is the barn for his donkey!
Nowadays, if you are looking for a donkey,
I'd say, go ahead!
Lots of donkeys are roaming around out there!
Don't search for Jesus though.
No Jesus can be found among the ignorant.
Jesus was separated from his donkey
with a hallowed heart.
But the heart of Jesus is not filled
With layer upon layer of dirt like a pouch.
The heart of Jesus is sacred and pure.
our immortal souls shall also be risen to Heaven.
Don't worry if the lean donkey of Jesus
is left behind in this world.
In Jesus, reason was strong;
his donkey was made lean by a strong rider.
Jesus didn't withhold candy from his donkey,
but the ass was naturally pleased with straw.
If candy had aroused delight in the ass,
Jesus would have poured out a hundred pounds for it.
Your lower-self (ego) is just like Jesus' donkey:
It can't stop thinking of how to get its fodder.
But if you have a guide like Jesus
and he has made you heartsick,
don't forget that your health, too, is from him.
Don't run away from Jesus.
How do you deal with affliction,
O you who have the healing Breath of Jesus inside?
Have pity on Jesus, not on the donkey!
Don't let your animal nature rule over your intellect.
For in this world, there is always a snake
guarding the treasure.
Where is our sweet-breathed Jesus
who no longer needs the motherly interventions
of his holy virgin mother, the immaculate Mary?
Where is our sweet-breathed Jesus
to tear into pieces the dark veil which has covered
the hearts of so many so-called Christians these days?
Even if the Antichrist manages to ignite
the biggest fire of sorrows and despairs in the World,
don't be afraid of those fake fires. Don't be afraid!
Jesus shall come back again.
Jesus shall draw his sharp sword
to defeat the wrongdoer Antichrist and his wicked armies.
Jesus is indeed the Prince of Peace.
Jesus was ascended into the Heavens
and in his honor, even the immortal Angels
made peace with the mortal humans.
O people of faith quarreling over doctrinal differences,
the blessings of the life-giving Breath of Jesus
will be also bestowed upon you,
If you decide to reconcile with each other.
The miracle of Jesus is himself,
not what he said or did about the future.
Every one of us is a living Christ for the nations.
Just like the healing hands of Jesus,
every pain and sufferings in this world
can be also healed
by a touch of our healing hands.
The immaculate heart of virgin Mary
was not ready to carry the light of Christ,
until the Holy Spirit got invisibly deposited
into the womb of Mary mother of Jesus
through the breath of Archangel Gabriel.
Virgin Mary, whose soul was shredded into pieces
by the anxieties over her immaculate conception,
became pregnant with the charming Christ
through Holy Spirit breathed by Archangel Gabriel.
Mary was always silent and never spoke about herself,
but she was a truly eloquent speaker
whenever she spoke about her dear son, Jesus Christ.
A Christ who doesn't belong to Earth or Sea.
A Christ who transcends the boundaries of both Worlds.
Our Mother Earth shall also get divinely impregnated
like the holy virgin mother of Jesus, Mary immaculate.
Jesus made his appearance via Mary,
but as a matter of fact,
that Divine Light which had illuminated Mary
also drew Jesus back up high into the Heaven.
There was reconciliation between
the Angels and the human beings,
When the Messiah was raised to the spiritual realm.
The speech of Jesus is derived
from the spiritual beauty of Mary
which itself is a reflection of the Divine Breath.
Mary is the embodiment of purity,
and Jesus, the embodiment of love.
As the son of Mary, Jesus is human;
but as one who could revive the dead,
Jesus was of God as Spirit.
Jesus appeared from Gabriel's breath,
but how could he be similar or comparable to him in form?
Man is from clay, but does he resemble clay?
No grape looks like the vine.
In the cradle, Jesus raises a cry:
"Without having become a youth,
I am already a master and an old man!"
If you see an ugly face, that is you;
and if you see the beautiful faces of
Jesus and Mary, that is also you.
In the fire of the Divine Love,
Behold I saw a whole universe.
Each particle there possessed
The healing Breath of Jesus.
It was Divine Love that breathed the glow of life
Which made the immaculate Mary pregnant with Jesus.
It was Divine Love that produced the Holy Spirit
Which made Mary deliver the miracle of Christ.
Sore distress is the evidence of worthiness
To receive the Divine Bounty.
It was Mary's want and pain that made
Baby Jesus to begin speaking in the cradle.
Whatever comes, comes from a need,
a sore distress, a hurting want.
Mary's pain made the baby Jesus.
Her womb opened its lips
and spoke the Word.
We are like that story of Mary.
Every one of us has a Jesus within,
but unless we experience the pain of birthing,
our Jesus is not born.
If there is no pain,
our Jesus return by that hidden way
to the original place from which
he came, and we will be left deprived.
The healing Breath of Jesus
is the gift of a new life to a dead body,
and the promise of Hereafter to an immortal soul.
The healing Breath of Jesus
is the surest sign of of his second coming,
and Christ's ultimate return before the Judgment Day.
By nature,
every spirit has the life-giving Breath of Jesus,
but one breath wounds, while another heals.
If spirits were freed from the body’s veils,
everyone’s words could be like the Messiah’s.
is like a new life to an already dead person.
From Jesus Christ's sweet taste of life,
even the angels of death are left
with their mouths wide open!
The Breath of Jesus,
which hourly brings forth another dawn,
causes a sleeping world
to raise its head from the earth.
Look at Jesus, son of Mary,
and how he gives life to the dead,
like water from the fountain of life.
To me, as to Mary, dates come forth
from a withered branch without cause;
to me, like Jesus, Master-ship comes unasked
in the cradle.
The life-bestowing Breath of Jesus
Is the equivalent of a kiss.
If someone asks you,
"How did Jesus bring the dead back to life?"
Don't say a word.
Just kiss her softly on the cheek.
Like this!
If I kiss you once,
I will become the Holy Spirit, like Jesus.
If I smell your apple,
I will give my soul, like Moses.
Jesus’s Breath made water mixed with clay.
Grow wings, become a bird and fly away!
Your praise is now hot air, but will appear
A bird of heaven if your heart’s sincere.
Moses’s light made Sinai dance and spin,
Becoming thus a dervish, free of sin.
Mountains can change to dervishes each day,
Moses’s body used to be mere clay!
May that Breath of Jesus serve as your cure
And make you like itself so blessed and pure.
Don’t claim in Spring on stone some verdure grows,
Be soft like soil to raise a lovely rose.
The Antichrist of grief is raising hell
With separation in my head.
I need Jesus, the Commander of Lover's Army,
To come and defeat the Antichrist and his army.
I should ask for the Breath of Jesus to get well.
The meaning of dying is need.
Make yourself dead in need and poverty,
So that Jesus' Breath may bring you back to life,
And make it like itself: Beautiful and auspicious.
I’ve seen a world without a trace of death,
All atoms here have Jesus’s pure breath,
A world that’s dead in form, but lives in essence,
While that world lives in form, the realm of transience.
Jesus, by his Breath, made the dead to be living.
I am in the hand of the Creator of Jesus though.
How should I remain dead in the grasp of God?
Likewise, do not hold this to be impossible
in the hand of Jesus who once said,
"I am Jesus son of Mary,
Anyone who's been revived by my life-giving breath
will remain unto everlasting."
The dead man was made living by Jesus,
but he died again.
Lucky is the one who gives up life for Jesus.
O early dawn, source of awareness,
you have such a fresh breath.
Blow the Breath of Jesus upon those
whose hearts are already dead.
O Lovers of Jesus,
die in self-abasement and spiritual poverty,
So that the Breath of Jesus may revive you,
and make you richly blessed.
Religious raptures depend on feelings and will,
but the true Lovers of Jesus are transported
into the rapture and ecstasy
by the life-giving Breath of Jesus.
Christ is the kindest and most caring Doctor of Love.
But how can Jesus possibly heal you
If you keep hiding your pain and sufferings
from him?
The physician of the soul
brought a tray as a present and said,
"If you are a doting old man
you will become fair and youthful.
It gives life to the body, intoxication to the soul;
it takes away from the heart’s slackness,
from the cheeks’ pallor.
That was the Tray of Jesus,
it became the inheritance of the physicians;
you will find in it the antidote,
if you have swallowed the poison of death.
You who seek that Tray of Jesus,
pay good attention to Christ's teachings
and shining examples.
Where Jesus lives, the great-hearted gather.
Christ has a door that's never locked.
If you are suffering any kind of pain,
stay near his door. Open it.
I called through your door,
'The Sufi Mystics are gathering
in the street. Come on out!'
"Leave me alone. I'm sick."
'I don't care if you're dead!
Jesus is here, and he wants
to resurrect somebody!'
Why should I suffer from heartache?
Jesus, the Physician of Souls, is with me.
Why should I be afraid of the dogs?
Christ, the Master of the Hunt, is with me.
Jesus used to fast all the time, never breaking the fast,
and stayed up during the night, never sleeping.
Jesus not only spent the nights awake,
but he also spent them in devotions.
Jesus was manifest in the world
with the divine name, 'Time' during the day,
and with the divine name, 'Self-Subsisting', or
'He who is neither overcome by sleep nor slumber',
during the night.
Christ said, "That's me, Jesus with a beautiful smile.
This world shall be visited by me once again.
I'm now living in my Lord's heavenly realms,
I no longer needs the motherly care of
My holy virgin mother, Mary immaculate."
Jesus said, "There are four qualities which are
not found in one person without causing wonder:
Silence which is the beginning of worship.
Sincere humility before God.
An ascetic attitude towards this material world.
Living in poverty which is to live in abundance.
Jesus was asked, "O Word of God,
What is the most difficult thing in this world and the next?”
Jesus said, “The Wrath of God.”
They asked again, “And what can save us from that?”
Jesus answered,
“Master your own wrath and suppress your own rage."
Jesus said to his disciples:
"A sinner who honestly repents before God,
is a better believer than a pious man
who makes a display of devotion."
Jesus washed the feet of his disciples.
Jesus sat humbly on the back of a donkey, my child. not found in one person without causing wonder:
Silence which is the beginning of worship.
Sincere humility before God.
An ascetic attitude towards this material world.
Living in poverty which is to live in abundance.
Jesus was asked, "O Word of God,
What is the most difficult thing in this world and the next?”
Jesus said, “The Wrath of God.”
They asked again, “And what can save us from that?”
Jesus answered,
“Master your own wrath and suppress your own rage."
Jesus said to his disciples:
"A sinner who honestly repents before God,
is a better believer than a pious man
who makes a display of devotion."
Jesus washed the feet of his disciples.
How could a zephyr ride a donkey?
Why did Jesus ride on a donkey?
For Jesus, the sovereign of sovereigns,
not a donkey’s back but riding horses was worthy of him.
Child, Jesus sat on a donkey for humility’s sake.
He was showing us how to be humble.
The humility of Jesus was such
that he had commanded his community
to completely humble themselves:
That if they were struck on one cheek,
they should also turn the other,
and not hit back or seek retribution.
Christ passed by a group of Pharisees who insulted him.
Every time they spoke a word of evil,
Christ answered with good.
Simon the pure said to Jesus,
"Will you answer them with good each time they speak evil?"
Christ said, "Each person spends of what he owns."
Christ is the population of the world,
and every object as well.
There is no room for hypocrisy.
Why use bitter soup for healing
when sweet water is everywhere?
Spring is Christ,
Raising martyred plants from their shrouds.
Their mouths open in gratitude,
wanting to be kissed.
This wind is the Holy Spirit.
The trees are Mary.
Jesus, son of Mary
Was constantly travelling and preaching.
Like an ever flowing stream filled with Water of Life,
Jesus kept on bestowing new life to the dead.
While outward travelling lies in words and deeds
Beyond the sky the inner journey leads.
While bodily senses only know things dry,
Like Jesus, over water souls pass by.
A table of food was once coming down from the sky
to feed Moses and his people,
when suddenly voices from the crowd called out,
"Where's the garlic?" and "We want lentils!"
At once the bread and the dishes of grace-food disappeared.
Everyone had to keep digging
with mattocks and cutting with long scythes.
Then Jesus interceded and sent more trays of food.
But again some insolent people showed no respect.
They grabbed like it wouldn't be enough,
even though Jesus kept telling them,
"This food will last. It will always be here."
To be suspicious and greedy when majesty arrives
is the worst arrogance.
The gates closed.
Jesus once interceded for a man,
A bounteous feast was sent down in God’s plan,
But then some greedy brats who lacked respect
Like beggars grabbed the most they could collect,
Even though Jesus cried, "It’s infinite,
You greedy fools, you’ll not run out of it!"
Regard this lust and faithless attitude
Before God’s feast as sheer ingratitude.
The universe came into being gradually over six days.
God could have just commanded, Be!
Little by little a person reaches forty and fifty
and sixty, and feels more complete.
God could have thrown full-blown prophets
flying through the cosmos in an instant.
Jesus said one word, and a dead man sat up,
but creation usually unfolds, like calm breakers.
The Word came from the non-physical realm.
When the Word lifted up the veil and showed himself,
Then people realized
That the Word was a manifestation of God.
If the Word comes from God’s Wisdom,
It accomplishes the spiritual processes of the Divine.
But if it comes from us human beings,
It causes quarrels and wars.
Someone said to Jesus, “We will come to your house.”
Jesus replied, “Where is my house in this world,
and how could I have a house?”
Jesus was wandering in the desert
when a great rainstorm broke.
He went to take shelter in the den of a jackal,
in the corner of its cave, until the rain ceased.
A revelation came to him, saying,
“Get out of the jackal’s den,
for the jackal’s little ones cannot rest on account of you.”
Jesus cried aloud, “O Lord, the jackal’s pups have a shelter,
but the son of Mary has no place to call home.”
Jesus laughed a lot, while John the Baptist wept a lot.
John said to Jesus, “You've become exceedingly carefree
against all the subtle deceits, that you laugh so much.”
Jesus replied, “You have become exceedingly
unmindful of the subtle, mysterious, wonderful graces
and loving kindness of God, that you weep so much.”
One of God’s saints was present at this incident.
He asked God, “Which of these two has the higher station?”
God answered,“Jesus, for he thinks better of Me.”
Indeed, Jesus was a laugher,
John the Baptist a frowner;
the former laughed out of trust,
the latter frowned from fear.
The pregnant mother of John the Baptist,
Elizabeth excitedly confided to Virgin Mary
the most incredible experience of her pregnancy:
"O Mary, I believe without any slightest doubt that
the child you're carrying inside your womb is a King.
He is indeed the promised Messiah and Spirit of God.
O Mary, when I was standing next to you,
I felt that my still unborn child, John
bowed down to your unborn child, Jesus.
John leaped for joy and bowed down with such passion,
that my whole body is still in pain and aches all over."
"I know my dear Elizabeth,
I already know who he really is.
deep inside my womb,
I also felt your still unborn son, baby John,
prostrating himself before my beautiful baby Jesus,"
Mary said.
When divine care arrives, struggling begins.
Jesus, what a struggle he made!
Yet John the Baptist recognized that gift
while Jesus was still in Mary’s womb.
Grace comes first.
Then if, by accident, awareness enters in,
this is the fruit of God’s Grace-
the pure Gift of the Lord.
If this were not true,
then how could Jesus’ disciples
have received such blessings?
Jesus said, “I wonder at the living creature
that can eat another living creature.”
The literalists say that Jesus refers to
people eating the flesh of animals.
This is an error. Why?
Because when people eat flesh,
it is not animal any longer, but inanimate.
Once the animal is killed,
the living spirit is gone from that flesh.
The true meaning of this saying is:
The master always consumes the disciple!
I find Jesus' above saying so extraordinary.
Jesus lays down one day with his head upon a stone.
Satan, passing by, said to him:
"O Jesus, you are so fond of this world!"
So Jesus took the stone and cast it
from under his head, saying:
"This be yours, together with this material world!"
Jesus was followed by a stupid fool
Who came across some bones in a deep pit:
‘Teach me God’s Greatest Name, my friend,’ he said,
‘With which you’re able to revive the dead,
So I can do some good to these poor bones
And grant them life though now they’re like mere stones.’
Jesus said, ‘Shut your mouth! That’s out of reach:
It’s not designed for your lips or your speech.
It needs breath purer than the rain and light,
And action finer than an angel’s flight —
It may take longer than a century
To make you fit for heaven’s treasury.
If you should grasp this rod now, understand
Your hand is not like Moses’s pure hand.’
He said, ‘If I’m not fit for secrets now,
You should chant over these bones anyhow!’
Jesus asked, ‘What’s the meaning of this, God?
What is the point of a request so odd?
Despite his sickness, this fool feels no strife:
This corpse is not concerned for his own life.
His own corpse this man chooses to neglect,
So that a stranger he might resurrect!’
God said, "Such fools are bad luck; all that grows
Are thorns from what the ignorant man sows.
Those who in this world sow seeds of this kind
Inside the rose-garden you’ll never find.
A rose in their hands turns into a thorn,
And as vile snakes such men are soon reborn;
Poison and snakes they make with alchemy —
As different from the pure souls as can be."
Jesus said God’s Name over all the bones
Because of that young man’s persistent moans;
That immature man thus, by God’s decree,
Saw bones come back to life incredibly,
But then a lion, not a man, appeared,
And knocked him down — for his own life he feared!
It broke his skull, which fell upon the ground —
It was an empty shell, no brain was found!
There would have been no harm if he had more
Than just a body, but there was no core.
Jesus asked, ‘Lion, why leave him for dead?’
‘Because he bothered you,’ the lion said,
‘But why not drink his blood once he’s been killed?’
‘Because that isn't what the Lord has willed.’
The lion said, ‘Messiah, killing then
Was just a lesson for the sake of men.
If in this world I still had time ahead
I wouldn't be right now among the dead.’
Once, Jesus entered a cave and
discovered a man sleeping on the floor.
“Get up,” Jesus said, “and get to work.
Make a way for yourself. The world is passing you by."
"But I've done enough work to last two lifetime,"
the man replied. "I've established a place for myself
in the next life."
"What have you accomplished, then?" Jesus asked.
"This world to me is a piece of straw. It's like a
crust of bread, or a bone that I might toss to the dogs.
Oh, I've been free of this world a long time now,
and I look for nothing from God.
Why should I look for happiness in this life.
I have no attachment, and I'm free," man responded.
When Jesus heard the man's reply, he said,
"Sleep soundly, then. Go and do as you like.
Since you are no longer bothered by the world,
it cannot hinder you. You have accomplished it all."
Jesus saw a snake charmer crouching beside a hole,
trying to coax the creature from its lair.
The charmer was incanting and
using magic potions and spells.
As Jesus passed by, the snake poked its head
out of the hole and said, "O Spirit of God,
O the shining candle of all creatures,
a thirty year old man is trying to lure me from my lair,
though I am a full three hundred years of age."
Some time later, Jesus revisited the area and saw
the snake charmer sitting in the market wit his basket.
"How is the spell-casting going?" Jesus asked.
"I managed to charm the snake into my basket,"
he answered.
Jesus lifted the wicker lid and peered in.
Sure enough, there was the snake, coiled up.
Jesus asked the snake,
"How could you have allowed yourself to be captured?"
After all, you knew what the charmer was up to."
"That's true," answered the snake.
"Yet none of his charm worked on me.
No, it was the repetition of God's Name
that mesmerized me.
It was the Divine Name which charmed me.
Oh, how I wish that a hundred souls like me
could find joy in His Name."
A dog lay dead by the wayside,
With its jaws open wide.
A truly foul stench rose from that dog.
When Jesus came to it
He told his companions: “This dog belongs to God;
Look how white its teeth are!”
Jesus perceived neither ugliness nor a foul stench,
But saw all the unpleasantness as pleasant in reality.
Learn to see purely like this, if you’re a bondsman
And one who perceives realities.
See everything as having the same color and worth –
See the gem in its mouth, rather than the serpent!
Choose goodness, kindness to others,
Munificence and fidelity.
If you have knowledge of God, be His bondsman,
Be a grateful recipient of bounty from Him;
Year in and year out you enjoy bounty from Him,
But neglect what is owed for it!
Jesus passed by three men.
Their bodies were lean and their faces pale.
Jesus asked them, "What has brought you to this plight?"
They answered, "Fear of the Fire."
Jesus said, "You fear a thing created, and it behoves God
that He should save those who fear."
Then he left them and passed by three others,
whose faces were paler and their bodies leaner,
and Jesus asked them, "What has brought you to this plight?"
They answered, "Longing for Paradise."
Jesus said, "You desire a thing created, and it behoves God that
He should give you that which you hope for."
Then he went on and passed by three others
of exceeding paleness and leanness,
so that their faces were as mirrors of light,
and Jesus asked them, "What has brought you to this?"
They answered, "Our Love of God."
Jesus said, "You are the nearest to Him,
you are the nearest to God."
Jesus has issued this command to me:
To separate from friends and family,
To face the wall and sit here all alone,
Renouncing life, and that includes my own.
From now on I have no right to even speak
Let alone teach the wisdom that you seek,
I’m dead from now on, friends, so it’s goodbye,
I’m taking my belongings to the sky!
In order not to burn like wood in hell,
Enduring blame and hardship there as well,
I’ll sit with Jesus from now on up there
In heaven’s summit, like a perfect pair.
When you have Jesus, eyes have little value;
Don’t go astray — an inner eye he’ll give you.
Your spirit’s Jesus is within, so pure —
Seek help from it, then you can feel secure!
But don’t compel your Jesus-pure heart to
Perform the work your body’s meant to do,
Like that fool whom we mentioned previously
Regarding Jesus and his purity —
Don’t ask your Jesus for a body’s health.
Don’t ask your Moses for vile Pharaoh’s wealth.
How could the Red Sea remain a barrier
in the path before Moses?Your spirit’s Jesus is within, so pure —
Seek help from it, then you can feel secure!
But don’t compel your Jesus-pure heart to
Perform the work your body’s meant to do,
Like that fool whom we mentioned previously
Regarding Jesus and his purity —
Don’t ask your Jesus for a body’s health.
Don’t ask your Moses for vile Pharaoh’s wealth.
How could the Red Sea remain a barrier
How could Jacob not smell
that scent of Joseph from the shirt?
How could the blind remain blind
in the protection of Jesus?
Moses was Moses, though still a shepherd.
Joseph was Joseph, though still in the well.
Jesus was Jesus, though still a poor carpenter.
Moses had a a table spread in the wilderness.
Jesus had a table spread for his disciples.
To celebrate those sacred gatherings,
Lord sent down a table spread with food from Heaven.
The Spread Table has come from heaven
To those who fast.
It was Jesus, son of Mary
Who has called it down with his prayers.
When Noah sails upon the flooding waters,
you will be his ark.
When the Prophet ascends to heaven,
you will be his ladder.
When Jesus walks among the weary souls,
you will be his healing breath.
When Moses goes forth as a shepherd,
you will be his staff.
Man is like the staff of Moses.
Man is like the incantation of Jesus.
For the sake of justice and for the sake of decorum,
the true believer's heart is in the hand of
God, between His two fingers.
The exterior form of Moses' staff is just a piece of wood,
but all created existence is one mouthful to it
when it opens its throat.
In the incantation of Jesus,
do not regard merely the letter and the sound,
regard the fact that death turned and fled from it.
In the incantation of Jesus,
do not regard the petty words,
consider that the dead sprang up and sat down.
In the case of staff of Moses,
do not regard the easy getting of it,
regard the fact that it cleft the Red Sea
and turned the Nile River blood-red.
You have seen from afar the black canopy,
take a step forward and behold Moses' army.
From afar you see nothing but the dust,
advance a little and see Moses in the dust.
His dust makes eyes bright;
his manliness uproots mountains.
When Moses came up
from the remotest part of the desert,
at his advent Mount Sinai began to dance.
Mount heaven like Jesus;
say, let me see like Moses,
for God will not say to you,
“Silence, you shall not see Me.”
Because commonality is a wonderful attractor;
wherever there is a seeker,
a kindred spirit is his attractor.
Jesus and Enoch went up to the Heavens
because they were kindred spirits
with the Angels.
You are Jesus and the sweet Breath of Jesus.
You are Jesus son of the blessed Mary immaculate.
You are the secret and keeper of those secrets.
Come, bestow upon us some miracles.
You are the young boy Jesus,
and I am your clay bird.
Breathe on me.
Let me fly out of sight.
Tell me, since you are Jesus,
What is the Kingdom of God?
Can you show us the Realm of Divinity
In the earthly realm of humans?
I am Archangel Gabriel,
You are my Divine Calling.
I'm the sick and needy soul of this world,
You are my healer, Jesus son of Mary.
Since You are Jesus son of Mary,
Sit us at the same table as Mary.
Let's eat from the same bowl.
Let's play the same song that
You've put into our hearts.
The wind like Gabriel, you a Mary
Born to this pair: Jesus of silkrose cheeks.
The dance of you two, key to the ever-life
Endless mercy on this dance!
The miracles that Jesus fashioned
by speaking the Name Hu,
come clearly to us through the name of
his holy virgin mother, Mary immaculate.
When the soul is in union with God,
to speak of God is to speak of the soul,
and to speak of the soul is to speak of Him.
By God's Grace, the mortal body made of soil,
becomes immortal and rests in the heavenly gardens.
The life-giving wind coming from God's Realm,
brings the dead to life, making Jesus jealous!
Sorrow for God's sake
is a treasure in my heart.
My heart is light upon light,
a beautiful Mary with Jesus in the womb.
Shams of Tabriz is Jesus
Sit us at the same table as Mary.
Let's eat from the same bowl.
Let's play the same song that
You've put into our hearts.
The wind like Gabriel, you a Mary
Born to this pair: Jesus of silkrose cheeks.
The dance of you two, key to the ever-life
Endless mercy on this dance!
The miracles that Jesus fashioned
by speaking the Name Hu,
come clearly to us through the name of
his holy virgin mother, Mary immaculate.
When the soul is in union with God,
to speak of God is to speak of the soul,
and to speak of the soul is to speak of Him.
By God's Grace, the mortal body made of soil,
becomes immortal and rests in the heavenly gardens.
The life-giving wind coming from God's Realm,
brings the dead to life, making Jesus jealous!
Sorrow for God's sake
is a treasure in my heart.
My heart is light upon light,
a beautiful Mary with Jesus in the womb.
Shams of Tabriz is Jesus
walking a mountain road.
I am a slow, bewildered
avalanche moving along somehow
trying to follow him.
If you want to a new Jesus born every moment,
Send a breeze from your rose garden
To the garments of Mary.
If you want the land of existence
To change into the non-existence,
Set the fire that Moses, son of Imran, saw,
Into the harvest of your grief and mourning.
If you want to reach the spiritual realm,
You should talk to Jesus.
Otherwise,
Don’t even try to climb up the holy sky.
If you want to go to heaven,
Become Jesus' loyal companion.
Otherwise,
Do not aim for the celestial spheres.
Beg for forgiveness like the castaway Adam,
in hope of being allowed back into the Paradise.
Rise up high to Heaven like Jesus,
and let go of Christ's donkey.
O heart, take refuge in Christ.
Go and sleep like a drunkard
In the shadow of Jesus.
He's already gone to Heaven,
But both you and I
Are still crying for him.
Myriads were the therapeutic art of the
Eminent Greek doctor and philosopher, Galen.
But before Jesus and his life-giving Breath,
They were a laughing stock.
When you leaves all the colors behind
and enter the earthenware of Jesus,
God’s color shall appear.
From then onward,
God can do what He Wills.
When Jesus, Love's Spirit, takes flight,
Never again will he lower his wing
To return to Man's worldly realm of labor.
Jesus would only come back to redeem the world.
Jesus is The Reason for the Season.Eminent Greek doctor and philosopher, Galen.
But before Jesus and his life-giving Breath,
They were a laughing stock.
When you leaves all the colors behind
and enter the earthenware of Jesus,
God’s color shall appear.
From then onward,
God can do what He Wills.
When Jesus, Love's Spirit, takes flight,
Never again will he lower his wing
To return to Man's worldly realm of labor.
Jesus would only come back to redeem the world.
Christmas is Christ's holy Season.
Come, let's all take a moment
and pray in silence and solitude to Lord Almighty.
Like Jesus Christ,
let's all pay our deepest respects
to his holy virgin mother, Mary immaculate.
Like a treasure-keeper,
I tightly guard this pain deep inside my heart.
The light of my heart has become illuminated
by the divine light.
Just like the immaculate Mary who's carrying
the beautiful baby Jesus in her womb.
O Jesus, you have suffered for God’s sake
Because no treasure is without its snake.
Jesus, how are you coping with deniers?
How are you with those jealous liars?
For stupid men’s sake, you bear endless strife,
So selflessly you can replenish life.
With those sick, useless ones how can you live?
O Jesus who are so exalted,
As you pass through the sky of love,
Turn your head; look down from the heaven,
And pull us high up there with you.
O Jesus, you are pulling the Soul
Towards the star of the Pleiades.
You are leading Saul high,
Highest to the most exalted God.
Like Moses,
You are bringing water out of a rock.
You are pulling Moses back to Mount Sinai.
Korah went down the well like a bucket.
Jesus ascended the dome of the sky
with the rope he threw to the heaven.
Korah who was the anchor of the earth,
was pulled and swallowed by earth.
The sky pulled and exalted
the greatest of the great, Jesus.
When Buraq, the winged horse of love,
arrives from heaven, it will deliver
Jesus, the Spirit of God, from this donkey,
yes indeed!
Either fly to the heavens like Jesus,
or fall to the depths like Korah.
Like Jesus, your image goes into the heart
to bestow a new spirit like Divine Revelation,
it descends upon Moses at the mountain.
Within the breast, you paint a form,
fatherless like Jesus.
Were Avicenna to try to understand it,
he would be an ass on ice!
Jesus calls from the fourth heaven,
Where communion is celebrated,
"Welcome. Wash your hands and face.
It is time to sit at the table together."
When Jesus found the ladder of God's Light,
he hastened to the top of the fourth dome.
Since Jesus has gone to the fourth heaven,
what need has he for the Church?
I am not tied to this house,
for like Jesus,
I have a house upon the fourth heaven.
From now on, let me sit with Jesus
on top of the fourth heaven.
Set the table spread of angels
at the heart assembly of drunkards.
Offer Jesus' heavenly meals
to hearts already drunk for Christ.
Bring meal from the sky, like Jesus.
Bring back to life three dead people
With your warm breath, like Jesus.
Become poor to make poor beggars rich,
Like Jesus.
When Jesus found the ladder of God's Light,
he hastened to the top of the fourth dome.
Since Jesus has gone to the fourth heaven,
what need has he for the Church?
I am not tied to this house,
for like Jesus,
I have a house upon the fourth heaven.
From now on, let me sit with Jesus
on top of the fourth heaven.
Set the table spread of angels
at the heart assembly of drunkards.
Offer Jesus' heavenly meals
to hearts already drunk for Christ.
Bring meal from the sky, like Jesus.
Bring back to life three dead people
With your warm breath, like Jesus.
Become poor to make poor beggars rich,
Like Jesus.
To watch a fire when Moses went one day
He managed to escape from hell this way.
Jesus jumped up to flee the enemy
That jump took him to heaven instantly!
Forbidden fruit trapped Adam, as decreed,
His being turned then to Mankind’s first seed.
In the providential history of the time,
and Jesus of unity and the next world.
O Joseph, come to poor Jacob
He has gone blind out of grief and
Incessant crying for you.
O young Joseph, come,
Poor Jacob has become very frail and old.
O hidden Jesus,
Appear from the dome of the heaven
Come and breathe on us
Bring us all spiritually dead people back to life.
O Moses, son of Amram,
I have the entire Mount Sinai in my heart for you.
Come down quickly from Mount Sinai,
They are again worshiping the golden calf as a god.
Joseph is back.
And if you don't feel in yourself
The freshness of Joseph,
Be Jacob.
Weep and then smile.
Do not pretend to know something
You have not experienced.
There is a necessary dying,
Then Jesus is breathing again.
Very little grows on jagged rock.
Be ground. Be crumbled.
So wild flowers will come up
Where you are.
You have been stony for too long.
Try something different: Surrender!
Move beyond any attachment to names.
Every war and every conflict between human beings
has happened because of some disagreement about names.
It is such an unnecessary foolishness,
because just beyond the arguing
there is a long table of companionship
set and waiting for us to sit down.
What is praised is one, so the praise is one too,
many jugs being poured into a huge basin.
All religions, all this singing, one song.
The differences are just illusion and vanity.
Sunlight looks a little different on this wall
than it does on that wall
and a lot different on this other one,
but it is still one light.
We have borrowed these clothes,
these time-and-space personalities,
from a light, and when we praise,
we are pouring them back in.
Make peace with the universe.
Take joy in it.
It will turn to gold.
Resurrection will be now.
Every moment, a new beauty.
Human beings are mines.
World-power means nothing.
Only the unsayable,
jeweled inner life matters.
Don’t ask what love can make, or can do.
Look at the colors of the world!
Take joy in it.
It will turn to gold.
Resurrection will be now.
Every moment, a new beauty.
Human beings are mines.
World-power means nothing.
Only the unsayable,
jeweled inner life matters.
Don’t ask what love can make, or can do.
Look at the colors of the world!
Today, like every other day,
we wake up empty and frightened.
Don't open the door to the study and begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty of what we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways
to kneel and kiss the ground.
to kneel and kiss the ground.
Not Christian or Jew or Muslim,
not Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi, or Zen.
Not any religion or cultural system.
I am not from the east or the west,
not out of the ocean or up from the ground,
not natural or ethereal,
not composed of elements at all.
I do not exist, am not an entity
in this world or the next,
did not descend from Adam and Eve
or any origin story.
My place is the place-less,
a trace of the trace-less.
Neither body or soul.
I belong to the beloved,
have seen the two worlds as one
and that one call to and know,
first, last, outer, inner,
only that breath breathing
human being.
I tried to find God on the Christian Cross,
but He was not there;
I went to Muslims' Kaaba in Mecca,
but God was not there either.
I went to to the old Jewish Synagogue
and the Hindu Temple of Idols,
but I couldn't find a trace of God anywhere.
I questioned the scholars and philosophers,
but God was way beyond their understanding!
I then looked deep into my heart and
it was there where He dwelled that I saw Him;
God was nowhere else to be found.
This is me:
Sometimes hidden and sometimes revealed,
Sometimes a devoted Muslim,
sometimes a Jew or a Christian.
For me to fit inside everyone's heart,
I put on a new face everyday.
“I” and “You” are the veil
between heaven and earth;
lift this veil and you will see
no longer the bonds of sects and creeds.
When “I” and “You” no longer exist,
What is a Mosque?
What is a Synagogue?
What is the Temple of Hindus?
What is the Church of Christ?
In the path of seeking,
wise and fool are the same.
In the faith of love,
known and unknown are the same.
For the lover already intoxicated
by the wine of union with Beloved -
in his or her faith -
Muslims' Kaaba and Hindus' Temple of Idols
are the same.
In the faith of love,
known and unknown are the same.
For the lover already intoxicated
by the wine of union with Beloved -
in his or her faith -
Muslims' Kaaba and Hindus' Temple of Idols
are the same.
Close your fault seeking eyes
and open the spiritual eye
so you don't differentiate
between a Mosques and a Temple of Idols
so you don't draw any distinction
between this believer and that believer.
My wise Sufi teachings don't mean
that you should just solemnly pause
and listen when the Church bells toll,
or to wear a fake Christian mantle,
or to simply marvel at the architectural beauty
of an old Jewish Synagogue.
This is about you learning how to behave
when you enter any of Lord's Houses of Worships:
When you enter a Christian Church,
you must behave as if Jesus himself
was preaching at that Church.
When you enter a Jewish Synagogue,
you must behave as if Moses himself
was preaching at Mount Sinai.
You will end up committing many errors.
But if you solely rely on your sight,
You will end up shooting yourself in the eye!
For those believers who're turned away
From a Muslim Mosque or a Christian Church,
Do you have any idea where their
Holy house of worship is actually at?!
There is a whole other world out there
beyond just Islam and Infidels.
I'm very interested
to get to know that world.
When the mystics reach that realm,
they simply lay their heads down,
for in that inclusive world
there is no room for Islam or Infidels!
Out beyond the worlds of Islam and Infidels,
there lies an egalitarian world where
no one is better, worse, or
more significant than the other.
If you're interested in moving
to that unique world,
you need to first leave you heart and soul
as security deposit with its Soul Master!
God lives deep inside
the inner and outer parts of my heart,
every single part of my heart belongs to Him.
God dwells deep inside
my body, my veins, and my blood,
every single part of my body belongs to Him.
How could there still be a place
for Islam or Infidels inside my heart,
if my entire being belongs to Him?
If the presence of my Beloved is felt
inside the Hindu Temple of Idols,
inside the Hindu Temple of Idols,
then it'll be a sin for me
going to Muslims' House of Ka'aba
and circle around it.
and circle around it.
If the fragrance of my Beloved
cannot be traced inside a Muslim Mosque,
cannot be traced inside a Muslim Mosque,
then I should start looking around
for a Jewish Synagogue.
for a Jewish Synagogue.
For the sake of tracing
the scent of my Beloved's mystical union,
the Synagogue will be my Mosque from now on.
Muslims, Christians, Jews,
Fire-Worshipers and Idol-Worshipers,
We all journey in our own ways
Towards the Almighty Sultan (God).
I am in love with Love
Because Love is my only salvation.
I'm in love only with Love
Someone else is a Muslim!
Your lover certainly isn't a Muslim
Because in the Religion of Love
There is no such thing as Islam or Infidels!
Love is my Religion
and I'm alive only because of Love.
Living like an Orthodox Muslim
is a total disgrace for my body and soul.
Religion of Love is different
From all other religions.
For true Lovers of Love,
God is their only faith and creed.
In the amazing Religion of Love,
there is no chapters-after-chapters
reading of a holy book!
In the Religion of Love,
the holiest chapters are
the sacred verses of love.
In the Religion of Love,
the holy verses recitation involves:
joyous singing, ecstatic chanting, and
love intoxication from start to finish!
In the Religion of Love,
once you're converted into a true lover of love,
YOU - Yourself - are the holy verses and
the reciter of those holy verses of love!
If you see a so called lover acting all sour and bitter,
be sure of this: he or she is neither a true lover
nor a faithful follower of Religion of Love.
Any lover who is not yet fully aware
of the strict rules of Religion of Love,
is a novice disciple barely starting the journey
upon the long and arduous path of love.
We're all doubtful about everything till the end,
but in the undoubted Religion of Love,
there is no second-guessing or beginning or end!
Every living thing needs water to survive.
Have you ever seen a lover surviving
without the water of love?
Enough of these Religion of Love explanations.
One thing should be perfectly clear by now:
The water of love analogy above
is the irrefutable proof that we all need love to survive.
Well, there is no need for me to keep on preaching
or to further torturing my fellow love-thirsty lovers!
This is love: To fly toward a secret sky,
to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment.
First to let go of life.
Finally, to take a step without feet.
Love comes with a knife,
not some shy question,
and not with fears for its reputation!
I say these things disinterestedly.
Accept them in kind.
Love is a madman,
working his wild schemes, tearing off his clothes,
running through the mountains, drinking poison,
and now quietly choosing annihilation.
A tiny spider tries to wrap an enormous wasp.
Think of the spiderweb woven across the cave
where Muhammad slept.
There are love stories,
and there is obliteration into love.
You've been walking the ocean’s edge,
holding up your robes to keep them dry.
You must dive naked under and deeper under,
a thousand times deeper!
Love flows down.
The ground submits to the sky and suffers
what comes.
Tell me, is the earth worse
for giving in like that?
Don’t put blankets over the drum!
Open completely.
Let your spirit-ear listen to the
green dome’s passionate murmur.
Let the cords of your robe be untied.
Shiver in this new love beyond all
above and below.
The sun rises, but which way does night go?
I have no more words.
Let soul speak with the silent
articulation of a face.
The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you,
not knowing how blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere,
they're in each other all along.
Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone
suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
You're covered with thick cloud.
Slide out the side. Die,
and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign
that you have died.
Your old life was a frantic running
from silence.
The speechless full moon comes out now.
Let love fill your golden cup
like sunbeams showering the earth.
Let love flow to every corner of your soul.
Let love tear up the gnarled roots of regret
and nourish the tender seeds of your hope.
by the stronger pull of what you really love.
Let the lover be disgraceful,
crazy, absentminded.
Someone sober
will worry about things going badly.
Let the lover be.
Love is reckless, not reason;
reason seeks a profit.
Love comes on strong,
consuming herself, unabashed.
Yet, in the midst of suffering,
Love proceeds like a millstone,
hard surfaced and straightforward.
Having died of self-interest,
Love risks everything and asks for nothing.
Love gambles away every gift God bestows.
Without cause, God gave us being.
Without cause, give it back again.
The way of love is not a subtle argument.
The door there is devastation.
Birds make great sky-circles of their freedom.
How do they learn it?
They fall, and falling, they're given wings.
The door there is devastation.
Birds make great sky-circles of their freedom.
How do they learn it?
They fall, and falling, they're given wings.
When love comes suddenly and taps
on your window, run and let it in but first,
shut the door of your reason.
Even the smallest hint chases love away
like smoke that drowns the freshness
of the morning breeze.
To reason love can only say,
the way is barred, you can't pass through
but to the lover it offers a hundred blessings.
Before the mind decides to take a step
love has reached the seventh heaven.
Before the mind can figure how
love has climbed the holy mountain.
I must stop this talk now and let
love speak from its nest of silence.
If I told you about a land of love,
friends, would you follow me and come?
In that land are vineyards
that yield a deadly wine-
no glass can hold it.
Would you swallow it as a remedy?
The people there must suffer.
Would you serve the sweetest drink to others
and take the bitter drink yourself?
There are no moons or suns there.
Nothing waxes or wanes.
Would you surrender your plans
and forget about your materials?
Awaken!
don't become unconscious
in words and treasures
in ceremonies and materials.
Awaken!
don't become a collector
of signposts and maps
of pointers and rules.
When the door is opened
walk through,
don't just stand there
staring at the open doorway!
There comes a time
when nothing is meaningful
except surrendering to love.
DO IT.
Behind a blood-stained curtain,
love has spread its gardens.
Lovers are busy with the beauty of the love
that is beyond explanation.
Intellect says: The six directions are the limit,
there is nothing beyond them.
Love says: There is a road, and I have journeyed on it
many times.'
Love detected markets beyond that market.
Intellect says: Do not set foot on the land of annihilation;
There is nothing there but thorns.
Love says: Those thorns you feel are only inside you!
Be silent!
remove the thorn of existence
from the foot of the heart;
So that you may see the gardens within.
I open and fill with love
and what is not love evaporates.
All the learning in books stays put
on the shelf. Poetry, the dear
words and images of song, comes down
over me like mountain water.
Love has taken away my practices
and filled me with poetry.
I tried to keep quietly repeating,
“No strength but yours,”
but I couldn't.
I had to clap and sing.
I used to be respectable and chaste and stable,
but who can stand in this strong wind
and remember those things?
A mountain keeps an echo deep inside itself.
That's how I hold your voice.
I am scrap wood thrown in your fire,
and quickly reduced to smoke.
I saw you and became empty.
This emptiness, more beautiful than existence,
it obliterates existence, and yet when it comes,
existence thrives and creates more existence!
The sky is blue. The world is a blind man
squatting on the road.
But whoever sees your emptiness
sees beyond blue and beyond the blind man.
A great soul hides like Muhammad, or Jesus,
moving through a crowd in a city
where no one knows him.
To praise is to praise
how one surrenders to the emptiness.
To praise the sun is to praise your own eyes.
Praise, the ocean. What we say, a little ship.
So the sea-journey goes on, and who knows where!
Just to be held by the ocean is the best luck
we could have. It's a total waking up!
Why should we grieve that we've been sleeping?
It doesn't matter how long we've been unconscious.
We're groggy, but let the guilt go.
Feel the motions of tenderness around you,
the buoyancy.
the buoyancy.
Dear soul,
when the condition comes
that we call being a lover,
there's no patience, and no repenting.
Both become huge absurdities.
See regret as a worm and love as a dragon.
Shame, changeable weather.
Love, a quality which wants nothing.
For this kind of lover,
love of anything or anyone is unreal.
Here, the source and object are one.
when the condition comes
that we call being a lover,
there's no patience, and no repenting.
Both become huge absurdities.
See regret as a worm and love as a dragon.
Shame, changeable weather.
Love, a quality which wants nothing.
For this kind of lover,
love of anything or anyone is unreal.
Here, the source and object are one.
There’s a strange frenzy in my head,
of birds flying,
each particle circulating on its own.
Is the one I love everywhere?
There’s no love in me without your being,
no breath without that. I once thought
I could give up this longing, then though again,
But I couldn't continue being human.
I am in love!
I am in love with him.
All this advise--
what's the use?
I have drunk poison.
All this sugar--
what's the use?
You say hurry, tie up his feet.
But its my heart that's gone crazy,
all this rope around my feet--
what's the use?
Yesterday the beauty of early dawn came over me,
and I wondered who
my heart would reach towards.
Then this morning again, and you.
Who am I?
Wind and fire and watery ground
move me mightily because
they're pregnant with love,
love pregnant with GOD.
These are the early morning generations
I praise.
I praise.
Love is the way messengers
from the mystery tell us things.
Love is the mother. We are her children.
She shines inside us, visible-invisible,
as we lose trust or feel it start to grow again.
If everyone could see what love is,
each would set up a tent-pole in the ocean.
The world’s population pitched and living
easily within the sea!
What if inside every lover’s tear you saw the face
of the Friend: Muhammad, Jesus, Buddha,
the impossible-possible philosopher,
the glass diamond one, Shams Tabriz?
Reason has no way to say its love.
Only love opens that secret.
If you want to be more alive,
love is the truest health.
Love is not condescension,
never that, nor books, nor any marking on paper,
nor what people say of each other.
Love is a tree with
branches reaching into eternity
and roots set deep in eternity,
and no trunk!
Have you seen it?
The mind cannot. Your desiring cannot.
The longing you feel for
this love comes from inside you.
When you become the Friend,
your longing will be as the man in
the ocean who holds to a piece of wood.
Eventually, wood, man, and
ocean become one swaying being,
Shams Tabriz, the secret of God.
Why should we tell you our love stories
when you spill them together like blood in the dirt?
Love is a pearl lost on the ocean floor,
or a fire we can’t see,
but how does saying that
push us through the top of the head into
the light above the head?
Love is not an iron pot,
so this boiling energy won’t help.
Soul, heart, self.
Beyond and within those
is one saying,
How long before
I’m free of this torture!
In the early morning hour,
just before dawn, lover and beloved wake
to take a drink of water.
She asks, “Do you love me or yourself more?
Really, tell the absolute truth.”
He says, “There’s nothing left of me.
I’m like a ruby held up to the sunrise.
Is it still a stone, or a world
made of redness? It has no
resistance to sunlight.”
The ruby and the sunrise are one.
Be courageous and discipline yourself.
Completely become hearing and ear,
and wear this sun-ruby as an earring.
Work. Keep digging your well.
Don’t think about getting off from work.
Water is there somewhere.
Submit to a daily practice.
Your loyalty to that
is a ring on the door.
Keep knocking, and the joy inside
will eventually open a window
and look out to see who’s there.
You play with the great globe of union,
you that see everyone so clearly
and cannot be seen. Even universal
intelligence gets blurry when it thinks
you may leave. You came here alone,
but you create hundreds of new worlds.
Spring is a peacock flirting with
revelation. The rose gardens flame.
Ocean enters the boat. I throw
it all away, except this love for Shams.
You may be planning departure, as a human soul
leaves the world taking almost all its sweetness
with it. You saddle your horse.
You must be going. Remember you have friends
here as faithful as grass and sky.
Have I failed you? Possibly you’re
angry. But remember our nights of conversation,
the well work, yellow roses by ocean,
the longing, the archangel Gabriel
saying So be it. Shamsi Tabriz, your face,
is what every religion tries to remember.
You bind me, and I tear away in a rage
to open out into air, a round
brightness, a candle-point,
all reason, all love.
This confusing joy, your doing,
this hangover, your tender thorn.
You turn to look, I turn.
I’m not saying this right.
I am a jailed crazy who ties up spirit-women.
I am Solomon.
What goes comes back. Come back.
We never left each other.
A disbeliever hides disbelief,
but I will say his secret.
More and more awake, getting up at night,
spinning and falling in love with Shams.
There is a passion in me that doesn't
long for anything from another human being.
I was given something else, a cap to wear
in both worlds. It fell off. No matter.
One morning I went to a place beyond dawn.
A source of sweetness that flows
and is never less. I have been shown
a beauty that would confuse both worlds,
but I won’t cause that uproar. I am
nothing but a head set on the ground
as a gift for Shams.
No one knows what makes the soul wake up so happy!
Maybe a dawn breeze has blown the veil
from the face of God.
A thousand new moons appear.
Roses open laughing.
Hearts become perfect rubies
like those from Badakshan.
The body turns entirely spirit.
Leaves become branches in this wind.
Why is it now so easy to surrender,
even for those already surrendered?
There’s no answer to any of this.
No one knows the source of joy.
A poet breathes into a reed flute,
and the tip of every hair makes music.
Shams sails down clods of dirt
from the roof, and we take jobs
as doorkeepers for him.
Inside a lover’s heart there’s another world,
and yet another.
Inside the Friend of this community
of lovers, an ear that interprets mystery,
a vein of silver in the ground, and another sky!
Intellect and compassion are ladders we climb,
and there are other ladders as we walk
the night hearing a voice that talks of forgiveness.
Inside Shams’s universe candlelight itself
becomes a moth to die in his candle.
There is some kiss we want
with our whole lives, the touch
of spirit on the body. Seawater
begs the pearl to break its shell.
And the lily, how passionately
it needs some wild darling!
At night, I open the window and ask
the moon to come and press its
face against mine.
Breathe into me. Close
the language-door and open the love-window.
The moon won’t use the door,
only the window.
Love comes sailing through and I scream.
Love sits beside me like a private supply of itself.
Love puts away the instruments
and takes off the silk robes. Our nakedness
together changes me completely.
Someone who does not run
toward the allure of love walks
a road where nothing lives.
But this dove here senses
the love-hawk floating above
and waits and will not be driven
or scared to safety.
I am a glass of wine with dark sediment.
I pour it all in the river.
Love says to me,
“Good, but you don’t see your own beauty.
I am the wind that mixes in your fire,
who stirs and brightens,
then makes you gutter out.”
“Good, but you don’t see your own beauty.
I am the wind that mixes in your fire,
who stirs and brightens,
then makes you gutter out.”
I hear nothing in my ear but your voice.
Heart has plundered mind of its eloquence.
Love writes a transparent calligraphy, so on
the empty page my soul can read and recollect.
Love's way is humility and intoxication,
The torrent floods down. How can it run up?
You'll be a cabuchon in the ring of lovers,
Even as Earth is a serf of the sapphire sky
If you're a red ruby's slave, dear friend ;
What did Earth ever lose by this relationship ?
And your monkey body's a slave to your spirit.
One shouldn't beat the snare drum of awakening
What mercy has the Self showed to weary limbs?
Beneath a cosy sofa's, comfy counterpane.
In that hollow of the vast turquoise dome,
Hoist, like a hero, your flag in the desert.
Listen with your soul's ear to the song,
Rising from the lover's passionate moan .
And the constellations gaze down ashamed.
When your tight gown-strings are loosened
By the tipsy inebriation of perfect love,
The victorious heavens shout, triumphantly !
This world is in deep trouble, from top to bottom,
But it can be swiftly healed by the balm of love.
The intellectual is always showing off;
You'll be a cabuchon in the ring of lovers,
Even as Earth is a serf of the sapphire sky
If you're a red ruby's slave, dear friend ;
What did Earth ever lose by this relationship ?
And your monkey body's a slave to your spirit.
One shouldn't beat the snare drum of awakening
What mercy has the Self showed to weary limbs?
Beneath a cosy sofa's, comfy counterpane.
In that hollow of the vast turquoise dome,
Hoist, like a hero, your flag in the desert.
Listen with your soul's ear to the song,
Rising from the lover's passionate moan .
And the constellations gaze down ashamed.
When your tight gown-strings are loosened
By the tipsy inebriation of perfect love,
The victorious heavens shout, triumphantly !
This world is in deep trouble, from top to bottom,
But it can be swiftly healed by the balm of love.
The intellectual is always showing off;
The lover is always getting lost.
The intellectual runs away, afraid of drowning;
the whole business of love is to drown in the sea.
Intellectuals plan their repose;
lovers are ashamed to rest.
The lover is always alone, even surrounded with people;
like water and oil, he remains apart.
The man who goes to the trouble
of giving advice to a lover
gets nothing. He’s mocked by passion.
Love is like musk. It attracts attention.
Love is a tree, and lovers are its shade.
Lovers think they’re looking for each other,
but there’s only one search: wandering
this world is wandering that,
both inside one
transparent sky. In here there is
no dogma and no heresy.
The miracle of Jesus is himself, not what he said
or did about the future. Forget the future.
I’d worship someone who could do that.
On the way you may want to look back, or not.
But if you can say, There’s nothing ahead,
there will be nothing there.
Stretch your arms
and take hold the cloth of your clothes
with both hands. The cure for pain is in the pain.
Good and bad are mixed. If you don’t have both,
you don’t belong with us.
When one of us gets lost,
is not here, he must be inside us. There’s no
place like that anywhere in the world.
Love came and became like blood in my body.
It rushed through my veins and
encircled my heart.
Everywhere I looked, I saw one thing.
The Beloved's name written
on my limbs, on my left palm,
on my forehead, on the back of my neck,
on my right big toe…
Oh, my friend,
all that you see of me is just a shell,
and the rest belongs to the Beloved.
It rushed through my veins and
encircled my heart.
Everywhere I looked, I saw one thing.
The Beloved's name written
on my limbs, on my left palm,
on my forehead, on the back of my neck,
on my right big toe…
Oh, my friend,
all that you see of me is just a shell,
and the rest belongs to the Beloved.
There is a certain love
that is formed out of the elixir of the East.
There is a certain cloud,
impregnated with a thousand lightnings.
There is my body,
in it an ocean formed of his glory,
all the creation, all the universes,
all the galaxies, are lost in it.
I wish I could give you a taste of
the burning fire of Love.
There is a fire blazing inside of me.
If I cry about it, or if I don't,
the fire is at work, night and day.
People make clothing to cover their intellect,
but the heart of Lovers is a shroud,
inflamed in golden hues of his love.
When love itself comes to kiss you,
don’t hold back! When the king goes hunting,
the forest smiles. Now the king has become
the place and all the players, prey,
bystander, bow, arrow, hand and release.
How does that feel? Last night’s dream
enters these open eyes. We sometimes make
spiderwebs of smoke and saliva, fragile
thought-packets. Leave thinking to the one
who gave intelligence. Stop weaving,
and watch how the pattern improves.
This is a gathering of lovers.
In this gathering,
there is no high, no low,
no smart, no ignorant,
no special assembly,
no grand discourse,
no proper schooling required.
There is no master, no disciple.
This gathering is more like a drunken party,
full of tricksters, fools,
mad men and mad women.
This is a gathering of Lovers.
In this gathering,
there is no high, no low,
no smart, no ignorant,
no special assembly,
no grand discourse,
no proper schooling required.
There is no master, no disciple.
This gathering is more like a drunken party,
full of tricksters, fools,
mad men and mad women.
This is a gathering of Lovers.
My love, you are closer to me than myself,
you shine through my eyes.
Your light is brighter than the Moon.
Step into the garden
so all the flowers, even the tall poplar
can kneel before your beauty.
Let your voice silence the lily
When you want to be kind you are
famous for its hundred tongues.
softer than the soul but when you withdraw
when you meet him face to face
you can be so cold and harsh.
Dear one, you can be wild and rebellious but
there is no stronger protection than him.
his charm will make you docile like the earth.
Throw away your shield and bare your chest
so the outside light cannot come though.
That's why when the dervish withdraws
from the world he covers all the cracks in the wall,
He knows that only the inner light
illuminates his world.
This world is no match for your love.
Being away from you
is death aiming to take my soul away.
My heart, so precious,
I won't trade for a hundred thousand souls.
Your one smile takes it for free.
you shine through my eyes.
Your light is brighter than the Moon.
Step into the garden
so all the flowers, even the tall poplar
can kneel before your beauty.
Let your voice silence the lily
When you want to be kind you are
famous for its hundred tongues.
softer than the soul but when you withdraw
when you meet him face to face
you can be so cold and harsh.
Dear one, you can be wild and rebellious but
there is no stronger protection than him.
his charm will make you docile like the earth.
Throw away your shield and bare your chest
so the outside light cannot come though.
That's why when the dervish withdraws
from the world he covers all the cracks in the wall,
He knows that only the inner light
illuminates his world.
Being away from you
is death aiming to take my soul away.
My heart, so precious,
I won't trade for a hundred thousand souls.
Your one smile takes it for free.
Go and die, go and die,
for this love go and die,
When you die in this love,
you will let spirits fly.
Go and die, go and die,
fear no death, don't be shy
When in this dust you will lie,
your spirit will soar up high.
A lover looks at creek-water and wants to be
that quick to fall, to kneel, then all
the way down in full prostration.
A lover wants to die of his love
like a man with dropsy
who knows that water will kill him,
but he can’t deny his thirst.
A lover loves death.
Spill your jug in the river!
Your shame and fear
are like felt layers covering coldness.
Throw them off, and rush naked
into the joy of death.
Should Love's heart rejoice unless I burn?
For my heart is Love's dwelling.
If You will burn Your house, burn it, Love!
Who will say, 'It's not allowed'?
Burn this house thoroughly!
The lover's house improves with fire.
From now on I will make burning my aim,
From now on I will make burning my aim,
for I am like the candle: burning only makes me brighter.
Abandon sleep tonight; traverse fro one night
the region of the sleepless.
Look upon these lovers who have become distraught
and like moths have died in union with the One Beloved.
Look upon this ship of God's creatures
and see how it is sunk in Love.
Lov whispers to my ear:
"Better to be a prey than a hunter.
Make yourself My fool.
Stop trying to be the sun and become a speck!
Dwell at my door and be homeless.
Don't pretend to be a candle, be a moth,
so you may taste the savor of Life
and know the power hidden in serving."
In the early dawn of happiness
you gave me three kisses
so that I would wake up
to this moment of love.
I tried to remember in my heart
what I'd dream about
during the night
before I became aware
of this moving of life.
I found my dreams
but the moon took me away
It lifted me up to the firmament
and suspended me there
I saw how my heart had fallen
on your path singing a song.
Between my love and my heart
things were happening which
slowly slowly
made me recall everything
You amuse me with your touch
although I can't see your hands.
You have kissed me with tenderness
although I haven't seen your lips
You are hidden from me.
But it is you who keeps me alive.
Perhaps the time will come
when you will tire of kisses
I shall be happy
even for insults from you
I only ask that you
keep some attention on me.
Turn me like a waterwheel turning a millstone.
Plenty of water, a Living River.
Keep me in one place and scatter the love.
Leaf-moves in wind, straw drawn toward amber,
all parts of the world are in love,
but they do not tell their secrets. Cows grazing
on a sacramental table, ants whispering in Solomon's ear.
Mountains mumbling an echo. Sky, calm.
If the sun were not in love, he would have no brightness,
the side of the hill no grass on it.
The ocean would come to rest somewhere.
Be a lover as they are,
that you come to know your Beloved.
Be faithful that you may know Faith.
The other parts of the universe did not accept
the next responsibility of love as you can.
They were afraid they might make a mistake
with it, the inspired knowing
that springs from being in love.
You come to us from another world
From beyond the stars
and void of space.
Transcendent, Pure,
Of unimaginable beauty,
Bringing with you
the essence of love.
You transform all
who are touched by you.
Mundane concerns,
troubles, and sorrows
dissolve in your presence,
Bringing joy to ruler and ruled
To peasant and king.
You bewilder us with your grace.
All evils transform into goodness.
You are the master alchemist.
You light the fire of love
in earth and sky
in heart and soul of every being.
Through your love
existence and nonexistence merge.
All opposites unite.
All that is profane
becomes sacred again.
A strange passion is moving in my head.
My heart has become a bird
which searches in the sky.
Every part of me goes in different directions.
Is it really so
that the one I love is everywhere?
From the beginning of my life
I have been looking for your face
but today I have seen it.
Today I have seen
the charm, the beauty,
the unfathomable grace
of the face that I was looking for.
Today I have found you
and those who laughed
and scorned me yesterday
are sorry that they were not looking
as I did.
I am bewildered by the magnificence
of your beauty and wish to see you
with a hundred eyes.
My heart has burned with passion
and has searched forever
for this wondrous beauty
that I now behold.
I am ashamed
to call this love human
and afraid of God to call it divine.
Your fragrant breath
like the morning breeze
has come to the stillness of the garden
You have breathed new life into me
I have become your sunshine
and also your shadow.
My soul is screaming in ecstasy
Every fiber of my being
is in love with you.
Your effulgence
has lit a fire in my heart
for me the earth and sky.
My arrow of love
has arrived at the target
I am in the house of mercy
and my heart
is a place of prayer.
Both light and shadow are the dance of love.
Every moment is made glorious by the light of love.
Love sickness is different from all other illnesses,
Love is the astrolabe of God's mysteries.
Love and lover are inseparable and timeless.
Whenever I try to describe love,
once I experience love, I am left speechless.
Whenever I try to write about love,
once I reach the word love, my pen breaks,
and the paper slips away at the ineffable
place where Lover loving and loved are one.
A lover asked his beloved,
Do you love yourself more than you love me?
Beloved replied, I have died to myself and I live for you.
I've disappeared from myself and my attributes,
I am present only for you.
I've forgotten all my learning,
but from knowing you I've become a scholar.
I've lost all my strength, but from your power I am able.
I love myself...I love you.
I love you...I love myself.
My heart is burning with love.
All can see this flame.
My heart is pulsing with passion,
like waves on an ocean.
My friends have become strangers and
I'm surrounded by enemies.
But I'm free as the wind,
no longer hurt by those who approach me.
I'm at home, wherever I am.
And in the room of lovers I can see
with closed eyes the beauty that dances.
Behind the veils intoxicated with love,
I too dance the rhythm of this moving world.
I have lost my senses in this world of lovers.
A lover knows only humility,
he has no choice.
He steals into your alley at night,
he has no choice.
He longs to kiss every lock of your hair,
don't fret, he has no choice.
In his frenzied love for you, he longs to break
the chains of his imprisonment,
he has no choice.
I am your lover, come to my side,
I will open the gate to your love.
Come settle with me,
let us be neighbors to the stars.
You have been hiding so long,
endlessly drifting in the sea of my love.
Even so, you have always been connected to me.
Concealed, revealed, in the unknown,
in the un-manifest. I am life itself.
You have been a prisoner of a little pond,
I am the ocean and its turbulent flood.
Come merge with me,
leave this world of ignorance.
Be with me, I will open the gate to your love.
You come to us from another world,
from beyond the stars and the void of space.
Transcendent, pure, of unimaginable beauty.
Bringing with you the essence of love.
You transform all who are touched by you.
Mundane concerns, troubles and sorrows
dissolve in your presence,
bringing joy to ruler and ruled,
to peasant and King.
You arouse me with your touch,
although I can't see your hands.
You have kissed me with tenderness,
although I haven't seen your lips.
You are hidden from me,
but it is you who keeps me alive.
Perhaps the time will come,
when you will tire of kisses,
I shall be happy even from insults from you.
I only ask that you keep some attention on me.
Because the idol is your face,
I have become an idolater.
Because the wine is from your cup,
I've become a drunkard.
In the existence of your love,
I have become non-existent.
This non-existence, linked to you,
is better than all existence.
The moon has become a dancer at this festival of love.
This dance of light, this sacred blessing, this divine love
beckons us to a world beyond,
that only lovers can see with their eyes of fiery passion.
They are the chosen ones who have surrendered.
Once they were particles of light,
now they are the radiant sun.
They have left behind the world of defeat-full games.
They are the privileged lovers who created new worlds
with their eyes of fiery passion.
Should Love's heart rejoice unless I burn?
For my heart is Love's dwelling.
If You will burn Your house, burn it, Love!
Who will say, 'It's not allowed'?
Burn this house thoroughly!
The lover's house improves with fire.
From now on I will make burning my aim,
From now on I will make burning my aim,
for I am like the candle: burning only makes me brighter.
Abandon sleep tonight; traverse fro one night
the region of the sleepless.
Look upon these lovers who have become distraught
and like moths have died in union with the One Beloved.
Look upon this ship of God's creatures
and see how it is sunk in Love.
Lov whispers to my ear:
"Better to be a prey than a hunter.
Make yourself My fool.
Stop trying to be the sun and become a speck!
Dwell at my door and be homeless.
Don't pretend to be a candle, be a moth,
so you may taste the savor of Life
and know the power hidden in serving."
In the early dawn of happiness
you gave me three kisses
so that I would wake up
to this moment of love.
I tried to remember in my heart
what I'd dream about
during the night
before I became aware
of this moving of life.
I found my dreams
but the moon took me away
It lifted me up to the firmament
and suspended me there
I saw how my heart had fallen
on your path singing a song.
Between my love and my heart
things were happening which
slowly slowly
made me recall everything
You amuse me with your touch
although I can't see your hands.
You have kissed me with tenderness
although I haven't seen your lips
You are hidden from me.
But it is you who keeps me alive.
Perhaps the time will come
when you will tire of kisses
I shall be happy
even for insults from you
I only ask that you
keep some attention on me.
Turn me like a waterwheel turning a millstone.
Plenty of water, a Living River.
Keep me in one place and scatter the love.
Leaf-moves in wind, straw drawn toward amber,
all parts of the world are in love,
but they do not tell their secrets. Cows grazing
on a sacramental table, ants whispering in Solomon's ear.
Mountains mumbling an echo. Sky, calm.
If the sun were not in love, he would have no brightness,
the side of the hill no grass on it.
The ocean would come to rest somewhere.
Be a lover as they are,
that you come to know your Beloved.
Be faithful that you may know Faith.
The other parts of the universe did not accept
the next responsibility of love as you can.
They were afraid they might make a mistake
with it, the inspired knowing
that springs from being in love.
You come to us from another world
From beyond the stars
and void of space.
Transcendent, Pure,
Of unimaginable beauty,
Bringing with you
the essence of love.
You transform all
who are touched by you.
Mundane concerns,
troubles, and sorrows
dissolve in your presence,
Bringing joy to ruler and ruled
To peasant and king.
You bewilder us with your grace.
All evils transform into goodness.
You are the master alchemist.
You light the fire of love
in earth and sky
in heart and soul of every being.
Through your love
existence and nonexistence merge.
All opposites unite.
All that is profane
becomes sacred again.
A strange passion is moving in my head.
My heart has become a bird
which searches in the sky.
Every part of me goes in different directions.
Is it really so
that the one I love is everywhere?
From the beginning of my life
I have been looking for your face
but today I have seen it.
Today I have seen
the charm, the beauty,
the unfathomable grace
of the face that I was looking for.
Today I have found you
and those who laughed
and scorned me yesterday
are sorry that they were not looking
as I did.
I am bewildered by the magnificence
of your beauty and wish to see you
with a hundred eyes.
My heart has burned with passion
and has searched forever
for this wondrous beauty
that I now behold.
I am ashamed
to call this love human
and afraid of God to call it divine.
Your fragrant breath
like the morning breeze
has come to the stillness of the garden
You have breathed new life into me
I have become your sunshine
and also your shadow.
My soul is screaming in ecstasy
Every fiber of my being
is in love with you.
Your effulgence
has lit a fire in my heart
for me the earth and sky.
My arrow of love
has arrived at the target
I am in the house of mercy
and my heart
is a place of prayer.
Both light and shadow are the dance of love.
Every moment is made glorious by the light of love.
Love sickness is different from all other illnesses,
Love is the astrolabe of God's mysteries.
Love and lover are inseparable and timeless.
Whenever I try to describe love,
once I experience love, I am left speechless.
Whenever I try to write about love,
once I reach the word love, my pen breaks,
and the paper slips away at the ineffable
place where Lover loving and loved are one.
A lover asked his beloved,
Do you love yourself more than you love me?
Beloved replied, I have died to myself and I live for you.
I've disappeared from myself and my attributes,
I am present only for you.
I've forgotten all my learning,
but from knowing you I've become a scholar.
I've lost all my strength, but from your power I am able.
I love myself...I love you.
I love you...I love myself.
My heart is burning with love.
All can see this flame.
My heart is pulsing with passion,
like waves on an ocean.
My friends have become strangers and
I'm surrounded by enemies.
But I'm free as the wind,
no longer hurt by those who approach me.
I'm at home, wherever I am.
And in the room of lovers I can see
with closed eyes the beauty that dances.
Behind the veils intoxicated with love,
I too dance the rhythm of this moving world.
I have lost my senses in this world of lovers.
A lover knows only humility,
he has no choice.
He steals into your alley at night,
he has no choice.
He longs to kiss every lock of your hair,
don't fret, he has no choice.
In his frenzied love for you, he longs to break
the chains of his imprisonment,
he has no choice.
I am your lover, come to my side,
I will open the gate to your love.
Come settle with me,
let us be neighbors to the stars.
You have been hiding so long,
endlessly drifting in the sea of my love.
Even so, you have always been connected to me.
Concealed, revealed, in the unknown,
in the un-manifest. I am life itself.
You have been a prisoner of a little pond,
I am the ocean and its turbulent flood.
Come merge with me,
leave this world of ignorance.
Be with me, I will open the gate to your love.
You come to us from another world,
from beyond the stars and the void of space.
Transcendent, pure, of unimaginable beauty.
Bringing with you the essence of love.
You transform all who are touched by you.
Mundane concerns, troubles and sorrows
dissolve in your presence,
bringing joy to ruler and ruled,
to peasant and King.
You arouse me with your touch,
although I can't see your hands.
You have kissed me with tenderness,
although I haven't seen your lips.
You are hidden from me,
but it is you who keeps me alive.
Perhaps the time will come,
when you will tire of kisses,
I shall be happy even from insults from you.
I only ask that you keep some attention on me.
Because the idol is your face,
I have become an idolater.
Because the wine is from your cup,
I've become a drunkard.
In the existence of your love,
I have become non-existent.
This non-existence, linked to you,
is better than all existence.
The moon has become a dancer at this festival of love.
This dance of light, this sacred blessing, this divine love
beckons us to a world beyond,
that only lovers can see with their eyes of fiery passion.
They are the chosen ones who have surrendered.
Once they were particles of light,
now they are the radiant sun.
They have left behind the world of defeat-full games.
They are the privileged lovers who created new worlds
with their eyes of fiery passion.
Seek the wisdom that will untie your knowledge
See the path that demands your whole being.
Leave that which is not, but appears to be
Seek that which is, but is not apparent.
When you do things from your soul,
you feel a river moving in you, a joy.
When actions come from another section,
the feeling disappears.
Don't let others lead you.
They may be blind or, worse, vultures.
Reach for the rope of God.
And what is that?
Putting aside self-will.
Because of willfulness people sit in jail,
the trapped bird's wings are tied,
fish sizzle in the skillet.
The anger of police is willfulness.
You've seen a magistrate inflict visible punishment.
Now see the invisible.
If you could leave your selfishness,
you would see how you've been torturing your soul.
We are born and live inside black water in a well.
How could we know what an open field of sunlight is?
Don't insist on going where you think you want to go.
Ask the way to the spring.
Your living pieces will form a harmony.
There is a moving palace that floats in the air
with balconies and clear water flowing through,
infinity everywhere, yet contained under a single tent.
Spiritual experience is a modest woman
who looks lovingly at one man.
It’s a great river where ducks live happily,
and crows drown. The visible bowl of form
contains food that is both nourishing and
a source of heartburn.
There is an unseen presence we honor
that gives the gifts.
No metaphor can say this,
but I can’t stop pointing to the beauty.
Every moment and place says,
“Put this design in your carpet!”
These spiritual window-shoppers,
who idly ask, 'How much is that?'
Oh, I'm just looking.
They handle a hundred items and put them down,
shadows with no capital.
What is spent is love and two eyes wet with weeping.
But these walk into a shop,
and their whole lives pass suddenly in that moment,
in that shop.
Where did you go? "Nowhere."
What did you have to eat? "Nothing much."
Even if you don't know what you want,
buy something, to be part of the exchanging flow.
Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah.
It makes absolutely no difference
what people think of you.
Who gets up early to discover the moment light begins?
Who finds us here circling, bewildered like atoms?
Who comes to a spring thirsty
and sees the moon reflected in it?
Who like Jacob, blind with grief and age,
smells the shirt of his lost son and can see again?
Who lets a bucket down and brings up a flowing prophet?
Or, like Moses, goes for fire and finds what burns inside
the sunrise?
Jesus slips into a house to escape enemies
and opens a door to the other world.
Solomon cuts open a fish, and there is a gold ring.
Omar storms in to kill the Prophet and leaves with blessings.
Chase a deer and end up everywhere.
An oyster opens his mouth to swallow one drop.
Now there is a pearl.
A vagrant wanders empty ruins.
Suddenly he is wealthy.
But do not be satisfied with stories,
how things have gone with others.
Unfold your own myth,
without complicated explanations,
so everyone will understand the passage,
We have opened you.
Start walking toward Shams, the teacher, the sun.
Your legs will get heavy and tired.
Then comes a moment of feeling
the wings you have grown, lifting.
This place is a dream.
Only a sleeper considers it real.
Then death comes like dawn,
and you wake up laughing
at what you thought was your grief.
But there's a difference with this dream.
Everything cruel and unconscious
done in the illusion of the present world,
all that does not fade away at the death-waking.
It stays, and it must be interpreted.
All the mean laughing,
all the quick, sexual wanting,
those torn coats of Joseph,
they change into powerful wolves
that you must face.
The retaliation that sometimes comes now,
the swift, payback hit,
is just a boy's game
to what the other will be.
You know about circumcision here.
It's full castration there!
And this groggy time we live,
this is what it's like:
A man goes to sleep in the town
where he has always lived,
and he dreams he's living in another town.
In the dream, he doesn't remember
the town he's sleeping in his bed in.
He believes the reality of the dream town.
The world is that kind of sleep.
The dust of many crumbled cities
settles over us like a forgetful doze,
but we are older than those cities.
We began as a mineral.
We emerged into plant life
and into the animal state, and then into being human,
and always we have forgotten our former states,
except in early spring when we slightly recall
being green again.
That's how a young person turns toward a teacher.
That's how a baby leans toward the breast,
without knowing the secret of its desire,
yet turning instinctively.
Humankind is being led along an evolving course,
through this migration of intelligence,
and though we seem to be sleeping,
there is an inner wakefulness
that directs the dream,
and that will eventually startle us back
to the truth of who we are.
There are many guises for intelligence.
One part of you is gliding in a high wind-stream,
while your ore ordinary notions
take little steps and peck at the ground.
Conventional knowledge is death to our souls,
and it is not really ours. It is laid on.
Yet we keep saying we find ‘rest’ in these ‘beliefs’.
We must become ignorant of what we have been taught
and be instead bewildered.
Run from what is profitable and comfortable.
Distrust anyone who praises you.
Give your investment money, and the interest
on the capital, to those who are actually destitute.
Forget safety. Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation. Be notorious.
I have tried prudent planning long enough.
From now on, I’ll be mad.
For ages you have come and gone
courting this delusion.
For ages you have run from the pain
and forfeited the ecstasy.
So come, return to the root of the root
of your own soul.
Although you appear in earthly form
Your essence is pure consciousness.
You are the fearless guardian
of Divine Light.
So come, return to the root of the root
of your own soul.
When you lose all sense of self
the bonds of a thousand chains will vanish.
Lose yourself completely,
Return to the root of the root
of your own soul.
You descended from Adam,
by the pure Word of God,
but you turned your sight
to the empty show of this world.
Alas, how can you be satisfied with so little?
So come, return to the root of the root
of your own soul.
Why are you so enchanted by this world
when a mine of gold lies within you?
Open your eyes and come
Return to the root of the root
of your own soul.
You were born from the rays of God’s Majesty
when the stars were in their perfect place.
How long will you suffer from the blows
of a nonexistent hand?
So come, return to the root of the root
of your own soul.
You are a ruby encased in granite.
How long will you deceive us with this outer show?
O friend, we can see the truth in your eyes!
So come, return to the root of the root
of your own soul.
After one moment with that glorious Friend
you became loving, radiant, and ecstatic.
Your eyes were sweet and full of fire.
Come, return to the root of the root
of your own soul.
Shams-e Tabriz, the King of the Tavern,
has handed you an eternal cup,
And God in all His glory is pouring the wine.
So come! Drink!
Return to the root of the root of your own soul.
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be cleaning you out
For some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from the beyond.
This we have now is not imagination.
This we have now is not imagination.
This is not grief,
or joy, not a judging state,
or an elation, or a sadness.
Those come and go.
This is the presence that doesn't.
It’s dawn, Husam,
here in the splendor of coral,
inside the Friend, in the simple truth
of what Hallaj said.
What else could human beings want?
When grapes turn to wine,
they’re wanting this.
When the night sky pours by,
it’s really a crowd of beggars,
and they all want some of this.
This we are now
created the body, cell by cell,
like bees building a honeycomb.
The human body and the universe
grew from this, not this
from the universe and the human body.
On the night when you cross the street
from your shop and your house
to the cemetery
you’ll hear me hailing you from inside
the open grave, and you’ll realize
how we've always been together.
I am the clear consciousness-core
of your being, the same in
ecstasy as in self-hating fatigue.
That night, when you escape your fear of snakebite
and all irritations with the ants, you’ll hear
my familiar voice, see the candle being lit,
smell the incense, the surprise meal fixed
by the lover inside all your other lovers.
This heart-tumult is my signal
to you igniting in the tomb.
So don’t fuss with the shroud
and the graveyard road dust.
Those get ripped open and washed away
in the music of our final meeting.
And don’t look for me in human shape.
I am inside your looking. No room
for form with love this strong.
Beat the drum and let the poets speak.
This is the day of purification for those who
are already mature and initiated into what love is.
No need to wait until we die!
There’s more to want here than money
and being famous and bites of roasted meat.
Now, what shall we call this new sort of gazing-house
that has opened in our town where people sit
quietly and pour out their glancing
like light, like answering?
It is your turn now,
you waited, you were patient.
The time has come, for us to polish you.
We will transform your inner pearl
into a house of fire.
You're a gold mine.
Did you know that, hidden in the dirt of the earth?
It is your turn now, to be placed in fire.
Let us cremate your impurities.
The way is full of genuine sacrifice.
The thickets blocking your path are anything
that keeps you from that, any fear that
you may be broken into bits like a glass bottle.
This road demands courage and stamina,
yet it’s full of footprints!
Who are these companions?
They are rungs in your ladder. Use them!
With company you quicken your ascent.
You may be happy enough going along,
but with others you’ll get farther, and faster.
Someone who goes cheerfully by himself
to the customs house to pay his traveler’s tax
will go even more lightheartedly
when friends are with him.
Every prophet sought out companions.
A wall standing alone is useless,
but put three or four walls together,
and they’ll support a roof and
keep grain dry and safe.
When ink joins with a pen,
then the blank paper can say something.
Rushes and reeds must be woven to be useful as a mat.
If they weren't interlaced;
the wind would blow them away.
Like that, God paired up creatures,
and gave them friendship.
What the material world values does not shine
The time has come, for us to polish you.
We will transform your inner pearl
into a house of fire.
You're a gold mine.
Did you know that, hidden in the dirt of the earth?
It is your turn now, to be placed in fire.
Let us cremate your impurities.
The way is full of genuine sacrifice.
The thickets blocking your path are anything
that keeps you from that, any fear that
you may be broken into bits like a glass bottle.
This road demands courage and stamina,
yet it’s full of footprints!
Who are these companions?
They are rungs in your ladder. Use them!
With company you quicken your ascent.
You may be happy enough going along,
but with others you’ll get farther, and faster.
Someone who goes cheerfully by himself
to the customs house to pay his traveler’s tax
will go even more lightheartedly
when friends are with him.
Every prophet sought out companions.
A wall standing alone is useless,
but put three or four walls together,
and they’ll support a roof and
keep grain dry and safe.
When ink joins with a pen,
then the blank paper can say something.
Rushes and reeds must be woven to be useful as a mat.
If they weren't interlaced;
the wind would blow them away.
Like that, God paired up creatures,
and gave them friendship.
What the material world values does not shine
the same in the truth of the soul.
You have been interested in your shadow.
Look instead directly at the sun.
What can we know by just watching
the time-and-space shapes of each other?
Someone half awake in the night sees imaginary dangers;
the morning star rises; the horizon grows defined;
people become friends in a moving caravan.
Night birds may think daybreak a kind of darkness,
because that’s all they know.
It’s a fortunate bird who’s not intrigued with evening,
who flies in the sun we call Shams.
When light returns to its Source,
it takes nothing of what it has illuminated.
It may have shone on a garbage dump, or a garden,
or in the center of a human eye. No matter.
It goes, and when it does,
the open plain becomes passionately desolate,
wanting it back.
How does a part of the world leave the world?
How does wetness leave water?
Don't try to put out fire by throwing on more fire!
Don't wash a wound with blood.
No matter how fast you run, your shadow keeps up.
Sometimes it's in front!
Only full overhead sun diminishes your shadow.
But that shadow has been serving you.
What hurts you, blesses you.
Darkness is your candle.
Your boundaries are your quest.
I could explain this,
but it will break the glass cover on your heart,
and there's no fixing that.
You must have shadow and light source both.
Listen, and lay your head under the tree of awe.
When from that tree feathers and wings sprout on you,
be quieter than a dove.
Don't even open your mouth for even a coo.
There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street
and being the noise.
Drink all your passion and be a disgrace.
Close both eyes to see with the other eye.
Open your hands, if you want to be held.
Sit down in this circle.
Quit acting like a wolf, and feel
the shepherd’s love filling you.
At night, your beloved wanders.
Don’t accept consolations.
Close your mouth against food.
Taste the lover’s mouth in yours.
You moan, “She left me.” “He left me.”
Twenty more will come.
Be empty of worrying.
Think who created thought!
Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?
Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.
Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.
When a baby is taken from the wet nurse,
it easily forgets her
and starts eating solid food.
Seeds feed awhile on ground,
then lift up into the sun.
So you should taste the filtered light
and work your way toward wisdom
with no personal covering.
That’s how you came here,
like a star without a name.
Move across the night sky
with those anonymous lights.
When you do things from your soul,
you feel a river moving in you, a joy.
When actions come from another section,
the feeling disappears.
Don't let others lead you.
They may be blind, or worse, vultures.
Reach for the rope of God.
And what is that?
Putting aside self-will.
Because of willfulness people sit in jail.
From willfulness, the trapped birds' wings are tied.
From willfulness, the fish sizzles in the skillet.
The anger of police is willfulness.
You've seen a magistrate inflict visible punishment.
Now see the invisible.
If you could leave selfishness, you would see
how your soul has been tortured.
We are born and live inside black water in a well.
How could we know what an open field of sunlight is?
Don't insist on going where you think you want to go.
Ask the way to the Spring.
you feel a river moving in you, a joy.
When actions come from another section,
the feeling disappears.
Don't let others lead you.
They may be blind, or worse, vultures.
Reach for the rope of God.
And what is that?
Putting aside self-will.
Because of willfulness people sit in jail.
From willfulness, the trapped birds' wings are tied.
From willfulness, the fish sizzles in the skillet.
The anger of police is willfulness.
You've seen a magistrate inflict visible punishment.
Now see the invisible.
If you could leave selfishness, you would see
how your soul has been tortured.
We are born and live inside black water in a well.
How could we know what an open field of sunlight is?
Don't insist on going where you think you want to go.
Ask the way to the Spring.
Don’t worry about saving these songs!
And if one of our instruments breaks,
it doesn't matter.
We have fallen into the place
where everything is music.
The strumming and the flute notes
rise into the atmosphere,
and even if the whole world’s harp
should burn up, there will still be
hidden instruments playing.
So the candle flickers and goes out.
We have a piece of flint, and a spark.
This singing-art is sea foam.
The graceful movements come from a pearl
somewhere on the ocean floor.
Poems reach up like the edge of driftwood
along the beach, wanting and wanting!
They derive from a slow and powerful root
that we can’t see.
Stop the words now.
Open the window in the center of your chest,
and let the spirits fly in and out.
Don’t go away, come near.
Don’t be faithless, be faithful.
Find the antidote in the venom.
Come to the root of the root of yourself.
Molded of clay, yet kneaded
from the substance of certainty,
a guard at the Treasury of Holy Light –
come, return to the root of the root of your Self.
Once you get hold of selflessness,
You’ll be dragged from your ego
and freed from many traps.
Come, return to the root of the root of your Self.
You are born from the children of God’s creation,
but you have fixed your sight too low.
How can you be happy?
Come, return to the root of the root of your Self.
You were born from a ray of God’s majesty
and have the blessings of a good star.
Why suffer at the hands of things that don’t exist?
Come, return to the root of the root of your Self.
You are a ruby embedded in granite.
How long will you pretend it’s not true?
We can see it in your eyes.
Come to the root of the root of your Self.
You came here from the presence of that fine Friend,
a little drunk, but gentle, stealing our hearts
with that look so full of fire; so,
come, return to the root of the root of your Self.
Our master and host, Shamsi Tabrizi,
has put the eternal cup before you.
Glory be to God, what a rare wine!
So come, return to the root of the root of your Self.
My heart, sit only with those
who know and understand you.
Sit only under a tree that is full of blossoms.
In the bazaar of herbs and potions
don't wander aimlessly
find the shop with a potion that is sweet.
If you don't have a measure
people will rob you in no time.
You will take counterfeit coins
thinking they are real.
Don't fill your bowl with food from
every boiling pot you see.
Not every joke is humorous,
so don't search for meaning where there isn't one.
Not every eye can see,
not every sea is full of pearls.
My heart, sing the song of longing
like a nightingale.
The sound of your voice casts a spell
on every stone, on every thorn.
First, lay down your head, then one by one
let go of all distractions.
Embrace the light and let it guide you
beyond the winds of desire.
There you will find a spring and
nourished by its sweet waters
like a tree you will bear fruit forever.
Little by little, wean yourself.
This is the gist of what I have to say.
From an embryo, whose nourishment comes in the blood,
move to an infant drinking milk,
to a child on solid food, to a searcher after wisdom,
to a hunter of more invisible game.
Think how it is to have a conversation with an embryo.
You might say, ‘The world outside is vast and intricate.
There are wheat-fields and mountain passes,
and orchards in bloom.
At night there are millions of galaxies, and in sunlight
the beauty of friends dancing at a wedding.’
You ask the embryo why he, or she, stays cooped up
in the dark with eyes closed.
A friend remarks to the Prophet,
‘Why is it I get screwed in business deals?
It's like a spell. I become distracted
by business talk and make wrong decisions.’
Muhammad replies,
Stipulate with every transaction
that you need three days to make sure.’
Deliberation is one of the qualities of God.
Throw a dog a bit of something.
He sniffs to see if he wants it.
Be that careful.
Sniff with your wisdom-nose.
Get clear. Then decide.
The universe came into being gradually over six days.
God could have just commanded, Be!
Little by little a person reaches forty and fifty and sixty,
and feels more complete.
God could have thrown full-blown prophets
flying through the cosmos in an instant.
Jesus said one word, and a dead man sat up,
but Creation usually unfolds, like calm breakers.
Constant, slow movement teaches us to keep working
like a small creek that stays clear,
that doesn't stagnate, but finds a way
through numerous details, deliberately.
Deliberation is born of joy, like a bird from an egg.
Birds don't resemble eggs!
Think how different the hatching out is.
A white-leathery snake egg, a sparrow's egg;
a quince seed, an apple seed: Very different things
look similar at one stage.
These leaves, our bodily personalities, seem identical,
but the globe of soul-fruit we make,
each is elaborately unique.
Let’s ask God to help us to self-control:
for one who lacks it, lacks His Grace.
The undisciplined person doesn't wrong himself alone—
but sets fire to the whole world.
Discipline enabled Heaven to be filled with light;
discipline enabled the angels to be immaculate and holy.
The peacock’s plumage is his enemy.
The world is the mountain,
and each action, the shout that echoes back.
This discipline and rough treatment are a furnace
to extract the silver from the dross
The spiritual path wrecks the body
and afterwards restores it to health.
Anger and lust make a man squint;
When self-interest appears, virtue hides:
Fortunate is he who does not carry envy as a companion.
If ten lamps are present in one place,
each differs in form from another;
yet you can’t distinguish whose radiance is whose
when you focus on the light.
In the field of spirit there is no division;
no individuals exist.
The idol of your self is the mother of all idols.
To regard the self as easy to subdue is a mistake.
If you wish mercy, show mercy to the weak.
The stoppered jar, though in rough water,
floated because of its empty heart.
When the wind of poverty is in anyone,
she floats in peace on the waters of this world.
As long as desires are fresh, faith is not;
for it is these desires that lock that gate.
The tongue of mutual understanding is quite special:
to be one of heart is better than to have a common tongue.
If you dig a pit for others to fall into,
you will fall into it yourself.
Many of the faults you see in others, dear reader,
are your own nature reflected in them.
With will, fire becomes sweet water.
The lion who breaks the enemy’s ranks
is a minor hero compared to the lion who overcomes himself.
O son, only those whose spiritual eye has been opened
know how compulsive we are.
Whoever gives reverence receives reverence.
The intellectual quest,
though fine as pearl or coral,
is not the spiritual search.
The intelligent desire self-control; children want candy.
Since in order to speak, one must first listen,
learn to speak by listening.
When, with just a taste, envy and deceit arise,
and ignorance and forgetfulness are born,
know you have tasted the unlawful.
Know that a word suddenly shot from the tongue
is like an arrow shot from the bow.
O tongue, you are an endless treasure.
O tongue, you are also an endless disease.
I am burning.
If any one lacks tinder,
let him set his rubbish ablaze with my fire.
Although your desire tastes sweet,
doesn't the Beloved desire you to be desireless?
The world’s flattery and hypocrisy is a sweet morsel:
eat less of it, for it is full of fire.
Forgetfulness of God, Beloved,
is the support of this world;
spiritual intelligence its ruin.
For Intelligence belongs to that other world,
and when it prevails, this material world is overthrown.
Were there no men of vision,
all who are blind would be dead.
All these griefs within our hearts
arise from the smoke and dust
of our existence and vain desires.
Whoever lives sweetly dies painfully:
whoever serves his body doesn't nourish his soul.
Your thinking is like a camel driver,
and you are the camel:
it drives you in every direction under its bitter control.
If you are wholly perplexed and in straits,
have patience, for patience is the key to joy.
Fast from thoughts, fast:
thoughts are like the lion and the wild ass;
men’s hearts are the thickets they haunt.
If you are irritated by every rub,
how will your mirror be polished?
Anyone in whom the troublemaking self has died,
sun and cloud obey.
If you wish to shine like day,
burn up the night of self-existence.
Dissolve in the Being who is everything.
There is no worse sickness for the soul,
O you who are proud, than this pretense of perfection.
The heart and eyes must bleed a lot
before self-complacency falls away.
Can the water of a polluted stream
clear out the dung?
Can human knowledge sweep away
the ignorance of the sensual self?
How does a sword fashion its own hilt?
Go, entrust the cure of this wound to a surgeon,
Many are the unbelievers who long for submission,
but their stumbling block
is reputation and pride and continual desires.
I’m the devoted slave
of anyone who doesn't claim
to have attained dining with God
at every way station.
For years, copying other people,
I tried to know myself.
From within, I couldn't decide what to do.
Unable to see, I heard my name being called.
Then I walked outside.
Inside this great mystery that is
we don't own anything.
What is this competition we feel then,
we don't own anything.
What is this competition we feel then,
if we all exit one at a time
through the same gate?
I am dust particles in sunlight.
I am the round sun.
To the bits of dust I say, Stay.
To the sun, Keep moving.
I am morning mist,
and the breathing of evening.
I am wind in the top of a grove,
and surf on the cliff.
Mast, rudder, helmsman, and keel,
I am also the coral reef they founder on.
I am a tree with a trained parrot in its branches.
Silence, thought, and voice.
The musical air coming through a flute,
a spark of stone, a flickering in metal.
Both candle and the moth crazy around it.
Rose, and the nightingale lost in the fragrance.
I am all orders of being, the circling galaxy,
the evolutionary intelligence, the lift, and the falling away.
What is, and what isn't.
You who know, Jelaluddin,
You the one in all, say who I am.
Say I am you.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
through the same gate?
I am dust particles in sunlight.
I am the round sun.
To the bits of dust I say, Stay.
To the sun, Keep moving.
I am morning mist,
and the breathing of evening.
I am wind in the top of a grove,
and surf on the cliff.
Mast, rudder, helmsman, and keel,
I am also the coral reef they founder on.
I am a tree with a trained parrot in its branches.
Silence, thought, and voice.
The musical air coming through a flute,
a spark of stone, a flickering in metal.
Both candle and the moth crazy around it.
Rose, and the nightingale lost in the fragrance.
I am all orders of being, the circling galaxy,
the evolutionary intelligence, the lift, and the falling away.
What is, and what isn't.
You who know, Jelaluddin,
You the one in all, say who I am.
Say I am you.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.
Don’t let your throat tighten
with fear. Take sips of breath
all day and night. Before death
closes your mouth.
You are the only faithful student you have.
All the others leave eventually.
Have you been making yourself shallow
with making other eminent?
Just remember, when you’re in union,
you don’t have to fear
that you’ll be drained.
The command comes to speak,
and you feel the ocean
moving through you.
Then comes, Be silent,
as when the rain stops,
and the trees in the orchard
begin to draw moisture
up into themselves.
Who makes these changes?
I shoot an arrow right. It lands left.
I ride after a deer and find myself
chased by a hog.
I plot to get what I want and end up in prison.
I dig pits to trap others and fall in.
I should be suspicious of what I want.
Time's knife slides from the sheath,
as a fish from where it swims.
Being closer and closer is the desire
of the body. Don't wish for union!
There's a closeness beyond that.
Why would God want a second God?
Fall in love in such a way that it frees you
from any connecting.
Love is the soul's light, the taste of morning,
no me, no we, no claim of being.
These words are the smoke the fire gives off
as it absolves its defects,
as eyes in silence, tears, face.
Love cannot be said.
Time's knife slides from the sheath,
as a fish from where it swims.
Being closer and closer is the desire
of the body. Don't wish for union!
There's a closeness beyond that.
Why would God want a second God?
Fall in love in such a way that it frees you
from any connecting.
Love is the soul's light, the taste of morning,
no me, no we, no claim of being.
These words are the smoke the fire gives off
as it absolves its defects,
as eyes in silence, tears, face.
Love cannot be said.
Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence.
Existence:
Existence:
This place made from our love for that emptiness!
Yet somehow comes emptiness,
this existence goes.
Praise to that happening, over and over!
For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness.
Then one swoop, one swing of the arm,
that work is over.
Free of who I was, free of presence, free of dangerous fear, hope,
free of mountainous wanting.
free of mountainous wanting.
The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece of straw
blown off into emptiness.
blown off into emptiness.
These words I'm saying so much begin to lose meaning:
Existence, emptiness, mountain, straw:
Words and what they try to say swept
out the window, down the slant of the roof.
An empty mirror and your worst destructive habits,
when they are held up to each other,
that’s when the real making begins.
That’s what art and crafting are.
A tailor needs a torn garment to practice his expertise.
The trunks of trees must be cut and cut again
so they can be used for fine carpentry.
Your doctor must have a broken leg to doctor.
Your defects are the ways that glory gets manifested.
There are two kinds of intelligence: One acquired,
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.
With such intelligence you rise in the world.
You get ranked ahead or behind others
in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablets.
There is another kind of tablet, one
already completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness
in the center of the chest. This other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid,
and it doesn't move from outside to inside
through the conduits of plumbing-learning.
This second knowing is a fountainhead
from within you, moving out.
If you want to learn theory,
talk with theoreticians. That way is oral.
When you learn a craft, practice it.
That learning comes through the hands.
If you want dervishhood, spiritual poverty
and emptiness, you must be friends with a teacher.
Talking about it, reading books,
and doing practices don’t help.
Soul receives from soul that knowing.
The mystery of absence
may be living in your pilgrim heart,
and yet the knowing of it may not yet be yours.
Wait for the illuminated openness,
as though your chest were filling with light,
as when God said, "Did we not expand you?"
Don’t look for it outside yourself.
You are the source of milk. Don’t milk others!
There is a fountain inside you.
Don’t walk around with an empty bucket.
You have a channel into the ocean,
yet you ask for water from a little pool.
Beg for the love expansion.
Meditate only on THAT.
The Qur’an says, And He is with you. (57:4)
There is a basket of fresh bread on your head,
yet you go door to door asking for crusts.
Knock on the inner door, no other.
Sloshing knee-deep in fresh river-water,
yet you keep asking for other people’s water-bags.
Water is everywhere around you, but you see
only barriers that keep you from water.
The horse is beneath the rider’s thighs,
and still you ask, “Where’s my horse?”
Under you! Can’t you see?
“Yes I can see, but whoever saw such a horse?”
Mad with thirst, you can’t drink from the stream
running close by your face.
You are like a pearl on the deep bottom
wondering inside the shell,
Where’s the ocean?
Those mental questionings form the barrier.
Stay bewildered inside God, and only that.
talk with theoreticians. That way is oral.
When you learn a craft, practice it.
That learning comes through the hands.
If you want dervishhood, spiritual poverty
and emptiness, you must be friends with a teacher.
Talking about it, reading books,
and doing practices don’t help.
Soul receives from soul that knowing.
The mystery of absence
may be living in your pilgrim heart,
and yet the knowing of it may not yet be yours.
Wait for the illuminated openness,
as though your chest were filling with light,
as when God said, "Did we not expand you?"
Don’t look for it outside yourself.
You are the source of milk. Don’t milk others!
There is a fountain inside you.
Don’t walk around with an empty bucket.
You have a channel into the ocean,
yet you ask for water from a little pool.
Beg for the love expansion.
Meditate only on THAT.
The Qur’an says, And He is with you. (57:4)
There is a basket of fresh bread on your head,
yet you go door to door asking for crusts.
Knock on the inner door, no other.
Sloshing knee-deep in fresh river-water,
yet you keep asking for other people’s water-bags.
Water is everywhere around you, but you see
only barriers that keep you from water.
The horse is beneath the rider’s thighs,
and still you ask, “Where’s my horse?”
Under you! Can’t you see?
“Yes I can see, but whoever saw such a horse?”
Mad with thirst, you can’t drink from the stream
running close by your face.
You are like a pearl on the deep bottom
wondering inside the shell,
Where’s the ocean?
Those mental questionings form the barrier.
Stay bewildered inside God, and only that.
A Sufi was wandering the world.
One night he came as a guest to a community of Sufis.
He tied up his donkey in the stable
and then was welcomed to the head of the dais.
They went into deep meditation and mystical communion,
he and these friends. For such people
a person's presence is more to learn from than a book.
A Sufi's book is not composed with ink and alphabet.
A scholar loves, and lives on, the marks of a pen.
A Sufi loves footprints!
He sees those and stalks his game.
At first, he sees the clues.
After a time he can follow the scent.
To go guided by fragrance is a hundred times better
than following tracks.
A person who is opening to the divine is like a door to a Sufi.
What might appear a worthless stone to others,
to him's a pearl.
You see your image clearly in a mirror.
A sheikh sees more than that in a discarded brick.
Sufi masters are those whose spirits existed before the world.
Before the body, they lived many lifetimes.
Before the body, they lived many lifetimes.
Before seeds went into the ground, they harvested wheat.
Before there was an ocean, they strung pearls.
While the great meeting was going on about bringing
human beings into existence, they stood up
to their chins in wisdom water.
to their chins in wisdom water.
When some of the angels opposed creation,
the Sufi sheikhs laughed and clapped among themselves.
Before materiality, they knew what it was like
to be trapped inside matter.
Before materiality, they knew what it was like
to be trapped inside matter.
Before there was a nightsky, they saw Saturn.
Before wheat grains, they tasted bread.
With no mind, they thought.
Immediate intuition to them is the simplest act
of consciousness, what to others would be epiphany.
Much of our thought is of the past, or the future.
They're free of those.
Before a mine is dug, they judge coins.
Before a mine is dug, they judge coins.
Before vineyards, they know the excitements to come.
In July, they feel December.
In unbroken sunlight, they find shade.
In fana, the state where all objects dissolve,
they recognize objects.
In fana, the state where all objects dissolve,
they recognize objects.
The open sky drinks from their circling cup.
The sun wears the gold of their generosity.
The sun wears the gold of their generosity.
When two of them meet, they are no longer two.
They are one and six hundred thousand.
The ocean waves are their closest likeness,
when wind makes, from unity, the numerous.
This happened to the sun, and it broke into rays
through the window, into bodies.
The disc of the sun does exist, but if you see
only the ray-bodies, you may have doubts.
The human-divine combination is a oneness.
Plurality, the apparent separation into rays.
Friend, we're traveling together.
Throw off your tiredness.
Let me show you one tiny spot of the beauty
that cannot be spoken.
Throw off your tiredness.
Let me show you one tiny spot of the beauty
that cannot be spoken.
I'm like an ant that's gotten into the granary,
ludicrously happy, and trying to lug out
a grain that's way too big.
We tremble, thinking we’re about to dissolve
into nonexistence, but nonexistence
fears even more that it might be given human form!
Loving God is the only pleasure. Other delights turn bitter.
What hurts the soul?
What hurts the soul?
To live without tasting the water of its own essence.
People focus on death and this material earth.
They have doubts about soul water.
Those doubts can be reduced!
Use night to wake your clarity.
Darkness and the living water are lovers.
Let them stay up together.
Use night to wake your clarity.
Darkness and the living water are lovers.
Let them stay up together.
When merchants eat their big meals
and sleep their dead sleep,
we night-thieves go to work!
Keep walking,
though there's no place to get to.
Don't try to see through the distances.
That's not for human beings.
Move within,
But don't move the way fear makes you move.
We are the mirror as well as the face of it.
We are tasting the taste this minute of eternity.
We are pain and what cures pain, both.
We are the sweet cold water and the jar that pours.
I want to hold you close like a lute,
so that we can cry out with loving.
Would you rather throw stones at a mirror?
I am your mirror and here are the stones.
though there's no place to get to.
Don't try to see through the distances.
That's not for human beings.
Move within,
But don't move the way fear makes you move.
We are the mirror as well as the face of it.
We are tasting the taste this minute of eternity.
We are pain and what cures pain, both.
We are the sweet cold water and the jar that pours.
I want to hold you close like a lute,
so that we can cry out with loving.
Would you rather throw stones at a mirror?
I am your mirror and here are the stones.
Hiding is the hidden purpose of creation.
Bury your seed and wait.
After you die, all the thoughts you had will
Bury your seed and wait.
After you die, all the thoughts you had will
throng around like children.
The heart is the secret inside the secret.
Call the secret language and never be sure
Call the secret language and never be sure
what you conceal.
It’s unsure people who get the blessing.
It’s unsure people who get the blessing.
Climbing jasmine, opening rose, nightingale song,
these are inside the chill November wind.
They are its secret.
these are inside the chill November wind.
They are its secret.
How did you discover mine?
Your laugh. Only the soul knows what love is.
This moment in time and space is an eggshell
with an embryo crumpled inside, soaked in
This moment in time and space is an eggshell
with an embryo crumpled inside, soaked in
spirit-yolk, under the wing of grace,
until it breaks free of mind to become
the song of birds and their breathing.
until it breaks free of mind to become
the song of birds and their breathing.
Spiritual experience is a modest woman
who looks lovingly at one man.
It’s a great river where ducks live
happily, and crows drown. The visible
bowl of form contains food that is both
nourishing and a source of heartburn.
There is an unseen presence we honor
that gives the gifts.
You’re water. We’re the millstone.
You’re wind. We’re dust blown up into shapes.
You’re spirit. We’re the opening and closing
of our hands. You’re the clarity.
We’re this language that tries to say it.
You’re joy. We’re all the different kinds of laughing.
Any movement or sound is a profession of faith,
as the millstone grinding is explaining
how it believes in the river!
No metaphor can say this,
Any movement or sound is a profession of faith,
as the millstone grinding is explaining
how it believes in the river!
No metaphor can say this,
but I can’t stop pointing to the beauty.
Every moment and place says,
“Put this design in your carpet!”
Imagine the phenomenal world as a furnace
heating water for the public bath.
Some people carry baskets of dung
to keep the furnace going.
Call them materialists, energetic, fire-stoking citizens.
One of those brags how he’s collected
and carried twenty dung baskets today,
while his friend has brought six!
They think the counting up at nightfall is where truth lies.
They love the smoke smell of dried dung,
and how it blazes up like gold!
If you give them musk or any fragrance
of soul intelligence, they find it unpleasant and turn away.
Others sit in the hot bathwater and get clean.
They use the world differently.
They love the feel of purity, and they have
dust marks on their foreheads from bowing down.
They are separated by a wall from those who feed the fires,
busy in the boiler room belittling each other.
Sometimes, though, one of those leaves the furnace,
takes off the burnt smelling rags,
and sits in the cleansing water.
The mystery is how the obsessions
of furnace stokers keep the bathwater
of the others simmering perfectly.
They seem opposed, but they’re necessary
to each other’s work: the proud piling up of fire worship,
the humble disrobing and emptying out of purification.
As the sun dries wet dung to make it ready to heat water,
so dazzling sparks fly from the burning filth.
heating water for the public bath.
Some people carry baskets of dung
to keep the furnace going.
Call them materialists, energetic, fire-stoking citizens.
One of those brags how he’s collected
and carried twenty dung baskets today,
while his friend has brought six!
They think the counting up at nightfall is where truth lies.
They love the smoke smell of dried dung,
and how it blazes up like gold!
If you give them musk or any fragrance
of soul intelligence, they find it unpleasant and turn away.
Others sit in the hot bathwater and get clean.
They use the world differently.
They love the feel of purity, and they have
dust marks on their foreheads from bowing down.
They are separated by a wall from those who feed the fires,
busy in the boiler room belittling each other.
Sometimes, though, one of those leaves the furnace,
takes off the burnt smelling rags,
and sits in the cleansing water.
The mystery is how the obsessions
of furnace stokers keep the bathwater
of the others simmering perfectly.
They seem opposed, but they’re necessary
to each other’s work: the proud piling up of fire worship,
the humble disrobing and emptying out of purification.
As the sun dries wet dung to make it ready to heat water,
so dazzling sparks fly from the burning filth.
Is there anything better than selling figs to the fig seller?
That’s how this is.
Making a profit is not why we’re here,
nor pleasure, nor even joy.
When someone is a goldsmith,
wherever he goes, he asks for the goldsmith.
The clouds build with what we share.
Wheat stays wheat right through the threshing.
How just do you feel when you load a lame donkey?
The world has some share in this cup.
That’s how it turns green.
Let the lean and wounded be revived in your garden.
How would the soul feel in the beloved’s river?
Fish washed free and clean of fear.
You drive us away, but we return like pet pigeons.
Ten nights becoming dawn flow in us
as a new kind of waking.
Shahabuddin Osmond joins the circle!
We will say the poem again so he can play.
There is no end to anything round.
That’s how this is.
Making a profit is not why we’re here,
nor pleasure, nor even joy.
When someone is a goldsmith,
wherever he goes, he asks for the goldsmith.
The clouds build with what we share.
Wheat stays wheat right through the threshing.
How just do you feel when you load a lame donkey?
The world has some share in this cup.
That’s how it turns green.
Let the lean and wounded be revived in your garden.
How would the soul feel in the beloved’s river?
Fish washed free and clean of fear.
You drive us away, but we return like pet pigeons.
Ten nights becoming dawn flow in us
as a new kind of waking.
Shahabuddin Osmond joins the circle!
We will say the poem again so he can play.
There is no end to anything round.
Doing prayer and meditation at a particular time,
fasting, and going on pilgrimage
are outward statements of inner intention.
Giving to charity and giving up jealousy
are ways to say how it is inside us.
Serving food and welcoming guests into your house
are actions meant to mean, I feel so close to you.
Any time you exert yourself by going somewhere,
giving money, or taking time to pray,
you are saying, There is a priceless jewel inside me.
Fasting says, I have not eaten
even what is permitted. I must want no connection
to what is not. Giving to the poor says,
I am distributing my own property.
Certainly, I will not steal from others.
There are, though, fowlers who throw out grain
to snare birds, and cats who pretend to fast,
fast-asleep, when they are really peeking
through eye-slits to ambush prey.
They give generosity a bad name.
But despite all the crookedness,
water comes from the star Arcturus
to wash even the hypocrites.
When our water here
becomes saturated with pollution,
it gets led back to the original water, the ocean.
After a year of receiving starlight,
the water returns, sweeping new robes along.
Where have you been? In the ocean of purity.
Now I'm ready for more cleaning work.
Give me your demons. I'll take them to sea.
If there were no impurity, what would water do?
It shows its glory in how it washes a face,
and in other qualities as well,
the way it grows the grass
and how it lifts a ship across to another port.
Every medicinal ointment derives essence
from water, as every pearl and every seed.
A river is a shop of salves,
food for the abandoned, movement
for those who are stuck.
When the river slows with the weight of silt
and corruption, it grows sad and prays,
Lord, what you gave me I gave others.
Is there more? Can you give more?
Clouds then draw up the river-water,
and dissolve it in to the ocean.
What this means is
we often need to be refreshed.
Mingling with surroundings, the soul falls ill.
It calls out to the first caller-out, Bilal,
revive us. Beat the drum that glides us along.
As the body stands at prayer,
the soul says, Peace, my friend,
then leaves for a while.
When it comes back, you don't have to do ablutions
with sand anymore or guess which way
to point the prayer rug.
Water is the story of how we are helped.
Hot baths prepare us to enter fire.
Only salamanders can go directly in
without an intermediary, salamanders and Abraham.
The rest of us need guidance from water.
Satisfaction comes from God,
but to get there you need to eat bread.
Beauty comes from the presence,
but those of us in bodies
must walk in a garden to feel it.
When this body-medium goes, we will see directly
the light that lives in the chest.
The qualities of water show
how we move inside grace.
fasting, and going on pilgrimage
are outward statements of inner intention.
Giving to charity and giving up jealousy
are ways to say how it is inside us.
Serving food and welcoming guests into your house
are actions meant to mean, I feel so close to you.
Any time you exert yourself by going somewhere,
giving money, or taking time to pray,
you are saying, There is a priceless jewel inside me.
Fasting says, I have not eaten
even what is permitted. I must want no connection
to what is not. Giving to the poor says,
I am distributing my own property.
Certainly, I will not steal from others.
There are, though, fowlers who throw out grain
to snare birds, and cats who pretend to fast,
fast-asleep, when they are really peeking
through eye-slits to ambush prey.
They give generosity a bad name.
But despite all the crookedness,
water comes from the star Arcturus
to wash even the hypocrites.
When our water here
becomes saturated with pollution,
it gets led back to the original water, the ocean.
After a year of receiving starlight,
the water returns, sweeping new robes along.
Where have you been? In the ocean of purity.
Now I'm ready for more cleaning work.
Give me your demons. I'll take them to sea.
If there were no impurity, what would water do?
It shows its glory in how it washes a face,
and in other qualities as well,
the way it grows the grass
and how it lifts a ship across to another port.
Every medicinal ointment derives essence
from water, as every pearl and every seed.
A river is a shop of salves,
food for the abandoned, movement
for those who are stuck.
When the river slows with the weight of silt
and corruption, it grows sad and prays,
Lord, what you gave me I gave others.
Is there more? Can you give more?
Clouds then draw up the river-water,
and dissolve it in to the ocean.
What this means is
we often need to be refreshed.
Mingling with surroundings, the soul falls ill.
It calls out to the first caller-out, Bilal,
revive us. Beat the drum that glides us along.
As the body stands at prayer,
the soul says, Peace, my friend,
then leaves for a while.
When it comes back, you don't have to do ablutions
with sand anymore or guess which way
to point the prayer rug.
Water is the story of how we are helped.
Hot baths prepare us to enter fire.
Only salamanders can go directly in
without an intermediary, salamanders and Abraham.
The rest of us need guidance from water.
Satisfaction comes from God,
but to get there you need to eat bread.
Beauty comes from the presence,
but those of us in bodies
must walk in a garden to feel it.
When this body-medium goes, we will see directly
the light that lives in the chest.
The qualities of water show
how we move inside grace.
The essence of darkness is light,
as oil is the essence of this light.
You are the origin of all jasmine, Narcissus,
and Irises to come.
You are sunlight moving through the houses,
David’s hand molding smooth chain mail,
David’s hand molding smooth chain mail,
September moon over the unharvested crop.
You set the grain in the husk.
You set the grain in the husk.
A rose torn open, my head not worrying about debt,
you, soul and body mortared together in bed,
you, soul and body mortared together in bed,
you saying, you are, you are,
then stopping to twist the strings to sweeten the voice.
When I give this body to the ground,
you will find another way.
you will find another way.
These words are an alternate existence.
Hear the passage into silence and be that.
Hear the passage into silence and be that.
Some souls have gotten free of their bodies.
Do you see them? Open your eyes for those
who escape to meet with other escapees,
whose hearts associate in a way they have
of leaving their false selves to live in a truer self.
I don’t mind if my companions wander away for a while.
They will come back like a smiling drunk.
The thirsty ones die of their thirst.
The nightingale sometimes flies from a garden
to sing in the forest.
Stay together, friends.
Don’t scatter and sleep.
Our friendship is made of being awake.
The waterwheel accepts water
and turns and gives it away, weeping.
That way it stays in the garden,
whereas another roundness rolls
through a dry riverbed looking for what it thinks it wants.
Stay here, quivering with each moment
like a drop of mercury.
Which is worth more, a crowd of thousands,
or your own genuine solitude?
Freedom, or power over an entire nation?
A little while alone in your room
will prove more valuable than anything else
that could ever be given you.
I have five things to say,
five fingers to give into your grace.
First, when I was apart from you,
this world did not exist, nor any other.
Second, whatever I was looking for was always you.
Third, why did I ever learn to count to three?
Fourth, my cornfield is burning!
Fifth, this finger stands for Rabia,
and this is for someone else.
Is there a difference?
Are these words or tears?
Is weeping speech?
What shall I do, my love?
So the lover speaks, and everyone around
begins to cry with him, laughing crazily,
moaning in the spreading union of lover and beloved.
This is the true religion.
All others are thrown-away bandages beside it.
All others are thrown-away bandages beside it.
This is the sema of slavery and mastery dancing together.
This is not-being. I know these dancers.
This is not-being. I know these dancers.
Day and night I sing their songs
in this phenomenal cage.
Look inside and find where a person loves from.
That’s the reality, not what they say.
Hypocrites give attention to form,
the right and wrong ways of professing belief.
Grow instead in universal light.
When that revealed itself, God gave it a thousand
different names,
the least of those sweet-breathing names being,
the one who is not in need of anyone.
That’s the reality, not what they say.
Hypocrites give attention to form,
the right and wrong ways of professing belief.
Grow instead in universal light.
When that revealed itself, God gave it a thousand
different names,
the least of those sweet-breathing names being,
the one who is not in need of anyone.
Notice how each particle moves.
Notice how everyone has just arrived here from a journey.
Notice how each wants a different food.
Notice how the stars vanish as the sun comes up,
Notice how the stars vanish as the sun comes up,
and how all streams stream toward the ocean.
Look at the chefs preparing special plates
for everyone according to what they need.
Look at this cup that can hold the ocean.
Look at those who see the face.
Look through Shams’s eyes into water
Look through Shams’s eyes into water
that is entirely jewels.
If you want what visible reality
can give, you’re and employee.
If you want the unseen world,
you’re not living your truth.
Both wishes are foolish,
but you’ll be forgiven for forgetting
that what you really want is
love’s confusing joy.
Gamble everything for love,
if you’re a true human being.
If not, leave this gathering.
Half-heartedness doesn't reach into Majesty.
You set out to find God,
but then you keep stopping for long periods
at mean-spirited roadhouses.
In a boat down a fast-running creek,
it feels like trees on the bank are rushing by.
What seems to be changing around us
is rather the speed of our craft
leaving this world.
can give, you’re and employee.
If you want the unseen world,
you’re not living your truth.
Both wishes are foolish,
but you’ll be forgiven for forgetting
that what you really want is
love’s confusing joy.
Gamble everything for love,
if you’re a true human being.
If not, leave this gathering.
Half-heartedness doesn't reach into Majesty.
You set out to find God,
but then you keep stopping for long periods
at mean-spirited roadhouses.
In a boat down a fast-running creek,
it feels like trees on the bank are rushing by.
What seems to be changing around us
is rather the speed of our craft
leaving this world.
Those who have reached their arms
into emptiness are no longer concerned
with lies and truth, with mind and soul,
or which side of the bed they rose from.
If you are still struggling to understand,
you are not there.
You offer your soul to one who says,
“Take it to the other side.”
You’re on neither side, yet those who love you
see you on one side or the other.
You say Illa, “Only God,”
then your hungry eyes see you’re in “nothing,” La.
You’re an artist who paints both with existence and non.
Shams could help you see who you are,
but remember, You are not your eyes.
into emptiness are no longer concerned
with lies and truth, with mind and soul,
or which side of the bed they rose from.
If you are still struggling to understand,
you are not there.
You offer your soul to one who says,
“Take it to the other side.”
You’re on neither side, yet those who love you
see you on one side or the other.
You say Illa, “Only God,”
then your hungry eyes see you’re in “nothing,” La.
You’re an artist who paints both with existence and non.
Shams could help you see who you are,
but remember, You are not your eyes.
What was said to the rose that made it open
was said to me here in my chest.
was said to me here in my chest.
What was told the cypress that made it strong
and straight, what was whispered the jasmine
so it is what it is, whatever made sugarcane sweet,
whatever was said to the inhabitants of the town of
Chigil in Turkestan that makes them so handsome,
whatever lets the pomegranate flower blush like a
human face, that is being said to me now. I blush.
Whatever put eloquence in language, that's happening here.
so it is what it is, whatever made sugarcane sweet,
whatever was said to the inhabitants of the town of
Chigil in Turkestan that makes them so handsome,
whatever lets the pomegranate flower blush like a
human face, that is being said to me now. I blush.
Whatever put eloquence in language, that's happening here.
The great warehouse doors open; I fill with gratitude,
chewing a piece of sugarcane, in love with the one
to whom every that belongs!
to whom every that belongs!
Aphrodite singing ghazals.
A sky with gold streaks across.
A stick that finds water in a stone.
A sky with gold streaks across.
A stick that finds water in a stone.
Jesus sitting quietly near the animals.
Night so peaceful.
Night so peaceful.
This is enough was always true.
We just haven’t seen it:
the hoopoe already wears a tufted crown.
Each ant is given its elegant belt at birth.
We just haven’t seen it:
the hoopoe already wears a tufted crown.
Each ant is given its elegant belt at birth.
This love we feel pours through us like giveaway song.
The source of now is here!
The soul: a wide listening sky
with thousands of candles.
When anything is sold, soul gets given
in the cash: people waiting at a door,
a ladder leaning on a roof, someone climbing down.
The market square bright with understanding.
Listening opens its amazed mouth.
Listening opens its amazed mouth.
When the ocean comes to you as a lover,
marry, at once, quickly, for God’s sake!
Don’t postpone it!
Existence has no better gift.
No amount of searching will find this.
A perfect falcon, for no reason,
has landed on your shoulder, and become yours.
What can I say to someone so curled up
with wanting, so constricted in his love?
Break your pitcher against a rock.
We don’t need any longer
Break your pitcher against a rock.
We don’t need any longer
to haul pieces of the ocean around.
We must drown, away from heroism,
and descriptions of heroism.
Like a pure spirit lying down, pulling its body over it,
like a bride pulling her husband
like a bride pulling her husband
for a cover to keep her warm.
Can you find another market like this?
Where, with your one rose
you can buy hundreds of rose gardens?
Where, for one seed
you get a whole wilderness?
For one weak breath, the divine wind?
you get a whole wilderness?
For one weak breath, the divine wind?
For sixty years I have been forgetful, every moment,
but not for a second has this flowing toward me
slowed or stopped.
but not for a second has this flowing toward me
slowed or stopped.
I deserve nothing. Today I recognize that I am
the guest the mystics talk about.
the guest the mystics talk about.
I play this living music for my host.
Everything today is for the host.
This is now. Now is.
Don’t postpone till then.
Spend the spark of iron on stone.
Sit at the head of the table.
Dip your spoon in the bowl.
Seat yourself next to your joy
and have your awakened soul pour wine.
Branches in the spring wind, easy dance of
jasmine and cypress.
Cloth for green robes has been cut from pure absence.
You’re the tailor, settled among his shop goods,
quietly sewing.
Don’t postpone till then.
Spend the spark of iron on stone.
Sit at the head of the table.
Dip your spoon in the bowl.
Seat yourself next to your joy
and have your awakened soul pour wine.
Branches in the spring wind, easy dance of
jasmine and cypress.
Cloth for green robes has been cut from pure absence.
You’re the tailor, settled among his shop goods,
quietly sewing.
Did you hear that winter’s over?
The basil and the carnations
cannot control their laughter.
The nightingale, back from his wandering,
has been made singing master over all the birds.
The trees reach out their congratulations.
The soul goes dancing through the king’s doorway.
Anemones blush because they have seen the rose naked.
Spring, the only fair judge, walks in the courtroom,
and several December thieves steal away.
Spring, the only fair judge, walks in the courtroom,
and several December thieves steal away.
Last year’s miracles will soon be forgotten.
New creatures whirl in from nonexistence,
galaxies scattered around their feet.
Have you met them?
Do you hear the bud of Jesus crooning in the cradle?
A single narcissus flower has been appointed
Inspector of Kingdoms.
A feast is set. Listen.
A feast is set. Listen.
The wind is pouring wine!
Love used to hide inside images. No more!
The orchard hangs out its lanterns.
The dead come stumbling by in shrouds.
Nothing can stay bound or be imprisoned.
You say, “End this poem here and wait for what’s next.”
I will.
Poems are rough notations for the music we are.
Philosophers have said that we love music
because it resembles the sphere-sounds of union.
We have been part of a harmony before,
so these moments of treble and bass keep our
remembering fresh.
remembering fresh.
Hearing the sound, we gather strength.
Love kindles with melody.
Music feeds a lover composure, and
provides form for the imagination.
Music feeds a lover composure, and
provides form for the imagination.
Music breathes on personal fire and makes it keener.
The waterhole is deep.
A thirsty man climbs a walnut tree growing next to the pool
and drops walnuts in one by one.
A thirsty man climbs a walnut tree growing next to the pool
and drops walnuts in one by one.
He listens carefully to the sound
as they hit and watches the bubbles.
A more rational man gives advice,
You will regret doing this. You are so far from the water
You will regret doing this. You are so far from the water
that by the time you get down to gather walnuts,
the water will have carried them away.
He replies, I am not here for walnuts.
I want the music they make when they hit.
You left ground and sky weeping,
mind and soul full of grief.
No one can take your place in existence
or in absence. Both mourn,
the angels, the prophets, and this sadness
I feel has taken from me the taste of language,
so that I can’t say the flavor of my being apart.
The roof of the kingdom within has collapsed!
The roof of the kingdom within has collapsed!
When I say the word you, I mean a hundred universes.
Pouring grief of water, or secret dripping
in the heart, eyes in the head or eyes of the soul,
I saw yesterday that all these flow out to find you
I saw yesterday that all these flow out to find you
when you’re not here.
That bright fire bird Saladin
went like an arrow, and now the bow trembles and sobs.
If you know how to weep for human beings,
weep for Saladin.
Your grief for what you've lost lifts a mirror
up to where you’re bravely working.
Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,
here’s the joyful face you've been wanting to see.
Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you would be paralyzed.
Your deepest presence is in every small
contracting and expanding,
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as bird-wings.
Don’t listen to anything I say.
I must enter the center of the fire.
Fire is my child, but I must
be consumed and become fire.
Why is there crackling and smoke?
Because the firewood and the flames
are still talking about each other.
“You are too dense. Go away!”
“You are too wavering. I have solid form.”
In the blackness those friends keep arguing.
Like a wanderer with no face.
Like the most powerful bird in existence
sitting on its perch, refusing to move.
Tonight is the night.
It's the creation of that land of eternity.
It's not an ordinary night,
it's a wedding of those who seek Love.
Tonight, the bride and groom
speak in one tongue.
Tonight, the bridal chamber
is looking particularly bright.
It's not an ordinary night,
it's a wedding of those who seek Love.
Tonight, the bride and groom
speak in one tongue.
Tonight, the bridal chamber
is looking particularly bright.
When we talk about the witness in our verse,
we talk about you.
A pure heart and a noble demeanor
cannot compete with your radiant face.
They will ask you what you have produced.
Say to them, except for love,
what else can a lover produce?
A pure heart and a noble demeanor
cannot compete with your radiant face.
They will ask you what you have produced.
Say to them, except for love,
what else can a lover produce?
An ant hurries along a threshing floor with its wheat grain,
moving between huge stacks of wheat,
not knowing the abundance all around.
It thinks its one grain is all there is to love.
moving between huge stacks of wheat,
not knowing the abundance all around.
It thinks its one grain is all there is to love.
So we choose a tiny seed to be devoted to.
This body, one path or one teacher.
Look wider and farther.
The essence of every human being can see,
and what that essence-eye takes in,
the being becomes. Saturn. Solomon!
The ocean pours through a jar,
and you might say it swims inside the fish!
This mystery gives peace to
This mystery gives peace to
your longing and makes the road home home.
Don't grieve.
Anything you lose
comes round in another form.
The child weaned from mother's milk
now drinks wine and honey mixed.
God's joy moves from unmarked box to unmarked box,
from cell to cell.
As rainwater, down into flower bed.
As roses, up from ground.
Now it looks like a plate of rice and fish,
now a cliff covered with vines,
now a horse being saddled.
It hides within these,
till one day it cracks them open
Part of the self leaves the body when we sleep
and changes shape. You might say, "Last night
I was a cypress tree, a small bed of tulips,
a field of grapevines." Then the phantasm goes away.
You're back in the room.
I don't want to make any one fearful.
Hear what's behind what I say.
Tatatumtum tatum tatadum.
There's the light gold of wheat in the sun
and the gold of bread made from that wheat.
I have neither. I'm only talking about them,
as a town in the desert looks up
at stars on a clear night.
Anything you lose
comes round in another form.
The child weaned from mother's milk
now drinks wine and honey mixed.
God's joy moves from unmarked box to unmarked box,
from cell to cell.
As rainwater, down into flower bed.
As roses, up from ground.
Now it looks like a plate of rice and fish,
now a cliff covered with vines,
now a horse being saddled.
It hides within these,
till one day it cracks them open
Part of the self leaves the body when we sleep
and changes shape. You might say, "Last night
I was a cypress tree, a small bed of tulips,
a field of grapevines." Then the phantasm goes away.
You're back in the room.
I don't want to make any one fearful.
Hear what's behind what I say.
Tatatumtum tatum tatadum.
There's the light gold of wheat in the sun
and the gold of bread made from that wheat.
I have neither. I'm only talking about them,
as a town in the desert looks up
at stars on a clear night.
If you pass your night and
merge it with dawn for the sake of heart
what do you think will happen?
if the entire world is covered with
the blossoms you have labored to plant
what do you think will happen?
if the elixir of life that has
been hidden in the dark
fills the desert and towns
what do you think will happen?
if a few humans find their lives
because of your generosity and love
what do you think will happen?
if you pour an entire jar filled
on the head of those already drunk
what do you think will happen?
go my friend bestow your love
even on your enemies.
if you touch their hearts
what do you think will happen?
merge it with dawn for the sake of heart
what do you think will happen?
if the entire world is covered with
the blossoms you have labored to plant
what do you think will happen?
if the elixir of life that has
been hidden in the dark
fills the desert and towns
what do you think will happen?
if a few humans find their lives
because of your generosity and love
what do you think will happen?
if you pour an entire jar filled
on the head of those already drunk
what do you think will happen?
go my friend bestow your love
even on your enemies.
if you touch their hearts
what do you think will happen?
You I choose, of all the world, alone;
Will you suffer me to sit in grief?
You are the cause if I am glad or melancholy.
My heart is as a pen in your hand,
Save what you show, what do I see?
Save what you will, what will have I?
Now I smell roses and now pull thorns.
You make grow out of me now a thorn and now a rose;
If you keep me that, that I am;
Who am I, what is my love and hate?
If you would have me this, I am this.
In the vessel where you give color to the soul
When you are manifest, I am of the faithful.
You were first, and last you shall be;
Make my last better than my first.
When you are hidden, I am of the infidels;
I have nothing, except you have bestowed it;
What do you seek from my bosom and sleeve?
You are the cause if I am glad or melancholy.
My heart is as a pen in your hand,
Save what you show, what do I see?
Save what you will, what will have I?
Now I smell roses and now pull thorns.
You make grow out of me now a thorn and now a rose;
If you keep me that, that I am;
Who am I, what is my love and hate?
If you would have me this, I am this.
In the vessel where you give color to the soul
When you are manifest, I am of the faithful.
You were first, and last you shall be;
Make my last better than my first.
When you are hidden, I am of the infidels;
I have nothing, except you have bestowed it;
What do you seek from my bosom and sleeve?
Someday our souls will be one
and our union will be forever.
I know that everything I give you
comes back to me.
So I give you my life,
hoping that you will come back to me.
Come to the orchid in Spring.
There is light and wine,
and sweethearts in the pomegranate flowers.
If you do not come, these do not matter.
If you do come, these do not matter.
and sweethearts in the pomegranate flowers.
If you do not come, these do not matter.
If you do come, these do not matter.
Thirst is angry with water.
Hunger bitter with bread.
The cave wants nothing to do with the sun.
This is dumb, the self-defeating way we've been.
A gold mine is calling us into its temple.
Instead, we bend and keep picking up rocks
from the ground.
Every thing has a shine like gold,
but we should turn to the source!
The origin is what we truly are.
I add a little vinegar to the honey I give.
The bite of scolding makes ecstasy more familiar.
But look, fish, you're already in the ocean:
just swimming there makes you friends with glory.
What are these grudges about?
You are Benjamin.
Joseph has put a gold cup in your grain sack
and accused you of being a thief.
Now he draws you aside
and says, you are my brother.
I am a prayer. You're the amen.
We move in eternal regions,
yet worry about property here.
This is the prayer of each:
You are the source of my life.
You separate essence from mud.
You honor my soul. You bring rivers
from the mountain springs.
You brighten my eyes.
The wine you offer takes me out of myself
into the self we share.
Doing that is religion.
The cave wants nothing to do with the sun.
This is dumb, the self-defeating way we've been.
A gold mine is calling us into its temple.
Instead, we bend and keep picking up rocks
from the ground.
Every thing has a shine like gold,
but we should turn to the source!
The origin is what we truly are.
I add a little vinegar to the honey I give.
The bite of scolding makes ecstasy more familiar.
But look, fish, you're already in the ocean:
just swimming there makes you friends with glory.
What are these grudges about?
You are Benjamin.
Joseph has put a gold cup in your grain sack
and accused you of being a thief.
Now he draws you aside
and says, you are my brother.
I am a prayer. You're the amen.
We move in eternal regions,
yet worry about property here.
This is the prayer of each:
You are the source of my life.
You separate essence from mud.
You honor my soul. You bring rivers
from the mountain springs.
You brighten my eyes.
The wine you offer takes me out of myself
into the self we share.
Doing that is religion.
You suppose you are the trouble
But you are the cure.
You suppose that you are the lock on the door
But you are the key that opens it.
It’s too bad that you want to be someone else
You don’t see your own face, your own beauty
Yet, no face is more beautiful than yours.
Deafened by the voice of desire
you are unaware that the Beloved lives
in the core of your heart.
Stop the noise and you will hear His voice in the silence.
The wine we really drink is our own blood.
Our bodies ferment in these barrels.
We give everything for a glass of this.
We give our minds for a sip.
Only sweet-voiced birds
are imprisoned.
Have you ever seen
Owls being kept in cages?
A night full of talking that hurts,
my worst held-back secrets.
Everything has to do with loving and not loving.
This night will pass.
Then we have work to do.
Soul is like a clear mirror;
the body is dust on it.
Beauty in us is not perceived,
for we are under the dust.
Do you pay regular visits to yourself?
Don’t argue or answer rationally.
Let us die, and dying, reply.
The tale of love must be heard from love itself.
For like a mirror,
it is both mute and expressive.
A secret turning in us makes the universe turn.
Head unaware of feet, and feet head.
Neither cares. They keep turning.
You suppose that you are the lock on the door
But you are the key that opens it.
It’s too bad that you want to be someone else
You don’t see your own face, your own beauty
Yet, no face is more beautiful than yours.
Deafened by the voice of desire
you are unaware that the Beloved lives
in the core of your heart.
Stop the noise and you will hear His voice in the silence.
The wine we really drink is our own blood.
Our bodies ferment in these barrels.
We give everything for a glass of this.
We give our minds for a sip.
Only sweet-voiced birds
are imprisoned.
Have you ever seen
Owls being kept in cages?
A night full of talking that hurts,
my worst held-back secrets.
Everything has to do with loving and not loving.
This night will pass.
Then we have work to do.
Soul is like a clear mirror;
the body is dust on it.
Beauty in us is not perceived,
for we are under the dust.
Do you pay regular visits to yourself?
Don’t argue or answer rationally.
Let us die, and dying, reply.
The tale of love must be heard from love itself.
For like a mirror,
it is both mute and expressive.
A secret turning in us makes the universe turn.
Head unaware of feet, and feet head.
Neither cares. They keep turning.
Look how desire has changed in you,
how light and colorless it is,
with the world growing new marvels
because of your changing.
Your soul has become an invisible bee.
We don't see it working,
but there's the full honeycomb!
Your body's height, six feet or so,
but your soul rises through nine levels of sky.
A barrel corked with earth
and a raw wooden spile
keeps the oldest vineyard's wine inside.
When I see you, it is not so much your physical form,
but the company of two riders,
your pure-fire devotion and your love for
the one who teaches you;
then the sun and moon on foot behind those.
how light and colorless it is,
with the world growing new marvels
because of your changing.
Your soul has become an invisible bee.
We don't see it working,
but there's the full honeycomb!
Your body's height, six feet or so,
but your soul rises through nine levels of sky.
A barrel corked with earth
and a raw wooden spile
keeps the oldest vineyard's wine inside.
When I see you, it is not so much your physical form,
but the company of two riders,
your pure-fire devotion and your love for
the one who teaches you;
then the sun and moon on foot behind those.
At every instant and from every side,
resounds the call of Love:
We are going to sky,
who wants to come with us?
We have gone to heaven,
we have been the friends of the angels,
And now we will go back there,
for there is our country.
We are higher than heaven,
more noble than the angels:
Why not go beyond them?
Our goal is the Supreme Majesty.
What has the fine pearl to do with the world of dust?
Why have you come down here?
Take your baggage back.
What is this place?
Luck is with us, to us is the sacrifice!
Like the birds of the sea,
men come from the ocean - the ocean of the soul.
How could this bird, born from that sea,
make his dwelling here?
No, we are the pearls from the bosom of the sea,
it is there that we dwell:
Otherwise,
how could the wave succeed
to the wave that comes from the soul?
The wave named, 'Am I not your Lord' has come,
it has broken the vessel of the body;
And when the vessel is broken,
the vision comes back, and the union with Love.
resounds the call of Love:
We are going to sky,
who wants to come with us?
We have gone to heaven,
we have been the friends of the angels,
And now we will go back there,
for there is our country.
We are higher than heaven,
more noble than the angels:
Why not go beyond them?
Our goal is the Supreme Majesty.
What has the fine pearl to do with the world of dust?
Why have you come down here?
Take your baggage back.
What is this place?
Luck is with us, to us is the sacrifice!
Like the birds of the sea,
men come from the ocean - the ocean of the soul.
How could this bird, born from that sea,
make his dwelling here?
No, we are the pearls from the bosom of the sea,
it is there that we dwell:
Otherwise,
how could the wave succeed
to the wave that comes from the soul?
The wave named, 'Am I not your Lord' has come,
it has broken the vessel of the body;
And when the vessel is broken,
the vision comes back, and the union with Love.
Don't go to sleep
this night
one night is worth
a hundred thousand souls.
The night is generous
it can give you
a gift of the full moon
it can bless your soul
with endless treasure.
Every night when you feel
the world is unjust
never ending grace
descends from the sky
to soothe your souls.
The night is not crowded
like the day
the night is filled
with eternal love
take this night
tight in your arms
as you hold a sweetheart.
Remember the water of life
is in the dark caverns
don't be like a big fish
stopping the life's flow
by standing in the mouth
of a creek.
Even Mecca is adorned
with black clothes
showing that the heavens
are ready to grace
the human soul.
Even one prayer
in the Mecca of a night
is like a hundred
no one can claim
sleep can build
a temple like this.
During a night
the blessed prophet
broke all the idols and
God remained alone
to give equally to all
an endless love.
this night
one night is worth
a hundred thousand souls.
The night is generous
it can give you
a gift of the full moon
it can bless your soul
with endless treasure.
Every night when you feel
the world is unjust
never ending grace
descends from the sky
to soothe your souls.
The night is not crowded
like the day
the night is filled
with eternal love
take this night
tight in your arms
as you hold a sweetheart.
Remember the water of life
is in the dark caverns
don't be like a big fish
stopping the life's flow
by standing in the mouth
of a creek.
Even Mecca is adorned
with black clothes
showing that the heavens
are ready to grace
the human soul.
Even one prayer
in the Mecca of a night
is like a hundred
no one can claim
sleep can build
a temple like this.
During a night
the blessed prophet
broke all the idols and
God remained alone
to give equally to all
an endless love.
I am the round sun.
To the bits of dust I say, Stay. To the sun, Keep moving. and the breath of evening. I am the morning mist, and the surf on the cliff. I am the wind at the top of a grove, I am also the coral reef they founder on. Mast, rudder, helmsman, and keel, Silence, thought, and voice. I am a tree with a trained parrot in its branches. Both candle and the moths crazy around it. The musical air coming through a flute, a spark of stone, a flickering in metal. I am all orders of being, the circling galaxy, Rose, and the nightingale lost in the fragrance. the evolutionary intelligence, the lift, and the falling away. What is, and what isn't. You who know Jelaluddin, You the one in all, say who I am.
Say I am You.
I regard not the outside and the words,
I regard the inside and the state of the heart.
I look at the heart if it be humble,
Because the heart is substance, and words accidents,
Though the words may be the reverse of humble.
How long will you dwell on words and superficiality?
Accidents are only a means, substance is the final cause.
And burn up utterly thoughts and fine expressions.
A burning heart is what I want; consort with burning!
Seizing my life in your hands,
you thrashed me clean
On savage rocks of eternal mind.
How its colors bled, until they grew white!
The Sea boils with passion for you,
You smile and sit back: I dry in your sun.
The clouds pour pearls at your feet
This smoke curling to heaven is its child.
A lightning from your love has pierced the earth
We were green: we ripened and grew golden.
We started sober: are love's startled drunkards.
The Sea terrified us: we learned how to drown.
Squat and earthbound, we unfolded huge wings.
You hide me in your cloak of nothingness
This love sacrifices all souls,
Reflect my ghost in your glass of being
I am nothing, yet appear: transparent dream
Where your eternity briefly trembles.
however wise, however "Awakened"
The friends of the one who slaughters his friends....
Cuts off their heads without a sword,
hangs them without a scaffold.
We are the guests of the one who devours his guests
Although by his gaze he brings death to so many lovers
Let yourself be killed by him:
he is the friend and kills gently.
is he not the water of life?
Never, ever, grow bitter:
Kills only kings near God and men free from passion.
Keep your heart noble, for this most noble love
We are like the night, earth's shadow.
the night with a sword soaked in dawn....
He is the Sun: He splits open
The man to whom is unveiled the mystery of Love
Exists no longer, but vanishes into love.
And watch its brilliance disappear before that blaze,
Place before the Sun a burning candle
The candle exists no longer,
it itself becomes sign....
it is transformed into Light,
There are no more signs of it,
You are my soul, my universe:
what do I have to do with
For me you are ever-flowing treasure:
the soul and the universe?
One minute, I am the friend of the wine,
what do I have to do with profit and loss?
I have come to this age of ruins,
another the friend of him who burns me.
so what do I have to do
I am sprung free of the whole world,
with time's melodrama?
I am terrified by the whole world,
I am drunk on union with you,
I am neither "hidden" no "apparent."
What do I have to do with existence or space?
what do I care about fate's bow and its arrows?
I need and want and care about no one else.
Since I am your prey,
I live at the bottom of the stream,
why go on staggering under
why would I go looking for water?
What could or would I say about this stream
that flows and flows?
I have given up existence,
why put up with the pretensions of the shepherd?
The burden of this mountain?
Since the wolf is my shepherd,
What abandon! What drunkenness!
You hold the cup in you hand
and glorious to the eye of the heart.
Blessed is the place you are,
Each atom, by your grace,
No one who has ever had a sign from you
is a universe, each drop of water a soul.
need worry again about "name" or "sign."
You have to dive, dive head first:
To find the place of splendor,
at the bottom of the Sea of truths
what do I have to do with feet that scurry?
What will I give to the toll-man?
With the sword of the One God
you have hacked a Path for us:
You have stolen all my clothes:
From your beauty ablaze like the sun,
contemplate love, contemplate friendship:
from the curls of your hair,
My heart has become ecstatic:
O my soul, hand me this brimming cup,
Do not weigh pain and misery,
And ask from joy all happiness, all security, all peace.
Do not mull over tyranny and neglect:
think of all those who have their eyes fixed on you.
Surname all grief 'grace':
transmute pain and anguish into joy
listen, and don't say a word.
Demand that security, that peace, demand them,
Choose the company of those withdrawn in love
Listen to those who open a path to you.
Glorious is the moment we sit in the palace,
You and I.
Two forms, two faces, but a single soul,
You and I.
The bird cries shower us with immortality
The flowers will blaze the moment we enter the garden,
You and I.
As we burn as the full moon itself,
You and I,
All the stars of heaven will run out to gaze at us,
The fire winged birds of heaven will rage with envy
While I am here in Konya and you in Khorasan;
In that place we laugh ecstatically,
You and I.
What a miracle, you and I,
entwined in the same nest
In this world and the next,
in an ecstasy without end.
What a miracle, you and I,
one love, one lover, one fire.
Suddenly, in the sky at dawn, a moon appeared,
Descended from the sky like a hawk
during the hunt seizing a bird.
It turned its burning gaze on me,
When I looked at myself, I could not see myself.
It grabbed me and flew with me high into heaven.
And when I traveled in this soul, I saw nothing but moon,
For in this moon, my body, by grace, had become soul.
All the nine heavenly spheres were drowned in this moon.
Until the mystery of eternal theophany lay open to me.
The skiff of my being drowned, dissolved,
And the Sea covered over with foam, entirely, in that Sea.
Then, that Sea broke up into waves,
Intelligence danced back, and launched its song,
clothed in a body.
And from each bubble of foam something sprang,
clothed in form,
Something sprang from each light-bubble,
Without the saving, redeeming help of my Lord,
Then each bubble of body-foam received a sign
from the Sea,
Melted immediately and followed the flow of its waves.
Shams-ul-Haqq of Tabriz,
no one can become the Sea.
No one can contemplate the moon.
Be helpless, dumbfounded,
Unable to say yes or no.
Then a stretcher will come from grace
to gather us up.
We are too dull-eyed to see that beauty.
That No will behead us
If we say we can, we're lying.
If we say No, we don't see it,
Beside ourselves, and only that, so
And shut tight our window onto spirit.
So let us rather not be sure of anything,
We shall be saying finally,
Miraculous beings come running to help.
Crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute,
With tremendous eloquence, Lead us.
We shall be a mighty kindness.
With every breath, the sound of love surrounds us, and we are bound for the depths o space,
without distraction.
Let's go there again, Master, We've been in orbit before and know the angels there. and more than angels. for that is our land. Yet we are beyond all of that Out beyond duality, different from this dusty world. We have a home, and it is Majesty. That pure substance is What kind of place is this? as we work at offering our lives. We once came down; soon we'll return. A new happiness befriends us The sweetness we breathe on the wind is from the scent of his hair, is from the light of his day. and the radiance of our thought His face once caused She couldn't endure the sight of him. The moon to split in two. Yet how lucky she was, she who humbly received him. Having seen that vision, Look into your heart and see the splitting moon within each breath. how can you still dream? it will be the time of union. When the wave of "Am I not?" struck, it wrecked the body's ship; when the ship wrecks again, The Human Being, like a bird of the sea, emerged from the ocean of the soul. for a bird born from the sea. Earth is not the final place of rest No, we are pearls of that ocean; wave upon wave arrive? All of us live in it; and if it weren't so, why would This is the time of union, The wave of bestowal has come. The time of eternal beauty. It is the time of luck and kindness; it is the ocean of purity. Whose face is pictured here? The roar of the sea is here. The morning of happiness has dawned. No, it is the light of God. this boiling ecstasy of the soul. Who is this shah or prince? Who is this ancient intelligence? They are all masks . . . and the only remedy is Many a pure head has been spilled A fountain of refreshment is in the head and the eyes - not this bodily head but another pure spiritual one. in the dust. Know the one from the other! Our original head is hidden, while this other is visible. that has no boundaries. Beyond this world is a world and draw some wine from our cask! Put your water skin away, brother, The clay jug of perception The sun appeared from the direction of Tabriz, has such a narrow spout. and I said, "This light is at once joined with all things, and yet apart from everything."
- Rumi's last poem on deathbed - ghazal/ode 2039
- Ah, what was there in that light-giving candle
- At night we fall into each other with such grace
- Body of earth, don't talk of earth
- By the God
- Come
- During the day I was singing with you
- Fasting
- God is "what is nearer to you than your neck-vein"
- How long will you say, "I will conquer the whole world"
- I drink stream-water and the air
- I lost my world, my fame, my mind
- I regard not the outside and the words
- I smile like a flower not only with my lips
- I'm neither beautiful nor ugly
- If a blow comes to you from Heaven
- If continually you keep your hope
- Inner Wakefulness
- Keep on knocking
- Like This
- Look at love
- Love is Here
- No end to the journey
- No One Here but Him
- Now comes the final merging
- On Love
- On the Night of Creation I was awake
- Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing
- Reason, leave now! You'll not find wisdom here!
- Sacrifice your intellect in love for the Friend
- Secret Language
- Secretly we spoke
- Seeking the Source
- Seizing my life in your hands, you thrashed me clean
- Shall I tell you our secret?
- Suddenly, in the sky at dawn, a moon appeared
- That moon which the sky never saw
- The Absolute works with nothing
- The beauty of the heart
- The glow of the light of daybreak
- The grapes of my body can only become wine
- The minute I heard my first love story
- The minute I'm disappointed, I feel encouraged
- The real work belongs to someone who desires God
- The Sun Must Come
- The Thirsty
- There is some kiss we want
- This love sacrifices all souls
- This moment
- Today I'm out wandering, turning my skull
- Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
- We are the mirror as well as the face in it
- What can I do, Muslims? I do not know myself
- What I want is to see your face
- Whoever finds love
- With Us
- You have fallen in love my dear heart
- You only need smell the wine
- Zero Circle
- A world with no boundaries - ghazal/ode 363
- You are closer to me than myself - ghazal/ode 2798
- On the day I die - ghazal/ode 911
- A gift for Shams - ghazal/ode 1620
- We've come again - ghazal/ode 3079
- Granite and Wineglass - ghazal/ode 2357
- I have a thirsty fish in me - ghazal/ode 1823
- I was dead, then alive - ghazal/ode 1373
- Those who don't feel this love - ghazal/ode 314
- I need a companion who isn't sour - ghazal/ode 119
- That Lives In Us
- The Way Things Should
- Love
- Love Has Nothing To Do With The Five Senses
- O Love
- O Lovers
- The Lovers
- Out Of Your Love
- In Love
- This Is Love
- Love Is The Water Of Life
- Love Makes
- The Privileged Lovers
- The Temple Of Love
- The Meaning Of Love
- Defeated By Love
- Love Is Reckless
- Love And Imagination
- Reason Says Love Says
- The Chance Of Humming
- What Was Told, That
- One Swaying Being
- Whoever Brought Me Here
- With Passion
- When the Rose is Gone
- The Agony and Ecstasy
- Light Up The Fire
- My Burning Heart
- Let Me Be Mad
- I Throw It All Away
- Draw It Now From Eternity's Jar
- Here I Am
- Soul Receives From Soul
- This We Have Now
- There Is A Way
- This Will Not Win Him
- The Seed Market
- You Personify God's Message
- Your Grief....
- The Springtime Of Lovers Has Come
- Sleep Of The Body The Soul's Awakening
- Light Breeze
- The Self We Share
- We Are As The Flute
- Behind The Scenes
- A New Rule
- Late, By Myself
- Shadow And Light Source Both
- O You Who Have Gone On Pilgrimage
- There Is A Community Of Spirit
- Not Intrigued With Evening
- This Aloneness
- An Intellectual
- The Taste Of Morning
- Who Is At My Door?
- I Am And I Am Not
- Two Friends
- One Whisper Of The Beloved
- I Have A Fire For You In My Mouth
- The Beauty Of The Heart
- Passion Makes The Old Medicine New
- In The Waters Of Purity
- Who Makes These Changes?
- I Have Been Tricked By Flying Too Close
- I Swear
- Until You Have Found Pain
- The Breeze At Dawn
- I See So Deeply Within Myself
- There Is A Life-Force Within Your Soul
- Moving Water
- Two Kinds Of Intelligence
- Last Night You Left Me And Slept
- Who Says Words With My Mouth?
- Bad Dreams
- In The Arc Of Your Mallet
- Not Here
- If You Show Patience
- Like This
- Let Go Of Your Worries
- If A Tree Could Wander
- In The End
- If You Want What Visible Reality
- I Am Part Of The Load
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Newly Channeled poems by Master Rumi
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