Maulana Rumi Online: 400 Rumi Quotes

"The essence of God is Love and the Sufi Path is the Path of Love. Love is to see what is good and beautiful in everything. It is to learn from everything, to see the gifts of God and the generosity of God in everything. It is to be thankful for all of God's bounties. This is the first step on the road to the Love of God. This is just a seed of Love. In time, the seed will grow and become a tree and bear fruit. Then, whoever tastes of that fruit will know what real Love is. It will be different for those who have tasted to tell of it to those who have not. 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...If invited to offer prayers in a Christian Church, a Muslim Mosque, a Jewish Synagogue, or a Hindu Temple of Idols, the Sufi is ready to do so, knowing that all people worship the same God, the Only Being, no matter what Name they use. Yet the Sufi's true House of Worship is the human heart, in which the Divine Beloved lives. Sufism is a religion for those who wish to learn religion from it, a philosophy for those wanting wisdom from it, a mystical path for any who would be guided by it to the unfolding of the soul, and yet it is beyond all these things. It is the light of life, which is the sustenance of every soul."

~Sufi Teachings of Rumi.

For more Rumi Poems on Jews, the Hebrew Bible and Jewish Prophets, please visit my related Post: Jews and Hebrew Bible in Rumi’s Poetry

Challenge Fear

1 - Run from what’s comfortable. Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious!

2 - Do not fear the future, nothing lasts forever.

Be Bold

1 - Do not be satisfied with the stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.

2 - Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.

Believe In Yourself

1 - You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.

2 - You are born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?

Have Gratitude

1 - Wear gratitude like a cloak and it will feed every corner of your life.

2 - Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

Take Action

1 - Why should you stay at the bottom of a well, when a strong rope is in your hand?

2 - Come, seek, for search is the foundation of fortune: every success depends upon focusing the heart.

Have Faith

1 - As you start to walk out on the way, the way appears.

2 - What you seek is seeking you.

Embrace Setbacks

1 - If you are irritated by every rub, how will you be polished?

2 - Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.

Look Inside

1 - Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

2 - Why are you so enchanted by this world, when a mine of gold lies within you?

3 - Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.

Learn From Suffering

1 - The wound is the place where the Light enters you.

2 - Yesterday is gone and its tale told. Today new seeds are growing.

Don't Be Concerned With What Others Think Of You

1 - Sing out loud like the birds sing, don't worry about who hears or what they think.

2 - Be with those who help your being. Sit only under a tree that is full of blossoms.

Do What You Love

1 - Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.

2 - Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull of that which you truly love.

There is nothing outside of yourself, look within, everything you want is there. You are that.
You yourself are what you are looking for. Raise your tent up to the sky. don't say: ''I can't''. Sure you can. Just do it!
Don't try to steer the boat. Don't open shop for yourself. Listen. Keep silent. You are not God's mouthpiece. Try to be an ear.
What matters is how quickly you do what your soul directs.
Lose yourself completely, return to the root of the root of your own soul.
Let go of your mind and then be mindful. Close your ears and listen!
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
The wound is the place where the Light enters you.
What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is your candle.
The cure for pain is in the pain.
Stand the pain. Escape the poison of your impulses. The sky will bow to your beauty, if you do.
Suffering is a gift. In it, lies the hidden mercy.
Look for the remedy inside the pain; since the rose came from the thorn, and the ruby from a stone.
Within tears, find hidden laughter. Seek treasures amid ruins.
When you feel a peaceful joy, that's when you are near Truth.
Respond to every call that excites your spirit.
Virtue cannot exist without temptation and difficulties to be overcome.
Truth lifts the heart, like water refreshes thirst.
Patience is the key to will. Listen to your heart.
The mind that tries to shape tomorrow beyond its capacities will find no rest.
A heart filled with love is like a phoenix that no cage can imprison.
Be with those who mix with God as honey blends with milk.
You are searching the world for treasures, but the real treasure is your own self.
Don't regret what's happened. If it's in the past, let it go. Don't even remember it!
Maybe you are searching among branches for what only appears in the roots.
When I think I am, I find myself worthless. When I think I am not, I find my value.
Prayer clears the mist and brings back peace to the soul.
Keep knocking, and the joy inside will eventually open a window. Look out to see who's there.
Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation.
Why should I seek? I am the same as He. His essence speaks through me. I've been searching all along for myself!
If light is in your heart, you will find your way home.
Has anyone ever produced a mirror of mud and straw? Yet clean away the mud and straw, and a mirror might be revealed.
Do not be satisfied with the stories being told, unfold your own myth.
Be quiet and tear the thorn from your heart. Uncover in silence your soul's own rose garden.
The world is a prison and we are its prisoners. Dig a hole in the prison wall and let yourself out.
There is a desert I long to be walking, a wide emptiness: peace beyond any understanding of it.
Suffering is a gift. In it, lies a hidden mercy.
Give up to grace. The ocean takes care of each wave 'til it gets to shore. You need more help than you know.
Lose yourself. Escape from the black cloud that surrounds you. Then you will see your own light, as radiant as the full moon.
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.
The most beautiful place on Earth is the center of your heart. This is where Life begins.
Be patient where you sit in the dark. The dawn is coming.
Do you think I know what I'm doing? I know as much as a pen knows what it's writing, or a ball guessing where it's going next!
Isn't it time you turn your heart into a temple of fire?
If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?
You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.
Oh heart, sit with someone who knows the heart; go under the tree which has fresh blossoms.
Remember God so much that you are forgotten. Let the caller and the called disappear, be lost in the call.
Kill the snake of desire (ego) in the beginning; or watch out: your snake will become a dragon.
Only from the heart can you touch the sky.
The world is in deep trouble, from top to bottom. But it can be swiftly healed by the balm of Love.
The whole business of love is to drown in the sea.
Watching my hand; He is moving it. Hearing my voice; He is speaking. Walking from room to room, no one is here but Him.
The rose's rarest essence lives in the thorns.
Since in order to speak, one must first listen, learn to speak by listening.
God has planted in your heart the desire to search Him. Don't look at your weaknesses, focus on the search.
Don't be fooled by my beauty. The light of my face comes from the candle of my spirit. All your suffering comes from desiring things that cannot be had. Stop desiring and you won't suffer.
This place is a dream. The garden of the world has no limits, except in your mind. Why lay yourself on the torture's rack of the past and future?
Last night my Teacher taught me the lesson of spiritual poverty: Having nothing and wanting nothing!
This is not reasonable. Reason cannot walk where this poem is going.
When ink joins a pen, then the blank paper can say something.
Either give me more wine or leave me alone.
Feeling lonely and ignoble indicates that you haven't been patient.
Search, no matter the situation. O thirsty one, keep on searching for water of life. Finally the time will come when you will reach the spring.
When someone criticizes or disagrees with you, a small ant of hatred is born in your heart. If you do not squash that ant of hatred at once, it might grow into a snake, or even a dragon.
If we come to anger and battle, it is the reflection of His wrath. And if we come to peace and pardon, it is the reflection of Who are we in this complicated world. If we come to sleep, we are His drowsy ones. And if we come to wake, we are in His hands.
If every tip of every hair on me could speak, I still couldn't say my full gratitude. When self-interest appears, virtue hides; a hundred veils rise between the heart and the eye.
Watch the man beating the rug. He is not mad at it. He wants to loosen the layers of dirt.
In love with life, my soul lives with subtle passion; each day a different house each night under the stars.
Your heart is the true mosque. Within your body is the place to offer your salutations to the Lord.
Happy the soul that sees its own faults.
We live in the world of dimensions but we belong to the world of non-dimensions, so close one shop and open another.
Very little grows on jagged rock. Be ground. Be crumbled, so wildflowers can come up where you are.
Speak a new language so that the world will be a new world.
I am Lost in God and God is found in me.
The soul has been given its own ears to hear things the mind does not understand.
A thousand half-loves must be forsaken to take one whole heart home.
The lion who breaks the enemy's rank is a minor hero compared to the lion who overcomes himself.
For would the sun not wander away in every night? How could at every morning the world be lighted up?
My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, and I intend to end up there.
Most minds do not live in the present and can stick a reasonable plan; most minds abruptly turn and undermine the chance of humming.
Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death.
And still, after all this time, the Sun has never said to the Earth, "You owe me." Look what happens with love like that. It lights up the sky.
But listen to me. For one moment quit being sad. Hear blessings dropping their blossoms around you.
A mountain keeps an echo deep inside. That's how I hold your voice.
Remember: The way you make love is the way God will be with you.
On a day when the wind is perfect, the sail just needs to open and the world is full of beauty. Today is such a day.
When someone is counting out gold for you, don't look at your hands, or the gold. Look at the Giver.
You think because you understand 'one' you must also understand 'two', because one and one make two. But you must also understand 'and'.
To be one with the Truth for just a moment, is worth more than the world and life itself.
With each passing moment a soul sets off to find itself.
Looking up gives light, although at first gives you dizzy.
We and our existences are really non-existence; you're the absolute being which manifests the perishable.
You are a lover of your own experience, not of me. You turn to me to feel your own emotion.
To deem oneself exalted is to claim co-partnership with God. As long as you have not died and become living through Him, you are a rebel seeking a realm for your co-partnership. When you have become living through Him, you are indeed He. That is utter Oneness, how could that be co-partnership?
In truth everything and everyone is a shadow of the Beloved: our seeking is His seeking and our words are His words.
The morning wind spreads its fresh smell. We must get up and take that in, that wind that lets us live. Breathe before it's gone.
When someone beats a rug, the blows are not against the rug, but against the dust in it.
Those times when I'm silent and still as the earth, The thunder of my roar is heard across the universe.
Launch me in the Sea of Love and let me sail.
Last night I learned how to be a lover of God: live in this material world and call nothing my own.
The lovers of God never run out of patience, for they know that time is needed for the crescent moon to become full.
It's good to leave each day behind, like flowing water, free of sadness. Yesterday is gone and its tale told. Today new seeds are growing.
Someone asked, "What is the Way?" I said, "This way is to abandon desires."
Who knows his or her soul knows his or her Lord.
This ego is hell, and hell is a dragon not diminished by oceans of water. It drinks down the seven seas, yet the heat of that man-burner does not become less. It makes a morsel out of a world and gulps it down. Its belly keeps shouting: Is there any more?
What intellectual warp and woof keeps you wrapped in blindness.
All of these are symbols -- I mean that the other world keeps coming into this world. Like cream hidden in the soul of milk, No-place keeps coming into place. Like intellect concealed in blood and skin, the Trace-less keeps entering into traces. And from beyond the intellect, beautiful Love comes dragging its skirts, a cup of wine in its hand. And from beyond Love, that indescribable One who can only be called That, keeps coming.
All creatures, day and night, make manifestation of God. Some of them know what they are doing and are aware of their manifesting, while others are unaware. However it may be, God's manifestation is confirmed.
We and our existences are non existences. you're Absolute Existence showing yourself as perishable things.
Moonlight floods the whole sky from horizon to horizon; How much it can fill your room depends on its windows.
Let go of your mind and then be mindful. Close your ears and listen!
Don't look to anyone for your needs, for the One who created you, waters you.
I said, 'First I know you, then I die.' He said, 'For the one who knows Me, there is no dying'.
Although you see the pit, you cannot avoid it.
Pull the thorn of existence out of the heart! Fast! For when you do, you will see thousands of rose gardens in yourself.
You must ask for what you really want. Don't go back to sleep. The door is round and open. Don't go back to sleep.
The fault is in the one who blames. Spirit sees nothing to criticize.
Why am I seeking? I am the same as he. His essence speaks through me. I have been looking for myself.
We can't help being thirsty, moving toward the voice of water.
Look past your thoughts, so you may drink the pure nectar of this moment.
The soul has been given its own ears to hear things mind does not understand.
The Beloved is with you in the midst of your seeking! He holds your hand wherever you wander.
Before death takes away what you are given, give away what there is to give.
Look for the remedy inside the pain; since the rose came from the thorn and the ruby came from a stone.
Lose yourself. Lose yourself. Then you will see your own light as radiant as the full moon.
After despair, many hopes flourish just as after darkness, thousands of suns open and start to shine.
I want to sing like birds sing. Not worrying who listens or what they think.
Yesterday, I was so clever; I wanted to change the world. Today, I am wise; I will change myself.
I learned that every mortal will taste death. But only some will taste life.
Every step of the way I will walk with you and never leave you stranded.
Be kind and honest, and harmful poisons will turn sweet inside you.
Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart, and that depends upon how much he has polished it. Whoever has polished it more sees more - more unseen forms become manifest to him.
I once had a thousand desires. But in my one desire to know you all else melted away.
Hardship may dishearten at first, but every hardship passes away. All despair is followed by hope; all darkness is followed by sunshine.
There is a loneliness more precious than life. There is a freedom more precious than the world. Infinitely more precious than life and the world is that moment when one is alone with God.
When one sense perceives the hidden, the invisible world becomes apparent to the whole.
When you lose all sense of self the bonds of a thousands chains will vanish.
Do not feel lonely, the entire universe is inside you.
Sufi mystics who are hidden in that ocean of light, their breath is all of darkness-shattering light.
When someone is counting out gold for you, don't look at your hands, or the gold. Look at the giver.
I searched for God and found only myself. I searched for myself and found only God.
Bring anger and pride under your feet, turn them into a ladder and climb higher.
What a relief to be empty! Then God can live your life.
Don't you know yet? It is your light that lights the world.
And if He bars against you all ways and passages, He will show you a secret way, which no man knows.
Once you conquer your selfish self, all your darkness will change to Light.
Put your thoughts to sleep, do not let them cast a shadow over the moon of your heart. Let go of thinking.
Take someone who doesn't keep score, who's not looking to be richer, or afraid of losing, who has not the slightest interest even in his own personality: he's free.
We wander from room to room Hunting for the diamond necklace that is already around our neck!
Birds make great sky-circles of their freedom. How do they learn it? They fall and falling, they're given wings.
To find the Beloved, you must become the Beloved.
Concern yourself not with the thief-like ego and its business. Whatever is not God's work is nothing, nothing!
Poverty is not for the sake of hardship. No, it is there because nothing exists but God. Poverty unlocks the door -- what a blessed key!
Lose yourself. Lose yourself. Then you will see your own light as radiant as the full moon.

The only lasting beauty is beauty of the heart.
Stop the words now. Open the window in the center of your chest, and let the spirits fly in and out.
The heart is the secret inside the secret.
Be watchful - the grace of God appears suddenly. It comes without warning to an open heart.
They say there is a doorway from heart to heart, but what is the use of a door when there are no walls?
We rarely hear the inward music, but we're all dancing to it nevertheless.
If you yearn for holy felicity, shed your arrogance and become a seeker of hearts.
As you live deeper in the heart, the mirror gets clearer and cleaner.
The only lasting beauty is the beauty of the heart.

Be silent. That Heart speaks without tongue or lips.

Why are you so afraid of silence? Silence is the root of everything.

The inspiration you seek is already within you. Be silent and listen.

Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence.

There is a voice that doesn't use words. Listen.

In silence there is eloquence. Stop weaving and see how the pattern improves.

Why do you stay in prison, when the door is so wide open. move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. live in silence!

let's keep silence but make our hearts move.

I closed my mouth and spoke to you in a hundred silent ways.

When I am silent, I fall into the place where everything is melody.

Listen; there's a hell of a good universe next door: let's go.

There is a Tower that Love builds, live there in silence.

Where the lips are silent. The heart has a hundred tongues.

Be a thirsty heart, search forever, without a break. Let this silence hidden in the deepest longing each of your words be the source.

Be quiet and tear the thorn from your heart. Uncover in silence your soul's own rose garden.

Silence, let the one behind your eyes talk.

Be wild and crazy and drunk with Love, if you are too careful, Love will not find you.
When you find Love, you will find your Self.
Wherever you are, and whatever you do, be always in love.
When in love, body, mind, heart and soul don't exist. Become this, fall in love, and you will not be separated again.
When you seek love with all your heart, you shall find its echoes across the universe.

Be foolishly in love, because love is all there is.
In every religion there is love, yet love has no religion.
Submit to love without thinking.
Believe in love's infinite journey, for it is your own, for you are love. Love is life.
I said to love "I'm dying in anticipation." Love said "That is where I want you. Always on the verge!"
Feed your heart on the love of God , that you may become immortal. And your face illuminated with divine light.
A heart filled with love is like a phoenix that no cage can imprison.
A lover only wants to be in love’s presence.
Remind those who tell you otherwise that Love comes to you out of its own accord,and the yearning for it cannot be learned in any school.
You feel the separation From the Beloved. Invite Him to fill you up, embrace the fire.
My life, my strength, my faith are in your hands. Launch me in the sea of love and let me sail.
Love is the energizing elixir of the universe, the cause and effect of all harmonies.
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
Gamble everything for love, if you are a true human being.
This is love: to fly toward a secret sky.
When the tears course down my cheeks, They are a proof of the beauty and grace of my beloved.
I once had a thousand desires, But in my one desire to know you all else melted away.
When the ocean surges, don't let me just hear it. Let it splash inside my chest!
Love is cure, Love is power, Love is the magic of changes. Love is the mirror of divine beauty.
When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.
Love rests on no foundation. It is an endless ocean, with no beginning or end.
When you find love you will find yourself.
Love exalts our earthly bodies to heaven, And makes the very hills to dance with joy!
Believe in love's infinite journey, for it is your own, for you are love. Love is life.
Come let's fall in love again, let's turn all the dirt in this world to shiny gold.
I have been a seeker and I still am, But I stopped asking the books and the stars. I started listening to the teaching of my Soul.
Fall in love in such a way that it frees you from any connecting.
Love is reckless; not reason. Reason seeks a profit. Having died of self-interest, Love risks everything and asks for nothing.
This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to let go and just live. to take a step without thought of feet.
The tale of love must be heard from love itself. For like a mirror it is both mute and expressive.
Whoever finds love beneath hurt and grief disappears into emptiness with a thousand new disguises.
When I am with you, we stay up all night. When you're not here, can't get to sleep. Praise God for these two insomnia!
Want to sing like the birds? sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.
This world is a mountain, in which your works are echoed back to you.
Nothing I say can explain to you Divine Love. Yet all of creation cannot seem to stop talking about it.
But love unexplained is clearer.
Be certain in the religion of love there are no believers or unbelievers. Love embraces all.
Poetry can b dangerous especially beautiful poetry, for it gives the illusion of having had the experience without actually going through it!
Come out of the circle of time, and enter into the circle of love.
A lifetime without Love is of no account. Love is the Water of Life. Drink it down with all your heart and soul!
Both light and shadow are the dance of Love.
Love has nothing to do with the five senses and the six directions: its goal is only to experience the attraction exerted by the Beloved.
Every moment is made glorious by the light of love.
God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches you by means of opposites, so that you will have two wings to fly, not one.
The lamps are different, but the light is the same.
Before death takes away what you are given, give away what there is to give.
I come to you without me. Come to me without you.
Believe in love's infinite journey, for it is your own, for you are love.
When you seek Love with all your Heart, you shall find its echoes in the universe.
Reason is powerless in the expression of Love.
Love is nothing other than finding the truth.
Feed your heart on the love of God , that you may become immortal. And your face illuminated with divine light.
Love calls - everywhere and always. We're sky bound. Are you coming?
In the slaughterhouse of love, they kill only the best, none of the weak or deformed. Don't run away from this dying. Whoever's not killed for love is dead meat.
Love is for vanishing into the sky.
What is it to know something of God? Burn inside that presence. Burn up!
I have been so drowned in Your Love's existence that my nonexistence is a thousand times sweeter than my own existence.
Go mad with Love, If sanity is what you want to find.
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.
Gamble everything for love, if you're a true human being.
In the house of lovers, the music never stops, the walls are made of songs and the floor dances.
Love is a mirror, it reflects only your essence, if you have the courage to look in its face.
Love is fearless in the midst of the sea of fear.
You transform all who are touched by you. Mundane concerns, troubles, and sorrows dissolve in your presence, bringing joy.
The fertile garden of love, as it is boundless, contains other fruits besides joy and sorrow.
Love is the energizing elixir of the universe, the cause and effect of all harmonies.
The pure heart is a spotless mirror in which images of infinite beauty are reflected.
Love risks everything and asks for nothing.
Love is the whole thing. We are only pieces.
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.
Be certain that in the Religion of Love there are no believers and unbelievers. Love embraces all.
Love is a river. Drink from it.
Would you become a pilgrim on the road of love? The first condition is that you make yourself humble as dust and ashes.
Oh, my friend, all that you see of me is just a shell and the rest belongs to love.
This Silence which causes you annoyance is uttering cries of love audible to the spiritual.
The lover is a king above all kings, unafraid of death, not at all interested in a golden crown.
Inhale nothing but love. Exhale all your hatred.
Your love lifts my soul from the body to the sky, and you lift me up out of the two worlds.
You are the Essence of the Essence, the intoxication of Love.
Whoever finds love beneath, hurt and grief disappears into emptiness with a thousand new disguises.
Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation!
Your essence is gold hidden in dust. To reveal its splendor you need to burn in the fire of love.

Faith brings relief to the heart from pain and suffering. Weakness of faith leads to despair and torment .
The rewards of a life of faith and devotion to God are love and inner rapture and the capacity to receive the Light of God.
It is certain that an atom of goodness on the path of faith is never lost.
When the world pushes you to your knees, you're in the perfect position to pray.
Whenever you are alone, remind yourself that God has sent everyone else away so that there is only you and Him.
On the way there is no harder pass than this: fortunate is he who does not carry envy as a companion.
Each moment contains a hundred messages from God. To every cry of "Oh Lord", God answers a hundred times: "I Am Right Here."
If you only say one prayer in a day, then say: Thank You Lord.
He (God) is Hidden and the Creator of all things; I desire the One who is manifest in everything!

Protect yourself from your own thoughts.
With each passing moment a soul sets off to find itself.
Who could be so lucky? Who comes to a lake for water and sees the reflection of moon.
The ego is a veil between humans and God.
Your name is upon my tongue. Your image is in my sight. Your memory is in my heart.
You were born with wings, why do you prefer to crawl through life?
Evil is not in not praying and not fasting. True evil is within the heart that can not forgive.
Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious!
Hardship may dishearten at first, but every hardship passes away. All despair is followed by hope; all darkness followed by sunshine.
Be like melting snow. Wash yourself of your own self.
Dance until you shatter yourself.
Where there is ruin, there is hope for treasures.
I looked in temples, churches, and mosques. But I found the Divine within my heart.
Be calm with those in duality. Speak sweetly and reasonably. Patience polishes and purifies.
Get rid of your talking and your books - it is far better to let Him be your book. All of Nature swings in unison singing without tongues listening without ears, what a blessing!
Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.
Be kind and honest and harmful poisons will turn sweet inside you.
Do not grieve over any joy that has gone forever, for it will return to you in another form, know that for sure.
Find the sweetness in your own heart, then you may find the sweetness in every heart.
Having two ears and one tongue, we should listen twice as much as we speak.
People of the world don't look at themselves, and so they blame one another.
To a frog that's never left his pond, the ocean seems like a gamble.
A life without love isn't a life.
Be with those who help your being. Don't sit with indifferent people, whose breath comes cold out of their mouths.
I wonder from these thousands of "me's" ...which one am I?
When the goodwill of hearts is with you, fountains of wisdom will begin to flow from within your own being.
In fact, my soul and yours are the same, You appear in me, I in you, We hide in each other.
Remembering Your scent wherever I saw a flower, I smelled it and tears began to pour.
As you start to walk out on the way, the way appears.
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.
You know how it is. Sometimes we plan a trip to one place, but something takes us to another.
There is a King who is aware of every mask you put on.
Wealth has no permanence it comes in the morning, and at night it is scattered to the winds.
I run from body. I run from spirit. I do not belong anywhere.
My soul wants to fly away when your presence calls it so sweetly. My soul wants to take flight, when you whisper, arise.
I know you're tired but come...this is the way.
I am nothing, yet appear: a transparent dream where your eternity briefly trembles.
I have a drop of knowing in my soul. Let it dissolve in your ocean.
If in the darkness of ignorance, you don't recognize a person's true nature, look to see whom he has chosen for his leader.
You that come to birth and bring the mysteries, your voice-thunder makes us happy. Roar, lion of the heart, and tear me open.
If you enter paradise looking for thorns, you will find none there but yourself.
Be like the sun for grace and mercy. Be like the night to cover others' faults. Be like running water for generosity. Be like death for rage and anger. Be like the earth for modesty. Appear as you are. Be as you appear.
Two there are who are never satisfied -- the lover of the world and the lover of knowledge.
I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door. It opens. I've been knocking from the inside.
And you? When will you begin that long journey into yourself?
Inside you there's an artist you don't know about.
All people on the planet are children, except for a very few. No one is grown up except those free of desire.
I, you, he, she, we, in the garden of mystic lovers, these are not true distinctions.
One of the marvels of the world: the sight of a soul sitting in prison with the key in its hand.
Purify your eyes and see the pure world. Your life will fill with radiant forms.
Do not grieve over any joy that has gone forever, for it will return to you in another form, know that for sure.
In the darkest of your moments, wait with no fear, since the water of life was found by the Prophet in the darkest caverns.
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?
Your lifelong task? To work with all the passion of your being to acquire an inner light.
He is the soul of my soul - How can I escape? But why would any soul in this world want to escape from the Beloved?
Do not break with the prophet of your time! Do not rely on your own skills and footsteps! Though you be a lion, if you travel the Path without a guide, you will be a self-seer, astray and contemptible.
Even if you do not reach His Essence, yet His remembrance has numerous effects upon you. You actualize tremendous benefits by invoking Him.
Let go of thought and bring it not into your heart, for you are naked and thought is an icy wind. You think in order to escape from torment and suffering, but your thinking is torment's fountain head. Know that the bazaar of God's Making is outside of thought.
His mental questionings form the barrier. His physical eyesight bandages his knowing. Self-consciousness plugs his ears.
Do you want yourself to be pure of defect? Then look toward him who isn't ashamed or afraid of speaking the truth.
I drank water from your spring and felt the current take me.
Thankfulness brings you to the place where the Beloved lives.
If there were no way into God, I would not have laid in the grave of this body so long.
Everyone is so afraid of death, but the real Sufis just laugh since nothing tyrannizes their hearts. What strikes the oyster shell does not damage the pearl.
I see my beauty in You.
There are no edges to my loving now.
Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.
Never lose hope, my heart, miracles dwell in the invisible. If the whole world turns against you, keep your eyes on the Friend.
There is a way between voice and presence, where information flows. In disciplined silence it opens; with wandering talk it closes.
The Prophets accept all agony and trust it. For the water has never feared the fire.
Kindness has the power to transform sworn enemies into firm friends.
I want your sun to reach my raindrops, so your heat can raise my soul upward like a cloud.
Those who pay attention to ways of behaving and speaking are one sort. Lovers who burn are another!
Close the language door, and open the window. The moon won't use the door, only the window.
The moon stays bright when it doesn't avoid the night.
Go my friend bestow your love even on your foes. If you touch their hearts, what do you think will happen ?
When you are with everyone but me, you are with no one. When you are with no one but me, You are with everyone.
A secret turning in us makes the universe turn. Head unaware of feet, and feet head. Neither cares. They keep turning.

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning is 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 are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing 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 beyond.

Be a lamp, a lifeboat, a ladder.
Help someone`s soul heal.
Walk out of your house like a shepherd.

Stay in the spiritual fire.
Let it cook you.
Be well-baked loaf and lord of the table.

Come and be served to your brothers.
You have been a source of pain.
Now you`ll be the delight.

You have been an unsafe house.
Now you`ll be the one
who sees into the Invisible.

I said this, and a Voice came to my ear:
'If you become this, you will be That!'

Then silence, and now more silence.
A mouth is not for talking.
A mouth is for tasting this sweetness.

Do you know what you are?
You are a manuscript of a divine letter.
You are a mirror reflecting a noble face.

This universe is not outside of you.

Look inside yourself;
everything that you want,
you are already that.

You were born with potential.
You were born with goodness and trust.
You were born with ideals and dreams.
You were born with greatness.
You were born with wings.
You are not meant for crawling, so don't.
You have wings.
Learn to use them and fly!

Work on your strong qualities
and become resplendent like the ruby.
Practice self-denial and accept difficulty.
Always see infinite life in letting the self die.
Your stoniness will decrease;
your ruby nature will grow.
The signs of self-existence will leave your body,
and ecstasy will take you over.

Be with those who help your being.
Don't sit with indifferent people,
whose breath
comes cold out of their mouths.
Not these visible forms, your work is deeper.

A chunk of dirt thrown in the air breaks to pieces.
If you don't try to fly,
and so break yourself apart,
you will be broken open by death,
when it's too late for all you could become.

Leaves get yellow.
The tree puts out fresh roots
and makes them green.
Why are you so content with a love that turns you yellow?

We gather at night to celebrate being human.
Sometimes we call out low to the tambourine.
Fish drink the sea,
but the sea does not get smaller!
We eat the clouds and evening light.
We are slaves tasting the royal wine.

We have fallen into the place
where everything is music.

The strumming and the flute notes
rise into the atmosphere,
and if the whole world's harp
should burn up,
there will still be hidden instruments
playing, playing.

This singing art is sea foam.
The graceful movements
come from a pearl
somewhere on the ocean floor.

Poems reach up like spindrift
and the edge of driftwood
along the beach
wanting, wanting.

They derive from a slow
and powerful root
that we cannot see.

Stop the words now.
Open the window
in the center of your chest,
and let the spirits fly
in and out!

A moment of happiness,
you and I sitting on the verandah,
apparently two, but one in soul, you and I.

We feel the flowing water of life here,
you and I, with the garden's beauty
and the birds singing.
The stars will be watching us,
and we will show them
what it is to be a thin crescent moon.

You and I unselfed, will be together,
indifferent to idle speculation, you and I.
The parrots of heaven will be cracking sugar
as we laugh together, you and I.

In one form upon this earth,
and in another form in a timeless sweet land.

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.

Hear this if you can:
If you want to reach the Beloved
You have to go beyond your own Self.
And when you finally arrive at the Land of Absence,
Be silent. Don’t say a thing.
Ecstasy, not words, is the language spoken there.

Let's get away from
all the clever humans
who put words in our mouths.
Let's only say what our hearts desire.

Every moment a taste of that beauty in our mouths,
another stashed in a pocket.
Impossible to say what: no cypress so handsome,
no sunlight, a lonely hiddenness.
Other pleasure gathers a crowd,
starts a fight, lots of noise there.
But soul beauty stays quiet.
His amazing whereabouts unknown inside my heart.

Last night,
my Teacher taught me the lesson of poverty:
having nothing and wanting nothing.

I am a naked man standing inside
a mine of rubies, clothed in red silk.
I absorb the shining and now I see the ocean,
billions of simultaneous motions
moving in me.
A circle of lovely, quiet people
becomes the ring on my finger.

Then the wind and thunder of rain on the way.
I have such a Teacher.

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 a 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.

I was a thorn rushing to be with a rose,
vinegar blending with honey,
Then I found some dirt
to make an ointment that would honor my soul.
Love said to me: “You are right,
but don’t claim these changes.
Remember, I am Wind.
You are an ember I ignite.

This we have now
is not imagination.
This is not grief or joy.
Not a judging state,
or an elation, or 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, 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 that 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.

In the early morning hour,
just before dawn, lover and beloved wake
and take a drink of water.

She asks, "Do you love me or yourself more?
Really, tell the absolute truth."
He says, "There is 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."

This is how Hallaj said, I am God,
and told the truth!

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.

Don’t go anywhere without me.
Let nothing happen in the sky apart from me,
or on the ground, in this world or that world,
without my being in its happening.
Vision, see nothing I don’t see.
Language, say nothing.

The way the night knows itself with the moon,
be that with me. Be the rose
nearest to the thorn that I am.

I want to feel myself in you when you taste food,
in the arc of your mallet when you work,
when you visit friends, when you go
up on the roof by yourself at night.

There’s nothing worse
than to walk out along the street without you.
I don’t know where I’m going.
You’re the road and the knower of roads,
more than maps, more than love.

Those who don`t feel this Love
pulling them like a river,
those who don`t drink dawn
like a cup of spring water
or take in sunset like supper,
those who don`t want to change,
let them sleep!

This Love is beyond the study of theology,
that old trickery and hypocrisy.
If you want to improve your mind that way,
sleep on!

I've given up on my brain.
I've torn the cloth to shreds
and thrown it away.
If you're not completely naked,
wrap your beautiful robe of words around you,
and sleep!

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 asks us to enjoy our life.
For nothing good can come of death.
Who is alive? I ask.
Those who are born of Love.

Love is reckless; not reason.
Reason seeks a profit.
Having died of Self,
Love risks everything and asks for nothing.

The agony of Lovers
burns with the fire of passion.
Lovers leave traces of where they've been.
The wailing of a broken heart
is the doorway to Love.

When in Love,
body, mind, heart and soul don't even exist.
Become this: Fall in Love,
and you will not be separated again.
Knock, and Love will open the door for you.
Vanish, and Love will make you shine like the sun.
Fall, and Love will raise you to the heavens.
Become nothing, and Love will turn you into everything.

Love is from the infinite
and will remain until eternity.
The seeker of love escapes
the chains of birth and death.
Tomorrow, when resurrection comes,
The heart that is not in love will fail the test.

Love isn't the work of the tender and the gentle;
Love is the work of wrestlers.
The one who becomes a servant of lovers
is really a fortunate sovereign.
Don't ask anyone about Love;
ask only Love about Love!
Love is a cloud that scatters pearls.

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?

Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absentminded.
Someone sober will worry
about things going badly.
Let the lover be.

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.

Because of your love,

I have lost all my sobriety.

I am intoxicated by the madness of love.
In the garden, I see only your face.
From trees and blossoms,
I inhale only your fragrance.
Drunk with the ecstasy of love,
I can no longer tell the difference

between drunkard and drink,

between lover and beloved.

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.

Because of your love

I have become the giver of light.
It is love that holds everything together,

and it is the everything also.
When the sweet glance of my love caught my eyes,
Like alchemy, it transformed my copper-like soul.

Your bright face is my day.
Your dark curls bring the night.
If you do not let me near you
I promise not to go to sleep nor to rise
Your magnificence has made me a wanderer.
Your charm has taught me the way of love.
I am the progeny of Abraham
I'll find my way through fire.

My heart is on fire.
In my madness, I roam the desert.
The flames of my passion devour the wind and the sky.
My cries of longing, my wails of sorrow
Are tormenting my soul.
You wait patiently, looking into my intoxicated eyes.
You accept my passion with the serenity of love.
You are the master of existence
One day I shall be a lover like you.

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 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 deceitful games.

They are the privileged lovers who create a new world
with their eyes of burning passion.

Dancing is not just getting up painlessly,

like a leaf blown on the wind;
dancing is when you tear your heart out

and rise out of your body

to hang suspended between the worlds.

I am your moon and your moonlight too.

I am your flower garden and your water too.
I have come all this way, eager for you
Without shoes or shawl.
I want to make you laugh.
To kill all your worries.
To love you and to nourish you.

I want to hold you close like a lute
So we can cry out with loving.
Would you rather throw stones at a mirror?
I am your mirror, and here are the stones.

In the orchard and rose garden
I long to see your face.
In the taste of sweetness
I long to kiss your lips.
In the shadows of passion I long for your love.

You are the essence of the essence,

The intoxication of love.
I long to sing your praises but stand mute
with the agony of wishing in my heart.

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.

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.

In my vertigo, in my dizziness,
in my drunken haze,

whirling and dancing like a spinning wheel,

I saw myself as the source of existence,

I was there at the beginning
and I was the spirit of love.

Behind the veils intoxicated with love,
I too dance the rhythm of this moving world.
I have lost my senses in my world of lovers.

When it's cold and raining, you are more beautiful.
And the snow brings me even closer to your lips.
The inner secret, that which was never born,
you are that freshness, and I am with you now.
I can't explain the goings, or the comings.
You enter suddenly, and I am nowhere again.
Inside the majesty.

Late by myself, in the boat by myself.
No light and no land anywhere cloud cover thick,
I try to stay just above the surface,
but I am already under and living in the ocean of your love.

I am 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.

Suddenly the drunken sweetheart
appeared out of my door.
She drank a cup of ruby wine and sat by my side.
Seeing and holding the lockets of her hair,
my face became all eyes, and my eyes all hands!

When I am with you, we stay up all night,
When you're not here, I can't get to sleep.
Praise God for these two insomnia
And the difference between them!

Sorrow prepares you for joy.
It violently sweeps everything out of your house,
so that new joy can find space to enter.
It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart,
so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place.
It pulls up the rotten roots,
so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow.
Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart,
far better things will take their place.

Whoever finds love beneath hurt and grief,
disappears into emptiness
with a thousand new disguises.

When you have indulged a lust, your wing drops off;
you become lame, abandoned by a fantasy.
People fancy they are enjoying themselves,
but they are really tearing out their wings
for the sake of an illusion.

You think of yourself
as a citizen of the universe.
You think you belong
to this world of dust and matter.
Out of this dust,
you have created a personal image,
but have forgotten
about the essence of your true origin.

The garden of Love is green without limit
and yields many fruits other than sorrow or joy.
Love is beyond either condition:
without spring, without autumn, it is always fresh.

This is how I would die
into the love I have for you:
Like pieces of cloud dissolving in sunlight.

You bewilder us with your grace,
all evils transformed into goodness.
You are the master alchemist.
You light the fire of love in earth and sky,
in the heart and soul of every being.
Through your loving,
existence and non-existence merge.
All opposites unite.
All that is profane becomes sacred again.

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.

When you find yourself with the Beloved,
embracing for one breath,
In that moment you will find your true destiny.
Don't spoil that precious moment.
Moments like that are very, very rare.

Birds make great sky-circles of their freedom.
How do they learn it?
They fall and falling,
They're given wings.

You wander from room to room
Hunting for the diamond necklace
That is already around your neck!

When you go through a hard period,
When everything seems to oppose you,
When you feel you cannot even bear
one more minute,
NEVER GIVE UP!
Because it is the time and place
that the course will divert!

Something opens our wings.
Something makes boredom and hurt disappear.
Someone fills the cup in front of us.
We taste only sacredness.

You seek knowledge from books.
What a shame!
You are an ocean of knowledge
Hidden in a dew drop.

Study me as much as you like, you will never know me,
for I differ in a hundred ways from what you see me to be.
Put yourself behind my eyes and see me as I see myself,
for I have chosen to dwell in a place you cannot see.

I have phrases and whole pages memorized,
but nothing can be told of love.
You must wait until you and I are living together.
In the conversation we'll have then...be patient...then.

Love is the Water of Life.
Everything other than love for the most beautiful God
though it be sugar- eating.
What is agony of the spirit?
To advance toward death without seizing hold of the Water of Life.

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.

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.

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.

The lover is a king above all kings,
unafraid of death, not at all interested in a golden crown.
The dervish has a pearl concealed under his patched cloak.
Why should he go begging door to door?

Through Love, bitter becomes sweet.
Through Love, copper becomes gold.
Through Love, dregs becomes wine.
Through Love, pain becomes remedy.
Through Love, dead becomes alive.
Through Love, king becomes slave!

Love is the One who masters all things;
I am mastered totally by Love.
They will ask you what you have produced.
Say to them: Except for Love,
what else can a Lover produce?

There is something in us
That has nothing to do with night and day,
diamonds which come from no earthly mine.
If the sun were not in love, it would have no brightness,
the side of the hill no grass on it.
The ocean would come to rest somewhere.

With passion pray.
With passion work.
With passion make love.
With passion eat and drink and dance and play.
Why look like a dead fish
In this bottomless Ocean of God?

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.

I desire you more than food or drink.

My body my senses my mind hunger for your taste.
I can sense your presence in my heart

though you belong to all the world.

I wait with silent passion for one gesture,

one glance from you.

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.

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.

When your chest is free of your limiting ego,
Then you will see the ageless Beloved.
You cannot see yourself without a mirror;
Look at the Beloved,
He is the brightest mirror.

Are you searching for the river of your soul?

Then come out of your own prison.
Leave the stream and join the river
that flows into the ocean.

We are the mirror as well as the face in 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.

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.

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.

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.

The same wind that uproots trees makes the grass shine.

The lordly wind loves

the weakness and the lowness of grasses.
Never brag of being strong.
The axe doesn't worry how thick the branches are.

It cuts them to pieces. But not the leaves.
It leaves the leaves alone.

In truth everything and everyone

is a shadow of the Beloved.

Our seeking is His seeking

and our words are His words.
We search for Him here and there,

while looking right at Him.

Sitting by His side, we ask:
'O Beloved, where is the Beloved?'

Everyone is so afraid of death,

but the real Sufis just laugh:
nothing tyrannizes their hearts.
What strikes the oyster shell doesn't damage the pearl.

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 or Eve or any origin story.
My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless.
Neither body nor soul, as I belong to the Beloved.
I have seen the two worlds as one and that one call to and know,
first, last, outer, inner, only that breath breathing human being.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing

there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When your soul lies down in that grass

the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase "each other"

don't make any sense.

Go my friend

Bestow your love
Even on your foes.
If you touch their hearts
What do you think will happen?

Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.
There are hundreds of ways
to kneel and kiss the ground.

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.

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 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.

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.

Soul of all souls, Life of all life – you are That.
Seen and unseen, moving and unmoving – you are That.
The road that leads to the City is endless;
Go without head and feet
and you’ll already be there.
What else could you be? – you are That.

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?

If anyone asks you

how the perfect satisfaction
of all our sexual wanting will look,
lift your face and say,
Like this.

When someone mentions the gracefulness
of the night sky, climb up on the roof
and dance and say,
Like this.

If anyone wants to know what spirit is,
or what "God's fragrance" means,
lean your head toward him or her.
Keep your face there close.
Like this.

When someone quotes the old poetic image
about clouds gradually uncovering the moon,
slowly loosen knot by knot the strings
of your robe.
Like this.

If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the dead,
don't try to explain the miracle.
Kiss me on the lips.
Like this. Like this.

The soul sometimes leaves the body, then returns.
When someone doesn't believe that,
walk back into my house.
Like this.

When lovers moan,
they're telling our story.
Like this.

I am a sky where spirits live.
Stare into this deepening blue,
while the breeze says a secret.
Like this.

When someone asks what there is to do,
light the candle in his hand.
Like this.

How did Joseph's scent come to Jacob?
Huuuuu.
How did Jacob's sight return?
Huuuu.
A little wind cleans the eyes.
Like this.

When a Shams comes back from Tabriz,
he'll put just his head around the edge

of the door to surprise us.
Like this.

I don't get tired of you.

Don't grow weary
of being compassionate toward me!

All this thirst equipment
must surely be tired of me,
the water jar, the water carrier.

I have a thirsty fish in me
that can never find enough
of what it's thirsty for!

Show me the way to the ocean!
Break these half-measures,
these small containers.

All this fantasy and grief.

Let my house be drowned in the wave
that rose last night in the courtyard
hidden in the center of my chest.

Joseph fell like the moon into my well.
The harvest I expected was washed away.
But no matter.

A fire has risen above my tombstone hat.
I don't want learning, or dignity,
or respectability.

I want this music and this dawn
and the warmth of your cheek against mine.

The grief-armies assemble,
but I'm not going with them.

This is how it always is
when I finish a poem.

A great silence comes over me,
and I wonder why I ever thought
to use language.

Whose idea was this,

to have the lover visible
and the beloved invisible?

So many people have died for their desiring
because of this. The lover cannot kiss
the lips he wants, so he bites himself!

Satisfaction is always two bow-shots away,
and yet something in the soul
prefers this unreachable Lover
to anyone reachable.

This being locked-in,
is better than having the keys
to the consolation-house.

The Beloved`s rejection is wanted more
than anyone else`s acceptance.

World happiness is nothing.
Look for what Bestami had, for
what Sanai and Attar wrote of.

A beautiful meal looks delicious.
Then one night passes, and the food passes
through you, becoming repellent filth.

Eat Love-food.
Suckle the toes of a Lion
like the baby Abraham did in the cave.

But you should put away what you learned
as a fetus in your cave, that need for blood.

There is a tall tower that Love builds.
Live there in Silence.

The One who knows all secrets
is here now, nearer
than your jugular vein.

People want you to be happy.

Don't keep serving them your pain!
If you could untie your wings

and free your soul of jealousy,
You and everyone around you

would fly up like doves.

The world's flattery and hypocrisy is a sweet morsel.

Eat less of it, for it is full of fire.
Its fire is hidden while its taste is manifest,

but its smoke becomes visible in the end.

Be empty of worrying.

Think of who created thought!
Why do you stay in prison
When the door is so wide open?

Drum sound rises on the air,

its throb, my heart.
A voice inside the beat says,

'I know you're tired,
but come. This is the way.'

I, You, He, She, We,

In the garden of mystic lovers,

these are not true distinctions.

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 the language that tries to say it.
You're joy.

We're all the different kinds of laughing.

This is how a human being can change:

there’s a worm addicted to eating
grape leaves.

Suddenly he wakes up,
call it grace, whatever, something
wakes him, and he’s no longer
a worm.

He’s the entire vineyard,
and the orchard too, the fruit, the trunks,
a growing wisdom and joy
that doesn't need to devour.

There is a way between voice and presence,

where information flows.
In disciplined silence it opens;
with wandering talk it closes.

There is loneliness more precious than life.

There is freedom more precious than the world.
Infinitely more precious than life and the world,
is the moment when you are alone with God.













"Rumi’s poetry is divided into various categories: the quatrains (rubayat) and odes (ghazal) of the Divan, and the six books of the Mathnawi or Masnavi. The prose works are divided into the Discourses, the Letters, and the Seven Sermons. Rumi's works were recorded, collected and compiled during his lifetime and after his death, by his son, friends and students; particularly his much-loved last disciple, Husamuddin Chelebi to whom Rumi had dedicated his magnum opus, Masnavi, as Husami Namah or the Book of Husam.



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 Perfection (God). Love, compassion, tolerance, respect for, openness to, acceptance of the other in their otherness; and interfaith dialogue are fundamentals of Rumi's thought and practice. 


The general theme of Rumi's thought, like that of other mystic and Sufi poets of Persian literature, is essentially that of the Sufi concept of Towheed – توحید - Ultimate mystical union of a Sufi mystic lover with Beloved (God) –  from Whom he or she has been cut off and become aloof – thus the lifelong longing and desire of the seeker to annihilate Self and become One with the One and Only (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. 


The main theme and message of Rumi's thoughts and teachings is the Love of God and His creatures. The focus of Rumi's philosophy is humanity and his objective is to achieve and to help others reach the state of perfect human being. Rumi founded the Mevlevi Sufi mystic order, commonly known as the "Whirling Dervishes" and created the Sema rite, a ritualistic sacred dance to symbolically seek the divine truth and maturity. Rumi's message and teachings continue to inspire people from all religions and cultures today and show us how to live together in peace and harmony. 


The world of Rumi is not exclusive, but is rather the highest state of a human being - namely, a fully evolved human. Rumi offends no one and includes everyone, as a perfect human being who is in search of love, truth and the unity of the human soul. Rumi's very broad appeal, highly advanced thinking, humanism and open heart and mind may derive from his genuinely cosmopolitan character, as during his lifetime he enjoyed exceptionally good relations with people of diverse social, cultural and religious backgrounds. Rumi was familiar with the core message of all of them and therefore was appreciated by believers of many religions. 


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 scholars who've studied Rumi admit that there was no more beautiful tribute to Rumi's universality than his funeral, a 40-day marathon of grieving attended by distraught and weeping Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and Zoroastrians who mourned in such a manner that one would have believed that Rumi belonged to each one of them."

400 Rumi Quotes

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