santi, shanti, shanti

. 

The source is within you, 
And this whole world is pouring from it. 

The source is full,
And it’s waters are overflowing. 

Do not grieve, drink your fill,
Don’t think it will ever run dry, this endless ocean.


—Rumi 

.

be foolishly in love

.

A spirit that lives in this world
and does not wear the shirt of love,
such an existence is a deep disgrace.
Be foolishly in love,
because love is all there is.

There is no way into presence
except through a love exchange.
If someone asks, But what is love?
answer, Dissolving the will.

True freedom comes to those
who have escaped the questions
of freewill and fate.
Love is an emperor.
The two worlds play across him.
He barely notices their tumbling game.

Love and lover live in eternity.
Other desires are substitutes
for that way of being.
How long do you lay embracing a corpse?
Love rather the soul, which cannot be held.

Anything born in spring dies in the fall,
but love is not seasonal.
With wine pressed from grapes,
expect a hangover.
But this love path has no expectations.

You are uneasy riding the body?
Dismount. Travel lighter.
Wings will be given.
Be clear like a mirror
reflecting nothing.

Be clean of pictures and the worry
that comes with images.
Gaze into what is not ashamed
or afraid of any truth.
Contain all human faces in your own
without any judgment of them.

Be pure emptiness.
What is inside that? you ask.
Silence is all I can say.
Lovers have some secrets
That they keep.

.    .    .

   

Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, 

absentminded. Someone sober

will worry about events going badly. 

Let the lover be.


—Rumi
Unseen Rain: Quatrains of Rumi 

.

What Hurts the Soul?

 

.

We tremble, thinking we're about to dissolve
into non-existence, but non-existence fears
even more that it might be given human form!

Loving God is the only pleasure.
Other delights turn bitter.
 

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.

When merchants eat their big meals and sleep
their dead sleep, we night-thieves go to work.


—Rumi
Mathnawi I: 3684-3692
Coleman Barks version
Say I Am You

.

be(coming

.

I have already died all deaths, and I am going to die all deaths again, die the death of the wood in the tree, die the stone death in the mountain, earth death in the sand, leaf death in the crackling summer grass and the poor bloody human death. I will be born again, flowers, tree and grass I will be born again.


—Herman Hesse

 

.   .   .

There is a force within
Which gives you life –
seek That.

In your body
Lies a priceless gem – 
seek That.

O wandering Sufi,
if you want to find
the greatest treasure
Don’t look outside,
Look inside, and seek That.


—Rumi
Star/Shiva version

.

Jan van Ijken

.

listen

.

Listen for the stream that tells you:

die on this bank

begin with me

the way of rivers with the sea.


—Rumi

 

.

rush naked

 

 

.

 

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 thrist. A lover loves

death, which is God's way of helping us evolve from mineral
to vegetable to animal, the one

incorporating the others. Then animal becomes Adam, and the
next will take us beyond what

we can imagine, into the mystery to which we are all returning.
Don't fear death. Spill your

jug in the river! Your attributes disappear, but the essence
moves on. Your shame and fear

are like felt layers covering coldness. Throw them off, and
rush naked into the joy of death.


—Rumi
Mathnawi III: 3884-89
Coleman Barks version

.

Gregory Colbert
.

 

 

 

 

 

 

not to worry

 

.

Everyone is so afraid of death, but the real sufis just laugh: nothing tyrannizes their hearts. What strikes the oyster shell does not damage the pearl.

 

—Rumi

.

What hurts the soul?

 

.

We tremble, thinking we're about to dissolve
into non-existence, but non-existence fears
even more that it might be given human form!

Loving God is the only pleasure.
Other delights turn bitter.

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.

When merchants eat their big meals and sleep
their dead sleep, we night-thieves go to work.


—Rumi
Mathnawi I: 3684-3692
Coleman Barks version
Say I Am You

.

dear ones

.

Everyone is so afraid of death, but the real sufis just laugh: 

nothing tyrannizes their hearts. 

What strikes the oyster shell does not damage the pearl.

—Rumi

.

question

.

What is the deep listening? Sama is
a greeting from the secret ones inside

the heart, a letter. The branches of 
your intelligence grow new leaves in

the wind of this listening. The body
reaches a peace. Rooster sound comes,

reminding you of your love for dawn.
The reed flute and the singer's lips:

the knack of how spirit breathes into
us becomes as simple and ordinary as

eating and drinking. The dead rise with 
the pleasure of listening. If someone

can't hear a trumpet melody, sprinkle
dirt on his head and declare him dead.

Listen, and feel the beauty of your
separation, the unsayable absence.

There's a moon inside every human being.
Learn to be companions with it. Give

more of your life to this listening. As
brightness is to time, so you are to

the one who talks to the deep ear in
your chest. I should sell my tongue

and buy a thousand ears when that
one steps near and begins to speak.

—Rumi
from The Glance

Coleman Barks version

.

know this

 

.

Know that the outward form passes away,
but the world of reality remains forever.

How long will you play at loving the shape of the jug?
Leave the jug; go, seek the water!


—Rumi

. 

Death has nothing to do with going away. —Rumi

.
 

... we are only the rind and the leaf. 
 

The great death, that each of us carries inside, is the fruit. 

Everything enfolds it. 

—Rainer Maria Rilke

.

call and answer

.

A dragon was pulling a bear into its terrible mouth.
A courageous man went and rescued the bear.
There are such helpers in the world, who rush to save
anyone who cries out. Like Mercy itself,
they run toward the screaming.

And they can't be bought off.
If you were to ask one of those, "Why did you come
so quickly?" he or she would say, "Because I heard
your helplessness."
Where lowland is,
that's where water goes. All medicine wants
is pain to cure.

And don't just ask for one mercy.
Let them flood in. Let the sky open under your feet.
Take the cotton out of your ears, the cotton
of consolations, so you can hear the sphere-music.

Push the hair out of your eyes.
Blow the phlegm from your nose,
and from your brain.
Let the wind breeze through.
Leave no residue in yourself from that bilious fever.
Take the cure for impotence,
that your manhood may shoot forth,
and a hundred new beings come of your coming.

Tear the binding from around the foot
of your soul, and let it race around the track
in front of the crowd. Loosen the knot of greed
so tight on your neck. Accept your new good luck.
Give your weakness
to one who helps.

Crying out loud and weeping are great resources.
A nursing mother, all she does
is wait to hear her child.
Just a little beginning-whimper,
and she's there.
God created the child, that is your wanting,
so that it might cry out, so that milk might come.

Cry out! Don't be stolid and silent
with your pain. Lament! And let the milk
of loving flow into you.
The hard rain and wind
are ways the cloud has
to take care of us.

Be patient.
Respond to every call
that excites your spirit.
Ignore those that make you fearful
and sad, that degrade you
back toward disease and death.


—Rumi

.

a stone i died

 

. 

A stone I died and rose again a plant;

A plant I died and rose an animal;

I died an animal and was born a man.

Why should I fear? What have I lost by death? 


—Rumi 

.

A stone I died

.

A stone I died and rose again a plant;

A plant I died and rose an animal;

I died an animal and was born a man.

Why should I fear? What have I lost by death?


—Rumi

. . .

I do not fear death.

I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.


—Mark Twain

.

know this

.

Know that the outward form passes away,
but the world of reality remains forever.

How long will you play at loving the shape of the jug?
Leave the jug; go, seek the water!


—Rumi

. 

questions

.

How does a part of the world leave the world?

How can wetness leave water?


–Rumi

.

rare bird

 

.

In the end you vanished, gone to the Unseen.
Strange the path you took out of this world.
Strange how your beating wings demolished the cage,
and you flew away to the world of the soul.

You were some old woman’s favorite falcon
but when you heard the Falcon Drum
you escaped to the placeless.

You were a drunken nightingale among owls,
but when the scent of the rose garden reached you,
you were gone.

The bitter wine you drank with us left it’s headache,
but at last you entered a timeless tavern.

Like an arrow you went straight for the target of bliss,
straight to the mark like an arrow from a bow.

Like a ghoul, the world tried to deceive you
with it’s false clues-
but you ignored the clues,
and went straight to that which has no clue.

Now that you are the sun, what good is a crown?
and how do you tie your belt
now that you have no middle?

Heart, what a rare bird you are,
that in your yearning for heaven’s attention.
you flew to the spear-point like a shield!

The rose flees autumn,
but what a foolhardy rose you are,
seeking the autumn wind.

You were rain from another world
that fell upon this dusty earth.

You ran in all directions
and escaped down the gutter.

Be silent. Be free
of the pain of speech.

No time for sleep since you took refuge
with so loving a friend.


–Rumi

.

look

.

The wound is the place where the Light enters you.


–Rumi



.

all is change; all yields its place and goes. –Euripides c. 416 B.C.E.

.

Be patient where you sit in the dark.

The dawn is coming.


–Rumi

.