“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..”
Poetry: Jelaluddin Rumi
Translation: Coleman Barks
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“Once upon a time Khidr, teacher of Moses, called upon mankind with a warning. At a certain date, he said, all the water in the world wihich had been specially hoarded, would disappear. It would then be renewed, with different water, which would drive men mad.
Only one man listened to the meaning of this advice. He collected water and went to a secure place where he stored it, and waited for the water to change its character.
On the appointed date the streams stopped running, the wells went dry, and the man who had listened, seeing this happening, went to his retreat and drank his preserved water.
When he saw, from his security the waterfalls again beginning to flow, this man decended among the other sons of men. He found that they were thinking and talking in an entirely different way from before; yet they had no memory of what happened, nor of having been warned. When he tried to talk to them he realized that they thought that he was mad, and they showed hostility or compassion, not understanding.
At first he drank none of the new water, but went back to his concelment, to draw on his supplies, every day. Finally, however, he took the decision to drink the new water because he could not bear the lonliness of living, behaving, and thinking in a different way from everyone else. He drank the new water, and became like the rest. Then he forgot all about his own store of special water, and his fellows began to look upon him as a madman who had miraculously been restored to sanity.”
From: ”Tales of Dervishes” by Idries Shah
Original Author: Dhun-Nun, the Egyption (died 860)
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Wedding Night
“The day I’ve died, and my coffin is moving on -
Do not think my heart is still in this world!
Don’t weep and pity me: “Oh woe, how awful!”
You fall in devil’s snare – woe, that is awful!
Don’t cry “Woe, he is gone!” at my burial -
For me this is the time of joyful union!
Don’t say “Farewell!” when I’m put in the grave -
Grave is but a curtain hiding the communion with paradise!
You saw “descending” – now look at the rising!
Is setting dangerous for sun and moon?
To you it looks like setting, but it’s rising;
The coffin seems a jail, yet it means freedom.
Which seed fell in the earth that did not grow there?
Why do you doubt the fate of human seed?
What bucket came not filled from out the cistern?
Why should Yusuf’s “Soul” then fear this well?
Close here your mouth and open it on that side.
So that your hymns may sound in Where-no-place!”
-Rumi
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QUOTES:
“Let the beauty we love, BE what we do!”
- Jelaluddin Rumi
“My best moment is when before I am starting, (to compose) I don’t know what I am going to do…because when you know what you’re going to do, you start thinking, and by thinking,
you reduce the chances of something which is Greater than your thoughts…your self.”
-Vangelis
“Every time I sit for music, I try to destroy my ego. At the same time, I have a sense of pride, that if I do something, it has to be good. It’s unnerving. It’s a paradox. It humbles you – and you wait for the intervention of God. You say: Give me a tune please. I need to make this work.”
-Ar Rahman
“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is a part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.”
- Hermann Hesse, Demian
“God has given each being a separate and unique way of seeing, knowing and saying that knowledge..”
- Rumi
“Peace cannot be kept by Force. It can only be achieved through Understanding” -Albert Einstein
“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is a part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.”
-Herman Hesse
“Knowing something, and Experiencing it are two different things”
-Herman Hesse
“Labor disgraces no man… man disgraces labor”
“There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”
-Rumi
“How can all this great love be inside of me?
- Look at your eyes.. they are tiny yet they see enormous things.”
-Rumi
“‘Our life takes its color from God, and who gives a better color than God?”
-Qur’an
“Our days pass as fast as the water of the river or the wind of the desert.But there are two days that do not interest me: yesterday and tomorrow.”
-Omar Khayam
“O Lord, if I worship you out of fear of hell, burn me in hell. If I worship you in the hope of paradise, forbid it to me. And if I worship you for your own sake, do not deprive me of your eternal beauty.”
-Rabia al Basri
“How can I see God?
-Do not ask how you can see God, but how you can remove the veils that prevent you from seeing God.”
- Ibn-al-Arabi
“When I first fell in love of God, I thought I was in the Ocean, yet, I was just standing on the beach.”
- Hafiz Shirazi
“The bride of the world approaches, but not to marry anyone. Watch, one bride comes and the other leaves…”
- Hafiz Shirazi
“What the soul knows, is often unknown to the man who has a soul. We are infinitely more than we think.”
-Khalil Gibran
“An OUNCE of practicing is better than a TON of preaching.”
- Mahatma Gandhi
“The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes–or it prospers; and anon,
Like Snow upon the Desert’s dusty Face,
Lighting a little hour or two–is gone.”
-Khayyam
“Knowing something, and Experiencing it are two different things.”
