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--- imported_by: wikihub-q7gz scraped_at: 2026-01-30 source_gdoc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YuVo2HYPDhKUZ7x8mKl94V0AomdidXnG2NeYxyLLwZ4 source_url: http://quoteslist.jacobcole.net/ title: Quotes List visibility: public --- [[systematicawesome]] \> [quotes.jacobcole.net](http://quotes.jacobcole.net) (formerly quoteslist.jacobcole.net) Contact: <jacobcole4000@gmail.com> Quotes Quotes and poems that are beautiful, funny, or poignant, and how people relate to them Add your own, and add comments on how you connect to quotes! Goals: Connect people with others who have similar taste in quotes or who liked similar quotes 10 years ago. (Find an older version of yourself!). Wise quotes are wise because they apply to many different human experiences, across people, space, and time. Gather comments from many people on how wise quotes applied to their lives (do this for various wisdom texts, e.g. the Tao Te Ching, the Bible). Connect related wise quotes from across different cultures/times that speak of the same truth in different words\ See Also: [Excellent Books (Jacob + Friends Curated)](https://drive.google.com/open?id=1cy36gZz74NwjE9C1UOJ1OUPIIm4v5vSHpuhKcNetfcs) • [Jacob’s Raw Books List](https://docs.google.com/document/d/10hCB_gzJZ-Ns5JUkxpPR0DLKXSsCGRUYmsFvrCsairc) • [[lifechangingthings|lifechangingthings.jacobcole.net/]] • [[thoughtfulweb]] Table of Contents [Quotes & Poems Lists](#h.usl5e8m4hc2u) [1](#h.usl5e8m4hc2u) [Jacob](#h.qoblpfst4ibu) [1](#h.qoblpfst4ibu) [Michael Norman](#h.89oal1l7sjod) [11](#h.89oal1l7sjod) [Add Your Own Favorites!](#h.e2ylz0urar9t) [235](#h.e2ylz0urar9t) [See also: Life Changing Books, Quotes, and More](#h.t1ue42nvicqk) [235](#h.t1ue42nvicqk) # Quotes & Poems Lists ## Jacob Annotations on [“On Work” ~Kahlil Gibran](http://www.katsandogz.com/onwork.html) ([Graph](https://ideapad.io/quotes-1/graph?snapshot=on-work)) "Work is love made visible." ~On Work, Kahlil Gibran For to be idle is to... to step out of life's procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite. – I think often of the metaphor of surfing — work is like catching the waves “The whispering of the hours” — the hours have energy that there is to be channeled — this is the essence of tai chi to me, recognizing that, inside you, outside you, all around you, everywhere, there is energy not your own to be channeled “It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.” “It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit” “And all work is empty save when there is love” ~On Work, Kahlil Gibran \<relates to\> “He who works with his hands is a laborer. He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.” ~Saint Francis of Assisi “the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass; And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving.” As the crickets soft hum is to us, so are we to the trees ~[Gary Snyder](https://juliegabrielli.com/lifesaving/poetry/front-lines-as-the-crickets-soft-autumn-hum/) When mind is chaotic Scrabbling for nature Sometimes I forget that Earth is here just inches below the pavement ~Jacob <span id="id.l4woicj1zxqz"></span> “I have left the world of Right and Wrong and instead focus on what keeps the love flowing.” ~Cristina Casanova, marriage counselor \<relates to\> [“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing…” ~Rumi](#id.s0xzq5awzip) Everything people say or do is either an expression of love or a cry for love. \#lifeChanging I am the creativity I am the dance step of the paintbrush singing I am the sculpture of the song the flame breath of words giving new life to paper Yes, I am the creativity that never dies I am the creativity keeping my people alive ~Alexis De Veaux “Like needlepoint, the meticulous art, I am pulled through and through, looping back upon myself in an embroidery of endless thread; I spin outward in expanding patterns, amplified as my parts reflect from one another. I write to answer the soft hiss and clack of spinning wool, to keep the wheel rolling, to keep the skein smooth. I write because I am the cloth woven of its own unravelings, circling through the loom to create a changing whole.” ~Ben LaBreche, “Why I Write” 12 neocortex Haloed apes in a circle / Inventing 0 / each moment practicing the presence of God \#poem ~Franz Wright The Only Path to Serenity Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt. Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench. Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner. Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity. ~Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching (chapter nine, translation by Stephen Mitchell) \#lifeChanging Isn’t it amazing that you don’t have to wait a single moment to start becoming the person you want to become? \#lifeChanging “It is…" I trailed off, racking my brain to think how I could describe love without resorting to other, equally abstract terms. “This is the nature of love," Vashet said. “To attempt to describe it will drive a woman mad. That is what keeps poets scribbling endlessly away. If one could pin it to the paper all complete, all others would lay down their pens. But it cannot be done" She held up a finger. “But only a fool claims there’s no such thing as love…" ~Wise Man’s Fear \#quote \#book “If I threw a rock at a cow and got a chicken, it means something happened.” (Explaining how we know quarks exist) ~Yvan Quinn \#Quote \#LOL \#Physics Asheville The place I am right now has a lot to teach – walking on a trail around this lake, seeing the fireflies glimmer in the deepening twilight, listening to children laugh on a white sandy beach as they play in the lake, moving to sit down on a rough hewn wooden bench and stillness is effortless. I wish to find that which is essential to making it so easy to be still here and bring it into my life wherever I go ~Jacob \<\>It’s not every day the world composes itself into a poem I meditate one hour every day, except those days I am too busy. Those days I meditate two hours. ~Gandhi Comment: To motivate myself to meditate, I ask myself: honestly, can I save more than 20 minutes today by taking 20 minutes to meditate? Can I save more than an hour over the course of the week by taking an hour to meditate? #lifeChanging Learning to meditate is like a soldier learning to put down his sword — it’s useless if you simply go and pick it up again when you are done ~Dalal Lama \#lifeChanging "I'm skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and when I take a high leap into the dark and come down thirty years later, I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy's life with a story." ~Tim O’Brian “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” ~Henry David Thoreau \#lifeChanging Find a happy person and you will find a project \#lifeChanging That voice of wisdom small but deep While standing in line Tilt to head back and relax the ribs To keep the connection To the divine \#PostTaichi \#poem \#taichi On Children ~Kahlil Gibran \#poem Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness; For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable. Fantasia #poem Here in Samarcand they offer emeralds, Pure as frozen drops of sea-water, Rubies, pale as dew-ponds stained with slaughter, Where the fairies fought for a king's daughter In the elfin upland. Here they sell you jade and calcedony, And the matrix of the turquoise, Spheres of onyx held in eagles' claws, But they keep the gems as far asunder From the dull stones as the lightning from the thunder; They can never come together On the mats of Turkish leather In the booths of Samarcand. Here they sell you balls of nard and honey, And squat jars of clarid butter, And the cheese from Kurdistan. When you offer Frankish money, Then they scowl and curse and mutter, Deep in Kurdish or Persan For they want your heart out and my hand In the booths of Samarcand. They would sell your heart's blood separate, In a jar with a gold brim, With a text of burning hatred Coiled around the rim; They would sell my hand upon a beam of teak wood, In the other scale a feather curled; They would sell your heart upon a silver balance Weighed against the world. But your heart could never touch my hand, They could never come together On the mats of Turkish leather In the booths of Samarcand. ~Duncan Campbell Scott Shui diao ge tou Poet: Su Shi \#poem Chinese \<\>yutong ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Redirect and neutralize the forces coming at me, Inside and out. Doing battle or dancing It is my choice ~Jacob Comment: It is a fine line Now I see the value of training the fighting as a way to learn to remain centered Seeing my own internal stressors as opponents Instead of engaging with an unproductive and painful process, return to engaging with the flows within me that are leading to healing — the circulation of qi The flow of qi through the channels from foot to fingertip \#best \#qigong \#Poem \#Haiku-ish In the cold as ashok’s garage opens All I see is peace and excitement and crisp Rochester’s snow #Poem The stuff I do automatically, against my conscious intent, is a fountain of energy The ultimate surf to be ridden Which moves me in spite of myself \#Poem Comment: Surfing is a plainer metaphor than most for what is really going on in the world \#lifeChanging Muted muffled time-constrained friendships like our hearts are slowly going deaf ------------------------------------------------------------------------ To the eagle or to Spider-Man, San Francisco a craggy mountain range When you listen to the Dalai Lama or anybody and start to empathize with them you start to see their worldview. He brings to an auditorium the feeling that he thinks of the auditorium as another clearing in tibet, each person a disciple. In this way, through his expectations and his reframing of your personal story you are transformed to be as he sees you Similarly, my mom thinks of everyone as little ones to be taken care of. Perhaps this is how she transforms people <span id="id.s0xzq5awzip"></span> “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other” doesn’t make any sense. 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.” ~Rumi \<relates to\> [“I have left the world of Right and Wrong and instead focus on what keeps the love flowing.” ~Cristina Casanova](#id.l4woicj1zxqz) <https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51296/ithaka-56d22eef917ec> #poem ithaka ~cavafy @chase On the Road Home It was when I said, “There is no such thing as the truth,” That the grapes seemed fatter. The fox ran out of his hole. You...You said, “There are many truths, But they are not parts of a truth.” Then the tree, at night, began to change, Smoking through green and smoking blue. We were two figures in a wood. We said we stood alone. It was when I said, “Words are not forms of a single word. In the sum of the parts, there are only the parts. The world must be measured by eye”; It was when you said, “The idols have seen lots of poverty, Snakes and gold and lice, But not the truth”; It was at that time, that the silence was largest And longest, the night was roundest, The fragrance of the autumn warmest, Closest and strongest. ~Wallace Stevens More (uncurated): <https://docs.google.com/document/d/13JE0qnozxGfWkSFD8mn45xwD-hJMFgKrJK8rcOglIDo> ## Michael Norman (Note: %%% is the divider between quotes for future programmatic processing) (from Copy of Michael Norman Quotes Doc – Copy of You Will Lose Everything – Parsed) You Will Lose Everything You will lose everything. Your money, your power, your fame, your success, perhaps even your memories. Your looks will go. Loved ones will die. Your body will fall apart. Everything that seems permanent is impermanent and will be smashed. Experience will gradually, or not so gradually, strip away everything that it can strip away. Waking up means facing this reality with open eyes and no longer turning away. But right now, we stand on sacred and holy ground, for that which will be lost has not yet been lost, and realising this is the key to unspeakable joy. Whoever or whatever is in your life right now has not yet been taken away from you. This may sound trivial, obvious, like nothing, but really it is the key to everything, the why and how and wherefore of existence. Impermanence has already rendered everything and everyone around you so deeply holy and significant and worthy of your heartbreaking gratitude. Loss has already transfigured your life into an altar. ~ Jeff Foster%%% \#impermanence \#presentmoment \#gratitude \#joy “I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche%%% \#lies \#trust “And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche%%% \#dance \#bedifferent \#beweird “It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!”~ Friedrich Nietzsche%%% \#funny “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche%%% \#morality \#darkness “You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche%%% \#chaos \#dance \#creativity \#beautiful “In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche%%% \#funny “Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche%%% \#truth \#illusions “There are no facts, only interpretations.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche%%% “The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche%%% \#individuality \#integrity \#selfawareness “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche%%% \#purpose \#meaning \#endurance \#life “We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.” ~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche%%% \#dance \#celebrate “No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche%%% \#individuality \#lifepath \#journey “The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche%%% \#bedifferent \#beweird \#individuality “Faith: not wanting to know what the truth is.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche%%% \#faith \#truth The Road Not Taken Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. ~ ROBERT FROST%%% \#lifepath \#journey \#bedifferent \#beweird \#individuality There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words. ~Thomas Reid%%% \#knowledge \#communication \#problem A problem well stated is a problem half solved. ~ Charles Kettering%%% \#communication \#problem Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is based on the idea of approximation. If a man tells you he knows a thing exactly, then you can be safe in inferring that you are speaking to an inexact man. ~ Bertrand Russell%%% \#science \#unknowing \#knowledge When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own — not of the same blood or birth, but of the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions. ~ Marcus Aurelius%%% \#morality \#humannature \#divine \#commonhumanity \#anger \#problem “It is easier to act yourself into a new way of thinking, than it is to think yourself into a new way of acting.” ~ Millard Fuller%%% \#action \#thought \#change \#growth “For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn't understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.”~ Cynthia Occelli%%% \#growth \#change \#transformation I have been in love more times than one, thank the Lord. Sometimes it was lasting whether active or not. Sometimes it was all but ephemeral, maybe only an afternoon, but not less real for that. They stay in my mind, these beautiful people, or anyway beautiful people to me, of which there are so many. You, and you, and you, whom I had the fortune to meet, or maybe missed. Love, love, love, it was the core of my life, from which, of course, comes the word for the heart. And, oh, have I mentioned that some of them were men and some were women and some—now carry my revelation with you— were trees. Or places. Or music flying above the names of their makers. Or clouds, or the sun which was the first, and the best, the most loyal for certain, who looked so faithfully into my eyes, every morning. So I imagine such love of the world—its fervency, its shining, its innocence and hunger to give of itself— I imagine this is how it began. ~ Mary Oliver%%% \#love \#impermanence \#beauty \#commonhumanity \#heart \#purpose I know, you never intended to be in this world. But you’re in it all the same. So why not get started immediately. I mean, belonging to it. There is so much to admire, to weep over. And to write music or poems about. Bless the feet that take you to and fro. Bless the eyes and the listening ears. Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste. Bless touching. You could live a hundred years, it’s happened. Or not. I am speaking from the fortunate platform of many years, none of which, I think, I ever wasted. Do you need a prod? Do you need a little darkness to get you going? Let me be as urgent as a knife, then, and remind you of Keats, so single of purpose and thinking, for a while, he had a lifetime." ~ Mary Oliver%%% \#purpose \#meaning \#beauty \#art \#gratitude \#motivation \#blessed The Summer Day Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean- the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down- who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? ~Mary Oliver%%% \#creation \#blessed \#gratitude \#nature \#impermanence To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go." ~ Mary Oliver%%% \#love \#impermanence \#letitgo \#meaning You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - over and over announcing your place in the family of things. ~ Mary Oliver%%% \#love \#tender \#purpose \#despair \#imagination \#opportunity \#calling \#home Every year the lilies are so perfect I can hardly believe their lapped light crowding the black, mid-summer ponds. Nobody could count all of them — the muskrats swimming among the pads and the grasses can reach out their muscular arms and touch only so many, they are that rife and wild. But what in this world is perfect? I bend closer and see how this one is clearly lopsided — and that one wears an orange blight — and this one is a glossy cheek half nibbled away — and that one is a slumped purse full of its own unstoppable decay. Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled — to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world. I want to believe I am looking into the white fire of a great mystery. I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing — that the light is everything — that it is more than the sum of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do. ~ Mary Oliver%%% \#perfection \#purpose \#light \#meaning \#mystery The heavens allowed me To settle myself On a small piece of land Looking into the distance Digging far down I delight in my own freedom All who come here Feel the lids fall From their eyes This view Of the world without end There is nowhere to hide ~ Muso Soseki (1275-1351)%%% \#freedom Leave the familiar for a while. Let your senses and bodies stretch out Like a welcomed season Onto the meadows and shores and hills. Open up to the Roof. Make a new water-mark on your excitement And love. Like a blooming night flower, Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness And giving Upon our intimate assembly. Change rooms in your mind for a day. All the hemispheres in existence Lie beside an equator In your heart. Greet Yourself In your thousand other forms As you mount the hidden tide and travel Back home. All the hemispheres in heaven Are sitting around a fire Chatting While stitching themselves together Into the Great Circle inside of You. ~ Hafiz%%% \#love \#unfamiliar \#divine \#new \#happiness \#home Center of all centers, core of cores, almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet-- all this universe, to the furthest stars all beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit. Now you feel how nothing clings to you; your vast shell reaches into endless space, and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow. Illuminated in your infinite peace, a billion stars go spinning through the night, blazing high above your head. But in you is the presence that will be, when all the stars are dead. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke%%% \#presence \#core \#center \#peace What does it mean to have integrity? It means many things, of course, but one criterion is to avoid behavior that readily leads to shame or remorse. The ethical terrain here extends well beyond the question of honesty — but to truly have integrity, we must not feel the need to lie about our personal lives. To lie is to erect a boundary between the truth we are living and the perception others have of us. The temptation to do this is often born of an understanding that others will disapprove of our behavior. Often, there are good reasons why they would Lying is, almost by definition, a refusal to cooperate with others. It condenses a lack of trust and trustworthiness into a single act. It is both a failure of understanding and an unwillingness to be understood. To lie is to recoil from relationship. At least one study suggests that 10 percent of communication between spouses is deceptive. Another has found that 38 percent of encounters among college students contain lies. However, researchers have discovered that even liars rate their deceptive interactions as less pleasant than truthful ones. This is not terribly surprising: We know that trust is deeply rewarding and that deception and suspicion are two sides of the same coin. Research suggests that all forms of lying — including white lies meant to spare the feelings of others — are associated with poorer-quality relationships. ~ Sam Harriss%%% \#integrity \#honesty \#lies \#truth \#trust \#relationships “Ordinary language is an accretion of lies. The language of literature must be, therefore, the language of transgression, a rupture of individual systems, a shattering of psychic oppression.” ~ Susan Sontag%%% \#language \#lies \#transgression “Nonage \[immaturity\] is the inability to use one’s own understanding without another’s guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one’s own mind without another’s guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) ‘Have the courage to use your own understanding,’ is therefore the motto of the Enlightenment.” ~ Kant 1784%%% \#understanding \#courage \#enlightenment “If you can’t say it clearly, you don’t understand it yourself.” ~John Searle%%% \#understanding \#communication Poets have never used the word balance, for good reason. First of all, it is too obvious and therefore untrustworthy; it is also a deadly boring concept and seems to speak as much to being stuck and immovable, as much as to harmony. There is also the sense of unbalancing that must take place in order to push a person into a new and larger set of circumstances. ~ David Whyte%%% \#balance \#change \#individuality THE JOURNEY Above the mountains the geese turn into the light again Painting their black silhouettes on an open sky. Sometimes everything has to be inscribed across the heavens so you can find the one line already written inside you. Sometimes it takes a great sky to find that first, bright and indescribable wedge of freedom in your own heart. Sometimes with the bones of the black sticks left when the fire has gone out someone has written something new in the ashes of your life. You are not leaving. Even as the light fades quickly now, you are arriving. ~David Whyte%%% \#freedom \#journey \#new \#change \#transformation \#selfdiscovery One of the difficulties of leaving a relationship is not so much, at the end, leaving the person themselves — because, by that time, you’re ready to go; what’s difficult is leaving the dreams that you shared together. And you know that somehow — no matter who you meet in your life in the future, and no matter what species of happiness you would share with them — you will never, ever share those particular dreams again, with that particular tonality and coloration. And so there’s a lovely and powerful form of grief there that is the ultimate of giving away but making space for another form of reimagination. no matter the medicinal virtues of being a true friend or sustaining a long close relationship with another, the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone. “all friendships of any length are based on a continued, mutual forgiveness” FORGIVENESS is a heartache and difficult to achieve because strangely, it not only refuses to eliminate the original wound, but actually draws us closer to its source. To approach forgiveness is to close in on the nature of the hurt itself, the only remedy being, as we approach its raw center, to reimagine our relation to it. ~ David Whyte%%% \#relationships \#dreams \#grief \#reimagine \#friendship \#seeing \#understanding \#forgiveness \#core \#center The truth is, rarely can a response make something better — what makes something better is connection. ~ Brene Brown%%% \#connection \#relationships “Our emotional life maps our incompleteness: A creature without any needs would never have reasons for fear, or grief, or hope, or anger.” ~ Martha Nussbaum%%% \#incomplete \#emotion “To forgive is to assume a larger identity than the person who was first hurt.” ~ Maria Popova%%% \#forgiveness there are 2 ways to live life: as if nothing is a miracle, or as if everything is a miracle ~ Albert Einstein%%% #miracle \#attitude \#gratitude When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness? And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility, and I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular, and each name a comfortable music in the mouth, tending, as all music does, toward silence, and each body a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth. When it's over, I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. When it's over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument. I don't want to end up simply having visited this world ~ Mary Oliver%%% \#death \#curiosity \#commonhumanity \#time \#eternity \#perspective \#wonder \#love \#lifeafterdeath “Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away... and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.... be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.... and don't expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet%%% \#solitude \#growth \#understanding \#individuality \#love \#faith \#blessing \#commonhumanity \#strength \#internallife “It is not inertia alone that is responsible for human relationships repeating themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new, unforeseeable experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope. But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical will live the relation to another as something alive.” ~ Rilke%%% \#relationships \#courage \#open \#willingness “Lest we forget at least an over the shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins - or which is which), the very first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom - Lucifer.” ~ Saul Alinksy%%% \#rebellion \#radical ...those who are at war with the present have an eye for the seeds of change and the potentialities of small beginnings.%%% \#change \#beginnings “If men are to wait for liberty till they become good and wise in slavery, they may indeed wait forever.” ~ Macaulay%%% \#liberty \#action \#waiting A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed. ~ Eric Hoffer%%% Give your daughters difficult names. Give your daughters names that command the full use of tongue. My name makes you want to tell me the truth. My name doesn’t allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce it right. ~ Warsan Shire%%% \#name \#truth \#trust “In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” ~ General Dwight D. Eisenhower%%% \#plan \#important The greatest problems of life are not meant to be solved, they are meant to be outgrown. ~ Carl Jung%%% \#growth \#change \#problem We are not what happened to us, we are what we choose to become. ~ Carl Jung%%% \#past \#growth \#individuality \#overcome \#transformation The sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being. ~ Carl Jung%%% \#purpose \#existence \#light \#being Where love rules, there is no will to power. Where power predominates, love is lacking. ~ Carl Jung%%% \#love \#power A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them. ~Carl Jung%%% \#overcome \#passion \#breakthrough What you resist, persists. ~Carl Jung%%% \# The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely. ~ Carl Jung%%% \#acceptance \#wholeness You do not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. ~Carl Jung%%% \#enlightenment \#consciousness \#darkness \#light \#truth Shame is a soul eating emotion. ~ Carl Jung%%% \#shame \#soul The best political, social, and spiritual work you can do is to withdraw the projection of your shadow onto others. ~ Carl Jung%%% \#projection \#innerlife \#truth Theologians fail to see that it is not a matter of proving the existence of the light, but of blind people who do not know that their eyes could see. ~ Carl Jung%%% \#light \#truth \#awaken \#innereye \#consciousness No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.\n ~ Carl Jung%%% \#growth \#grounding \#roots I have longed for the School of the Void, To learn with my mind of ashes To sit in Son. Fame is fragile As a clay rice-cake steamer Even after success, The effort for fame Has been in vain. Riches and honors, Sought uselessly The poor also have this affliction. I have left my village home And sleep calmly under pines. ~ Chin'gak Hyesim (1178-1234)%%% \#void \#emptiness \#fame \#success \#vanity \#escape Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could. ~ Louise Erdrich%%% \#life \#solitude \#lifeworthliving \#love \#purpose \#meaning \#yolo The second awakening is to know how much is enough. Even if you already have something, you set a limit for yourself for using it. So you should know how much is enough. ~ Dogen (1200-1253)%%% \#awaken \#enough \#limits \#boundaries You have been telling people that this is the Eleventh Hour, now you must go back and tell the people that this is the Hour. And there are things to be considered…%%% Where are you living? What are you doing? What are your relationships? Are you in right relation? Where is your water? Know your garden. It is time to speak your truth. Create your community. Be good to each other. And do not look outside yourself for your leader. This could be a good time! There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore. They will feel they are being torn apart and will suffer greatly. Know the river has its destination. The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open, and our heads above the water. And I say, see who is in there with you and celebrate. At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally, least of all ourselves. For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey come to a halt. The time of the one wolf is over. Gather yourselves! Banish the word ’struggle’ from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. ~ Hopi Elders' Prophecy, June 8, 2000%%% \#questioning \#purpose \#existential \#relationships \#truth \#community \#goodness \#leadership \#initiative \#flow \#enlightenment \#letgo \#uncertainty \#growth \#journey \#attitude \#celebrate \#empowerment 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 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. When someone asks what it means to "die for love," point here. If someone asks how tall I am, frown and measure with your fingers the space between the creases on your forehead. This tall. 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? Huuuu. How did Jacob's sight return? Huuuuu. A little wind cleans the eyes. Like this. When Shams comes back from Tabriz, he'll put just his head around the edge of the door to surprise us. Like this. ~ Rumi%%% \#wonder \#mystery \#sex \#love \#miracles \#spiritual \#intimacy \#surprise I AM WILLING Dear Ones: Six months ago this week, Rayya died. People keep asking me how I’m doing, and I’m not always sure how to answer that. It depends on the day. It depends on the minute. Right this moment, I’m OK. Yesterday, not so good. Tomorrow, we’ll see. Here is what I have learned about Grief, though. I have learned that Grief is a force of energy that cannot be controlled or predicted. It comes and goes on its own schedule. Grief does not obey your plans, or your wishes. Grief will do whatever it wants to you, whenever it wants to. In that regard, Grief has a lot in common with Love. The only way that I can “handle” Grief, then, is the same way that I “handle” Love — by not “handling” it. By bowing down before its power, in complete humility. When Grief comes to visit me, it’s like being visited by a tsunami. I am given just enough warning to say, “Oh my god, this is happening RIGHT NOW,” and then I drop to the floor on my knees and let it rock me. It’s a full-body experience. To resist it is to be brutalized by it. You just bow down — that’s all you CAN do — and you let this thing roll through your heart and body and mind, in all its vehemence. How do you survive the tsunami of Grief? By being willing to experience it, without resistance. By being willing to feel everything. By being willing to accept the unacceptable. The conversation of Grief, then, is one of prayer-and-response. Grief says to me: “You will never love anyone the way you loved Rayya.” And I reply: “I am willing for that to be true.” Grief says: “She’s gone, and she’s never coming back.” I reply: “I am willing for that to be true.” Grief says: “You will never see her walk in the door again.” I say: “I am willing.” Grief says: “You will never have access to her wisdom again.” I say: “I am willing.” Grief says: “You will never hear that laugh again.” I say: “I am willing.” Grief says, “You will never smell her skin again.” I get down on the floor on my fucking knees, and — and through my sheets of tears — I say, “I AM WILLING.” I am beginning to understand that Grief is not the same thing as Depression. Depression is unwilling. Grief is a MOVEMENT — catastrophic and mighty — that you ALLOW to rock you and spin you. Depression is refusal to feel. Depression is a refusal to move, or to be moved. Depression is resistance, and resistance is futile. I am not depressed, in the wake of Rayya’s death. I am DESTROYED, but I am not depressed — but that’s only because I am willing to be destroyed. I will live on, because I am WILLING. I am willing to take this life on God’s terms, not mine. Love’s terms, not mine. Grief’s terms, not mine. I am willing to surrender to the reality that I will never understand any of this. I am even willing to accept that I may not ever fully heal from the loss of Rayya. Grief says: “You may never recover from this” And I say: “I am willing.” This is the job of the living — to be willing to bow down before EVERYTHING that is bigger than you. And nearly everything in this world is bigger than you. Let your willingness be the only big thing about you. My friend Martha Beck officiated the commitment ceremony last year for me and Rayya. I will never forget what she said on that day: “True love always liberates the beloved.” Six months ago, I had to let Rayya go. It wasn’t up to me. It was brutal, and I was willing. I bowed down and wept. God’s will, not mine. But Rayya belonged to God before she belonged to me. She NEVER belonged to me, actually; I just loved her. And true love always liberates the beloved. I am willing. Two days ago — on the six month anniversary of Rayya’s death — Martha wrote me a letter. She said, “The spark of absolutely unique, inimitable energy that showed up as Rayya is no longer in form. I can’t wrap my head around it. What is she doing now? What is she BEING now? Death is every bit as common as life, and both utterly baffle me.” Me, too. I am completely fucking baffled. I don’t understand Life any more than I understand Love or Death or Grief. But I am willing to be here for the duration of the mystery. I am willing to be rocked by every last tsunami. I don’t know what Rayya is doing or being now. That is not for me to know. I only know that I will love her forever. And I know what I am doing and what I am being: I am willing. Onward ~ Elizabeth Gilbert%%% \#acceptance \#grief \#death \#love \#mystery \#trust \#God \#allowing "Cor" is the Latin word for heart. And courage is to speak one's mind by telling all one's heart" ~ Brene Brown%%% \#courage \#truth "Green was the silence, wet was the light, the month of June trembled like a butterfly." ~ Pablo Neruda%%% Messenger My work is loving the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird— equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums. Here the clam deep in the speckled sand. Are my boots old? Is my coat torn? Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work, which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished. The phoebe, the delphinium. The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture. Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here, which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart and these body-clothes, a mouth with which to give shouts of joy to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam, telling them all, over and over, how it is that we live forever. ~ Mary Oliver%%% \#love \#nature \#aging \#wonder \#stillness \#joy \#gratitude \#eternallife “I have already lost touch with a couple of the people I used to be.” ~ Joan Didion%%% \#transformation \#change \#evolve God will not have his work manifest by cowards. ~ Emerson%%% \#courage \#God \#goodworks Thomas Merton - Letter to a young activist https://revsponderings.wordpress.com/2013/10/16/thomas-merton-a-letter-to-a-young-activist/%%% #God \#hope \#faith \#goodworks \#trust \#truth \#service the wounds have changed me. i am so soft with scars my skin breathes and beats stars. ~ Nayyirah Waheed%%% \#wounds \#resilience \#beauty i want more ‘men’ with flowers falling from their skin. more water in their eyes. more tremble in their bodies. more women in their hearts than on their hands. more softness in their height. more honesty in their voice. more wonder. more humility in their feet. ~ Nayyirah Waheed%%% \#vulnerability \#men \#relationships \#truth \#wonder \#humility \#tender \#honesty ...can we speak in flowers. it will be easier for me to understand. ~ Nayyirah Waheed%%%%%% \#language If you are softer Than before they came You have been loved. ~Nayyirah Waheed%%% \#love \#vulnerability \#relationships It is being honest About my pain That makes me Invincible. ~ Nayyirah Waheed%%% \#truth \#honesty \#wounds \#resilience \#strength “I love myself” The quietest. simplest. Most Powerful. Revolution Ever. ~ Nayyirah Waheed%%% \#love \#selflove \#change \#transformation “i don't pay attention to the world ending. it has ended for me many times and began again in the morning.” ~ Nayyirah Waheed%%% \#overcome \#resilience \#strength i walk into a poem. and walk out someone else. ~ Nayyirah Waheed%%% \#change \#transformation \#poem There is the calmness of the lake when there is not a breath of wind. . . . So it is with us. Sometimes we are clarified and calmed healthily, as we never were before in our lives, not by an opiate, but by some unconscious obedience to the all-just laws, so that we become like a still lake of purest crystal and without an effort our depths are revealed to ourselves. All the world goes by us and is reflected in our deeps. ~ Thoreau%%% \#innerpeace \#calm \#obedience \#selfawareness \#depth “Whether you like it or not, whether you know it or not, secretly Nature seeks and hunts and tries to ferret out the track in which God may be found.” ~ Meister Eckhart%%% \#God \#path \#journey Written at Yuan Tan-ch’ui’s Mountain Retreat%%% An old friend who lives on Tung Mountain Loves the beauty of valleys and hills. In green spring, he rests in empty woods And sleeps though the sun is high. Pine wind rustles his collar and sleeve; The deep, rocked pool cleanses heart and ear. I envy this man who suffers no delusions, His high pillow wreathed by green clouds. ~ Li Po%%% \#nature \#beauty \#peace \#cleanse \#delusion The moon's the same old moon, The flowers exactly as they were, Yet I've become the thingness Of all the things I see! ~ Bunan (1602-1676)%%% \#oneness \#transformation \#change \#perspective "I don't think I have ever seen a day like yesterday, and I am still dazzled by a dazzle that comes at me from all sides and from a source that I am not used to." ~Thomas Merton%%% \#wonder \#awe \#perspective \#new A white flower grows in the quietness. Let your tongue become that flower. ~ Rumi%%% \#silence "Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment." ~ Rumi%%% "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.” ~ Rumi%%% Every child has known God, Not the God of names, Not the God of don'ts, Not the God who ever does anything weird, But the God who knows only 4 words. And keeps repeating them, saying "Come dance with Me... Come dance." ~ Hafiz%%% “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” ~ Marcel Proust%%% Do not go to the garden of flowers o Friend! go not there; In your body is the garden of flowers. Take your seat on the thousand petals of the lotus, and there gaze on the Infinite Beauty. I came with my Lord to my Lord's home, but I lived not with Him and I tasted Him not, and my youth passed away like a dream. On my wedding night my women friends sang in chorus, and I was anointed with the unguents of pleasure and pain. But when the ceremony was over, I left my Lord and came away, and my kinsman tried to console me upon the road. Kabir says "I shall go to my Lord's house with my love at my side; then shall I sound the trumpet of triumph!” KABIR says " O Sadhu! hear my deathless words. If you want your own good, examine and consider them well. You have estranged yourself from the Creator, of whom you have sprung\nyou have lost your reason, you have bought death.\nAll doctrines and all teachings are sprung from Him, from Him they grow. Know this for certain, and have no fear. Hear from me the tidings of this great truth! Whose name do you sing, and on whom do you meditate? O, come forth from this entanglement! He dwells at the heart of all things, so why take refuge in empty desolation? If you place the Guru at a distance from you, then it is but the distance that you honour If indeed the Master be far away, then who is it else that is creating this world? When you think that He is not here, then you wander further and further away, and seek Him in vain with tears. Where He is far off, there He is un- attainable. Where He is near, He is very bliss. Kabir says" Lest His servant should suffer pain He pervades him through and through." Know yourself then, O Kabir ; for He is in you from head to foot. Sing with gladness, and keep your seat unmoved within your heart. There is an endless world, O my Brother! and there is the Name- less Being, of whom nought can be said. Only he knows it who has reached that region : it is other than all that is heard and said. No form, no body, no length, no breadth is seen there : how can I tell you that which it is ? He comes to the Path of the Infinite on whom the grace of the Lord descends : he is freed from births and deaths who attains to Him. Kabir says : "It cannot be told by the words of the mouth, it cannot be written on paper : It is like a dumb person who tastes a sweet thing how shall it be ex- plained ? THE Vedas say that the Unconditioned stands beyond the world of Con- ditions. O woman, what does it avail thee to dispute whether He is beyond all or in all ? 78 KABIR'S POEMS See thou everything as thine own dwell- ing place : the mist of pleasure and pain can never spread there. There Brahma is revealed day and night : there light is His garment, light is His seat, light rests on thy head. Kabir says : " The Master, who is true, He is all light." THE light of the sun, the moon, and the stars shines bright : The melody of love swells forth, and the rhythm of love's detachment beats the time. Day and night, the chorus of music fills the heavens ; and Kabir says, " My Beloved One gleams like the lightning flash in the sky." Do you know how the moments per- form their adoration ? Waving its row of lamps, the universe sings in worship day and night, There are the hidden banner and the secret canopy : THE moon shines in my body, but my blind eyes cannot see it : The moon is within me, and so is the sun. The unstruck drum of Eternity is sounded within me ; but my deaf ears cannot hear it. So long as man clamours for the / and the Mine, his works are as naught : When all love of the / and the Mine is dead, then the work of the Lord is done. For work has no other aim than the getting of knowledge : When that comes, then work is put away%%% To what shore would you cross, O my heart ? there is no traveller before you, there is no road : KABIR'S POEMS 27 Where is the movement, where is the rest, on that shore ? There is no water ; no boat, no boat- man, is there ; There is not so much as a rope to tow the boat, nor a man to draw it. No earth, no sky, no time, no thing, is there : no shore, no ford ! There, there is neither body nor mind : and where is the place that shall still the thirst of the soul ? You shall find naught in that empti- ness. Be strong, and enter into your own body : for there your foothold is firm. Consider it well, O my heart ! go not elsewhere. Kabir says : " Put all imaginations away, and stand fast in that which you are." THE shadows of evening fall thick and deep, and the darkness of love envelops the body and the mind. Open the window to the west, and be lost in the sky of love ; Drink the sweet honey that steeps the petals of the lotus of the heart. Receive the waves in your body : what splendour is in the region of the sea ! Hark ! the sounds of conches and bells are rising. Kabir says : " O brother, behold ! the Lord is in this vessel of my body. " I became suddenly revealed in Benares, and Ramananda illumined me ; I brought with me the thirst for the Infinite, and I have come for the meeting with Him. In simplicity will I unite with the Simple One ; my love will surge up. O Gorakh, march thou with His music ON this tree is a bird : it dances in the joy of life. None knows where it is : and who knows what the burden of its music may be ? Where the branches throw a deep shade, there does it have its nest : and it comes in the evening and flies away in the morning, and says not a word of that which it means. None tell me of this bird that sings within me. It is neither coloured nor colourless : it has neither form nor outline : It sits in the shadow of love. It dwells within the Unattainable, the Infinite, and the Eternal ; and no one marks when it comes and goes. Kabir says : " O brother Sadhu ! 38 KABIR'S POEMS deep is the mystery. Let wise men seek to know where rests that bird." O FRIEND, awake, and sleep no more ! The night is over and gone, would you lose your day also ? Others, who have wakened, have re- ceived jewels ; O foolish woman ! you have lost all whilst you slept. Your lover is wise, and you are foolish, O woman ! KABIR'S POEMS 43 You never prepared the bed of your husband : O mad one ! you passed your time in silly play. Your youth was passed in vain, for you did not know your Lord ; Wake, wake ! See ! your bed is empty : He left you in the night. Kabir says : " Only she wakes, whose heart is pierced with the arrow of His music." If there be lust, how can love be there ? Where there is love, there is no lust. Lay hold on your sword, and join in the fight. Fight, O my brother, as long as life lasts. Strike off your enemy's head, and there make an end of him quickly : then come, and bow your head at your King's Durbar. He who is brave, never forsakes the battle : he who flies from it is no true fighter. In the field of this body a great war goes forward, against passion, anger, pride, and greed : It is in the kingdom of truth, content- ment and purity, that this battle is raging ; and the sword that rings forth most loudly is the sword of His Name. Kabir says : " When a brave knight KABIR'S POEMS 45 takes the field, a host of cowards is put to flight. It is a hard fight and a weary one, this fight of the truth-seeker : for the vow of the truth -seeker is more hard than that of the warrior, or of the widowed wife who would follow her husband. For the warrior fights for a few hours, and the widow's struggle with death is soon ended : But the truth-seeker's battle goes on day and night, as long as life lasts it never ceases HAVE you not heard the tune which the Unstruck Music is playing ? In the midst of the chamber the harp of joy is gently and sweetly played ; and where is the need of going without to hear it ? If you have not drunk of the nectar of that One Love, what boots it though you should purge yourself of all stains ? The Kazi is searching the words of the Koran, and instructing others : but if his heart be not steeped in that love, what does it avail, though he be a teacher of men ? The Yogi dyes his garments with red : but if he knows naught of that colour of love, what does it avail though his garments be tinted ? 60 KABIR'S POEMS Kabir says : " Whether I be in the temple or the balcony, in the camp or in the flower garden, I tell you truly that every moment my Lord is taking His delight in me SUBTLE is the path of love ! Therein there is no asking and no not- asking, There one loses one's self at His feet, There one is immersed in the joy of the seeking : plunged in the deeps of love as the fish in the water. The lover is never slow in offering his head for his Lord's service. Kabir declares the secret of this love. HE is the real Sadhu, who can reveal the form of the Formless to the vision of these eyes : Who teaches the simple way of attain- ing Him, that is other than rites or ceremonies : Who does not make you close the doors, and hold the breath, and renounce the world : Who makes you perceive the Supreme Spirit wherever the mind attaches itself : Who teaches you to be still in the midst of all your activities. Ever immersed in bliss, having no fear in his mind, he keeps the spirit of union in the midst of all enjoy- ments. 62 KABIR'S POEMS The infinite dwelling of the Infinite Being is everywhere : in earth, water, sky, and air : Firm as the thunderbolt, the seat of the seeker is established above the void. He who is within is without : I see Him and none else WHEN at last you are come to the ocean of happiness, do not go back thirsty. Wake, foolish man ! for Death stalks you. Here is pure water before you ; drink it at every breath. Do not follow the mirage on foot, but thirst for the nectar ; Dhruva, Prahlad, and Shukadeva have drunk of it, and also Raidas has tasted it : The saints are drunk with love, their thirst is for love. Kabir says : " Listen to me, brother ! The nest of fear is broken. Not for a moment have you come face to face with the world : p 66 KABIR'S POEMS You are weaving your bondage of falsehood, your words are full of deception : With the load of desires which you hold on your head, how can you be light ? " Kabir says : " Keep within you truth, detachment, and love IF God be within the mosque, then to whom does this world belong ? If Ram be within the image which you find upon your pilgrimage, then who is there to know what happens without ? Hari is in the East : Allah is in the West. Look within your heart, for there you will find both Karim and Ram ; All the men and women of the world are His living forms. Kabir is the child of Allah and of Ram : He is my Guru, He is my Pir THE jewel is lost in the mud, and all are seeking for it ; Some look for it in the east, and some in the west ; some in the water and some amongst stones. But the servant Kabir has appraised it at its true value, and has wrapped it with care in the end of the mantle of his heart. ~Kabir (Songs of Kabir)%%% \n"When your face is hidden from me, like the moon hidden on a dark night, I shed stars of tears and yet my night remains dark in spite of all those shining stars.\n ~ Jami Epitaph %%% \ I never saw a lamp shine more brilliantly than the lamp of silence.\n ~Bayazid Bastami%%% I don't know why they say the horse is a noble animal and the dove is beautiful and why no one keeps a vulture. Why is the clover inferior to the red tulip? We need to wash our eyes and view things differently. We should wash our words Words should be wind Words should be rain We should close the umbrellas And walk in the rain. ~ Sohrab Sepeheri%%% Happiness turned to me and said -- 'It is time. It is time to forgive yourself for all of the things that you did not become. It is time to exonerate yourself for all the people you couldn't save, for all the fragile hearts you fumbled with in the dark of your confusion. It is time, child, to accept that you don't have to be who you were a year ago, that you don't have to want the same things. Above all else, it is time to believe, with reckless abandon, that you are worthy of me, for I have been waiting for years. ~ Bianca Sparacino%%% Envision the train station you want to build, imagine it in perfection, and as you build it, know imperfections will arise, but you’ll still create this station that is yours. and is beautiful%%% What binds souls together and creates harmony is the ability to empathize over pain and yet still decide you will choose joy.%%% Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I'm gazing at a distant star. It's dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago. Maybe the star doesn't even exist anymore. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything. ~ Murakami %%% In the spacious temple, The back door's not barred at night. Half a gatha composed beside the stream, A remaining sutra read beneath the moon. Though I pursued the mundane dust, I came awake at last. Those who do not know this truth Must labor in lifelong toil. ~ Zanning (919-1001)%%% Last night as I was sleeping I dreamt a marvellous vision that there was a beehive here in my heart. And the en bees were making white combs and sweet honey from my old failures. ~ Antonio Machado%%% Delusion is a divine curse that makes someone envious, conceited, malicious, so that he doesn't know the evil he does will strike him back.%%% If he could see his nothingness and his deadly, festering wound, pain would arise from looking within, and that pain would save him.\n ~ Rumi%%% The Tyger Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies. Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand, dare seize the fire? And what shoulder, & what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? & what dread feet? What the hammer? what the chain, In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp, Dare its deadly terrors clasp! When the stars threw down their spears And water'd heaven with their tears: Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee? Tyger Tyger burning bright, In the forests of the night: What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? ~ William Blake%%% If you don't know the kind of person I am and I don't know the kind of person you are a pattern that others made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home we may miss our star. For there is many a small betrayal in the mind, a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood storming out to play through the broken dike. And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail, but if one wanders the circus won't find the park, I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty to know what occurs but not recognize the fact. And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy, a remote important region in all who talk: though we could fool each other, we should consider— lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark. For it is important that awake people be awake, or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep; the signals we give\n— yes or no, or maybe — should be clear: the darkness around us is deep. ~ William Stafford%%% "How do I Listen to others? As if everyone were my Master Speaking to me His Cherished Last Words" ~ Hafiz%%% "Define and narrow me, you starve yourself of yourself..." \n ~ Rumi%%% A thousand times I have ascertained and found it to be true: The affairs of this world are really nothing into nothing. Still though, we should dance. ~ Hafiz%%% One night a man was crying, Allah! Allah! His lips grew sweet with the praising, until a cynic said, "So! I have heard you calling out, but have you ever gotten any response?” The man had no answer to that. He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep. He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls, in a thick, green foliage. "Why did you stop praising?" "Because I've never heard anything back." "This longing you express is the return message." The grief you cry out from draws you toward union. Your pure sadness that wants help is the secret cup. Listen to the moan of a dog for its master. That whining is the connection. There are love dogs no one knows the names of. Give your life to be one of them.\n ~ Rumi%%% …And let me talk to you with your silence that is bright as a lamp, simple as a ring. You are like the night, with its stillness and constellations… ~ Neruda%%% 'Day and night I guarded the pearl of my soul. Now in this ocean of pearling currents, I've lost track of which is mine' ~Rumi%%% ‘Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street. I took it as a sign to start singing, falling up into the bowl of sky. The bowl breaks. Everywhere is falling everywhere. Nothing else to do. Here’s the new rule: break the wineglass, and fall toward the glassblower’s breath.’\n ~ Rumi%%% ‘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!’\n ~ Rumi%%% If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two; Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if the other do. And though it in the center sit, Yet when the other far doth roam, It leans and hearkens after it, And grows erect, as that comes home. Such wilt thou be to me, who must, Like th' other foot, obliquely run; Thy firmness makes my circle just, And makes me end where I begun. ~ John Donne%%% An honorable human relationship — that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word “love” — is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.%%% It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation.%%% It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity.%%% It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.%%% It isn’t that to have an honorable relationship with you, I have to understand everything, or tell you everything at once, or that I can know, beforehand, everything I need to tell you.%%% It means that most of the time I am eager, longing for the possibility of telling you. That these possibilities may seem frightening, but not destructive, to me. That I feel strong enough to hear your tentative and groping words. That we both know we are trying, all the time, to extend the possibilities of truth between us. The possibility of life between us. The liar lives in fear of losing control. She cannot even desire a relationship without manipulation, since to be vulnerable to another person means for her the loss of control. The liar has many friends, and leads an existence of great loneliness. Lying is done with words, and also with silence. This is why the effort to speak honestly is so important. Lies are usually attempts to make everything simpler — for the liar — than it really is, or ought to be. In lying to others we end up lying to ourselves. We deny the importance of an event, or a person, and thus deprive ourselves of a part of our lives. Or we use one piece of the past or present to screen out another. Thus we lose faith even within our own lives. The unconscious wants truth, as the body does. The complexity and fecundity of dreams come from the complexity and fecundity of the unconscious struggling to fulfill that desire. The possibilities that exist between two people, or among a group of people, are a kind of alchemy. They are the most interesting thing in life. The liar is someone who keeps losing sight of these possibilities. When relationships are determined by manipulation, by the need for control, they may possess a dreary, bickering kind of drama, but they cease to be interesting. They are repetitious; the shock of human possibilities has ceased to reverberate through them. ~ Adrienne Rich%%% “So many days, oh so many days seeing you so tangible and so close, how do I pay, with what do I pay? The bloodthirsty spring has awakened in the woods. The foxes start from their earths, the serpents drink the dew, and I go with you in the leaves between the pines and the silence, asking myself how and when I will have to pay for my luck. Of everything I have seen, it's you I want to go on seeing: of everything I've touched, it's your flesh I want to go on touching. I love your orange laughter. I am moved by the sight of you sleeping. What am I to do, love, loved one? I don't know how others love or how people loved in the past. I live, watching you, loving you. Being in love is my nature. You please me more each afternoon. Where is she? I keep on asking if your eyes disappear. How long she's taking! I think, and I'm hurt. I feel poor, foolish and sad, and you arrive and you are lightning glancing off the peach trees. That's why I love you and yet not why. There are so many reasons, and yet so few, for love has to be so, involving and general, particular and terrifying, joyful and grieving, flowering like the stars, and measureless as a kiss.” ~ Pablo Neruda%%% I love your lips when they’re wet with wine And red with a wild desire; I love your eyes when the lovelight lies Lit with a passionate fire. I love your arms when the warm white flesh Touches mine in a fond embrace; I love your hair when the strands enmesh Your kisses against my face. Not for me the cold, calm kiss Of a virgin’s bloodless love; Not for me the saint’s white bliss, Nor the heart of a spotless dove. But give me the love that so freely gives And laughs at the whole world’s blame, With your body so young and warm in my arms, It sets my poor heart aflame. So kiss me sweet with your warm wet mouth, Still fragrant with ruby wine, And say with a fervor born of the South That your body and soul are mine. Clasp me close in your warm young arms, While the pale stars shine above, And we’ll live our whole young lives away In the joys of a living love. ~ Wilcox%%%% "Most people don't know there are angels whose only job is to make sure you don't get too comfortable & fall asleep & miss your life."%%% "Time stands still best in moments that look suspiciously like ordinary life."\n %%% "Anyone can slay a dragon he told me, but try waking up every morning and loving the world all over again. That's what takes a real hero."%%% "If I love you with all my heart, she said, what will you give me? & then she stopped & said I didn't have to answer that because she was going to do it anyway."%%% "We sat on the edge of the world & you asked me to tell you why & though a thousand things came to mind, underneath them all was a quiet voice saying, because you remind me of everything there is in this world to love. "%%% Someday, the light will shine like a sun through my skin & they will say, What have you done with your life? & though there are many moments I think I will remember, in the end, I will be proud to say, I was one of us.%%% I carry you with me into the world, into the smell of rain & the words that dance between people & for me, it will always be this way, walking in the light, remembering being alive together. I don’t know who we’ll become in the days ahead, she said. I only know the quiet voice in my heart that says we’ll become it together.%%% Hay un momento perfectamente quieto antes del amanecer, cuando el sol se prepara & después entra en el mundo oscuro & todo se llena de tanta luz que las dudas de esa noche larga apenas son unas memorias. Es la manera de todas las cosas, así que la noche termina & la luz regresa. La luz siempre regresa.%%% Someone asked me about you the other day & I said something like she is not too tall & her hair is such & such a color. I said that, because how could I tell them you are like the play of sunlight on water, dancing to music we don’t often hear. Or the song of doves, like the soft sounds a woman makes when she is truly kissed. Or the way people smile at each other when there is nothing to hide. How could I tell them you are the way love looks when it walks through this world of ours? How could I say that to them before I spent a lifetime saying that to you?%%% this is a story of how one plus one equals something bigger than you can imagine as long as you don’t give up too soon because you didn’t understand the math.%%% All the times I imagined the future, I never saw you in it, so now when someone asks me what I think will happen, even about the simplest things, I shake my head & say, I don’t know for sure, but leave room for something wonderful. ~Brian Andreas%%% “Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious. They are the questions with no answers. A question with no answer is a barrier that cannot be breached. In other words, it is questions with no answers that set the limit of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence.”%%% “Human life occurs only once, and the reason we cannot determine which of our decisions are good and which bad is that in a given situation we can make only one decision; we are not granted a second, third, or fourth life in which to compare various decisions.” “... characters are not born like people, of woman; they are born of a situation, a sentence, a metaphor containing in a nutshell a basic human possibility that the author thinks no one else has discovered or said something essential about.” The characters in my novels are my own unrealized possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented. It is that crossed border (the border beyond which my own "I" ends) which attracts me most. For beyond that border begins the secret the novel asks about. This novel is not the author's confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become.%%% "People usually escape from their troubles into the future; they draw an imaginary line across the path of time, a line beyond which their current troubles will cease to exist." “loves are like empires: when the idea they are founded on crumbles, they, too, fade away.”%%% In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine. %%% And suddenly Tomas grasped a strange fact: everyone was smiling at him, everyone wanted him to write the retraction; it would make everyone happy! The people with the first type of reaction would be happy because by inflating cowardice, he would make their actions seem commonplace and thereby give them back their lost honor. The people with the second type of reaction, who had come to consider their honor a special privilege never to be yielded, nurtured a secret love for the cowards, for without them their courage would soon erode into a trivial, monotonous grind admired by no one.%%% ~Kundera%%% Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable ~ mary oliver%%% Seven times have I despised my soul: The first time when I saw her being meek that she might attain height. The second time when I saw her limping before the crippled. The third time when she was given to choose between the hard and the easy, and she chose the easy. The fourth time when she committed a wrong, and comforted herself that others also commit wrong. The fifth time when she forbore for weakness, and attributed her patience to strength. The sixth time when she despised the ugliness of a face, and knew not that it was one of her own masks. And the seventh time when she sang a song of praise, and deemed it a virtue.~ Gibran%%% I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers~ Gibran%%% You see but your shadow when you turn your back to the sun.~ Gibran%%% “Anxiety is love’s greatest killer… It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you.”~ Gibran%%% she lives the poetry she cannot write ~oscar wilde%%% lovely days don’t come to you , you should walk to them ~rumi%%% With chaste heart, and pure eyes I celebrate you, my beauty, restraining my blood so that the line surges and follows your contour, and you bed yourself in my verse, as in woodland, or wave-spume: earth's perfume, sea's music. Nakedly beautiful, whether it is your feet, arching at a primal touch of sound or breeze, or your ears, tiny spiral shells from the splendour of America's oceans. Your breasts also, of equal fullness, overflowing with the living light and, yes, winged your eyelids of silken corn that disclose or enclose the deep twin landscapes of your eyes. The line of your back separating you falls away into paler regions then surges to the smooth hemispheres of an apple, and goes splitting your loveliness into two pillars of burnt , pure alabaster, to be lost in the twin clusters of your feet, from which, once more, lifts and takes fire the double tree of your symmetry: flower of fire, open circle of candles, swollen fruit raised over the meeting of earth and ocean. Your body - from what substances agate, quartz, ears of wheat, did it flow, was it gathered, rising like bread in the warmth, and signalling hills silvered, valleys of a single petal, sweetnesses of velvet depth, until the pure, fine, form of woman thickened and rested there? It is not so much light that falls over the world extended by your body its suffocating snow, as brightness, pouring itself out of you, as if you were burning inside. Under your skin the moon is alive. ~ Neruda%%% The Last Rains of April When the silence of night descended And sleep fell upon all weary souls Longing to dream A noise unheard since last the skies were warm dawned in the distance\n First came the thunder Then the lightening And then the rains How they fell through the window Cool and wet to the touch Rousing in me dreams of my own\n How I wish that it were you that had awoken me Like thunder Like lightening And how I wish that it were I That fell upon thee like rain ~ Briana%%% When I sink my eye into your eyes I catch a glimpse of a deep dawn And I see ancient yesterday And I see what I do not know And I feel the universe flowing Between my eye and yours ~ Khalil Gibran%%% I do not resemble your other lovers, my lady should another give you a cloud I give you rain Should he give you a lantern, I will give you the moon Should he give you a branch I will give you the trees And if another gives you a ship I shall give you the journey.\n ~ Nizar Qabbani%%% When a man is in love how can he use old words? Should a woman desiring her lover lie down with grammarians and linguists? I said nothing to the woman I loved but gathered love's adjectives into a suitcase and fled from all languages. ~ Nizar Qabbani%%% Autobiography In Five Short Chapters Chapter I I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost... I am hopeless. It isn't my fault. It takes forever to find a way out. Chapter II I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don't see it. I fall in again. I can't believe I am in this same place. But it isn't my fault. It still takes a long time to get out. \nChapter III I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it there. I still fall in... it's a habit... but, my eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately. \nChapter IV I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it. Chapter V I walk down another street. ~ Portia Nelson%%% To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded. ~ Emerson%%% Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race. --Calvin Coolidge%%% Your life is nothing more than a love story between you and God. Every person, every gift, every loss, every pain is sent on your path, for one reason and one reason only. To bring you back to Him. ~Yasmin Mogahed%%% There are so many kinds of time. The time by which we measure our lives. Months and years. Or the big time the time that raises mountains and makes stars. Or all the things that happen between one heartbeat and the next. It’s hard to live in all those kinds of time. Easy to forget that you live in all of them. ~ Robert Charles Wilson%%% We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. Through the unknown, unremembered gate When the last of earth left to discover Is that which was the beginning; At the source of the longest river The voice of the hidden waterfall And the children in the apple-tree Not known, because not looked for But heard, half-heard, in the stillness Between two waves of the sea. Quick now, here, now, always-- A condition of complete simplicity (Costing not less than everything) And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well When the tongues of flames are in-folded Into the crowned knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one. ~TS Elliot%%% "The soul has been given its own ears to hear things the mind does not understand." ~Rumi%%% To have courage for whatever comes in life - everything lies in that. ~ Saint Teresa of Avila%%% “Spirituality is not to be learned by flight from the world, or by running away from things, or by turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, we must learn an inner solitude wherever or with whomsoever we may be. We must learn to penetrate things and find God there.” ~ Meister Eckhart%%% Life consists of what man is thinking about all day.\n ~ Emerson %%% The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature as all ridicule and deformity... and some scarcely see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.\n ~ William Blake%%% It is here, my daughters, that love is to be found - not hidden away in corners but in the midst of occasions of sin. And believe me, although we may more often fail and commit small lapses, our gain will be incomparably the greater. ~ Saint Teresa of Avila%%% “With you, intimacy colours my voice. even ‘hello’ sounds like ‘come here'.” \n ~ Warsan Shire%%% “Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark." ~ Rabindranath Tagore%%% The lust for comfort murders the passions of the soul. ~ Khalil Gibran %%% “The ego hurts you like this: you become obsessed with the one person who does not love you. blind to the rest who do.” \n ~ Warsan Shire%%% “Run from what's comfortable. 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.”\n ~ Rumi%%% I will only let you touch me If your hands are so full of intention that every brush of your palms feels like you're writing a novel on my skin. ~ Azra T.%%% It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or even generations. ~ Khalil Gibran%%% "Love takes off the masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within." ~James Baldwin%%% The happiness of the drop is to die in the river. ~ Sufi Saying%%% With every breath I plant the seeds of devotion - I am a farmer of the heart. ~ Rumi%%% if you want to win hearts, sow the seeds of Love. If you want heaven, stop scattering thorns on the road. ~ Rumi%%% You are what you seek. ~ Rumi%%% When I say the word you, I mean a hundred universes ~ Rumi%%% I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think. ~ Rumi%%% What is forgiveness? It's the fragrance that flowers give when they are crushed. ~ Sufi Saying%%% Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother. ~Kahlil Gibran%%% Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights. ~ Kahlil Gibran%%% Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation. ~ Kahlil Gibran%%% We are all like the bright moon, we still have our darker side.\n ~ Kahlil Gibran%%% “Give your weakness to one who helps.” ~ Rumi%%% "...you can't make homes out of human beings, someone should have already told you that..." ~ Warsan Shire%%% “Two people who were once very close can without blame or grand betrayal become strangers. Perhaps this is the saddest thing in the world.” ~ Warsan Shire%%% "We took such care of tomorrow and died on the way there." ~ Warsan Shire%%% “Anyone who knows me, should learn to know me again; For I am like the Moon, you will see me with new face everyday.” ~ Rumi%%% "What you seek is seeking you." ~ Rumi%%% "If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it."\n ~ Anaïs Nin%%% “Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark." ~Rabindranath Tagore%%% In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter,\nand sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed. ~ Kahlil Gibran%%% 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\nare 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, and you have made radiant 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. ~Rumi%%% “I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.”\n ~ Hafiz %%% Young lovers wisely say, "Let's try it from this angle, Maybe something marvelous will happen, Maybe three suns and two moons Will roll out From a hiding place in the body Our passion has yet to ignite." Old lovers say, "We can do it one more time, How about from this longitude And latitude - Swinging from a rope tied to the ceiling, Maybe a part of God Is still hiding in a corner of your heart Our devotion has yet to reveal." Bottom line: Do not stop playing These beautiful Love Games. ~ Hafiz%%% Let us be like Two falling stars in the day sky.\n Let no one know of our sublime beauty As we hold hands with God And burn\n Into a sacred existence that defies - That surpasses\n Every description of ecstasy And love. ~ Hafiz%%% A Barroom View of Love I would not want all my words To parade around this world In pretty costumes, So I will tell you something Of the Barroom view of Love. Love is grabbing hold of the Great Lion's mane And wrestling and rolling deep into Existence While the Beloved gets rough And begins to maul you alive. True Love, my dear, Is putting an ironclad grip upon The soft, swollen balls Of a Divine Rogue Elephant And Not having the good fortune to Die! ~ Hafiz %%% I saw you dancing last night on the roof of your house all alone. I felt your heart longing for the Friend. I saw you whirling beneath the soft bright rose that hung from an invisible stem in the sky. So I began to change into my best clothes in hopes of joining you, even though I live a thousand miles away. And if you had spun like an immaculate sphere just two more times, then bowed again so sweetly to the east, you would have found God and me standing so near and lifting you into our arms. I saw you dancing last night near the roof of this world ~ Hafiz%%% Everything is clapping today. Light, Sound, Motion, All movement. A rabbit I pass pulls a cymbal From a hidden pocket Then winks. This causes a few planets and I To go nuts And start grabbing each other. Someone sees this, Calls a Shrink, Tries to get me Committed For Being too Happy. Listen: this world is the lunatic’s sphere, Don’t always agree it’s real, Even with my feet upon it And the postman knowing my door My address is somewhere else ~ Hafiz%%% Running Through the streets Screaming, Throwing rocks through windows, Using my own head to ring Great bells, Pulling out my hair, Tearing off my clothes, Tying everything I own To a stick, And setting it on Fire. What else can Hafiz do tonight To celebrate the madness, The joy, Of seeing God Everywhere!\n ~ Hafiz%%% For a brief moment, I swore, the moon fell asleep in your eyes, and dreams became the way the light leaked from your eyelids. ~ Christopher Poindexter %%% They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered. ~ f scott fitzgerald%%% Birds fly with wings I fly without I break my cup against a stone I tear my shirt and dig for roots I rain. A black tulip mocks my strangeness The one who teaches me is spring That show will open soon. Outside, i grieve Inside, pure laughter ~ Rumi%%% alternate names for black boys 1. smoke above the burning bush 2. archnemesis of summer night 3. first son of soil 4. coal awaiting spark & wind 5. guilty until proven dead 6. oil heavy starlight 7. monster until proven ghost 8. gone 9. phoenix who forgets to un-ash 10. going, going, gone 11. gods of shovels & black veils 12. what once passed for kindling 13. fireworks at dawn 14. brilliant, shadow hued coral 15. (I thought to leave this blank but who am I to name us nothing?) 16. prayer who learned to bite & sprint 17. a mother’s joy & clutched breath ~Danez Smith%%% If you want to change the world… love a woman-really love her. Find the one who calls to your soul, who doesn’t make sense. Throw away your check list and put your ear to her heart and listen. Hear the names, the prayers, the songs of every living thing- every winged one, every furry and scaled one, every underground and underwater one, every green and flowering one, every not yet born and dying one… Hear their melancholy praises back to the One who gave them life. If you haven’t heard your own name yet, you haven’t listened long enough. If your eyes aren’t filled with tears, if you aren’t bowing at her feet, you haven’t ever grieved having almost lost her. If you want to change the world… love a woman-one woman beyond yourself, beyond desire and reason, beyond your male preferences for youth, beauty and variety and all your superficial concepts of freedom. We have given ourselves so many choices we have forgotten that true liberation comes from standing in the middle of the soul’s fire and burning through our resistance to Love. There is only one Goddess. Look into Her eyes and see-really see if she is the one to bring the axe to your head. If not, walk away. Right now. Don’t waste time “trying.” Know that your decision has nothing to do with her because ultimately it’s not with who, but when we choose to surrender. If you want to change the world… love a woman. Love her for life-beyond your fear of death, beyond your fear of being manipulated by the Mother inside your head. Don’t tell her you’re willing to die for her. Say you’re willing to LIVE with her, plant trees with her and watch them grow. Be her hero by telling her how beautiful she is in her vulnerable majesty, by helping her to remember every day that she IS Goddess through your adoration and devotion. If you want to change the world… love a woman in all her faces, through all her seasons and she will heal you of your schizophrenia- your double-mindedness and half-heartedness which keeps your Spirit and body separate- which keeps you alone and always looking outside yourself for something to make your life worth living. There will always be another woman. Soon the new shiny one will become the old dull one and you’ll grow restless again, trading in women like cars, trading in the Goddess for the latest object of your desire. Man doesn’t need any more choices. What man needs is Woman, the Way of the Feminine, of Patience and Compassion, non-seeking, non-doing, of breathing in one place and sinking deep intertwining roots strong enough to hold the Earth together while she shakes off the cement and steel from her skin. If you want to change the world… love a woman, just one woman . Love and protect her as if she is the last holy vessel. Love her through her fear of abandonment which she has been holding for all of humanity. No, the wound is not hers to heal alone. No, she is not weak in her codependence. If you want to change the world… love a woman all the way through until she believes you, until her instincts, her visions, her voice, her art, her passion, her wildness have returned to her- until she is a force of love more powerful than all the political media demons who seek to devalue and destroy her. If you want to change the world, lay down your causes, your guns and protest signs. Lay down your inner war, your righteous anger and love a woman… beyond all of your striving for greatness, beyond your tenacious quest for enlightenment. The holy grail stands before you if you would only take her in your arms and let go of searching for something beyond this intimacy. What if peace is a dream which can only be remembered through the heart of Woman? What if a man’s love for Woman, the Way of the Feminine is the key to opening Her heart? If you want to change the world…love a woman to the depths of your shadow, to the highest reaches of your Being, back to the Garden where you first met her, to the gateway of the rainbow realm where you walk through together as Light as One, to the point of no return, to the ends and the beginning of a new Earth. ~ Lisa Citore%%% “I want to see you. Know your voice. Recognize you when you first come 'round the corner. Sense your scent when I come into a room you've just left. Know the lift of your heel, the glide of your foot. Become familiar with the way you purse your lips then let them part, just the slightest bit, when I lean in to your space and kiss you. I want to know the joy of how you whisper "more”~ Rumi%%% There are lovers content with longing. I’m not one of them. ~Rumi%%% "If I keep a green bough in my heart the singing bird will come." ~ Chinese proverb%%% If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too: If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or being hated don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise; If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim, If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same:. If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools; If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings, And never breathe a word about your loss: If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!" If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much: If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son! ~ Rudyard kipling%%% "The great secret of death, and perhaps its deepest connection with us, is this: that, in taking from us a being we have loved and venerated, death does not wound us without, at the same time, lifting us toward a more perfect understanding of this being and of ourselves." ~ Rilke%%% “So don't be frightened, dear friend, if a sadness confronts you larger than any you have ever known, casting its shadow over all you do. You must think that something is happening within you, and remember that life has not forgotten you; it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. Why would you want to exclude from your life any uneasiness, any pain, any depression, since you don't know what work they are accomplishing within you?” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke%%% My heart tells me it is distressed with Him, but I can only laugh at such pretended injuries. Be fair, You who are the Glory of the just. You, Soul, free of "we" and "I," subtle spirit within each man and woman. When a man and a woman become one, that "one" is You. And when that one is obliterated, there You are. Where is this "we" and this "I"? By the side of the Beloved. You made this "we" and this "I" in order that you might play this game of courtship with Yourself, that all "you's" and "I's" might become one soul and finally drown in the Beloved. All this is true. Come! You who are the Creative Word: Be You, so far beyond description. Is it possible for the bodily eyes to see You? Can thought comprehend Your laughter or grief? Tell me now, can it possibly see You at all? Such a heart has only borrowed things to live with. 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.\n ~ Rumi%%% 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 a thick cloud. Slide out the side. Die, and be quiet. Quiteness is the surest sign that you've died. Your old life was a frantic running from silence.%%% The speechless full moon comes out now.\n ~ Rumi%%% I would love to hold you close, to push away the curls. I'd look within your eyes and feel how perfect is this face. But I will write this letter instead as love harbors in words. And if, in reading them, you should come to know, your ilk compared my love is plain, and stark, I would say in return these embers seer me deep not all poets' pages burn. \n ~ Saba Mirza%%% Listen for the stream that tells you one thing. Die on this bank. Begin in me the way of rivers with the sea. ~Rumi%%% Longing is the core of mystery. Longing itself brings the cure. The only rule is, Suffer the pain.%%% Your desire must be disciplined, and what you want to happen in time, sacrificed. ~ rumi%%%%%% 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 off a stone, a flickering in metal. Both candle and the moth crazy around it. Rose and 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 is not. You who know Jelaluddin, You are the one in all, say who I am. Say I am you. ~ Rumi%%% Through love Bitter things become sweet. Through love Bits of copper turn into . Through love Dregs taste like pure wine. Through love Pains are healed.\nLove 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.\n 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. Two there are who are never satisfied – the lover of the world and the lover of knowledge. Remember. The way you make love is the way God will be with you. If in thirst you drink water from a cup, you see God in it. Those who are not in love with God will see only their own faces in it. Is it really so that the one I love is everywhere? ~ Rumi %%% Great lions can find peace in a cage. But we should only do that As a last resort. So those bars I see that restrain your wings, I guess you won’t mind if I pry them open. ~ Rumi%%% I dwell in Possibility I dwell in Possibility – A fairer House than Prose – More numerous of Windows – Superior – for Doors –%%% Of Chambers as the Cedars – Impregnable of eye – And for an everlasting Roof The Gambrels of the Sky –%%% Of Visitors – the fairest – For Occupation – This – The spreading wide my narrow Hands To gather Paradise ~Emily Dickinson%%% One. You know how this ends. There’s nothing you can do to change it, so make peace with it now. Ready your hands for the callus, shred the cloth for bandages, prepare the rosaries. Two. When you meet him, outside the grocery, along the boardwalk, beneath the overpass, you will not know what he is. He will be neither be too charming nor too handsome, not thunder, not polish Three. The day you fall in love, his mouth will spill your name. He will repeat and repeat. He will not touch you. He will watch your hips, study whatever ample you have, will ask to watch you dance. When you turn to leave, he will use your name like a choke chain. Four. He will call you miracle. Your face will unravel. This is his magic. When he begs you promise, say yes. Five. When he offers his lips, take them. Take his arms, his throat, take his toes when he offers. Gorge. Swallow everything whole. Gag. Vomit. Swallow more. Do not hesitate. No time for polite, or coy. Take. Six. When the minions call you whore, nod. Seven. He will tell you of the others. How they went crazy in their sleep awaiting his return. Do not flinch. Do not doubt your thickened fingertips. Stand upright. You promised. Eight. When you find him in his room, thrashing the sheets, pressing his palms into the walls, howling, his face a river… close the door. This is how he makes wine. Leave him in his sorcery. Nine. When he explains that he cannot love. That he will never be yours alone. When he tells how the meek, the gluttons, the tempted, the proud are his angels, do not mourn. Smile, feed him, wash his hair. Ten. He is a king among thieves. The leeches will hollow his skin, the crows reduce him to bones. His own heart will empty him. Allow for the bleed. Be ready with tourniquet and prayer. Eleven. In the dry burn of dawn, after the last of the lashes, the thorns and the spittle, when his limp body is laid at your feet, remember the night you loved him, the ember of his eyes and the way the words came like honey.%%% Twelve. You were made for this. ~ Jeanann Verlee%%% Osho Satyakam http://www.oshoworld.com/osho_talk/talks/enligh25.asp%%% Mustard Seed http://www.oshoworld.com/osho_talk/talks/seeds01.asp%%% The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed.... You are the kingdom of heaven, you are like a mustard seed. Be ready to die, prepare for your death! Of course there will be trembling and fear and apprehension. The jump is going to be difficult. Many times you may come back, many times you will go to the very brink and turn back and escape, because there is an abyss. The seed can only know the abyss, the seed cannot know the tree. There is no way that the seed can witness the sprouting tree -- there is no way. The seed has to die and trust in the unknown -- that it will happen. If you are ready to die, it happens. Go and sow seeds in the ground: when the tree has come, then dig the ground again and see where the seed is. It will have disappeared, it will not be there. Go and dig in a Buddha, in a Jesus -- you will not find the man, the seed. This is the meaning of Jesus being the son of God, no more the son of Joseph the carpenter -- because the seed came from Joseph the carpenter and Mary, but now the seed has disappeared, the shell has disappeared. This tree never came from the visible, it is from the invisible. Look at Jesus: the seed is no longer there, only God is there. Be ready to die so that you can be reborn. Drop the mind, the body, the ego, the identity. Suddenly you will find that something new is growing within you: you have become a womb, you are pregnant. And to be spiritually pregnant is the peak of creation, because you are creating yourself through it. Nothing is comparable to it. You may create a great painting or a great sculpture, but nothing is to be compared with when you create yourself, when you "self-create" yourself. ~Osho%%% When a disciple asks, there is no answer in his mind. He does not know, he simply does not know and that is why he is asking. Remember this: when you ask something, remember well, are you asking because you already have an answer? Are you asking through your knowledge? Then there can be no meeting. Then even if I answer, the answer will never reach you. You are not empty enough to receive the answer. The answer is already there: you are prejudiced, poisoned already. There are two types of questioning: one is out of knowledge, and then it is useless because then only a debate is possible, not a dialogue. But when you ask out of ignorance, knowing well that you don't know, when you know that you don't know, and ask, you have become a disciple. Now it is not going to be an argument. You are just thirsty and you ask for water; you are hungry and you ask for food. You don't know and you ask; you are ready to receive. A disciple asks knowing well that he doesn't know. When you don't know you are humble\n ~ Osho%%% There are things which are known only in their wholeness; you cannot dissect them. They are greater than their parts, this is the problem -- a basic problem for those who are in search of truth. Truth is greater than all the parts joined together. It is not just the sum of the parts, it is greater than the parts. A melody is not just the sum of all the notes, of all the sounds. No, it is something greater. When all the notes meet, a harmony is created, a harmony becomes manifest which was not there in single notes. I am speaking to you: you can dissect my words, they will all be found in a dictionary, but you cannot find me in the dictionary\n ~ Osho%%% Go sweep out the chamber of your heart. Make it ready to be the dwelling place of the Beloved. When you depart out, He will enter it. In you, void of yourself, will He display His beauties. ~Mahmud Shabistari%%% Strive to discover the mystery before life is taken from you. If while living you fail to find yourself, to know yourself, how will you be able to understand the secret of your existence when you die? ~ Farud ud-Din Attar%%% Piousness and the path of love are two different roads. Love is the fire that burns both belief and non-belief. Those who practice Love have neither religion nor caste. ~ Shaikh Abu-Saeed Abil-Kheir%%% Until you become an unbeliever in your own self, you cannot become a believer in God. ~Shaikh Abu-Saeed Abil-Kheir%%% The source of my suffering and loneliness is deep in my heart. This is a disease no doctor can cure. Only Union with the Friend can cure it. ~ Rabi´a al-Adawiyya%%% I'd like to taste, one more time, the rain that arrived one afternoon and fell just short of where I stood, so I leaned my face in, alive in both worlds at once, not knowing if it would end and not caring. ~ K. Addonizio%%% Your eyelash will write on my cheek The poem that has not been thought of. ~ Rumi%%% I believe in you, my Soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you; And you must not be abased to the other. Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat; Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best; Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice. I mind how once we lay, such a transparent summer morning; How you settled your head athwart my hips, and gently turn’d over upon me, And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart, And reach’d till you felt my beard, and reach’d till you held my feet. Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth; And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own, And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own; And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers; And that a kelson of the creation is love; And limitless are leaves, stiff or drooping in the fields; And brown ants in the little wells beneath them; And mossy scabs of the worm fence, and heap’d stones, elder, mullen and poke-weed. ~ Walt Whitman, Song of myself%%% The sun once glimpsed God’s true nature And has never been the same. Thus that radiant sphere Constantly pours its energy Upon this earth As does He from behind The veil. With a wonderful God like that Why isn’t everyone a screaming drunk? Hafiz’s guess is this: Any thought that you are better or less Than another man Quickly Breaks the wine Glass. ~Daniel Landinsky%%% Once a group of thieves stole a rare diamond Larger than a goose egg. Its value could have easily bought One thousand horses And two thousand acres Of the most fertile land in Shiraz. The thieves got drunk that night To celebrate their great haul, But during the course of the evening The effects of the liquor And their mistrust of each other grew to such An extent They decided to divide the stone into pieces. Of course then the Priceless became lost. Most everyone is lousy at math And does that to God - Dissects the Indivisible One, By thinking, saying, “This is my Beloved, he looks like this And acts like that, How could that moron over there Really Be God.” ~ Hafiz%%% 1. You came to me this morning And you handled me like meat. You´d have to live alone to know How good that feels, how sweet. My mirror twin, my next of kin, I´d know you in my sleep. And who but you would take me in A thousand kisses deep? 2. I loved you when you opened Like a lily to the heat. I´m just another snowman Standing in the rain and sleet, Who loved you with his frozen love His second-hand physique - With all he is, and all he was A thousand kisses deep. 3. All soaked in sex, and pressed against The limits of the sea: I saw there were no oceans left For scavengers like me. We made it to the forward deck I blessed our remnant fleet - And then consented to be wrecked A thousand kisses deep. 4. I know you had to lie to me, I know you had to cheat. But the Means no longer guarantee The Virtue in Deceit. That truth is bent, that beauty spent, That style is obsolete - Ever since the Holy Spirit went A thousand kisses deep. 5. (So what about this Inner Light That´s boundless and unique? I´m slouching through another night A thousand kisses deep.) 6. I´m turning tricks; I´m getting fixed, I´m back on Boogie Street. I tried to quit the business - Hey, I´m lazy and I´m weak. But sometimes when the night is slow, The wretched and the meek, We gather up our hearts and go A thousand kisses deep. 7. (And fragrant is the thought of you, The file on you complete - Except what we forgot to do A thousand kisses deep.) 8. The ponies run, the girls are young, The odds are there to beat. You win a while, and then it´s done - Your little winning streak. And summoned now to deal With your invincible defeat, You live your life as if it´s real A thousand kisses deep. 9. (I jammed with Diz and Dante - I did not have their sweep - But once or twice, they let me play A thousand kisses deep.) 10. And I´m still working with the wine, Still dancing cheek to cheek. The band is playing "Auld Lang Syne" - The heart will not retreat. And maybe I had miles to drive, And promises to keep - You ditch it all to stay alive A thousand kisses deep. 11. And now you are the Angel Death And now the Paraclete; And now you are the Savior's Breath And now the Belsen heap. No turning from the threat of love, No transcendental leap - As witnessed here in time and blood A thousand kisses deep. ~ Leonard Cohen%%% Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write, for example,'The night is shattered and the blue stars shiver in the distance.' The night wind revolves in the sky and sings. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. Through nights like this one I held her in my arms I kissed her again and again under the endless sky. She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too. How could one not have loved her great still eyes. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her. To hear the immense night, still more immense without her. And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture. What does it matter that my love could not keep her. The night is shattered and she is not with me. This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance. My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her. My sight searches for her as though to go to her. My heart looks for her, and she is not with me. The same night whitening the same trees. We, of that time, are no longer the same. I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her. My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing. Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before. Her voice. Her bright body. Her inifinite eyes. I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, is so long. Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her. Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer and these the last verses that I write for her. ~ Neruda%%% I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair. Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets. Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps. I hunger for your sleek laugh, your hands the color of a savage harvest, hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails, I want to eat your skin like a whole almond. I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body, the sovereign nose of your arrogant face, I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes, and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight, hunting for you, for your hot heart, like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue. ~ Neruda%%% Between what is said and not meant And meant but not said Most love is lost ~ Khalil Gibran%%%%%% My body and my mind are in depression because You are not with me. How much I love you and want you in my house! When I hear people describe me as your bride I look sideways ashamed, because I know that far inside us we have never met. Then what is this love of mine? I don’t really care about food, I don’t really care about sleep, I am restless indoors and outdoors. The bride wants her lover as much as a thirsty man wants water. And how will I find someone who will take a message to the Guest from me? How restless Kabir is all the time! How much he wants to see the Guest! ~Kabir%%% Lift the veil that obscures the heart and there you will find what you are looking for. ~Kabir%%% Hiding in this cage of visible matter is the invisible lifebird pay attention to her she is singing your song ~ Kabir%%% Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive. Jump into experience while you are alive! Think . . . and think . . . while you are alive. What you call “salvation” belongs to the time before death. If you don’t break your ropes while you’re alive, do you think ghosts will do it after? The idea that the should will rejoin the ecstatic just because the body is rotten— that is all fantasy. What is found now is found then. If you find nothing now, you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of the Death. If you make love with the divine now, in the next life you will have the face of satisfied desire So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is, Believe in the Great Sound! Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all the work. Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity. ~ Kabir%%% What is seen is not the Truth What is cannot be said Trust comes not without seeing Nor understanding without words The wise comprehends with knowledge To the ignorant it is but a wonder Some worship the formless God Some worship His various forms In what way He is beyond these attributes Only the Knower knows That music cannot be written How can then be the notes Says Kabir, awareness alone will overcome illusion ~ Kabir%%% She had blue skin And so did he He kept it hid And so did she They searched for blue Their whole life through Then passed right by And never knew ~ Shel Silverstein%%%%%% Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat. My shoulder is against yours. you will not find me in the stupas, not in Indian shrine rooms, nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals: not in masses, nor kirtans, not in legs winding around your own neck, nor in eating nothing but vegetables. When you really look for me, you will see me instantly -- you will find me in the tiniest house of time. Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God? He is the breath inside the breath. ~Kabir%%% “Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found.” ~ Pema Chödrön%%% "That is why the light of the oni xuma is black. It doesn't explain. It doesn't reveal. Instead of uncovering mysteries, it respects them. It makes them more and more mysterious, more fertile and prodigal. Oni xuma irrigates the unknown territory: that is its way of shedding light. ~Joan Parisi Wilcox%%% Souls are nourished by offerings. They are nourished by offering themselves, and they become more themselves the more they give of themselves. And ashes turn to water when the thirsty kiss them. ~ Ino Moxo%%% I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage appears, whose frown And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed and on the pedestal these words appear: “My name is Ozymandius, king of kings: look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!” Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretch far away. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley%%% Good poetry makes the universe reveal a secret ~Hafiz\n%%% You have done well In the contest of madness. You were brave in that holy war. You have all the honorable wounds Of one who has tried to find love Where the Beautiful Bird Does not drink. May I speak to you Like we are close And locked away together? Once I found a stray kitten And I used to soak my fingers In warm milk; It came to think I was five mothers On one hand. Wayfarer, Why not rest your tired body? Lean back and close your eyes. Come morning I will kneel by your side and feed you. I will so gently Spread open your mouth And let you taste something of my Sacred mind and life. Surely There is something wrong With your ideas of God O, surely there is something wrong With your ideas of God If you think Our Beloved would not be so Tender. ~ Rumi%%% "Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder." ~ Rumi%%%% There’s courage involved if you want to become truth. There is a broken-open place in a lover. Where are those qualities of bravery and sharp compassion in this group? What’s the use of old and frozen thought? I want a howling hurt. This is not a treasury where is stored; this is for copper. We alchemists look for talent that can heat up and change. Lukewarm won’t do. Halfhearted holding back, well-enough getting by? Not here. ~ Rumi%%% Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt that I had a beehive here inside my heart. And the en bees were making white combs and sweet honey from my old failures. ~Antonio Machado%%% You have no idea how hard I've looked for a gift to bring You. Nothing seemed right. What's the point of bringing gold to The gold mine, or water to the ocean. Everything I came up with was like taking spices to the Orient. It's no good giving my heart and my soul because you already have these. So I've brought you a mirror. Look at yourself and remember me. ~ Rumi%%% What would make a lover value you over all lovers they have known? Tell me about your favorite place to eat, or the finest meal you ever had. There is something in caring touch that your memory has recorded..... and holds dear, because it nourishes as few things can. A sincere wanting and need to artfully give is inherent in love. And love will get its way; for it knows patience, and what a strength that is. The closest thing to amorous play with God in form should be the goal of any intimacy between us. Us, those who seek sacred friendship, and can gaze at each other in appreciation, in places we allow few to ever see. ~Hafiz%%% “In the end these things matter most: How well did you love? How fully did you live? How deeply did you let go?” ~Gautama Buddha%%% Far, very far Near, very near I hear your ankle bells. Why do I lose my self-form in shyness? How long have I to wait for You to tie my hands with your love-cord? ~ Sri Chinmoy%%% Barren of events, Rich in pretensions My earthly life. Obscurity My real name. Wholly unto myself I exist. I wrap no soul In my embrace. No mentor worthy Of my calibre Have I. I am all alone Between failure And frustration. I am the red thread Between Nothingness And Eternity. ~ Sri Chinmoy%%% “Keep Searching” Even though you're not equipped, keep searching: equipment isn't necessary on the way to the Lord. Whoever you see engaged in search, become her friend and cast your head in front of her, for choosing to be a neighbor of seekers, you become one yourself; protected by conquerors, you will yourself learn to conquer. If an ant seeks the rank of Solomon, don't smile contemptuously upon its quest. Everything you possess of skill, and wealth and handicraft, wasn't it first merely a thought and a quest? ~ Rumi%%% Ghazal 838 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 because of your generosity and love a few humans find their lives what do you think will happen if you pour an entire jar filled with joyous wine 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 ~Rumi%%%% Take bread away from me, if you wish, take air away, but do not take from me your laughter. Do not take away the rose, the lance flower that you pluck, the water that suddenly bursts forth in joy, the sudden wave of silver born in you. My struggle is harsh and I come back with eyes tired at times from having seen the unchanging earth, but when your laughter enters it rises to the sky seeking me and it opens for me all the doors of life. My love, in the darkest hour your laughter opens, and if suddenly you see my blood staining the stones of the street, laugh, because your laughter will be for my hands like a fresh sword. Next to the sea in the autumn, your laughter must raise its foamy cascade, and in the spring, love, I want your laughter like the flower I was waiting for, the blue flower, the rose of my echoing country. Laugh at the night, at the day, at the moon, laugh at the twisted streets of the island, laugh at this clumsy boy who loves you, but when I open my eyes and close them, when my steps go, when my steps return, deny me bread, air, light, spring, but never your laughter for I would die. ~ Neruda%%% By finding you first and then polishing. Let me enhance your personality. I don’t want to change you I just want to sharpen what is already there.%%% “ Had I told the sea What I felt for you, It would have left its shores, Its shells, Its fish, And followed me.” ~ Nizar Qabbani%%% “I hadn’t told them about you, but they saw you bathing in my eyes. I hadn’t told them about you, but they saw you in my written words. The perfume of love cannot be concealed.” ~ Nizar Qabbani%%% "I closed my mouth and spoke to you in a hundred silent ways." ~ Rumi%%%%%% 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 into 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? ~ Rumi%%% "The intelligent want self control, children want candy." ~ Rumi%%%%%% I will not rise To Praise the sun Nor revel between Her slippery lips Prefer the quiet solace Of my anonymity To the sickly sweet White coming of day. ~ DJ Paul%%% Speak to me. Take my hand. What are you now? I will tell you all. I will conceal nothing. When I was three, a little child read a story about a rabbit who died, in the story, and I crawled under a chair: a pink rabbit: it was my birthday, and a candle burnt a sore spot on my finger, and I was told to be happy. Oh, grow to know me. I am not happy. I will be open: Now I am thinking of white sails against a sky like music, like glad horns blowing, and birds tilting, and an arm about me. There was one I loved, who wanted to live, sailing. Speak to me. Take my hand. What are you now? When I was nine, I was fruitily sentimental, fluid: and my widowed aunt played Chopin, and I bent my head on the painted woodwork, and wept. I want now to be close to you. I would link the minutes of my days close, somehow, to your days. I am not happy. I will be open. I have liked lamps in evening corners, and quiet poems. There has been fear in my life. Sometimes I speculate On what a tragedy his life was, really. Take my hand. Fist my mind in your hand. What are you now? When I was fourteen, I had dreams of suicide, and I stood at a steep window, at sunset, hoping toward death: if the light had not melted clouds and plains to beauty, if light had not transformed that day, I would have leapt. I am unhappy. I am lonely. Speak to me. I will be open. I think he never loved me: he loved the bright beaches, the little lips of foam that ride small waves, he loved the veer of gulls: he said with a gay mouth: I love you. Grow to know me. What are you now? If we could touch one another, if these our separate entities could come to grips, clenched like a chinese puzzle… yesterday I stood in a crowded street that was live with people, and no one spoke a word, and the morning shone. Everyone silent, moving… Take my hand. Speak to me. ~ Muriel Rukeyser%%% When I had no roof I made Audacity my roof. When I had No supper my eyes dined. When I had no eyes I listened. When I had no ears I thought. When I had no thought I waited. When I had no father I made Care my father. When I had No mother I embraced order. When I had no friend I made Quiet my friend. When I had no Enemy I opposed my body. When I had no temple I made My voice my temple. I have No priest, my tongue is my choir. When I have no means fortune Is my means. When I have Nothing, death will be my fortune. Need is my tactic, detachment Is my strategy. When I had No lover I courted my sleep. ~ Robert Pinsky%%% "Love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person. Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love." ~ Erich Fromm%%% "Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision." ~ Erich Fromm (The Art of Loving)%%% "Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you." ~ Erich Fromm%%% "Love isn't something natural. Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn't a feeling, it is a practice." ~ Erich Fromm%%% “THE KISS WITH THE TASTE OF GOD ON YOUR LIPS I LOSE MY BREATH THEIR GENTLE TOUCH BREATHES SPIRIT IN ME AS I RECEIVE ALL THAT YOU ARE MY LIFE IS RESTORED SYNCHRONIZING OUR HEARTS AND THE BREATH WE ALTERNATE BETWEEN LOVER AND BELOVED LIPS ENTWINED WE SIGH IN RELEASE AS OUR LOVE BECOMES ETHEREAL” ~ Luz Emma Canas Madrigal%%% The Dowry As a token of my love I offer you my heart My riches are not of this world They lie in the hereafter If it is His will That we part ways Through indifference or death Keep it as a reminder Of His Love For you In His generosity He has replaced my heart With His own I am grateful for the Love that this is And the love that it is not It is through your humanity That I have come to love myself more and your divinity That I have come to Love God more. ~ Luz Emma Canas Madrigal%%% “A FOOL AM I TO THINK I CAN EXERCISE WILL OVER MY HEART A SLAVE TO LOVE IS A VICTIM OF LOGIC A SLAVE TO GOD FINDS FREEDOM IN SERVITUDE EXCUSE MY VANITY FOR ATTEMPTING TO CONTROL MATTERS OF THE HEART EXHAUSTED BY MY IGNORANCE I SUBMIT TO YOUR WILL MY LOVE IS AT YOUR SERVICE IT IS YOU WHO DECIDES IF MY HEART BEATS “IT IS YOU WHO DECIDES WHO IT BEATS FOR” ~ Luz Emma Canas Madrigal%%% HOVERING ON THE EDGE OF BLISS OR OBLIVION I FEAR NOT FOR GOD WILL CATCH ME THE PURSUIT OF LOVES ECSTASY KEEPS ME IN BALANCE OF WHAT IS AND WHAT WILL BE I HAVE FAITH IN WHAT WILL COME TO PASS IT IS ALREADY WRITTEN” ~ Luz Emma Canas Madrigal.%%% It Is all Just a love contest And I never Lose. Now you have another good reason To spend more time With Me. ~Hafiz%%% This Sky Where we live Is no place to lose your wings So love, love, Love. ~Hafiz%%% Once In a while God cuts loose His purse strings, Gives a big wink to my orchestra, Does not require Any more prompting than that To let Every instrument inside Go Berserk ~Hafiz%%% When I was the stream, when I was the forest, when I was still the field, when I was every hoof, foot, fin and wing, when I was the sky itself, no one ever asked me did I have a purpose, no one ever wondered was there anything I might need, for there was nothing I could not love. It was when I left all we once were that the agony began, the fear and questions came, and I wept, I wept. And tears I had never known before. So I returned to the river, I returned to the mountains. I asked for their hand in marriage again, I begged – I begged to wed every object and creature, and when they accepted, God was ever present in my arms. And He did not say, “Where have you been?” For then I knew my soul – every soul has always held Him. ~ Meister Eckhart%%% LOVE DOES THAT All day long a little burro labors, sometimes with heavy loads on her back and sometimes just with worries about things that bother only burros. And worries, as we know, can be more exhausting than physical labor. Once in a while a kind monk comes to her stable and brings a pear, but more than that, he looks into the burro's eyes and touches her ears and for a few seconds the burro is free and even seems to laugh, because love does that. Love Frees. ~ Meister Eckhart%%% “Some people want to see God with their eyes as they see a cow, and to love Him as they love a cow – for the milk and cheese and profit it brings them. This is how it is with people who love God for the sake of outward wealth or inward comfort. They do not rightly love God, when they love Him for their own advantage. ”~ Meister Eckhart%%% “Some people prefer solitude. They say their peace of mind depends on this. Others say they would be better off in church. If you do well, you do well wherever you are. If you fail, you fail wherever you are. Your surroundings don’t matter. God is with you everywhere — in the market place as well as in seclusion or in the church. If you look for nothing but God, nothing or no one can disturb you. God is not distracted by a multitude of things. Nor can we be.”~ Meister Eckhart%%% If He let go of my hand, I would weep so loudly, I would petition with all my might, I would cause so much trouble that I bet God would come to His senses and never do that again. ~ Meister Eckhart%%% All beings are words of God, His music, His art. Sacred books we are, for the infinite camps in our souls. Every act reveals God and expands His being. I know that may be hard to comprehend. All creatures are doing their best to help God in His birth of Himself. Enough talk for the night. He is laboring in me; I need to be silent for a while, worlds are forming in my heart. ~ Meister Eckhart%%% The Hope of Loving What keeps us alive, what allows us to endure? I think it is the hope of loving, or being loved. I heard a fable once about the sun going on a journey to find its source, and how the moon wept without her lover’s warm gaze. We weep when light does not reach our hearts. We wither like fields if someone close does not rain their kindness upon us. ~ Meister Eckhart%%% ‘What is grace’ I asked God. And He said, ‘All that happens.’ Then He added, when I looked perplexed, ‘Could not lovers say that every moment in their Beloved’s arms was grace? Existence is my arms, though I well understand how one can turn away from me until the heart has wisdom.’ ~ St John Of the Cross%%% My soul is a candle that burned away the veil; only the glorious duties of light I now have. The sufferings I knew initiated me into God. I am a holy confessor for men. When I see their tears running across their cheeks and falling into His hands, what can I say to their great sorrow that I too have known. The soul is a candle that will burn away the darkness, only the glorious duties of love we will have. The sufferings I knew initiated me into God. Only His glorious cares I now have. ~ St John Of the Cross%%% What kind of God would He be if He did not hear the bangles ring on an ant’s wrist as they move the earth in their sweet dance? And what kind of God would He be if a leaf’s prayer was not as precious to creation as the prayer His own son sang from the glorious depth of his soul - for us. And what kind of God would He be if the vote of millions in this world could sway Him to change the divine law of love that speaks so clearly with compassion’s elegant tongue, saying, eternally saying: all are forgiven – moreover, dears, no one has ever been guilty. What kind of God would He be if He did not count the blinks of your eyes and is in absolute awe of their movements? What a God – what a God we have. ~Kabir%%% Hey brother, why do you want me to talk? Talk and talk and the real things get lost. Talk and talk and things get out of hand. Why not stop talking and think? If you meet someone good, listen a little, speak; If you meet someone bad, clench up like a fist. Talking with a wise man is a great reward. Talking with a fool? A waste. Kabir says: A pot makes noise if it's half full, But fill it to the brim -- no sound. ~ Kabir%%% I've burned my own house down, the torch is in my hand. Now I'll burn down the house of anyone who wants to follow me. ~ Kabir%%% still the body still the mind still the voice inside in silence feel the stillness move friends this feeling cannot be imagined ~ Kabir%%% There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence .... (and that is) activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful. ~ Thomas Merton (catholic mystic)%%% "Come,\nlet's scatter roses and pour wine in the glass; we'll shatter heaven's roof and lay a new foundation. If sorrow raises armies to shed the blood of lovers, I'll join with the wine bearer so we can overthrow them. With a sweet string at hand, play a sweet song, my friend, so we can clap and sing a song and lose our heads in dancing" ~Hafiz%%% Hello. There didn't need to be more than that. Lets Play? Yes, Lets Play! There didn't need to be more than that. Skip stones with me? Skipping happened. There didn't need to be more than that. Here, take my shirt to stay warm. Shirt taken, nothing more than that. Huddled in the last warmth of sunset There didn't need to be more than that. Peer and hold your gaze See nothing but myself There couldn't be more than that. ~Gigi%%% SHIBLI WAS ASKED: ‘WHO GUIDED YOU IN THE PATH?’ SHIBLI SAID: ‘A DOG. ONE DAY I SAW HIM, ALMOST DEAD WITH THIRST, STANDING BY THE WATER’S EDGE. EVERY TIME HE LOOKED AT HIS REFLECTION IN THE WATER HE WAS FRIGHTENED AND WITHDREW, BECAUSE HE THOUGHT IT WAS ANOTHER DOG.‘FINALLY, SUCH WAS HIS NECESSITY, HE CAST AWAY FEAR AND LEAPT INTO THE WATER;AT WHICH THE REFLECTION DISAPPEARED. ‘THE DOG FOUND THAT THE OBSTACLE, WHICH WAS HIMSELF, THE BARRIER BETWEEN HIM AND WHAT HE SOUGHT, MELTED AWAY.‘IN THIS SAME WAY, MY OWN OBSTACLE VANISHED WHEN I KNEW THAT IT WAS WHAT I TOOK TO BE MY OWN SELF. AND MY WAY WAS FIRST SHOWN TO ME BY THE BEHAVIOUR OF – A DOG.’" ~ Idries Shah%%% Noise is a cruel ruler who is always imposing curfews, while stillness and silence break open the vintage bottles and awake the real band. ~ Hafiz%%% Mis manos abren las cortinas de tu ser te visten con otra desnudez descubren los cuerpos de tu cuerpo Mis manos inventan otro cuerpo a tu cuerpo. ~Octavio Paz%%% Niña morena y ágil, el sol que hace las frutas, el que cuaja los trigos, el que tuerce las algas, hizo tu cuerpo alegre, tus luminosos ojos y tu boca que tiene la sonrisa del agua. Un sol negro y ansioso se te arrolla en las hebras de la negra melena, cuando estiras los brazos. Tú juegas con el sol como con un estero y él te deja en los ojos dos oscuros remansos. Niña morena y ágil, nada hacia ti me acerca. Todo de ti me aleja, como del mediodía. Eres la delirante juventud de la abeja, la embriaguez de la ola, la fuerza de la espiga. Mi corazón sombrío te busca, sin embargo, y amo tu cuerpo alegre, tu voz suelta y delgada. Mariposa morena dulce y definitiva como el trigal y el sol, la amapola y el agua. ~ Neruda%%% After chopping off all the arms that reached out to me; after boarding up all the windows and doors; after filling all the pits with poisoned water; after building my house on the rock of no, inaccessible to flattery and fear; after cutting off my tongue and eating it; after hurling handfuls of silence and monosyllable of scorn at my loves. after my name; and the name of my birthplace; and the name of my race; after judging and sentencing myself to perpetual waiting, and perpetual loneliness, I heard against the stones of my dungeon of syllogisms, the humid, tender, insistent onset of spring. ~ Octavio Paz%%% I turn the page of the day, writing what I'm told by the motion of your eyelashes. My hands draw open the curtains of your being They clothe you in another nudity They uncover the bodies of your body My hands invent another body for your body I enter you, the truthfulness of the dark. I want proofs of darkness, want to drink the black wine: take my eyes and crush them. A drop of night on your breast's tip: mysteries of the carnation. Closing my eyes I open them inside your eyes. Always awake on its garnet bed: your wet tongue. There are fountains in the garden of your veins. With a mask of blood I cross your thoughts blankly: amnesia guides me to the other side of life. ~Octavio paz%%% 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. ~ Rumi%%% We don't see things as they are. We see them as we are. ~ Anais Nin%%% Each friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born. ~ Anais Nin%%% In the pursuit of knowledge: everyday something is added in the pursuit of enlightenment: everyday something is dropped. ~ Lao Tzu%%% Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don't open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down the dulcimer. ~Rumi%%% Keep on knocking 'til the joy inside opens a window, look to see who's there. ~Rumi%%% 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 ~Rumi%%% 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 Humankind is being led along an evolving course, through this migration of intelligences 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 ~Rumi%%% Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground At night we fall into each other with such grace. When it's light, you throw me back like you do your hair. ~ Rumi%%% Your eyes now drunk with God, mine with looking at you, one drunkard takes care of another. ~ Rumi%%% I lost my world, my fame, my mind -- The Sun appeared, and all the shadows ran. I ran after them, but vanished as I ran -- Light ran after me and hunted me down. ~Rumi%%% We are the mirror as well as the face in it. ~Rumi%%% Today I'm out wandering, turning my skull into a cup for others to drink wine from. In this town somewhere there sits a calm, intelligent man, who doesn't know what he's about to do! You only need smell the wine You only need smell the wine For vision to flame from each void-- Such flames from wine's aroma! Imagine if you were the wine. ~ Rumi%%% The grapes of my body can only become wine After the winemaker tramples me. I surrender my spirit like grapes to his trampling So my inmost heart can blaze and dance with joy. Although the grapes go on weeping blood and sobbing "I cannot bear any more anguish, any more cruelty" The trampler stuffs cotton in his ears: "I am not working in ignorance You can deny me if you want, you have every excuse, But it is I who am the Master of this Work. And when through my Passion you reach Perfection, You will never be done praising my name." ~ Rumi%%% And to the open-handed the search for one who shall receive is joy greater than giving ~ Gibran%%% http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jrcole/gibran/prophet/prophet.htm#Giving To be with someone who has known is contagious -- and truth is not taught, it is caught. If you are really committed to truth you are bound to become a sannyasin. If your commitment to truth is an inquiry then you will have to learn the ways of learning. And the first thing to learn is to surrender, to trust, to love.%%% The sannyasin is one who has fallen in love with a person, or a no-person, where he feels a gut feeling: "Yes, it has happened here!" ~OSHO%%% http://www.oshoworld.com/osho_talk/talks/wisdom28.asp Sometimes a mule does not know What is best for itself. When the mind is confused like that It secretly desires a master With a skilled whip To guide it to those playgrounds On the earth’s table Where the Sweet One’s light has Made life more tasty. Hafiz always carries such a whip But I rarely need to use it. I prefer just turning myself into The prettiest mule In town And making my tail sing knowing your heart will then Follow ~Hafiz%%% You must bet and lose everything you’ve ever owned if you truly desire to become one with your beloved. ~ Rumi%%% Sadness is but a wall between two gardens. ~Kahlil Gibran%%% My friend, you and I shall remain strangers unto life, And unto one another, and each unto himself, Until the day when you shall speak and I shall listen Deeming your voice my own voice; And when I shall stand before you Thinking myself standing before a mirror. ~ Khalil Gibran%%% If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don’t, they never were. ~ Kahlil Gibran%%% Beauty is not in the face; Beauty is a light in the heart. ~ Khalil Gibran%%% If I accept the sunshine and warmth, then I must also accept the thunder and lightning. ~ Kahlil Gibran%%% It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or even generations. ~ Khalil Gibran%%% First The fish needs to say, "Something ain't right about this Camel ride - And I'm Feeling so damn Thirsty." ~ Hafiz%%% When the Day came, The Day I had lived and died for, The Day that is not in any calendar, Clouds heavy with love Showered me with wild abundance. Inside me, my soul was drenched. Around me, even the desert grew green. ~ Kabir%%% Go Past the thoughts into silence. Go Past the silence into stillness. Go Past the stillness into the heart. Let love consume all that is left of you. ~ Kabir%%% “I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty. I laugh when I hear that men go on pilgrimage to find God.” ~ Kabir%%% How humble is God? God is the tree in the forests that allows itself to die and will not defend itself in front of those with the ax, not wanting to cause them shame. And God is the earth that will allow itself to be deformed by man’s tools, but He cries; yes, God cries, but only in front of His closest ones. And a beautiful animal is being beaten to death, but nothing can make God break His silence to the masses and say, “Stop, please stop, why are you doing this to Me?” How humble is God? Kabir wept when I knew. ~ Kabir%%% From the solemn gloom of the temple children run out to sit in the dust, God watches them play and forgets the priest. ~ Rabindranath Tagorej%%% The Definition of Love Kill and be happy. Indeed, This is the definition Of animal love. Possess and be happy, Indeed, This is the definition Of human love. Become one and be happy. Indeed, This is the definition Of divine love. ~ Sri chinmoy%%% When God and I Have a private moment, The first thing He asks me is this: “My child, Why are you so slow In your unconditional surrender To My will?” ~ Sri chinmoy%%% No Estés Lejos de Mí "No estés lejos de mí un sólo día, porque cómo, porque, no sé decírtelo, es largo el día, y te estaré esperando como en las estaciones cuando en alguna parte se durmieron los trenes. No te vayas por una hora porque entonces en esa hora se juntan las gotas del desvelo y tal vez todo el humo que anda buscando casa venga a matar aún mi corazón perdido. Ay que no se quebrante tu silueta en la arena, ay que no vuelen tus párpados en la ausencia: no te vayas por un minuto, bienamada, porque en ese minuto te habrás ido tan lejos que yo cruzaré toda la tierra preguntando si volverás o si me dejarás muriendo." ~Pablo Neruda%%% Absence I have scarcely left you When you go in me, crystalline, Or trembling, Or uneasy, wounded by me Or overwhelmed with love, as when your eyes Close upon the gift of life That without cease I give you. My love, We have found each other Thirsty and we have Drunk up all the water and the Blood, We found each other Hungry And we bit each other As fire bites, Leaving wounds in us. But wait for me, Keep for me your sweetness. I will give you too A rose. ~ Neruda%%% Carnal apple, Woman filled, burning moon, dark smell of seaweed, crush of mud and light, what secret knowledge is clasped between your pillars? What primal night does Man touch with his senses? Ay, Love is a journey through waters and stars, through suffocating air, sharp tempests of grain: Love is a war of lightning, and two bodies ruined by a single sweetness. Kiss by kiss I cover your tiny infinity, your margins, your rivers, your diminutive villages, and a genital fire, transformed by delight, slips through the narrow channels of blood to precipitate a nocturnal carnation, to be, and be nothing but light in the dark. ~Neruda%%% “It is always difficult to give oneself up; few persons anywhere ever succeed in doing so, and even fewer transcend the possessive stage to know love for what it actually is: a perpetual discovery, and immersion in the waters of reality, an unending re-creation.” ~ Octavio Paz%%% I want you to know one thing. You know how this is: if I look at the crystal moon, at the red branch of the slow autumn at my window, if I touch near the fire the impalpable ash or the wrinkled body of the log, everything carries me to you, as if everything that exists, aromas, light, metals, were little boats that sail toward those isles of yours that wait for me. Well, now, if little by little you stop loving me I shall stop loving you little by little. If suddenly you forget me do not look for me, for I shall already have forgotten you. If you think it long and mad, the wind of banners that passes through my life, and you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots, remember that on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms and my roots will set off to seek another land. But if each day, each hour, you feel that you are destined for me with implacable sweetness, if each day a flower climbs up to your lips to seek me, ah my love, ah my own, in me all that fire is repeated, in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten, my love feeds on your love, beloved, and as long as you live it will be in your arms without leaving mine ~Neruda%%% The difference between a good artist and a great one is The novice will often lay down his tool Or brush Then pick up an invisible club On the mind’s table And helplessly smash the easels and Jade. Whereas the vintage man No longer hurts himself or anyone And keeps on Sculpting Light. ~ Hafiz%%% If I adore You out of fear of Hell, Burn me in Hell! If I adore you out of desire for Paradise, Lock me out of Paradise. But if I adore you for yourself alone, Do not deny to me Your eternal beauty. ~ Rabia al-Basri%%% O Beloved, Another Night is passing away, Another Day is rising Tell me that I have spent the Night well so I can be at peace, Or that I have wasted it, so I can mourn for what is lost. I swear that ever since the first day You brought me back to life, The day You became my Friend, I have not slept And even if You drive me from your door, I swear again that we will never be separated. Because You are alive in my heart. ~ Rabia al-Basri%%% In Love, nothing exists between heart and heart. Speech is born out of longing, True description from the real taste. The one who tastes, knows; the one who explains, lies. How can you describe the true form of Something In whose presence you are blotted out? And in whose being you still exist? And who lives as a sign for your journey? ~ Rabia al-Basri%%% Even After All this time The Sun never says to the Earth, “You owe me.” Look What happens With a love like that, It lights the whole sky. ~ Hafiz%%% What Do sad people have in Common? It seems They have all built a shrine To the past And often go there And do a strange wail and Worship. What is the beginning of Happiness? It is to stop being So religious Like That. ~ Hafiz%%% I caught the happy virus last night When I was out singing beneath the stars. It is remarkably contagious -So kiss me. ~ Hafiz%%% I have a thousand brilliant lies For the question: How are you? I have a thousand brilliant lies For the question: What is Beloved? If you think that the Truth can be known From words, If you think that the Sun and the Ocean Can pass through that tiny opening Called the mouth, O someone should start laughing! Someone should start wildly Laughing Now! ~ Hafiz%%% Throw away All your begging bowls at God’s door, For I have heard the Beloved Prefers sweet threatening shouts, Something on the order of: “Hey Beloved, My heart is a raging volcano Of love for you! You better start kissing me - Or Else!” ~ Hafiz%%%% Out Of a great need We are all holding hands And climbing. Not loving is a letting go. Listen, The terrain around here Is Far too Dangerous For That. ~ Hafiz%%% A still cup…. For God To make Love, For the divine alchemy to work, The Pitcher needs a still cup. Why Ask Hafiz to say Anything more about Your most Vital Requirement? ~ Hafiz%%% Once a man came to me and spoke for hours about “His great visions of God” he felt he was having. He asked me for confirmation, saying, “Are these wondrous dreams true?” I replied, “How many goats do you have?” He looked surprised and said, “I am speaking of sublime visions And you ask About goats!” And I spoke again saying, “Yes, brother – how many do you have?” “Well, Hafiz, I have sixty-two.” “And how many wives?” Again he looked surprised, then said, “Four.” “How many rose bushes in your garden, How many children, Are your parents still alive, Do you feed the birds in winter?” And to all he answered. Then I said, “You asked me if I thought your visions were true, I would say that they were if they make you become More human, More kind to every creature and plant That you know.” ~ Hafiz%%% The Real love I always keep a secret. All my words Are sung outside Her window, For when She lets me in I take a thousand oaths of silence. But, Then She says, O, then God says, “What the hell, Hafiz, Why not give the whole world My Address.” ~ Hafiz%%% This sky where we live is no place to lose your wings So love, love, love. ~ Hafiz%%% I am trying the best I can With this crude brush, the tongue, To cover you with light. ~ Hafiz%%% Lucky is the one who realizes the secret of being nobody for no one gets anywhere by being somebody. Whatever is not about desirelessness and detachment is a delusion and will lead but to disillusion. There is a light on your face which whispers of the Divine Flame. With God is my witness you were born from the same. For the caged bird to reach the perfumed garden it has to pass through the realm of imagination. You have to rise above that which you think human destiny to fulfill your destiny, for your covenant is not with man but with God. Should you not be allowed yet to join the Beloved’s caravan be content if you hear its bells from a distance in the realm of hearts none but our King rules the One who by day is the Ruler and by night the Life bestowing Thief! ~ Jami%%% Though you are wise, be as a fool; Though you can see, be as one blind; Though you can hear, be as one deaf; Patiently bear with all you meet, and politely talk to everyone. This practice surely will lead you to the realisation of the Truth. ~ Lalla%%% At Some point Your relationship With God Will Become like this: Next time you meet Him in the forest Or on a crowded city street There won’t be anymore “Leaving.” That is, God will climb into Your pocket. You will simply just take Yourself Along! ~ Hafiz%%% Your tastes have become refined. It used to be If someone stole all your coins Or locked your sexual pleasure in a room You could not reach This world would have no meaning And a thirst for a hemlock brew Might arise. But that was many lives ago. Now look at yourself: You are often still a mess Through these days, At times, You weep because You miss Him. ~ Hafiz%%% The small man Builds cages For everyone He Knows While the sage, Who has to duck his head When the moon is low, Keeps dropping keys all night long For the Beautiful Rowdy Prisoners. ~ Hafiz%%% I know the voice of depression Still calls to you. I know those habits that can ruin your life Still send their invitations. But you are with the Friend now And look so much stronger. You can stay that way And even bloom!… Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins That may buy you just a moment of pleasure, But then drag you for days, Like a broken man Behind a farting camel… O keep squeezing drops of the Sun From your prayers and work and music And from your companions’ beautiful laughter And from the most insignificant movements Of your own holy body. Now, sweet one, Be wise. Cast all your votes for dancing…! ~ Hafiz%%% The path that leads to love is so Narrow that Two cannot walk on it unless they become One. ~ Kabir%%% Love is The funeral pyre Where I have laid my living body. All the false notions of myself That once caused fear and pain, Turned to ash As I neared the Beloved. What has risen From the tangled web of thought and sinew Now shines with jubilation Through the eyes of angels And screams from the guts of Infinite existence Itself. Love is the funeral pyre Where the heart must lay Its body. ~ Hafiz%%% 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 it's 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. ~ Rumi%%% I used to live in A cramped house with confusion And pain. But then I met the Friend And started getting drunk And singing all Night. Confusion and Pain Started acting nasty, Making threats, With talk like this, “If you don’t stop ‘that’ All that fun We’re Leaving.” ~ Hafiz%%% The heart is The thousand-stringed instrument. Our sadness and fear come from being Out of tune with love. All day long Love coaxes my lips To speak, So that your tears will not stain His green dress. It is not that the Friend is vain, It is just your life we care about. Sometimes the Beloved Takes my pen in hand, For Hafiz is just a simple man. The other day the Old One Wrote on the Tavern wall: “The heart is The thousand-stringed instrument That can only be tuned with Love.” ~ Hafiz%%% “There are different wells within your heart. Some fill with each good rain, Others are far too deep for that. In one well You have just a few precious cups of water, That "love" is literally something of yourself, It can grow as slow as a diamond If it is lost. Your love Should never be offered to the mouth of a Stranger, Only to someone Who has the valor and daring To cut pieces of their soul off with a knife Then weave them into a blanket To protect you. There are different wells within us. Some fill with each good rain, Others are far, far too deep For that.” ~ Hafiz%%% Noise Is a cruel ruler Who is always imposing Curfews, While Stillness and quiet Break open the vintage Bottles, Awake the real Band. ~ Hafiz%%% There is no home, unless we find it in ourselves. ~Osho%%%%%% The life of love is a very insecure life, but tremendously beautiful. Dangerous, adventurous, but the only way to live is to live in danger, and to live in adventure. ~OSHO%%% Watch the waves in the ocean. The higher the wave goes, the deeper is the wake that follows it. One moment you are the wave, another moment you are the hollow wake that follows. Enjoy both–don’t get addicted to one. Don’t say: I would always like to be on the peak. Simply see the fact: it is not possible. It has never happened and it will never happen. It is simply impossible–not in the nature of things. Then what to do? Enjoy the peak while it lasts and then enjoy the valley when it comes. What is wrong with the valley? What is wrong with being low? It is a relaxation. A peak is an excitement, but nobody can exist continuously in an excitement. ~Osho%%% When somebody comes and gives, his or her love to you without asking, without demanding anything in return for it, it has a beauty, it is not of this world, it has an unearthly quality to it, it is sacred. ~ Osho%%% One birth has been given to you by your parents The other birth is waiting. It has to be given by yourself. ~Osho%%% STORMS “It is good to be available to the wind, to the rain, to the sun, … because this is what life is. So rather than becoming worried about it, dance!” Growth means that you are absorbing something new every day, and that absorption is possible only if you are open. Now your windows and doors are open. Sometimes the rain comes in and the wind comes in, the sun comes, and life moves within you. So you will feel a few disturbances: Your newspaper will start moving in the wind, the papers on the table will be disturbed, and if the rain starts coming in your clothes may become wet. If you have always lived in a closed room, you will ask, “What is happening?” Something beautiful is happening. It is good to be available to the wind, to the rain, to the sun, because this is what life is. So rather than becoming worried about it, dance! Dance when the storm comes, because silence will follow. Dance when challenges come and disturb your life, because in responding to those challenges you will be growing to new heights. Remember, even suffering is a grace. If one can take it rightly it becomes a stepping stone. People who have never suffered and have lived a convenient and comfortable, life are almost dead. Their lives will not be like a sharp sword. It will not even cut vegetables. Intelligence becomes sharp when you face challenges. Pray every day to God, “Send me more challenges tomorrow, send more storms,” and then you will know life at the optimum. ~ Osho%%% Why Love Hurts ? Love is painful because it creates the way for bliss. Love is painful because it transforms. Love is mutation. Each transformation is going to be painful because the old has to be left for the new. The old is familiar, secure, safe, the new is absolutely unknown. You will be moving in an uncharted ocean. You cannot use your mind with the new’ with the old, the mind is skillful. The mind can function only with the old’ with the new, the mind is utterly useless. Hence, fear arises, and leaving the old, comfortable, safe world, the world of convenience, pain arises. It is the same pain that the child feels when he comes out of the womb of the mother. It is the same pain that the bird feels when he comes out of the egg. It is the same pain that the bird will feel when he will try for the first time to be on the wing. It is because of the pain of love, millions of people live a loveless life. They too suffer, and their suffering is futile. To suffer in love is not to suffer in vain. To suffer in love is creative’ it takes you to higher levels of consciousness. To suffer without love is utterly a waste’ it leads you nowhere, it keeps you moving in the same vicious circle. ~ Osho%%% Friendship is the purest love. It is the highest form of Love where nothing is asked for, no condition, where one simply enjoys giving. ~ Osho%%% This pain is not to make you sad, remember. That’s where people go on missing…. This pain is just to make you more alert–because people become alert only when the arrow goes deep into their heart and wounds them. Otherwise they don’t become alert. When life is easy, comfortable, convenient, who cares? Who bothers to become alert? When a friend dies, there is a possibility. When your woman leaves you alone–those dark nights, you are lonely. You have loved that woman so much and you have staked all, and then suddenly one day she is gone. Crying in your loneliness, those are the occasions when, if you use them, you can become aware. The arrow is hurting: it can be used. The pain is not to make you miserable, the pain is to make you more aware! And when you are aware, misery disappears. Love is not a relationship between two persons. It is a state of mind within yourself. If you are loving, you are loving to everybody — not only to persons, but to things as well. Love moves from you to objects also. Even when you are alone, when no one is there, you are loving. It is just like breathing. ~ Osho%%% Fear is never love, and love is never afraid. There is nothing to lose for love. Why should love be afraid? Love only gives. It is not business, so there is no question of loss or profit. Love enjoys giving, just as flowers enjoy releasing their fragrance. Why should they be afraid ? ~ Osho%%% God is not a person but only the experience that the whole existence is an alive, phenomenon; it is not matter alone, it is throbbing with life!…that it has a heartbeat. The moment you know that the universe has a heartbeat, you have discovered God… ~ Osho%%% He is certainly a great poet, perhaps the greatest that has ever been born on the earth, but he is not a mystic; and there is a tremendous difference between a poet and a mystic. The poet, once in a while, suddenly finds himself in the same space as the mystic. In those rare moments, roses shower over him. On those rare occasions, he is almost a Gautam Buddha – but remember, I’m saying almost. These rare moments come and go. He’s not the master of those rare moments. They come like the breeze and the fragrance and by the time you have become aware they are gone. A poet’s genius is that he catches those moments in words. Those moments come into your life too. They are free gifts of existence – or in other words, glimpses to provoke in you a search, to come to a moment when this space will become your very life, your blood, your bones, your marrow. You will breathe it; your heart will beat it. You will never be able to lose it, even if you want to. The poet is for moments a mystic, and the mystic is a poet forever. ~ Osho%%% Only those who are ready to become nobodies are able to love. ~ Osho%%% You will love because you have something to give, not to get something. ~ Osho%%% You can understand only as much as you have experienced. ~ Osho%%% Listen only to that which is significant. Read only that which is meaningful. Avoid the unnecessary , the irrelevant. Speak only that which is to the point. Make your each word your heart. Don’t just go on saying things as if your a gramophone record. ~ Osho%%% When you are different, the whole world is different. It is not a question of creating a different world. It is only a question of creating a different you. ~ Osho%%% Love is a wine you have to taste it, you have to drink it, you have to become drunk with it, only then do you know what it is. ~ Osho%%% I am not serious, I am just celebrating. When I talk to you, I am not giving you an idealogy, a philosophy, a religion. I simply want to share my celebration. ~ Osho%%% Only in deep silence something of me enters in you and something of you enters in me… ~ Osho%%% Love, and yet don’t be lost in it. Relate, and yet be alone, utterly alone. ~ Osho%%% Never hope that the other should change. In every relationship start the change from your side. ~ Osho%%% I teach you rebellion! Come out of the masses. Stand alone like a lion and live your life according to your own light. ~ Osho%%% Falling in love you remain a child; rising in love you mature. By and by love becomes not a relationship, it becomes a state of your being. Not that you are in love – now you are love. ~ Osho%%% The real seeker of truth never seeks truth. On the contrary, he tries to clean himself of all that is untrue, inauthentic, insincere - and when his heart is ready, purified, the guest comes. You cannot find the guest, you cannot go after him. He comes to you; you just have to be prepared. You have to be in a right attitude. ~ Osho%%%%%% What you see outside is only a projection, just as you see a projection of a film on the screen. There is nothing outside, you are projecting everything. ~ Osho%%% The day there is no question and no answer within you, and you are just sitting here empty, you have come home. ~ Osho%%% The innermost core is witnessing, awareness, watchfulness. You can call it anything, but it will be another meaning of witnessing. Truth is pure awareness. ~ Osho%%% Don’t seek, don’t search, don’t ask, don’t knock, don’t demand – relax. If you relax, it comes. If you relax, it is there. If you relax, you start vibrating with it. ~ Osho%%% There is a time to be in love and there is a time to move beyond it. There is a time to be related and enjoy the relationship, and there is a time to be alone. And everything is beautiful. ~ Osho%%% You are master of your own love, and you can give as much as you want-but you cannot demand love from another person, because nobody is a slave. ~ Osho%%% When two centers meet, a new thing is created. That new thing is love. And it is just like water; The thirst of many lives is satisfied. Suddenly you become contented. That is the visible sign of love. ~ Osho%%% LOVE Real love is something which has nothing to do with filling the inner space. Just the contrary, it has something to do with sharing the inner space. If you are sharing then it is love. Sharing is the bridge which joins the human to the divine. Love is the bridge which joins you to the divine. ~ Osho%%% And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to open. ~ Anais Nin%%% Love makes no conditions, no ifs, no buts. Love never says, “Fulfill these requirements, then I will love you.” Love is like breathing: when it happens you are. ~ Osho%%% SI TÚ ME OLVIDAS QUIERO que sepas una cosa. Tú sabes cómo es esto: si miro la luna de cristal, la rama roja del lento otoño en mi ventana, si toco junto al fuego la impalpable ceniza o el arrugado cuerpo de la leña, todo me lleva a ti, como si todo lo que existe, aromas, luz, metales, fueran pequeños barcos que navegan hacia las islas tuyas que me aguardan. Ahora bien, si poco a poco dejas de quererme dejaré de quererte poco a poco. Si de pronto me olvidas no me busques, que ya te habré olvidado. Si consideras largo y loco el viento de banderas que pasa por mi vida y te decides a dejarme a la orilla del corazón en que tengo raíces, piensa que en ese día, a esa hora levantaré los brazos y saldrán mis raíces a buscar otra tierra. Pero si cada día, cada hora sientes que a mí estás destinada con dulzura implacable. Si cada día sube una flor a tus labios a buscarme, ay amor mío, ay mía, en mí todo ese fuego se repite, en mí nada se apaga ni se olvida, mi amor se nutre de tu amor, amada, y mientras vivas estará en tus brazos sin salir de los míos. ~ Neruda%%% The Difference Between a good artist And a great one Is: The novice Will often lay down his tool Or brush Then pick up an invisible club On the mind’s table And helplessly smash the easels and Jade. Whereas the vintage man No longer hurts himself or anyone And keeps on Sculpting Light. ~Hafiz%%% "IT HAS NOT RAINED LIGHT" It has not rained light for many days. The wells in most eyes look drought-stricken. Thus friends are not easy to find In this barren place Where most everyone has become ill From guarding nothing. On this primal caravan Careers and cities can appear real in this Intense Desert heat, But I say to my close ones, "Don't get lost in them, it has not rained light there for days. Look, most everyone is diseased From 'making love' to nothing." ~Hafiz%%% The Gift Our Union is like this: You feel cold So I reach for a blanket to cover Our shivering feet. A hunger comes into your body So I run to my garden And start digging potatoes. You ask for a few words of comfort and guidance, I quickly kneel at your side offering you This whole book - As a gift. You ache with loneliness one night So much you weep And I say, Here's a rope, Tie it around me, Hafiz Will be your companion For life. ~Hafiz%%% 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. From Essential Rumi by Coleman Barks%%% Someone Untied Your Camel I cannot sit still with my countrymen in chains. I cannot act mute Hearing the world's loneliness Crying near the Beloved's Heart. My love for God is such That I could dance with Him tonight without you, But I would rather have you there. Is your caravan lost? It is, If you no longer weep from gratitude or happiness, Or weep From being cut deep with the awareness Of the extraordinary beauty That emanates from the most simple act And common object. My dear, is your caravan lost? It is if you can no longer be kind to yourself And loving to those who must live With the sometimes difficult task of loving you. At least come to know That someone untied your camel last night For I hear its gentle voice Calling for God in the desert. At least come to know That Hafiz will always hold a lantern With galaxies blooming inside And that I will always guide your soul to The divine warmth and exhilaration Of our Beloved's Tent. ~Hafiz “If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?” ~ Rumi%%% "The sum of my life is no more than these three words: I was raw, I got cooked, I got burned." ~Rumi%%% "Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about." ~ Rumi%%% THE SILENT ARTICULATION OF A FACE 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. ~Rumi%%% Lift the veil that obscures the heart and there you will find what you are looking for Open those curtains wide Your treasure awaits you Hurt no one Be not vain Wealth and beauty Are fleeting conditions In the quiet place within Find a seat Sit in a way That nothing stirs For Kabir it has Become blissful The silent drum Keeps playing. ~ Kabir%%% Everything is clapping today. Light, Sound, Motion, All movement. A rabbit I pass pulls a cymbal From a hidden pocket Then winks. This causes a few planets and I To go nuts And start grabbing each other. Someone sees this, Calls a Shrink, Tries to get me Committed For Being too Happy. Listen: this world is the lunatic's sphere, Don't always agree it's real, Even with my feet upon it And the postman knowing my door My address is somewhere else. ~Hafiz God and I have become like two giant fat people living in a tiny boat. We keep bumping into each other and laughing! ~Hafiz%%% The Great religions are the Ships, Poets the life Boats. Every sane person I know has jumped Overboard. That is good for business Isn't it ~Hafiz%%% Tripping over Joy What is the difference Between your experience of Existence And that of a saint? The saint knows That the spiritual path Is a sublime chess game with God And that the Beloved Has just made such a Fantastic Move that the saint is now continually Tripping over Joy And bursting out in Laughter And saying, "I Surrender!" Whereas, my dear, I'm afraid you still think You have a thousand serious moves to make. ~Hafiz WITH THAT MOON LANGUAGE Admit something: Everyone you see, you say to them: "love me." Of course you do not say this out loud; Otherwise, Someone would call the cops. Still though, think about this, This great pull in us To connect. Why not become the one Who lives with a full moon in each eye That is always saying, With that sweet moon Language, What every other eye in this world Is dying to hear. Hear. ~Hafiz 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. ~Rumi%%% 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. Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absentminded. Someone sober will worry about things going badly. Let the lover be. ~Rumi Look Look as long as you can at the friend you love No matter whether that friend is moving away from you or coming back toward you. ~Rumi%%% 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 our prophets is the way of Truth. If you want to live, die in Love; die in Love if you want to remain alive. ~rumi%%% What Happens? What happens when your soul Begins to awaken Your eyes And your heart And the cells of your body To the great Journey of Love? First there is wonderful laughter And probably precious tears And a hundred sweet promises And those heroic vows No one can ever keep. But still God is delighted and amused You once tried to be a saint. What happens when your soul Begins to awake in this world To our deep need to love And serve the Friend? O the Beloved Will send you One of His wonderful, wild companions ~ Like Hafiz. ~Hafiz Some Kiss We Want 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. ~Rumi. Translator: Coleman Barks%%% Dance when you're broken open. Dance when you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free. Struck, the dancer hears a tambourine inside her, like a wave that crests into foam at the very top, Begins. Maybe you don't hear that tambourine, or the tree leaves clapping time. Close the ears on your head, that listen mostly to lies and cynical jokes. There are other things to see, and hear. Music. Dance. A brilliant city inside your soul! ~ Rumi%%% En un beso, sabrás todo lo que he callado.\n ~Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) Poeta chileno.%%% No olvides nunca que el primer beso no se da con la boca, sino con los ojos. ~ O. K. Bernhardt Escritor alemán.%%% Amar no es mirarse el uno al otro; es mirar juntos en la misma dirección.\n ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery%%% La peor forma de extrañar a alguien es estar sentado a su lado y saber que nunca lo podrás tener.\n ~ Gabriel García Márquez (1927-?) Escritor colombiano.%%% Para mi corazón basta tu pecho, para tu libertad bastan mis alas.\n ~ Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) Poeta chileno.%%% Purifica tu corazón antes de permitir que el amor se asiente en él, ya que la miel más dulce se agria en un vaso sucio.\n ~ Pitágoras de Samos (582 AC-497 AC) Filósofo y matemático griego.%%% En el amor no basta atacar, hay que tomar la plaza.\n ~Ovidio (43 AC-17) Poeta latino.%%% El verdadero paraíso no esta en el cielo, sino en la boca de la mujer amada.\n ~ Théophile Gautier\n%%% It doesn't interest me what you do for a living I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. It doesn't interest me how old you are I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love for your dreams for the adventure of being alive. It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon... I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain mine or your own without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy mine or your own if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful be realistic to remember the limitations of being human. It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy. I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure yours and mine and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes." It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after a night of grief and despair weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children. It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back. It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments. ~ Oriah%%% No Te Amo No te amo como si fueras rosa de sal, topacio o flecha de claveles que propagan eñ fuego: te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras, secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma. Te amo como la planta que no florece y lleva dentro de sí, escondida, la luz de aquellas flores, y gracias a tu amor vive oscuro en mi cuerpo el apretado aroma que ascendió de la tierra. Te amo sin saber cómo, ni cuándo, ni de dónde, te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo: así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera, Sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres, tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía, tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño. I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz, or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off. I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, Secretly, between the shadow and the soul. I love you as the plant that never blooms but carries within itself the light of those hidden flowers; thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance, risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body. I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way than this: where I does not exist, nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep. ~ Neruda%%% Quítame el pan, si quieres, quítame el aire, pero no me quites tu risa. No me quites la rosa, la lanza que desgranas, el agua que de pronto estalla en tu alegría, la repentina ola de plata que te nace. Mi lucha es dura y vuelvo con los ojos cansados a veces de haber visto la tierra que no cambia, pero al entrar tu risa sube al cielo buscándome y abre para mí todas las puertas de la vida. Amor mío, en la hora más oscura desgrana tu risa, y si de pronto ves que mi sangre mancha las piedras de la calle, ríe, por que tu risa será para mis manos como una espada fresca. Junto al mar en otoño, tu risa debe alzar su cascada de espuma, y en primavera, amor, quiero tu risa como la flor que yo esperaba, la flor azul, la rosa de mi patria sonora. Ríete de la noche, del día, de la luna, ríete de las calles torcidas de la isla, ríete de este torpe muchacho que te quiere, pero cuando yo abro los ojos y los cierro, cuando mis pasos van, cuando vuelven mis pasos, niégame el pan, el aire, la luz, la primavera, pero tu risa nunca por que me moriría. ~ Neruda How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me, my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running. So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes, and over our heads the grey light unwinds in turning fans. ~ Neruda%%% because two bodies, naked and entwined, leap over time, they are invulnerable, nothing can touch them, they return to the source. There is no you, no I, no tomorrow, no yesterday, no names, the truth of two in a single body, a single soul, oh total being… porque las desnudeces enlazadas saltan el tiempo y son invulnerables, nada las toca, vuelven al principio, no hay tú ni yo, mañana, ayer ni nombres, verdad de dos en sólo un cuerpo y alma, oh ser total... ~Octavio Paz%%% A Lesson In Drawing My son places his paint box in front of me and asks me to draw a bird for him. Into the color gray I dip the brush and draw a square with locks and bars. Astonishment fills his eyes: '… But this is a prison, Father, Don't you know, how to draw a bird?' And I tell him: 'Son, forgive me. I've forgotten the shapes of birds.' My son puts the drawing book in front of me and asks me to draw a wheatstalk. I hold the pen and draw a gun. My son mocks my ignorance, demanding, 'Don't you know, Father, the difference between a wheatstalk and a gun?' I tell him, 'Son, once I used to know the shapes of wheatstalks the shape of the loaf the shape of the rose But in this hardened time the trees of the forest have joined the militia men and the rose wears dull fatigues In this time of armed wheatstalks armed birds armed culture and armed religion you can't buy a loaf without finding a gun inside you can't pluck a rose in the field without its raising its thorns in your face you can't buy a book that doesn't explode between your fingers.’ My son sits at the edge of my bed and asks me to recite a poem, A tear falls from my eyes onto the pillow. My son licks it up, astonished, saying: 'But this is a tear, father, not a poem!' And I tell him: 'When you grow up, my son, and read the diwan of Arabic poetry you'll discover that the word and the tear are twins and the Arabic poem is no more than a tear wept by writing fingers.' My son lays down his pens, his crayon box in front of me and asks me to draw a homeland for him. The brush trembles in my hands and I sink, weeping. ~Nizar Qabbani And when I wake in the morning I know I'll question why- because you made me drink from the fount of you, and now my thirst for truth has grown tenfold. However my eyes saw the world before, now I want them to be gouged from my face. I want to be blinded in the rays of the setting sun; hazy and blushes red, hues of peach and Where did you go, what are you thinking, what do your eyes see, what do your dreams tell you? Are you finding solace in your quest for truth and meaning? Is your body rested in the night and alert in the daylight? Where did the time go and how should I tolerate the utter and profound absence of you? Of all souls there in the world to touch and be touched, to place a warm hand on my breast, feel the soft thumping of my heart underneath, you call it by it's name and still I tremble. ~ EJ Hammond%%% Would that my life were made bare as my soul does captured in the gaze. %%% How could one caress a body and not say goodbye, goodnight, good morning? Are not your needs that of any man, any heart, any spirit, yearning to be fed the draught from which the river of life flows freely?%%% My lips part but no words can escape, hands grasp but no matter can they hold, feet that walk but no distance can they truly carry; dreams that fly me to another world of pure freedom and ecstasy, but as all suns must needs rise, with the waning day in turn falls with the onset of nights black cold. Let me speak, grasp, and walk, and my dreams will rise from the cold like the arctic sun and never set again ~EJ Hammond%%% Bless us with the first breath of morning. Bless the packet of seeds for the garden, shaking like a shaman’s rattle in prayer. Bless us with spare change in our pockets to give to the homeless, bless us with a heart that has been serviced by the mechanic, bless us with good tires on the icy road. Bless us so that we’re not just covering our own asses, but weeping for the rest of the world. Bless our tears so that they irrigate the land for the starving, that there be no more drought. Bless us with one idea after another that we might sort out the good from the bad, bless us with free lunches and subscriptions, bless us with a winter storm so big that it closes everything down for a week and we find ourselves at the beginning of time. Bless us with water, bless us with light, bless us with darkness, and bless us with language. Bless our tongues that we can speak. Bless our cars so they start. Bless our computers so that they may connect to the internet, and bring us the news of the universe. Bless Robert Bly and Gloria Steinem, bless all the worn-out athletes whose bodies are falling apart, bless the tides twice a day and the moon every month. Bless the sun, bless us as we are blessing you, for this is a two-way street, after all, and we’re in this think together. Bless mass transit, and the first cup of coffee. Sing O ye frost heaves and icy patches, praise the spruce trees all crowded together, the crows in the trees flying heavenward and earthward, flying everywhere in between. Bless the night with its constellations that we have dreamed up. Bless our stories that they may somehow be true, for this is all we have. Bless all creatures great and small and the basket makers who weave together a framework to hold emptiness. Bless the empty spaces that are within our bodies, the vast distances inside each cell. Bless each cell, which is its own universe, ready to divide, split in two, and make more than enough. ~Stuart Kestenbaum%%% “Only now do you realize how quickly everything passes how we are here for a blink of God’s eye how the light passes by us and through us how the world began with a breath and a cry earth and sky.”%%% You know the Beatles could have afforded another microphone, but George would always stand in the middle and step up to Paul’s when it was time to join in. Because that’s the way harmony is, you need to share the electricity, the voice, the words. Just the way we do when we drive in our cars with the radio on, the windows rolled down with fall in the air, dead leaves swirling in the wake, or in the spring, the earth damp and soft, the air hazy with pollen. We hear the song that moves us, crank the radio and sing along, at the top of our lungs, as if we just joined the group. In tune out of tune, country western, rock and roll, we want to harmonize. A whole country of would-be stars losing love, finding love with the radio in different cars, on different paths, the dark road rumbling beneath. ~Stuart Kestenbaum%%% What was it we wanted to say anyhow, like today when there were all the letters in my alphabet soup and suddenly the ‘j’ rises to the surface. The ‘j’, a letter that might be great for Scrabble, but not really used for much else, unless we need to jump for joy, and then all of a sudden it’s there and ready to help us soar and to open up our hearts at the same time, this simple line with a curved bottom, an upside down cane that helps us walk in a new way into this forest of language, where all the letters are beginning to speak, finding each other in just the right combination to be understood. ~Stuart Kestenbaum%%% The light snow started late last night and continued all night long while I slept and could hear it occasionally enter my sleep, where I dreamed my brother was alive again and possessing the beauty of youth, aware that he would be leaving again shortly and that is the lesson of the snow falling and of the seeds of death that are in everything that is born: we are here for a moment of a story that is longer than all of us and few of us remember, the wind is blowing out of someplace we don’t know, and each moment contains rhythms within rhythms, and if you discover some old piece of your own writing, or an old photograph, you may not remember that it was you and even if it was once you, it’s not you now, not this moment that the synapses fire and your hands move to cover your face in a gesture of grief and remembrance. ~Stuart Kestenbaum%%% DESPUÉS Luego de haber cortado todos los brazos que se tendían hacia mí; luego de haber tapiado todas las ventanas y puertas; luego de haber inundado con agua envenenada los fosos; luego de haber edificado mi casa en la roca de un No inaccesible a los halagos y al miedo; luego de haberme cortado la lengua y luego de haberla devorado; luego de haber arrojado puñados de silencio y monosílabos de desprecio a mis amores; luego de haber olvidado mi nombre y el nombre de mi lugar natal y el nombre de mi estirpe; luego de haberme juzgado y haberme sentenciado a perpetua espera y a soledad perpetua, oí, contra las piedras de mi calabozo de silogismos, la embestida húmeda, tierna, insistente, de la primavera. ~Octavio Paz ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## Add Your Own Favorites! Add your own “Like a child with fire, so was I with time” # See also: Life Changing Books, Quotes, and More See <http://lifechangingthings.jacobcole.net/> --- *Source: <http://quoteslist.jacobcole.net/>* *Google Doc: <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YuVo2HYPDhKUZ7x8mKl94V0AomdidXnG2NeYxyLLwZ4>* *Scraped: 2026-01-30*