I am only the house of your beloved

"I am only the house of your beloved,

not the beloved herself:

true love is for the treasure,

not for the coffer that contains it."

The real beloved is that one who is unique,

who is your beginning and your end.

When you find that one,

you'll no longer expect anything else:

that is both the manifest and the mystery.

That one is the lord of states of feeling,

dependent on none;

month and year are slaves to that moon.

When he bids the "state,"

it does His bidding;

when that one wills, bodies become spirit.

Mathnawi III, 1417-1424

 

The intellectual is always showing off

The intellectual is always showing off,

the lover is always getting lost.

The intellectual runs away.

afraid of drowning;

the whole business of love

is to drown in the sea.

Intellectuals plan their repose;

lovers are ashamed to rest.

The lover is always alone.

even surrounded by people;

like water and oil, he remains apart.

The man who goes to the trouble 

of giving advice to a lover

get nothing. He's mocked by passion.

Love is like musk. It attracts attention.

Love is a tree, and the lovers are its shade.

Kulliyat-e Shams, 21

 

 

The springtime of Lovers has come

The springtime of Lovers has come,

that this dust bowl may become a garden;

the proclamation of heaven has come,

that the bird of the soul may rise in flight.

The sea becomes full of pearls,

the salt marsh becomes sweet as kauthar,

the stone becomes a ruby from the mine,

the body becomes wholly soul.

Love has nothing to do with the five senses - Rumi

Love has nothing to do with

the five senses and the six directions:

its goal is only to experience

the attraction exerted by the Beloved.

Afterwards, perhaps, permission

will come from God:

the secrets that ought to be told with be told

with an eloquence nearer to the understanding

that these subtle confusing allusions.

The secret is partner with none

but the knower of the secret:

in the skeptic's ear

the secret is no secret at all.

Mathnawi III, 1417-1424

 

Those Who Don't Feel This Love

A lifetime without Love is of no account

Love is the Water of Life

Drink it down with heart and soul! 

Divan-i-Shams 11909

When the rose is gone and the garden faded

When the rose is gone and the garden faded
 

you will no longer hear the nightingale's song.
 

The Beloved is all; the lover just a veil. 

The Beloved is living; the lover a dead thing.

If love withholds its strengthening care,

the lover is left like a bird without care,

the lover is left like a bird without wings.

How will I be awake and aware

if the light of the Beloved is absent?

Love wills that this Word be brought forth.

 Mathnawi I, 23-31

Ode 314

Ode 314

 

Those who don't feel this Love
pulling them like a river,
those who don't drink dawn
like a cup of spring water
or take in sunset like supper,
those who don't want to change,

let them sleep. 

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

sleep on. 

I've given up on my brain.
I've torn the cloth to shreds
and thrown it away. 

If you're not completely naked,
wrap your beautiful robe of words
around you, 

and sleep.

Last Night You Left Me And Slept - Rumi

Last night you left me and slept

your own deep sleep. Tonight you turn

and turn. I say,

"You and I will be together

till the universe dissolves."

You mumble back things you thought of

when you were drunk.

Like This, Rumi, Coleman Barks, Maypop Books 

 

I have been tricked by flying too close - Rumi

I have been tricked by flying too close 
to what I thought I loved.

Now the candleflame is out, the wine spilled,
and the lovers have withdrawn
somewhere beyond my squinting.

The amount I thought I'd won, I've lost.
My prayers becomes bitter and all about blindness.

How wonderful it was to be for a while
with those who surrender.

Others only turn their faces on way,
then another, like pigeon in flight.

I have known pigeons who fly in a nowhere,
and birds that eat grainlessness,

and tailor who sew beautiful clothes
by tearing them to pieces.

(Mathnawi, V. 346-353) Like This,
Rumi, Coleman Barks, Maypop Books 

In The Arc Of Your Mallet

Don't go anywhere without me.
Let nothing happen in the sky apart from me,
or on the ground, in this world or that world,
without my being in its happening.
Vision, see nothing I don't see.
Language, say nothing.
The way the night knows itself with the moon,
be that with me. Be the rose
nearest to the thorn that I am.

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

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

Who is at my door?

Who is at my door?

He said, "Who is at my door?"
I said, "Your humble servant."
He said, "What business do you have?"
I said, "To greet you, 0 Lord."

He said, "How long will you journey on?"
I said, "Until you stop me."
He said, "How long will you boil in the fire?"
I said, "Until I am pure.

"This is my oath of love.
For the sake of love
I gave up wealth and position."

He said, "You have pleaded your case
but you have no witness."
I said, "My tears are my witness;
the pallor of my face is my proof.'
He said, "Your witness has no credibility;
your eyes are too wet to see."
I said, "By the splendor of your justice
my eyes are clear and faultless."

He said, "What do you seek?"
I said, "To have you as my constant friend."
He said, "What do you want from me?"
I said, "Your abundant grace."

He said, "Who was your companion on the 'ourney?
I said, "The thought of you, 0 King."
He said, "What called you here?"
I said, "The fragrance of your wine."

He said, "What brings you the most fulfillment?"
I said, "The company of the Emperor."
He said, "What do you find there?"
I said, "A hundred miracles."
He said, "Why is the palace deserted?"
I said, "They all fear the thief."
He said, "Who is the thief?"
I said, "The one who keeps me from -you.

He said, "Where is there safety?"
I said, "In service and renunciation."
He said, "What is there to renounce?"
I said, "The hope of salvation."

He said, "Where is there calamity?"
I said, "In the presence of your love."
He said, "How do you benefit from this life?"
I said, "By keeping true to myself

Now it is time for silence.
If I told you about His true essence
You would fly from your self and be gone,
and neither door nor roof could hold you back!

Rumi - In the Arms of the Beloved, Jonathan Star
Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, New York 1997

 

Beauty of the heart

The beauty of the heart

is the lasting beauty:

its lips give to drink

of the water of life.
Truly it is the water,

that which pours,

and the one who drinks.

All three become one when 

your talisman is shattered.

That oneness you can't know

by reasoning.

Because I cannot sleep

Because I cannot sleep
I make music at night.
I am troubled by the one
whose face e has the color of spring flowers.
I have neither sleep nor patience,
neither a god reputation nor disgrace.
A thousand robes of wisdom are gone.
All my good manners have moved a thousand miles away.
The heart and the mind are left angry with each other.
The starts and the moon are envious of each other.
Because of this alienation the physical universe
is getting tighter and tighter.
The moon says, "How long will I remain
suspended without a sun?"
Without Love's jewel inside of me,
let the bazaar of my existence by destroyed stone by stone.
O Love, You who have been called by a thousand names,
You who know how to pour the wine
into the chalice of the body,
You who give culture to a thousand cultures,
You who are faceless but have a thousand faces,
O Love, You who shape the faces
of Turks, Europeans, and Zanzibaris,
give me a glass from Your bottle,
or a handful of bheng from Your Branch.
Remove the cork once more.
The we'll see a thousand chiefs prostrate themselves,
and a circle of ecstatic troubadours will play.
Then the addict will be breed of craving.
and will be resurrected,
and stand in awe till Judgement Day.

Two Kinds of Intelligence

Two Kinds of Intelligence

There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired,

as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts

from books and from what the teacher says,

collecting information from the traditional sciences

as well as from the new sciences.

With such intelligence you rise in the world.

You get ranked ahead or behind others

in regard to your competence in retaining

information. You stroll with this intelligence

in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more

marks on your preserving tablets.

There is another kind of tablet, one

already completed and preserved inside you.

A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness

in the center of the chest. This other intelligence

does not turn yellow or stagnate. It's fluid,

and it doesn't move from outside to inside

through conduits of plumbing-learning.

This second knowing is a fountainhead

from within you, moving out.

From Essential Rumi

By Coleman Barks

The Rose

What Allah said to the Rose

And caused it to laugh in full blown beauty,

He said to my heart

And made it a hundred times more beautiful.

The Agony and Ecstasy of Divine Discontent - The Moods of Rumi

The Agony and Ecstasy of Divine Discontent:
The Moods of Rumi

In the orchard and rose garden

I long to see your face.

In the taste of Sweetness

I long to kiss your lips.

In the shadows of passion

I long for your love.

Oh! Supreme Lover!

Let me leave aside my worries.

The flowers are blooming
with the exultation of your Spirit.

By Allah!

I long to escape the prison of my ego

and lose myself
in the mountains and the desert.

These sad and lonely people tire me.

I long to revel in the drunken frenzy of your love
and feel the strength of Rustam in my hands.

I’m sick of mortal kings.

I long to see your light.

With lamps in hand
the sheiks and mullahs roam
the dark alleys of these towns
not finding what they seek.

You are the Essence of the Essence,

The intoxication of Love.

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

The Inner Consciousness

The inner consciousness

Of the saint

Is the true mosque

Where all should worship,

God lives there.

Spirit sees nothing to Criticise

The fault is in the blamer

Spirit sees nothing to criticise

Allah

I tried to find Him on the Christian cross,

but He was not there;

I went to the Temple of the

Hindus and to the old pagodas,

but I could not find a trace of Him anywhere.

I searched on the mountains and in the valleys

but neither in the heights nor in the depths was I able to find Him.

I went to the Ka'bah in Mecca,

but He was not there either.

I questioned the scholars and philosophers but

He was beyond their understanding.

I then looked into my heart and it was there

where He dwelled that I saw Him; He was

nowhere else to be found.

The Mouse and the Camel

A mouse once caught in its paws a rope tied to a camel.

When the camel began to walk, the mouse thought that he was pulling the camel.

“How strong and mighty I am”, he boasted.

Little did he realize that the camel was walking by himself.

The two then arrived at a river. Here, the mouse came to a stop.

“Why have you stopped, brother mouse?” asked the camel. “Keep leading me on, for you are my guide.”

“But this is a deep river. I am afraid I’ll drown,” replied the mouse.

“Let me see how deep it is,” said the camel, stepping into the water.

“Why it only comes up to my knee,” the camel revealed. “Do go on, brother mouse.”

The mouse of course could not cross the river on his own.

“Oh great camel,” he said, “the river is like an ant to you, but to me it is like a dragon.”

The camel took pity on the mouse.

“Jump up and sit on my hump,” he told the little creature,

“And be not so proud another time.”