Surrender

 

Be Ground.

Be crumbled, so wildflowers will come up where you are. 

You have been stony for too many years

Try something different. 

Surrender. 

Jalaluddin Rumi

There are no edges to my loving now

The clear bead at the center changes everything.
There are no edges to my loving now.

You've heard it said there's a window
that opens from one mind to another,

but if there's no wall, there's no need
for fitting the window, or the latch.

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Translated from the original Persian by Coleman Barks

Things are such

Things are such, that someone lifting a cup,
or watching the rain, petting a dog,

or singing, just singing - could be doing as
much for this universe as anyone.

Jelaluddin Rumi

On a day when the wind is perfect

On a day
when the wind is perfect,
the sail just needs to open and the world is full of beauty.
Today is such a
day.

My eyes are like the sun that makes promises;
the promise of life
that it always
keeps

each morning.

The living heart gives to us as does that luminous sphere,
both caress the earth with great
tenderness.

This is a breeze that can enter the soul.
This love I know plays a drum. Arms move around me;
who can contain their self before my beauty?

Peace is wonderful,
but ecstatic dance is more fun, and less narcissistic;
gregarious He makes our lips.

On a day when the wind is perfect,
the sail just needs to open
and the love starts.

Today is such
a day.

Jelaluddin  Rumi
'Love Poems From God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West' by Daniel Ladinsky

And makes the wayside ditch, burst into blossom

The Illness of Ego
Jelaluddin Rumi

If you don't want your friend of today
to be unfriendly tomorrow,
choose friendship with the wise.
You're seasick from the storms of the ego,
because you make everything stormy.

If you take a jewel in hand, it loses its luster;
near you kindness of heart becomes hatred;
and even a beautiful word becomes vulgar.

You say, "I've heard this all before;
tell me something else, my friend."
If something fresh and bright is shared,
the very next day you're cranky and bored.

Get rid of this illness. When it's gone,
every old tale becomes new,
and makes the wayside ditch
burst into blossom.

Now I seek mornings

"At the time (in my youth), I was seeking out late afternoons, drab outskirts, and unhappiness; now I seek mornings, the center of town, peace."

Jorge Luis Borges
Prologue to 'Fervor de Buenos Aires'

What Was Told, That
Jalal al-Din Rumi
Translated by Coleman Barks

What was said to the rose that made it open was said
to me here in my chest.
What was told the cypress that made it strong
and straight, what was
whispered the jasmine so it is what it is, whatever made
sugarcane sweet, whatever
was said to the inhabitants of the town of Chigil in
Turkestan that makes them
so handsome, whatever lets the pomegranate flower blush
like a human face, that is
being said to me now. I blush. Whatever put eloquence in
language, that's happening here.
The great warehouse doors open; I fill with gratitude,
chewing a piece of sugarcane,
in love with the one to whom every that belongs!


Photo: Cubbon Park, this Sunday morning

That's where the light enters you

Trust your wound to a teacher's surgery.
Flies collect on a wound. They cover it,
those flies of your self-protecting feelings,
your love for what you think is yours.
Let a teacher wave away the flies
and put a plaster on the wound.
Don't turn your head. Keep looking
at the bandaged wound. That's where
the light enters you.
And don't believe for a moment
that you're healing yourself.

Rumi

Photo: Ibrahim Rauza, Bijapur

Contracting, and expanding

Your grief for what you’ve lost lifts a mirror
up to where you’re bravely working.
Expecting the worst, you look, and instead
here’s the joyful face you’ve been wanting to see.

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you’d be paralyzed.
Your deepest presence is in every small contracting
and expanding,
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as bird wings.

Rumi

Begin

This is now.  Now is,

all there is.  Don't wait for Then;

strike the spark, light the fire.

Sit at the Beloved's table,

feast with gusto, drink your fill

then dance

the way branches

of jasmine and cypress

dance in a spring wind.

The green earth

is your cloth;

tailor your robe

with dignity and grace.

Jelaluddin Rumi

Lifting

Chanced upon Rumi again..

Fish don't hold the sacred liquid in cups,
they swim the huge fluid freedom.

* * * * * * *
I died as a mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was Man.
Why should I fear?
When was I less by dying?

* * * * * * *

But don't be satisfied with stories, how things
have gone with others. Unfold
your own myth, without complicated explanation,
so everyone will understand the passage,
We have opened you.

Start walking towards Shams. Your legs will get heavy
and tired. Then comes a moment
of feeling the wings you've grown,
lifting.

Jalaluddin Rumi, poet and mystic (1207-1273)

To sit apart

....What I most want
is to spring out of this personality,
then to sit apart from that leaping.
I've lived too long where I can be reached.

Who says the eternal being does not exist?
Who says the sun has gone out?
Someone who climbs up on the roof,
and closes his eyes tight, and says,
--I don't see anything.

.....With one silent laugh
You tilted the night
and the garden ran with stars.

Jelaluddin Rumi

Bewilderment

"Sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment."

Jelaluddin Rumi