I felt in need of a great pilgrimage

 

I felt in need of a great pilgrimage.

So I sat still for three days
and God came to me.

Kabir, in 'Love Poems from God, Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West'

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

The Path

"Ali said: None may arrive at the Truth until he is able to think that the Path itself may be wrong."

'Thinkers of the East, Studies in Experientialism'. Page 38.
Idries Shah
 

Bowing, then rising up

When The Wind Takes A Tree In Its Arms
Hafiz

Three-quarters of the world dances all night,
the waves moving as they do on the seas.

And when the wind takes a tree in its arms,
what happens then?

The green branches of the earth may seem to
reach out to touch us if we near them in a forest,
a meadow, a field.

Does not all sway to a rhythm that began long
before we stood upright?

We are in the mountain's home, just guests.
Guests of the sky, the streams, the giving soil
we all nurse from.

Would not you be happier following their example -
bowing in unseen ways, then rising up?

Hundreds of ways

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened.
Don't open the door to the study and begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Jelaluddin Rumi

The Way, not the wayfarer

"To possess anything means to be possessed by it - the world enthralls those who possess some of its goods, whereas "the true faqir should not possess anything and thus not be possessed by anything".

"...Dervishhood in all its meaning is a metaphorical poverty, and amidst all its subordinate aspects there is a transcendent principle. The Divine mysteries come and go over the dervish, so that his affairs are acquired by himself, his actions attributed to himself, and his ideas attached to himself. But when his affairs are freed from the bonds of acquisition, his actions are no more attributed to himself. Then he is the Way, not the wayfarer, i.e, the dervish is a place over which something is passing, not a wayfarer following his own will."

Page 119, 'The Path', from 'The Mystical Dimensions of Islam', Annemarie Schimmel

Joy

"What is Sufism? He (Rumi) said: "To find joy in the heart when grief comes."

Page 17, 'Mystical Dimensions of Islam', Annemarie Schimmel

Joy
Carl Sandburg

Let a joy keep you.
Reach out your hands
And take it when it runs by,
As the Apache dancer
Clutches his woman.
I have seen them
Live long and laugh loud,
Sent on singing, singing,
Smashed to the heart
Under the ribs
With a terrible love.
Joy always,
Joy everywhere--
Let joy kill you!
Keep away from the little deaths.

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

Imperfect Thirst

If your eyes are not deceived by the mirage
do not be proud of the sharpness of your understanding.
It may be your freedom from this optical illusion
is due to the imperfectness of your thirst.

Suhrawardi (1155–1191), Iranian Philosopher

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

Leave the familiar for a while

All the Hemispheres

Leave the familiar for a while.
Let your senses and bodies stretch out
Like a welcomed season
Onto the meadow and shores and hills.

Open up to the Roof.
Make a new watermark 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.

Hafez, Persian Poet

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)

He knows - or maybe even he does not!

"Ali said: None may arrive at the Truth until he is able to think that the Path itself may be wrong."

from 'Thinkers of the East, Studies in Experientialism'. Page 38. Idries Shah

 

And a friend sends these brilliant responses to my excerpt Doubt is not paralysis. Certainty is.:

 Richard Feynman:

"...I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing - I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things. But I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here......

But I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose." (This is the state I am currently in, so I can totally relate to this statement :))

From this brilliant 5-min video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3846497984030197366

 

The Rig Veda: 

From the Nasadiya Sukta - the Creation Hymn:

“After all, who really knows what happened and who can presume to tell it? What is the origin of creation? For even the Gods themselves are younger than it. 

He, whether he created it or did not, He who surveys it all from the highest heaven, He knows - or maybe even he does not!" 

http://www.apamnapat.com/articles/Suktas003.html

Alchemy

"Relating happiness and fulfillment to a process of alchemical transmutation of the human mind, Ghazali gives a story of Bayazid, one of the early classical Sufi masters, in his Alchemy of Happiness, to stress how the amour propre (Commanding Self) must first be seen in its real light before any refining can actually be done:

A man came to Bayazid and said that he had fasted and prayed for thirty years, and yet had not come near to an understanding of God. Bayazid told him that even a hundred years would not be enough. The man asked why.

"Because your selfishness is working as a barrier between yourself and truth."
"Give me the remedy".
"There is a remedy, but it is impossible to you."

The man insisted, and Bayazid agreed to describe it to him.

"Go and shave your beard. Strip yourself naked, except for a loincloth. Fill a nose bag full of walnuts and go to the marketplace. There cry out, 'A walnut for every boy who slaps me!" Then make your way to the court where the doctors of law are in session."

"But I really could not do that. Give me some other method."

"This is the only method," said Bayazid, "but I have already told you, there is no answer for you."

Idries Shah, 'The Sufis'

Wonder

"........We stopped at a little monastery occupied by dervishes who danced every Friday. The arched doorway was green and had an open hand of bronze-Mohammed's sacred symbol-on the lintel. We entered the immaculate courtyard. It was paved with large white pebbles; there were flowerpots and creepers all around the edges, and in the centre a huge fruit-laden laurel.

We stopped beneath its shade to catch our breath. One of the dervishes saw us from his cell. Approaching, he greeted us by placing his hand over his breast, lips, and forehead. He was wearing a long blue robe and a tall kulah of white wool. His beard was pitch black and pointed; a silver earring hung from his right ear. He clapped his hands. A chubby barefoot boy came and brought us some stools. We sat down. The dervish chatted about the flowers we saw around us, then about the sea, which we observed sparkling between the laurel's lanceolate leaves. Finally he began to speak about dancing.

"If a man cannot dance, he cannot pray. Angels have mouths but lack the power of speech. They speak to God by dancing." 

Father, what name do you give God?", asked the abbé. 

"God does not have a name", the dervish replied. "He is too big to fit inside names. A name is a prison, God is free." 

"But in case you should want to call Him," the abbé persisted, "when there is need, what name will you use?'

The dervish bowed his head and thought. Finally he parted his lips: "Ah! - that is what I shall call Him. Not Allah, but Ah!"

Nikos Kazantzakis
'Report to Greco' (Autobiography)

Need

The Five Hundred Gold Pieces

One of Junaid's followers came to him with a purse containing five hundred gold pieces.

"Have you any more money than this?", asked the Sufi.
"Yes, I have."
"Do you desire more?"
"Yes, I do."

"Then you must keep it, for you are more in need than I; for I have nothing and desire nothing. You have a great deal and still want more."

Page 72. Chapter: Attar of Nisharpur. 'The Way of the Sufi'
Idries Shah

Mystic

"You will not be a mystic until you are like the earth - both the righteous and the sinner tread upon it - and until you are like the clouds - they shade all things - and until you are like the rain - it waters all things, whether it loves them or not."

Bayazid Bistami

The Five Hundred Gold Pieces

One of Junaid's followers came to him with a purse containing five hundred gold pieces.

"Have you any more money than this?", asked the Sufi.
"Yes, I have."
"Do you desire more?"
"Yes, I do."
"Then you must keep it, for you are more in need than I; for I have nothing and desire nothing. You have a great deal and still want more."

Page 72. Chapter: Attar of Nisharpur.
'The Way of the Sufi' by Idries Shah