Rumi Read online

  Contents

  Introduction

  Beautiful and Profound Quotes

  Quotes on Love

  Inspirational and Uplifting Quotes

  Short and Pithy Quotes

  Wise and Enlightening Quotes

  Quotes on God and Religion

  Selected Lines and Poetry

  INTRODUCTION

  Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī, Mevlânâ/Mawlānā, Mevlevî/Mawlawī, and more popularly simply as Rumi, was a 13th-century Persian Sunni Muslim poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic originally from Greater Khorasan. Rumi descended from a long line of Islamic jurists, theologians, and mystics, including his father, who was known by followers of Rumi as “Sultan of the Scholars.” When Rumi was still a young man, his father led their family more than 2,000 miles west to avoid the invasion of Genghis Khan’s armies. They settled in present-day Turkey, where Rumi lived and wrote most of his life.

  As a teenager, Rumi was recognized as a great spirit by the poet and teacher Fariduddin Attar, who gave him a copy of his own Ilahinama (The Book of God). When his father died in 1231, Rumi became head of the madrasah, or spiritual learning community. The school reportedly had over ten thousand students, including masons, grocers, weavers, hatmakers, carpenters, tailors, and bookbinders.

  Rumi’s oldest son, Sultan Velad, managed to save 147 of Rumi’s intimate letters, which provide insights about the poet and how he lived. Rumi often involved himself in the lives of his community members, solving disputes and facilitating loans between nobles and students. The letters are described as having lines of poetry scattered throughout.

  In 1244, Rumi met Shams Tabriz, a dervish “God-man” who had taken a vow of poverty. Their meeting is considered a central event in Rumi’s life. Though accounts of their meeting differ, one story claims that Rumi was teaching by a fountain, and Shams walked up through the crowd of students and pushed Rumi’s books into the water, including his father’s spiritual diary. “You must now live what you have been reading about,” Shams told Rumi. Rumi believed both his real life and his real poetry began when he met Shams. “What I had thought of before as God,” Rumi said, “I met today in a human being.”

  Shams and Rumi were close friends for about four years. Over the course of that time, Shams was repeatedly driven away by Rumi’s jealous disciples, including one of Rumi’s sons, Ala al-Din. In December of 1248, Shams again disappeared; it is believed that he was either driven away or killed. Rumi left the madrasah in search of his friend, travelling to Damascus and elsewhere. Eventually, Rumi made peace with his loss, returning to his home believing Shams to be a part of him: “His essence speaks through me.”

  Rumi’s mourning for the loss of his friend led to the outpouring of more than 40,000 lyric verses, including odes, eulogies, quatrains, and other styles of Eastern-Islamic poetry. The resulting collection, Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi or The Works of Shams Tabriz, is considered one of Rumi’s masterpieces and one of the greatest works of Persian literature.

  In his introduction to his translation of Rumi’s The Shams, Coleman Barks has written: “Rumi is one of the great souls, and one of the great spiritual teachers. He shows us our glory. He wants us to be more alive, to wake up… He wants us to see our beauty, in the mirror and in each other.”

  For the last twelve years of his life, beginning in 1262, Rumi dictated a single, six-volume poem to his scribe, Husam Chelebi. The resulting masterwork, the Masnavi-ye Ma’navi (Spiritual Verses), consists of sixty-four thousand lines, and is considered Rumi’s most personal work of spiritual teaching. Rumi described the Masnavi as “the roots of the roots of the roots of the (Islamic) Religion,” and the text has come to be regarded by some Sufis as the Persian-language Koran.

  In his introduction to an English edition of Spiritual Verses, translator Alan Williams wrote: “Rumi is both a poet and a mystic, but he is a teacher first, trying to communicate what he knows to his audience. Like all good teachers, he trusts that ultimately, when the means to go any further fail him and his voice falls silent, his students will have learnt to understand on their own.”

  Rumi fell ill and died on December 17, 1273 C. E., in Konya, Turkey. His remains were interred adjacent to his father’s, and the Yeşil Türbe (Green Tomb) was erected above their final resting place. Now the Mevlâna museum, the site includes a mosque, dance hall, and dervish living quarters.

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  Beautiful and Profound Quotes

  In order to understand the dance one must be still. And in order to truly understand stillness one must dance.

  The garden of the world has no limits except in your mind. Its presence is more beautiful than the stars with more clarity than the polished mirror of your heart.

  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.

  You are the root of heaven, the morning star, the bright moon, the house of endless Love.

  The soul has been given its own ears to hear things mind does not understand.

  If you look too closely at the form, you miss the Essence.

  I begged the Wise One to tell me

  the secret of the world.

  Gently, gently, he whispered,

  Be quiet,

  the secret cannot be spoken,

  It is wrapped in silence.

  Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.

  You are an ocean in a drop of dew, all the universes in a thin sack of blood. What are these pleasures then, these joys, these worlds that you keep reaching for, hoping they will make you more alive?

  Absorbed in this world, you’ve made it your burden. Rise above this world. There is another vision. All your life you’ve paid attention to your experiences, but never to your Self. Are you searching for your Soul? Then come out of your prison. Leave the stream and join the river that flows into the Ocean. It will not lead you astray. Let the beauty you seek be what you do.

  This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor…Welcome and entertain them all. Treat each guest honorably. 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.

  Our purpose here on earth: to manifest the very nature of our spirit, which is touched by the spirit of God.

  There is someone who looks after us

  from behind the curtain.

  In truth we are not here, this is our shadow.

  Something opens our wings. Something makes boredom and hurt disappear. Someone fills the cup in front of us: We taste only sacredness.

  You have no need to travel anywhere - journey within yourself. Enter a mine of rubies and bathe in the splendor of your own light.

  My head is bursting with the joy of the unknown. My heart is expanding a thousand fold.

  There is a way between voice and presence, where information flows. In disciplined silence it opens; with wandering talk it closes.

  In our hearts there burns a fire…

  That burns all veils to their root and foundation

  When those veils have been burned away

  Then the heart will understand completely.

  Ancient love will unfold ever-fresh forms

  In the heart of the Spirit,

  In the core of the heart.

  Put your thoughts to sleep, do not let them cast a shadow over the moon of your heart. Let go of
thinking.

  I smile like a flower not only with my lips but with my whole being.

  There is my body, in it an ocean formed of his glory, all the creation, all the universes, all the galaxies, are lost in it.

  Let the waters settle and you will see the moon and the stars mirrored in your own being.

  The water in the stream may have changed many times, but the reflection of the moon and the stars remains the same.

  Everything is emptiness. Everything else, accidental. Emptiness brings peace to your loving. Everything else, disease. In this world of trickery, emptiness is what your soul wants.

  Not the ones speaking the same language, but the ones sharing the same feeling understand each other.

  Knowledge that is acquired is not like this. Those who have it worry if audiences like it or not. It’s a bait for popularity. Disputational knowing wants customers. It has no soul… The only real customer is God. Chew quietly your sweet sugarcane God-Love, and stay playfully childish.

  Why should I be unhappy? Each parcel of my being is in full bloom.

  A white flower grows in the quietness. Let your tongue become that flower.

  My soul Is Naked.

  It wears The Transparent Garment Of Love.

  To me nothing in the world is as precious as a genuine smile, especially from a child.

  How do I know who I am or where I am? How could a single wave locate itself in an ocean.

  You don’t see your own face, your own beauty

  Yet, no face is more beautiful than yours.

  Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.

  Be like the sun for grace and mercy. Be like the night to cover others’ faults. Be like running water for generosity. Be like death for rage and anger. Be like the Earth for modesty. Appear as you are. Be as you appear.

  All day I think about it, then at night I say it. Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing? I have no idea. My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that, and I intend to end up there. Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul? I cannot stop asking. If I could taste one sip of an answer, I could break out of this prison for drunks. I didn’t come here of my own accord, and I can’t leave that way. Whoever brought me here, will have to take me home.

  Love is the soul’s light, the taste of morning, no me, no we, no claim of being.

  Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

  What comes, will go. What is found, will be lost again. But what you are is beyond coming and going and beyond description.

  I am the dust in the sunlight,

  I am the ball of the sun …

  I am the mist of morning,

  the breath of evening … .

  I am the spark in the stone,

  the gleam of gold in the metal … .

  The rose and the nightingale

  drunk with its fragrance.

  I am the chain of being,

  the circle of the spheres,

  The scale of creation,

  the rise and the fall.

  I am what is and is not …

  I am the soul in all.

  Always search for your innermost nature in those you are with, as rose oil imbibes from roses.

  Allah made the illusion look real and the real an illusion. He concealed the sea and made the foam visible, the wind invisible, and the dust manifest. you see the dust whirling, but how can the dust rise by itself? you see the foam, but not the ocean. Invoke Him with deeds, not words; for deeds are real and will save you in the infinite-life.

  Every object and being in the universe is a jar overflowing with wisdom and beauty, a drop of the Tigris that cannot be contained by any skin. Every jarful spills and makes the earth more shining, as though covered in satin… Make peace with the universe. Take joy in it. It will turn to gold. Resurrection will be now. Every moment, a new beauty.

  There are many languages in the world; in meaning all are the same. If you break the cups, water will be unified and will flow together.

  Although you appear in earthly form your essence is pure consciousness. You are the fearless guardian of Divine Light.

  The mind says there is nothing beyond the physical world; the HEART says there is, and I’ve been there many times.

  Do you know what you are? You are a manuscript of a divine letter. You are a mirror reflecting a noble face. This universe is not outside of you. Look inside yourself; everything that you want, you are already that.

  Watch for all that beauty reflecting from you and sing a love song to your existence.

  Everyone sleeps, except lovers, who stay awake, telling stories to God.

  They are the chosen ones

  who have surrendered …

  Once they were particles of light

  now they are the radiant sun!

  If you could get rid of yourself just once, the secret of secrets would open to you. The face of the unknown, hidden beyond the universe would appear on the mirror of your perception.

  I am merely a guest, born in this world to know the secrets that lie beyond it.

  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.

  I said to the night, If you are in love with the moon, it is because you never stay for long. The night turned to me and said, It is not my fault. I never see the Sun, how can I know that love is endless?

  When you feel a peaceful joy, that’s when you are near truth.

  Tender words we spoke to one another are sealed in the secret vaults of heaven. One day like rain, they will fall to earth and grow green all over the world.

  Those doing soul work, who want the searing truth more than solace or applause, know each other right away. Those who want something else turn and take a seat in another room. Soul-makers find each other’s company.

  Sing to me in the silence of your heart and I will rise up to hear your triumphant song.

  The pure heart is a spotless mirror in which images of infinite beauty are reflected.

  Be helpless, dumbfounded, Unable to say yes or no. Then a stretcher will come from grace to gather us up. We are too dull-eyed to see that beauty. If we say we can, we’re lying. If we say No, we don’t see it, That No will behead us And shut tight our window onto spirit. So let us rather not be sure of anything, Beside ourselves, and only that, so Miraculous beings come running to help. Crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute, We shall be saying finally, With tremendous eloquence, Lead us. When we have totally surrendered to that beauty, We shall be a mighty kindness.

  Everything that is made beautiful and fair and lovely is made for the eye of one who sees.

  Inside the Great Mystery that is, we don’t really own anything. What is this competition we feel then, before we go, one at a time, through the same gate?

  Make peace with the universe. Take joy in it. It will turn to gold. Resurrection will be now. Every moment, a new beauty.

  All the particles of the World are in Love

  and looking for Lovers.

  How can I know anything about the past or the future, when the light of the Beloved shines only Now.

  What hurts the soul? To live without tasting the water of its own essence.

  This is a subtle truth. Whatever you love, you are.

  It may be that the satisfaction I need depends on my going away, so that when I’ve gone and come back, I’ll find it at home.

  Fling me across the fabric of time and the seas of space. Make me nothing and from nothing-everything.

  I closed my mouth and spoke to you in a hundred silent ways.

  Be crumbled.

  So wild flowers will come up where you are.

  You have been stony for too many years.

  Try something different.

  Surrender.

  Leave that which is not,

  but appears to be.

  Seek that which is,