Rumi

What the material world values does

You have been interestedin your shadow. Look instead directly at the sun.What can we know by justwatching the time-and-space shapes of each other?Someone half awake in the night sees imaginary dangers;the morning star rises; the horizon growsdefined; people become friends in a moving caravan.Night birds may thinkdaybreak a kind of darkness, becausethat’s all they know.It’s…

You who are not kept anxiously awake for love’s sake, sleep on.

you whose heart such anxiety has not disturbed, sleep on.Love’s place is out beyond the many separate sects;since you love choosing and excluding, sleep on.Love’s dawn cup is our sunrise, his dusk our supper;you whose longing is for sweets and whose passion is for supper, sleep on.In search of the philosopher’s stone, we are melting…

If I weep, if I come with excuses, my beloved puts cotton wool in his ears.

If he accounts me nonexistent, I account his tyranny generosity.The cure of the ache of my heart is the ache for him; how shall I not surrender my heart to his ache?Only then are glory and respect mine, when his glorious love renders me contemptible.Only then does the vine of my body become wine, when…

All through eternity

in the solitude of nothingness;He holds a mirror to His Faceand beholds His own beauty.he is the knower and the known,the seer and the seen;No eye but His ownhas ever looked upon this Universe.His every quality finds an expression:Eternity becomes the verdant field of Time and Space;Love, the life-giving garden of this world.Every branch and…

The moon has become a dancer

This dance of light,This sacred blessing,This divine love,beckons usto a world beyondonly lovers can seewith their eyes of fiery passion.They are the chosen oneswho have surrendered.Once they were particles of lightnow they are the radiant sun.They have left behindthe world of deceitful games.They are the privileged loverswho create a new worldwith their eyes of fiery…

Both light and shadow

Love has no cause;it is the astrolabe of God’s secrets.Lover and Loving are inseparableand timeless.Although I may try to describe Lovewhen I experience it I am speechless.Although I may try to write about LoveI am rendered helpless;my pen breaks and the paper slips awayat the ineffable placewhere Lover, Loving and Loved are one.Every moment is…