Rumi
Sufism inspired writings of Persian poet and mystic Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi; these writings express the longing of the soul for union with the divine.
Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī - also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī, Mevlânâ/Mawlānā (مولانا, "our master"), Mevlevî/Mawlawī (مولوی, "my master") and more popularly simply as Rumi - was a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian and Sufi mystic who lived in Konya, a city of Ottoman Empire (Today's Turkey). His poems have been widely translated into many of the world's languages, and he has been described as the most popular poet and the best-selling poet in the United States.
His poetry has influenced Persian literature, but also Turkish, Ottoman Turkish, Azerbaijani, Punjabi, Hindi, and Urdu, as well as the literature of some other Turkic, Iranian, and Indo-Aryan languages including Chagatai, Pashto, and Bengali.
Due to quarrels between different dynasties in Khorāṣān, opposition to the Khwarizmid Shahs who were considered devious by his father, Bahā ud-Dīn Wālad or fear of the impending Mongol cataclysm, his father decided to migrate westwards, eventually settling in the Anatolian city Konya, where he lived most of his life, composed one of the crowning glories of Persian literature, and profoundly affected the culture of the area.
When his father died, Rumi, aged 25, inherited his position as the head of an Islamic school. One of Baha' ud-Din's students, Sayyed Burhan ud-Din Muhaqqiq Termazi, continued to train Rumi in the Shariah as well as the Tariqa, especially that of Rumi's father. For nine years, Rumi practised Sufism as a disciple of Burhan ud-Din until the latter died in 1240 or 1241. Rumi's public life then began: he became an Islamic Jurist, issuing fatwas and giving sermons in the mosques of Konya. He also served as a Molvi (Islamic teacher) and taught his adherents in the madrassa. During this period, Rumi also travelled to Damascus and is said to have spent four years there.
It was his meeting with the dervish Shams-e Tabrizi on 15 November 1244 that completely changed his life. From an accomplished teacher and jurist, Rumi was transformed into an ascetic.
On the night of 5 December 1248, as Rumi and Shams were talking, Shams was called to the back door. He went out, never to be seen again. Rumi's love for, and his bereavement at the death of, Shams found their expression in an outpouring of lyric poems, Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi. He himself went out searching for Shams and journeyed again to Damascus.
Rumi found another companion in Salaḥ ud-Din-e Zarkub, a goldsmith. After Salah ud-Din's death, Rumi's scribe and favourite student, Hussam-e Chalabi, assumed the role of Rumi's companion. Hussam implored Rumi to write more. Rumi spent the next 12 years of his life in Anatolia dictating the six volumes of this masterwork, the Masnavi, to Hussam.
In December 1273, Rumi fell ill and died on the 17th of December in Konya.
“The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell youDon't go back to sleep!You must ask for what you really want.Don't go back to sleep!People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch,The door is round and openDon't go back to sleep!”
“Either give me more wine or leave me alone.”
“Give up to grace. The ocean takes care of each wave 'til it gets to shore. You need more help than you know.”
“When I am with you, we stay up all night.When you're not here, I can't go to sleep.Praise God for those two insomnias!And the difference between them.”
“Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free.”
“The morning wind spreads its fresh smell. We must get up and take that in, that wind that lets us live. Breathe before it's gone.”
“You are my shams.”
“Give your weakness to one who helps.”
“This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.”
“I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.”
“You wander from room to roomHunting for the diamond necklaceThat is already around your neck!”
“As for us, He has appointed the job of permanent unemployment.If he wanted us to work, after all,He would not have created this wine.With a skinfull of this, Sir,would you rush out to commit economics?”
“How will you know the difficulties of being human, if you are always flying off to blue perfection? Where will you plant your grief seeds? Workers need ground to scrape and hoe, not the sky of unspecified desire.”
“Every moment a taste of that beauty in our mouths, another stashed in a pocket. Impossible to say what: no cypress so handsome, no sunlight, a lonely hiddenness. Other pleasure gathers a crowd, starts a fight, lots of noise there. But soul beauty stays quiet..his amazing whereabouts unknown inside my heart.”
“A mountain keeps an echo deep inside. That's how I hold your voice.”
“And you? When will you begin that long journey into yourself?”
“Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.”
“This that is tormented and very tired,tortured with restraints like a madman,this heart.”
“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.”
“Inside you there’s an artist you don’t know about… say yes quickly, if you know, if you’ve known it from before the beginning of the universe.”
“Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”
“If the foot of the trees were not tied to earth, they would be pursuing me.. For I have blossomed so much, I am the envy of the gardens.”
“If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?”
“Reason is powerless in the expression of Love.”
“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”
“The universe and the light of the stars come through me.”
“The ground's generosity takes in our compost and grows beauty! Try to be more like the ground.”
“Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.”
“Beauty surrounds us.”
“silence is the language of god, all else is poor translation.”
“In Silence there is eloquence. Stop weaving and see how the pattern improves.”
“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.”
“This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say.”
“Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah…it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.”
“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.”
“In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest where no-one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.”
“Is it really so that the one I love is everywhere?”
“Sit, be still, and listen,because you're drunkand we're atthe edge of the roof.”
“People want you to be happy.Don't keep serving them your pain!If you could untie your wingsand free your soul of jealousy,you and everyone around youwould fly up like doves.”
“Flow down and down in always widening rings of being.”
“That which God 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.”
“We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust.”
“I have lived on the lipof insanity, wanting to know reasons,knocking on a door. It opens.I've been knocking from the inside.”
“Who could be so lucky? Who comes to a lake for water and sees the reflection of moon.”
“A thousand half-loves must be forsaken to take one whole heart home.”
“Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull of that which you truly love.”
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
“A Thirsty FishI don't get tired of you. Don't grow wearyof being compassionate toward me!All this thirst equipmentmust surely be tired of me,the waterjar, the water carrier.I have a thirsty fish in methat can never find enoughof what it's thirsty for!Show me the way to the ocean!Break these half-measures,these small containers.All this fantasyand grief.Let my house be drowned in the wavethat rose last night in the courtyardhidden in the center of my chest.Joseph fell like the moon into my well.The harvest I expected was washed away.But no matter.A fire has risen above my tombstone hat.I don't want learning, or dignity,or respectability.I want this music and this dawnand the warmth of your cheek against mine.The grief-armies assemble,but I'm not going with them.This is how it always iswhen I finish a poem.A great silence comes over me,and I wonder why I ever thoughtto use language.”
“Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.”
“You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?”