Quotes by Mevlana Rumi

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion
or cultural system. I am not from the East or the West, not out of the ocean or up
from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not composed of elements at all. I do not exist,
am not an entity in this world or the next, did not descend from Adam or Eve or any
origin story. My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless. Neither body or soul.
I belong to the beloved, have seen the two worlds as one and that one call to and know,
first, last, outer, inner, only that breath breathing human being.

Awe is the salve that will heal our eyes.

Someone who goes with a half a loaf of bread
to a small place that fits like a nest around him,
someone who wants no more, who's not himself
longed for by anyone else,

He is a letter to everyone. You open it.
It says, LIVE.

What is a highway to one is a disaster to the other.

A fire has risen above my tombstone hat.
I don't want learning, or dignity, or respectability.
I want this music and this dawn and the warmth of your cheek against mine.

Every thirst gets satisfied except
that of these fish, the mystics,

who swim a vast ocean of grace
still somehow longing for it!

Be a lamp, a lifeboat, a ladder. Help someone's soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.

This is not a day for asking questions,
not a day on any calendar.
This day is conscious of itself.
This day is a lover, bread, and gentleness,
more manifest than saying can say.

How can anyone say what happens, even if each of us dips a pen a hundred million times into ink?

What if a man cannot be made to say anything?

How do you learn his hidden nature?

I sit in front of him in silence,
and set up a ladder made of patience,
and if in his presence a language from beyond joy
and beyond grief begins to pour from MY chest,
I know that his soul is as deep and bright
as the star Canopus rising over Yemen.
And so when I start speaking a powerful right arm
of words sweeping down, I know HIM from what I say,
and how I say it, because there is a window open
between us, mixing the night air of our beings.