“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.”
Rumi
“Buddhas don’t worship other buddhas”
Bodhidharma
There already is a buddha withinside you. Observe yourself; don’t waste time worshiping another buddha and ignoring the buddha within.
“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.”
“The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.
They’re in each other all along.”
“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
“What you seek is seeking you.”
“You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?”
“Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.”
“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.”
“Knock, And He’ll open the door
Vanish, And He’ll make you shine like the sun
Fall, And He’ll raise you to the heavens
Become nothing, And He’ll turn you into everything.”
“Forget safety.
Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation.
Be notorious.”
“And still, after all this time, the Sun has never said to the Earth,
“You owe me.”
Look what happens with love like that.
It lights up the sky.”
“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.”
“Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.”
“Silence is the language of god,
all else is poor translation.”
“Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”
“There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled.
There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled.
You feel it, don’t you?”
“I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.”
“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.”
“Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.”
“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.”
“Why do you stay in prison
When the door is so wide open?
“Travel brings power and love back into your life.”
“Sit, be still, and listen,
because you’re drunk
and we’re at
the edge of the roof.”
“People want you to be happy.
Don’t keep serving them your pain!
If you could untie your wings
and free your soul of jealousy,
you and everyone around you
would fly up like doves.”
“I have lived on the lip
of insanity, wanting to know reasons,
knocking on a door. It opens.
I’ve been knocking from the inside.”
“Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah…it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.”
“But listen to me. For one moment
quit being sad. Hear blessings
dropping their blossoms
around you.”
“Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesn’t matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again , come , come.”
“Reason is powerless in the expression of Love.”
“Suffering is a gift. In it is hidden mercy.”
“A mountain keeps an echo deep inside. That’s how I hold your voice.”
“Take someone who doesn’t keep score,
who’s not looking to be richer, or afraid of losing,
who has not the slightest interest even
in his own personality: he’s free.”
“I know you’re tired but come, this is the way.”
“And you? When will you begin that long journey into yourself?”
“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.”
“Beauty surrounds us.”
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
-Rumi; Utterances of a Free Soul: A prophet in a poet