My friend, the sufi is the friend of the present moment. To say tomorrow is not our way.

You think the shadow is the substance.

I died as a mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was Man.
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
Yet once more I shall die as Man, to soar
With angels bless’d; but even from angelhood
I must pass on: all except God doth perish.
When I have sacrificed my angel-soul,
I shall become what no mind e’er conceived.
Oh, let me not exist! for Non-existence
Proclaims in organ tones,
To Him we shall return..

We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust.

In truth everything and everyone
Is a shadow of the Beloved,
And our seeking is His seeking
And our words are His words…
We search for Him here and there,
while looking right at Him.
Sitting by His side, we ask:
“O Beloved, where is the Beloved?”

Love will find its way through all languages on its own.

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.

The middle path is the way to wisdom.

No longer a stranger, you listen all day to these crazy love-words. Like a bee you fill hundreds of homes with honey, though yours is a long flight from here.

Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.

Love is the ark appointed for the righteous,
Which annuls the danger and provides a way of escape.
Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.
Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment intuition.

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

Friends are enemies sometimes, and enemies friends.

If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?

Every object, every being.. is a jar full of delight.

Patience is the key to happiness.

I was a tiny bug. Now a mountain. I was left behind. Now honored at the head. You healed my wounded hunger and anger, and made me a poet who sings about joy.

Most people guard against going into the fire, and so end up in it.

Inside the Great Mystery that is, we don’t really own anything.

We rarely hear the inward music, but we’re all dancing to it nevertheless.

The Truth is yourself, but not your mere bodily self.
Your real self is higher than ‘you’ and ‘me.’
This visible ‘you’ which you fancy to be yourself
Is limited in place, the real ‘you’ is not limited.
Why, O pearl, linger you trembling in your shell?
Esteem not yourself mere sugar-cane, but real sugar.
This outward ‘you’ is foreign to your real ‘you;’
Cling to your real self, quit this dual self.

The monk said, “I am searching everywhere for a man
Who lives by the life of the breath of God.”
The other said, “Here are men the Bazaar is full;
These are surely men, O enlightened sage!”
The monk said, “I seek a man who walks straight
As well in the road of anger as in that of lust.
Where is one who shows himself a man in anger and lust?
In search of such an one I run from street to street.
If there be one who is a true man in these two states,
I will yield up my life for him this day!”

I died as a mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was Man.
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
Yet once more I shall die as Man, to soar
With angels bless’d; but even from angelhood
I must pass on: all except God doth perish.
When I have sacrificed my angel-soul,
I shall become what no mind e’er conceived.
Oh, let me not exist! for Non-existence
Proclaims in organ tones,
To Him we shall return.

Let the beauty you love be what you do. There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the earth.

Silence is an ocean. Speech is a river.

To Love is to reach God.

Since in order to speak, one must first listen, learn to speak by listening.

Everyone is so afraid of death, but the real sufis just laugh: nothing tyrannizes their hearts. What strikes the oyster shell does not damage the pearl.

People of the world don’t look at themselves, and so they blame one another.

If in thirst you drink water from a cup, you see God in it. Those who are not in love with God will see only their own faces in it.