Rumi, the Mad Arab

[dudetyson]

Quotes from Sufi poet Rumi


Outside ideas of right doing
And wrong doing,
There is a field.
I'll meet you there.


I would love to kiss you.
The price of kissing is your life.
Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,
What a bargain, let's buy it.

Gamble everything for love if you’re a true human being.
Half-heartedness never reaches into majesty.


There is a kiss we want
with our whole lives,
the touch of Spirit on the body.
Seawater begs the pearl
to break its shell.
And the lily, how passionately
it needs some wild Darling!
At night, I open the window
and ask the moon to come
and press its face into mine.
Breathe into me.
Close the language-door,
and open the love-window.
The moon won't use the door,
only the window.

The clear bead at the center changes everything.
There are no edges to my loving now.
I've heard it said there's a window that opens
from one mind to another,
but if there's no wall, there's no need
for fitting the window, or the latch.


We’re all half good and half bad. If you’re not, you don’t belong with us.



Stay bewildered in God, and only that.



Oh Beloved,
take me.
Liberate my soul.
Fill me with your love and
release me from the two worlds.
If I set my heart on anything but you
let fire burn me from inside.


Become the sky. Take an axe to the prison wall. Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color. Do it now.

There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street
and being the noise.
Drink all your passion,
and be a disgrace.
Close both eyes
to see with the other eye.


The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don'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 open.
Don't go back to sleep.




Thank God
Everyone else is already asleep
And I'm alone
With my Creator tonight.
Thank Heavens
For this grace and fortune
The Truth is wide awake
So am I tonight.
I'd rather give up my eyes
If they were to close tonight.
Tonight,
I'm having a very
Miserable and poor night
Tonight is the night
To decipher the Mysteries.
O sleep,
Even if you're like the finest
Water of Life
You have nothing to do
With me tonight.
You've slept a hundred nights before
And seen its outcomes.
for God's sake,
Stay awake
All night tonight.
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[Kai'zen]

This is really good, can you tell me anything about the poet who wrote it?

[dudetyson]

He's a Sufi, which is a branch of Islam which involves mysticism. I am no expert at all on Sufism, but it involves trying to reach unity with God through transcendental states rather than just trudging through life, mouthing the words, and following the rules. They tend to be a religious minority in Muslim countries, serving as specialist keepers of monasteries and holy sites. They also face discrimination. Apparently Egypt bucks the trend, and there are a ton of Sufis there, almost like Catholic/Protestant in the USA.

They are the people who do the spin-dance, which they use as a form of meditation. They're basically the walking stereotype of the desert mystic. Not to start shit but I feel like they pull off the whole universal love thing better than Christ.

Politically they tend to be on the far-libertarian end of the Muslim spectrum, enjoying things like open-air festivals which in other places are seen as sinful. Whereas the Saudi-based Wahhabists are the fuckers who will chop your hand off.

Ask Cora'Sahn, I suspect she knows far more than me, and I believe she even practices their dance style. I looked it up on YouTube but I don't feel any of the videos I found do justice to their technique the time I saw it performed.[/color]

[Yahn'ikthorn]

Check out Farid ud-Din Attar and Kabir too:

www.poetry-chaikhana.com/Traditions/MuslimSufi.htm

Plenty of great poetry there from many traditions.