The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam translation by Edward Fitzgerald 10 With me along some Strip of Herbage strown That just divides the desert from the sown, Where name of Slave and Sultán is scarce known, And pity Sultán Mahmúd on his Throne!
The Lover and the Beloved Indeed, no lover seeks union without his beloved seeking him. But the love of lovers makes their bodies into bowstrings, while the love of beloveds makes them happy and plump. When the lightning of love for the loved one flashes in *this* heart, know that there is also love in *that* heart. When love for God has doubled in your heart, without doubt God has love for you. You have never heard one hand clapping without the other. The thirsty man laments, "Oh sweet water!" The water also laments, "Where is the drinker!" This thirst in our souls is the attraction of the Water - we belong to It and It belongs to us. Jalaluddin Rumi's Mathnawi, book 3, vv. 4393-4399, from "The Sufi Path of Love," translated by W. C. Chittick, p.209.
From 'The Prophet' Kahlil Gibran And a youth said, "Speak to us of Friendship." Your friend is your needs answered. He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving. And he is your board and your fireside. For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace. When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the "nay" in your own mind, nor do you withhold the "ay." And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart; For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed. When you part from your friend, you grieve not; For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain. And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit. For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught. And let your best be for your friend. If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also. For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill? Seek him always with hours to live. For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness. And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
Tears of a Rose Even that which is beautiful Can sometimes bring pain, So to love from the heart, Is to invite the rain. But to reach for the rose, You must fear not the thorn, So to love from the soul, Is to embrace the storm. ~Helen Steiner Rice
Every vision born of earth is fleeting Every vision born of heaven is a blessing For people, the sight of spring warms their hearts For fish, the rhythm of the ocean is a blessing The brilliant sun that shines in every heart For the heaven's earth and all creatures What a blessing!... The heart can't wait to speak of this ecstasy The soul is kissing the earth saying Oh God, what a blessing! ~Rumi
From: 'The Inner Voice of Love' by Henri J. M. Nouwen Cry Inward A split between divinity and humanity has taken place in you. With your divinely endowed centre you know God's will, God's way, God's love. But your humanity is cut off from that. Your many human needs for affection, attention, and consolation are living apart from your divine sacred space. Your call is to let these two parts of yourself come together again. You have to move gradually from crying outward - crying out for people who you think can fulfil your needs - to crying inward to the place where you can let yourself be held and carried by God, who has become incarnate in the humanity of those who love you in community. No one person can fulfil all your needs. But the community can truly hold you. The community can let you experience the fact that, beyond your anguish, there are human hands that hold you and show you God's faithful love.
Ramakrishna What will a man gain by merely reasoning about the words of the scriptures? Ah, the fools! They reason themselves to death over information about the path. They never take the plunge. What a pity! ~Ramakrishna
You are always the Supreme. But your attention is fixed on things, physical or mental. When your attention is off a thing and not yet fixed on another, in the interval you are pure being. When through the practice of discrimination and detachment (viveka-vairagya), you lose sight of sensory and mental states, pure being emerges as the natural state. By focusing the mind on "I am", on the sense of being, "I am so-and-so" dissolves; "am a witness only" remains and that too submerges in "I am all". Then the all becomes the One, and the One yourself. ~Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
All things are full of God By John Stuart Blackie ALL things are full of God. Thus spoke Wise Thales in the days When subtle Greece to thought awoke And soared in lofty ways. And now what wisdom have we more? No sage divining-rod Hath taught than this a deeper lore, ALL THINGS ARE FULL OF GOD. The Light that gloweth in the sky And shimmers in the sea, That quivers in the painted fly And gems the pictured lea, The million hues of Heaven above And Earth below are one, And every lightful eye doth love The primal light, the Sun. Even so, all vital virtue flows From life's first fountain, God; And he who feels, and he who knows, Doth feel and know from God. As fishes swim in briny sea, As fowl do float in air, >From Thy embrace we cannot flee; We breathe, and Thou art there. Go, take thy glass, astronomer, And all the girth survey Of sphere harmonious linked to sphere, In endless bright array. All that far-reaching Science there Can measure with her rod, All powers, all laws, are but the fair Embodied thoughts of God.
In this immeasurable darkness, be the power that rounds your senses in their magic ring, the sense of their mysterious power. And if the earthly no longer knows your name, whisper to the silent earth: I'm flowing. To the flashing water say: I am Rainer Maria Rilke 'Sonnets to Orpheus'
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