Ḥāfeẓ-e Shīrāzī - The River of Wine

 

 O Beloved, upon this river of wine, launch our boat-shaped cup,
And into this river throw those weeping with envy, too.

Winebringer, throw a cask of wine into my boat,
For without that–for forty days and nights on the open sea–
I will die of thirst.

I am lost in this city and can no longer find the Winehouse door.
Please help me to find that street again where Love resides.

Bring me a cup of wine that is dark red and smells like musk.
Don’t bring me that expensive brand that tastes like money
and smells like lust.

Even though I am drunk and worthless, be kind to me,
And on this dark heart shine the light of Your smile.

If it’s sun at midnight that you desire, throw the veil from
The face of the rose, and you will have all the light you need.

If I die, don’t let them bury me in a dusty grave;
Take my corpse to the Winehouse and throw me into a cask of wine!

Hafiz, if you have had enough of this world and all its violence,
Then take up the cup, and from the inside let this liquid love make peace.

 

 

Rabindranath Tagore - "The morning sea of silence..."

 

    The morning sea of silence broke into ripples of bird songs; and the flowers were all merry by the roadside; and the wealth of gold was scattered through the rift of the clouds while we busily went on our way and paid no heed.

    We sang no glad songs nor played; we went not to the village for barter; we spoke not a word nor smiled; we lingered not on the way. We quickened our pace more and more as the time sped by.

    The sun rose to the mid sky and doves cooed in the shade. Withered leaves danced and whirled in the hot air of noon. The shepherd boy drowsed and dreamed in the shadow of the banyan tree, and I laid myself down by the water and stretched my tired limbs on the grass.

    My companions laughed at me in scorn; they held their heads high and hurried on; they never looked back nor rested; they vanished in the distant blue haze. They crossed many meadows and hills, and passed through strange, far-away countries. All honour to you, heroic host of the interminable path! Mockery and reproach pricked me to rise, but found no response in me. I gave myself up for lost in the depth of a glad humiliation in the shadow of a dim delight.

    The repose of the sun-embroidered green gloom slowly spread over my heart. I forgot for what I had travelled, and I surrendered my mind without struggle to the maze of shadows and songs.

    At last, when I woke from my slumber and opened my eyes, I saw thee standing by me, flooding my sleep with thy smile. How I had feared that the path was long and wearisome, and the struggle to reach thee was hard!

Gitanjali #48

Thanks to

Owlcation

Jean Klein - In communion with all things

 

"It is important to see how we live mainly in our heads. 

Think with your whole body, feel with your whole body. 

In the whole feeling, the global sensation, 

you go into your room and touch your whole room. 

You go outside and touch the clouds, the trees, the water. 

You do not live in isolation.  

In your radiation you are in communion with all things. 

In this expansion there is no place for the ego 

because the ego is a contraction. 

Love is expansion, a feeling of spaciousness."

Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī - The buoyancy

 

 

 Love has taken away my practices
and filled me with poetry.

I tried to keep quietly repeating,
No strength but yours,
but I couldn’t.

I had to clap and sing.
I used to be respectable and chaste and stable,
But who can stand in this strong wind
and remember those things?

A mountain keeps an echo deep inside itself.
That’s how I hold your voice.

I am scrap wood thrown in your fire,
and quickly reduced to smoke.

I saw you and became empty.
This emptiness, more beautiful than existence,
it obliterates existence, and yet when it comes,
existence thrives and creates more existence!

The sky is blue. The world is a blind man
squatting on the road.

But whoever sees your emptiness
sees beyond blue and beyond the blind man.

A great soul hides like Muhammad, or Jesus,
moving through a crowd in a city
where no one knows him.

To praise is to praise how
one surrenders to the emptiness.

To praise the sun is to praise your own eyes.
Praise, the ocean. What we say, a little ship.

So the sea-journey goes on, and who knows where!
Just to be held by the ocean is the best luck
we could have. It’s a total waking up!

Why should we grieve that we’ve been sleeping?
It doesn’t matter how long we’ve been unconscious.

We’re groggy, but let the guilt go.
Feel the motions of tenderness around you,
the buoyancy.

from Rumi: Selected Poems, trans Coleman Barks with John Moynce

 

 

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - Little Prince Poem

 

And what, exactly, is that metaphorical thorn for you?
 
“It's madness to hate all roses
because you got scratched with one thorn,

to give up all dreams
because one of them didn't come true,

to give up all attempts
because one of them failed.

It's folly to condemn all your friends
because one has betrayed you,

to no longer believe in love
just because someone was unfaithful
or didn't love you back,

to throw away all your chances to be happy
because something went wrong.

There will always be another opportunity,
another friend,
another love,
a new strength.

For every end,
there is always a new beginning.....

And now here is my secret,
a very simple secret:
It is only with the heart
that one can see rightly;
what is essential is invisible to the eye."

 

 

Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī - The sphere of Love

 

 

 Rumi calls his beloved to lead him
to the sema and thus to the sphere of love

 

 O come, o come! you are the soul
of the soul of the sou! of whirling!
O come! You are the cypress tall
in the blooming garden of whirling!
O come! For there has never been
and will never be one like you!
O come! Such one has never seen
the longing eye of whirling!
O come! The fountain of the sun
is hidden under your shadow!
You own a thousand Venus stars
in the circling heavens of whirling!
The whirling sings your praise and thanks
with a hundred eloquent tongues:
I'll try to say just one, two points
translating the language of whirling.
For when you enter in the dance
you then leave both these worlds.
For outside these two worlds there lies
the universe, endless, of whirling.
The roof is high, the lofty roof
which is in the seventh sphere,
but far beyond this roof has reached
the ladder, the ladder of whirling!
Whatever there appears but He,
you tread on that in dancing:
The whirling, see, belongs to you
and you belong to the whirling.
What can I do when Love appears
and puts its claw round my neck?
I grasp it, take it to my breast
and drag it into the whirling.
And when the bosom of the motes
is filled with the glow of the sun:
They enter all the dance, the dance
and do not complain in the whirling!

 

 

 

Imam al-Ghazali’s deathbed poem

 

 

 Say unto brethren when they see me dead,
And weep for me, lamenting me in sadness:
“Think ye I am this corpse ye are to bury?
I swear by God, this dead one is not I.
I in the Spirit am, and this my body
My dwelling was, my garment for a time.
I am a treasure: hidden I was beneath
This talisman of dust, wherein I suffered.
I am a pearl; a shell imprisoned me,
But leaving it, all trials I have left.
I am a bird, and this was once my cage;
But I have flown, leaving it as a token.
I praise God who hath set me free, and made
For me a dwelling in the heavenly heights.
Ere now I was a dead man in your midst,
But I have come to life, and doffed my shroud.”

 

PDF 

 

 

Prema Lynn - 'Shhhh....'

 

 Innocently,
without judging or interpreting -
just notice yourself thinking.

Just notice.

Then, without attempting  
to change anything
or make it wrong -

gently,  
as the thinking
is happening,
 
become aware
of what Notices it.

That Noticing Essence
is Who you are, in truth.

It is Free.  
It is One.
It is Changeless and Unaffected.

Now,
quietly, gently,
while letting the thinking 'be',

sink deeper
to this Pure Noticing.
This Pure Awareness.

Don't look at this
so much as a practice,

but as a conscious,
'returning Home'
to what you Are.

To what you know
you want to Feel again:

Your Real Nature.

'Notice yourself thinking,
then become aware
of What notices -

and without trying
to change anything,
bring attention there.'

Do this for as long
as it feels right.

Don't strain.

Trust that some thing
is happening
all on its own,

to bring a
deeper feeling

of quiet and
stillness inside.

Even one drop
of bringing attention

to the
Unwavering Presence

matters more
than words can say.

And eventually you will
know yourself more deeply

as the Pure Awareness...
not its apparent contents.

You can tenderly say within,
if you feel so moved:
'Shhhh....'

You are not your
thoughts or thinking

or the seeming world
born of that.

You are the
ever present One
that all appears in.

 

 

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