Rumi - The resplendent city of the soul

art Mahmoud Said

 Holy men dance and wheel on the
spiritual battlefield.
They dance in their own blood.
When they are freed from the dominion of self,
they clap a hand;
When they transcend their own imperfection,
they make a dance.
From within them musicians strike the
tambourine:
At their ecstasy the sea bursts into foam.
You see nothing, but for them
leaves on branches are clapping hands.
You see not the clapping of the leaves:
One must have spiritual ears,
not the ear of body.
Close the head's ears to jesting and falsehood,
That you may see the resplendent city
of the soul.

 

Thich Nhat Hanh - Emptiness

Emptiness, Nirvana and the Extinction of Ideas

‘We are afraid of death, we are afraid of separation, and we are afraid of nothingness. In the West, people are very afraid of nothingness. When they hear about emptiness, people are also very afraid, but emptiness just means the extinction of ideas. Emptiness is not the opposite of existence. It is not nothingness or annihilation. The idea of existence has to be removed and so does the idea of nonexistence. Emptiness is a tool to help us.

Reality has nothing to do with existence and nonexistence. When Shakespeare says: “To be or not to be - that is the question,” the Buddha answers: “To be or not to be is not the question.” To be and not to be are just two ideas opposing each other. But they are not reality, and they do not describe reality.

Not only does awakened insight remove the notion of permanence, but it also removes the notion of impermanence. The notion of emptiness is the same. Emptiness is an instrument, and if you are caught in the notion of emptiness you are lost. The Buddha said in the Ratnakuta Sutra: “If you are caught by the notion of being and non-being, then the notion of emptiness can help you get free. But if you are caught by the notion of emptiness, there’s no hope.” The teaching on emptiness is a tool helping you to get the real insight of emptiness, but if you consider the tool as the insight, you just get caught in an idea.

If you have a notion about nirvana, that notion should be removed. Nirvana is empty of all notions, including the notions of nirvana, you have not touched nirvana yet. This deep insight and discovery of the Buddha took him beyond fear, beyond anxiety and suffering and beyond birth and death.’

- Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear.

 

Mooji - There is an empty room...

art Maandersen

 There is an empty room,
come fully inside.
There are no stories here.
There is no past or future here.
No relatives.
No names, no forms, time, no self.
Don't be in your head now.
Listen from another place; a holy place deep inside your being.
All the things you once talked about are outside now.
This is a room without walls. No door.
Nothing lives here.
It is not a dead space.
It's your true place and Being.
The mind will try to say something like:
‘You cannot stay here,’ or ‘There is nothing here for you,’
but this voice is also phenomenal, while you are not.
Therefore, touch nothing.
Pay attention only to your unmixed self now,
not the personal sense of self.
Personality is only a garment worn by the Self
for a duration called a lifetime.
The body also is just a garment worn for the time being.
Rare is a human being who comes to this place
which cannot be divided;
that cannot die,
where one is naturally happy,
where there are no beginnings or ends.
It is the most pure—immaculate.
From here ego and world arises as fleeting images,
but the Real does not arise.
It permeates all yet nothing permeates it.
Leave everything.
Be here.

~ Mooji

Rishikesh, India, 8th of March 2013

 

art Jale Saraçoğlu

Reynold A. Nicholson - The Voice within your Hearts

Deep in our hearts the Light of Heaven is shining
Upon a soundless Sea without a shore.
Oh, happy they who found it in resigning
The images of all that men adore.
Blind eyes, to dote on shadows of things fair
Only at last to curse their fatal lure,
Like Harut and Marut, that Angel-pair
Who deemed themselves the purest of the pure.
Our ignorance and self-will and vicious pride
Destroy the harmony of part and whole.
In vain we seek with lusts unmortified
A vision of the One Eternal Soul.
Love, Love alone can kill what seemed so dead,
The frozen snake of passion. Love alone,
By tearful prayer and fiery longing fed,
Reveals a knowledge schools have never known.
God’s lovers learn from Him the secret ways
Of Providence, the universal plan.
Living in Him, they ever sing His praise
Who made the myriad worlds of Time for Man.
Evil they knew not, for in Him there’s none;
Yet without evil how should good be seen?
Love answers: “Feel with me, with me be one;
Where I am nought stands up to come between.”
There are degrees of heavenly light in souls;
Prophets and Saints have shown the path they trod,
Its starting points and stages, halts and goals,
All leading to the single end in God.
Love will not let his faithful servants tire,
Immortal Beauty draws them on and on
From glory unto glory drawing nigher
At each remove and loving to be drawn.
When Truth shines out words fail and nothing tell;
Now hear the Voice within your hearts. Farewell.

1868-1945. Professor of Arabic. 

R.A. Nicholson was a scholar of both Islamic literature and Islamic mysticism, and widely regarded as one of the greatest scholars and translators of Rumi, the 13th-century Persian Sufi mystic.

Nicholson was born in Yorkshire and educated at Aberdeen and Cambridge.  He became a lecturer in the Persian language (1902-26) and Sir Thomas Adams's Professor of Arabic at Cambridge (1926-1933). He is considered to have been a leading scholar in Islamic literature and Islamic mysticism who exercised a lasting influence on Islamic studies.

His most influential books were the Literary History of The Arabs (1907), The Mystics of Islam (1914), and his exhaustive eight-volume work on Rumi's Masnavi.  He also translated Muhammad Iqbal's first philosophical Persian poetry book Asrar-i-Khudi into English as The Secrets of the Self.

Jennifer Welwood - Renuncation

There will always be voices that promise you greatness and glory:
They call out from the worldly marketplace;
They call out from the spiritual marketplace;
They call out from the fill-your-holes-marketplace;
They call out from the bigger-better-more marketplace.

Do not buy their false promises, or purchase their ephemeral wares;
What fulfills for a moment is not worth the price of your soul.
There are heights that will lift you, but not when you try to ascend them;
There are powers that will fill you, but not when you make them your own.
There are treasures, and there are imitations of treasures.
If you have lost your true gold, at least turn away from the glitter.

Want only what is true.
This will lead you to the well of your deepest sorrows.
Follow that passageway, all the way down;
Become the dark emptiness of your absent core.
Be still. Don’t measure the waiting.
Be still. Let the waiting become a fire.
Be still. Let the fire show you its secret heart:
A strand of clear light running through you.
Gather yourself there, and the luminous universe opens.
In that vast expanse, fathomless, infinite ocean of light,
Lose yourself, and find yourself, and become what you already are.

http://jenniferwelwood.com/ 

Hafiz - Not with wings

Here soar
Not with wings,



But with your moving hands and feet
And sweating brows--



Standing by your Beloved's side
Reaching out to comfort this world



With your cup of solace
Drawn from your vast reservoir of Truth.



Here soar
Not with your eyes and senses



That turn their backs
On the earth's sweet stumbling dance
Which needs you.



Here love, O here love,
With your mouth tender and open upon your lover,



And with your heart on duty
To the souls of rivers, children, forest animals,
All the shy feathered ones and laughing, jumping,
Shining fish.



O here, pilgrim, Love
On this holy battleground of life



Where there are bleeding men
Who are calling for a sacred drink,



A gentle word or touch from a man
Or God.



Hafiz, why just serve and play with angels?
They are already content.



Brew your knowledge well for men
With aching minds and guts,



And for those wayfarers who have gained
The rare courageous thirsts
That can never be relinquished
Until Union!



Hafiz,
Leave your recipes in golden drums.



Tie those barrels to the backs of camels
Who will keep circumambulating the worlds,



Giving nourishment
To all our tender wondrous spheres.



O here Love, O love right here.
Find your happiness, dear wayfarer,



With your beautiful lips and body
So sweetly opened,



Yielding their vital gifts upon
This magnificent
Earth.