Coleman Barks Quotes

All people on the planet are children, except for a very few. No one is grown up except those free of desire.

Beyond our ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’ doesn’t make sense any more.

A man once asked Rumi, "Why is it you talk so much about silence?" His answer: "The radiant one inside me has never said a word.

Solitude is a fount of healing which makes my life worth living. Talking is often a torment for me, and I need many days of silence to recover from the futility of words.

There's 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. From Essential Rumi by Coleman Barks

From 'A Bowl Fallen From the Roof' Be quiet now and wait. It may be that the ocean one, the one we desire so to move into and become, desires us out here on land a little longer, going our sundry ways to the shore. -Rumi

The only offering you can make to God is your increasing awareness.

If you want what visible reality can give, you're an employee. If you want the unseen world, you're not living your truth. Both wishes are foolish, but you'll be forgiven for forgetting that what you really want is love's confusing joy.

I have no name for what circles so perfectly.

In the front yard lives the oldest thing around, a white oak That I used to say is my love for the world, That I now would just call love as it is. Belonging to nobody, no metaphor, the very.

Fold within fold, the beloved drowns in its own being. This world is drenched with that drowning.

Little by little a person reaches forty and fifty and sixty, and feels more complete. God could've thrown full blown prophets flying through the cosmos in an instant.

Fasting By Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi (1207 - 1273) English version by Coleman Barks There's hidden sweetness in the stomach's emptiness. We are lutes, no more, no less. If the soundbox is stuffed full of anything, no music. If the brain and belly are burning clean with fasting, every moment a new song comes out of the fire. The fog clears, and new energy makes you run up the steps in front of you. Be emptier and cry like reed instruments cry. Emptier, write secrets with the reed pen. When you're full of food and drink, Satan sits where your spirit should, an ugly metal statue in place of the Kaaba. When you fast, good habits gather like friends who want to help. Fasting is Solomon's ring. Don't give it to some illusion and lose your power, but even if you have, if you've lost all will and control, they come back when you fast, like soldiers appearing out of the ground, pennants flying above them. A table descends to your tents, Jesus' table. Expect to see it, when you fast, this table spread with other food, better than the broth of cabbages.

…the work of the (Muslim Sufi) dervish community was to open the heart, explore the mystery of union, to fiercely search for and try to say the truth, and to celebrate the glory and difficulty in being in human incarnation.

We were all born by accident but this wandering caravan will make camp in perfection Forget the nonsense categories of there and here, race, nation, religion, starting point and destination You are soul, and you are love,... No more questions now as to what it is we're doing here

Water the fruit trees, and don't water the thorns. Be generous to what nurtures the spirit and God's luminous reason-light. Don't honor what causes dysentry and knotted up tumors.

I have no name for what circles so perfectly

We sometimes make spiderwebs of smoke and saliva, fragile though-packets Leave thinking to the one who gave intelligence Stop weaving and watch how the pattern improve

Nothing can save us. All this sweetness dies and rots.

A story has come down about Rumi: a woman asks if he would say something to her young boy about his eating too much of a particular kind of white-sugar candy. Rumi tells her to come back in two weeks. She does, and he tells her again to come in two weeks. She does, and he advises the child to cut down on sweets. "Why did you not say this a month ago?" "Because I had to see if I could resist having that candy for two weeks. I couldn't. Then I tried again and was successful. Only now can I tell him to try not to have so much.

The mind is what sleeps. What recognizes itself as God is awake.

Be loyal to your daily practice. Keep working. And keep knocking on the door. As you'll remember, it is said in one of Rumi's most pithy moments that the door we're knocking on opens from the inside.

Love is the religion and the universe is the book.

Many Americans first fell in love with the poetry of the thirteenth century teacher and spiritual leader Jelalludin Rumi during the early 1990s when the unparalleled lyrical grace, philosophical brilliance, and spiritual daring of his work took modern Western readers completely by surprise. The impact of its soulful beauty and the depth of its profound humanity were so intense that they reportedly prompted numerous individuals to spontaneously compose poetry.

WHAT WAS TOLD, THAT What was said to the rose that made it open was said to me here in my chest. What was told the cypress that made it strong and straight, what was whispered the jasmine so it is what it is, whatever made sugarcane sweet, whatever was said to the inhabitants of the town of Chigil in Turkestan that makes them so handsome, whatever lets the pomegranate flower blush like a human face, that is being said to me now. I blush. Whatever put eloquence in language, that's happening here. The great warehouse doors open; I fill with gratitude, chewing a piece of sugarcane, in love with the one to whom every that belongs!

Build a far mosque where you can read your soul-book and listen to the dreams that grew in the night.

A hand shifts our birdcages around. Some are brought closer. Some move apart. Do not try to reason it out. Be conscious of who draws you and who not.

Inhale autumn, long for spring

I like to hope that Rumi's poems, even in translation, carry the essence of the transforming friendship of Rumi and Shams, that the sun can reappear, whole and radiant in any one of us at any moment.

I offer no proof other than my whole life and your whole life as they dissolve in each other as we read or speak, as we watch or dance, as we play or sing, as we walk from being indoors to being out.

Fana is what opens our wings, what makes boredom and hurt disappear. We break to pieces inside it, dancing and perfectly free. We are the dreamer streaming into the loving nowhere of night. Rapt, we are the devouring worm who, through grace, becomes an entire orchard, the wholeness of the trunks, the leaves, the fruit, and the growing. Fana is the dissolution just before our commotion and mad night prayers become silence. Rumi often associates surrender with the joy of falling into the freedom of sleep.

The world's longest, as far as I know, ghazal ("Bowls of Food") in its wandering wonders what's hidden in language, in the talk of plants, and in the moment, which, it says, is an embryo inside an eggshell that shatters into birth to become birdsong, and God! Such an astonishing image for the transformative edge of the present.

Rumi tells of Solomon's practice of building each dawn a place made of intention and compassion and sohbet (mystical conversation). He calls it the "far mosque." Solomon goes there to listen to the plants, the new ones that come up each morning. They tell him of their medicinal qualities, their potential for health, and also the dangers of poisoning.

What is the body? That shadow of a shadow of your love, that somehow contains the entire universe

As long as you have not set fire to everything you call yours, you are not alive. You are not here! Your happiness is not real.

I've got some broken ducks. I need to get them in a row.

THE HUSK AND CORE OF MASCULINITY Masculinity has a core of clarity, which does not act from anger or greed or sensuality, and a husk, which does. The virile center that listens within takes pleasure in obeying that truth. Nobility of spirit, the true spontaneous energy of your life, comes as you abandon other motives and move only when you feel the majesty that commands and is the delight of the self. Remember Ayaz crushing the king's pearl!

There was also more practical inquiry. How should I make a living? How do I get my relatives out of my house? Could you help me postpone payment of this loan? The dervishes had jobs in the workday world: mason, weaver, bookbinder, grocer, hatmaker, tailor, carpenter. They were craftsmen and -women, not renunciates of everyday life, but affirmative makers and ecstatics. Some people call them sufis, or mystics. I say they're on the way of the heart.

The great human questions arose. What is the purpose of desire? What is a dream? A song? How do we know the depth of silence in another human being? What is the heart? What is it to be a true human being? What is the source of the universe and how do these individual awarenesses connect to that? They asked the Faustian question in many guises: What is it at bottom that holds the world together? How do we balance surrender and discipline? This high level of continuous question-and-answer permeated the poetry and music, the movement, and each activity of the community. They knew that answers might not come in discursive form, but rather in music, in image, in dream, and in the events of life as they occur.

The work of the dervish community was to open the heart, to explore the mystery of union, to fiercely search for and try to say truth, and to celebrate the glory and difficulty of being in a human incarnation. To these ends, they used silence and song, poetry, meditation, stories, discourse, and jokes. They fasted and feasted. They walked together and watched the animals. Animal behavior was a kind of scripture they studied. They cooked, and they worked in the garden. They tended orchards and vineyards.

But that is just half the story. The Gospel of Thomas has what I take to be the full text. The Kingdom of God is within you and all around you. Split a piece of wood. I am there. Lift up a stone, and you will find me there. The holiest thing then, the Kingdom, is inside, the observing consciousness, the deep core of being, and outside, the Brown Thrasher, the little girl skipping over the squares of the sidewalk, the universe itself that, so far as we know is unlimited. It would be best here to start singing and dancing for the spacious joy of inside and outside.

MARY'S HIDING Before these possessions you love slip away, say what Mary said when she was surprised by Gabriel, I'll hide inside God. Naked in her room she saw a form of beauty that could give her new life. Like the sun coming up, or a rose as it opens. She leaped, as her habit was, out of herself into the divine presence. There was fire in the channel of her breath. Light and majesty came. I am smoke from that fire and proof of its existence, more than any external form.

No one can say what the inner life is, but poetry tries to, and no one can say what poetry is, but let's be bold and claim that there are two major streamings in consciousness, particularly in the ecstatic life, and in Rumi's poetry: call them fana and baqa, Arabic words that refer to the play and intersection of human with divine. Rumi's poetry occurs in that opening, a dervish doorway these energies move through in either direction. A movement out, a movement in. Fana is the streaming that moves from the human out into mystery-the annihilation, the orgasmic expansion, the dissolving swoon into the all. The gnat becomes buttermilk; a chickpea disappears into the flavor of the soup; a dead mule decays into salt flat; the infant turns to the breast. These wild and boundaryless absorptions are the images and the kind of poem Rumi is most well known for, a drunken clairvoyant tavern voice that announces, "Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.

The door was still open, so I shut it and was returning to my desk when I braked. There was a backpack resting on the other side of my desk chair. It wasn’t mine. It wasn’t Missy’s. I was pretty sure it wasn’t Holly’s or the cousin’s. “Shit,” I muttered under my breath. “Huh?” she barked, her head swinging around to me. A quick glance confirmed what I already knew. She was drunk. “Nothing.” She pulled out one of her shirts, but it wasn’t her normal pajama top. She was really drunk. I picked up Shay’s bag and checked the contents to make sure it was his. It was. I saw his planner with his name scrawled at the top, so I zipped that bag and put it in the back of my closet. No one needed to go through it. I didn’t think Missy would, but I just never knew. Dropping into my chair, I picked up my phone to text Shay as Missy fell to the floor. I looked up to watch. I couldn’t not see this. I was tempted to video it, but I was being nice. For once. As Missy wrestled with her jeans and lifted them over her head to throw into her closet, I texted Shay. Me: You left your bag here. Missy let out a half-gurgled moan and a cry of frustration at the same time. She didn’t stand, instead crawling to the closet. She grabbed another pair of pants. Those weren’t her pajamas, either. As she pulled them on—or tried since her feet kept eluding the pants’ hole—my phone buzzed back. Coleman: Can I pick it up in the morning? I texted back. Me: When? Missy got one leg in. Success. I wanted to thrust my fist in the air for her. My phone buzzed again. Coleman: Early. My playbook is in there. I groaned. Me: When is early? I’m in college, Coleman. Sleeping in is mandatory. Coleman: Nine too early for you? I can come back to get it now. Nine was doable. Me: Let’s do an exchange. You bring me coffee, and I’ll meet you at the parking lot curb with your bag. Coleman: Done. Decaf okay? I glared at my phone. Me: Back to hating you. Coleman: Never stop that. The world’s equilibrium will be fucked up. I have to know what’s right and wrong. Don’t screw with my moral compass, Cute Ass. Oh, no! No way. Me: Third rule of what we don’t talk about. No nicknames unless they reconfirm our mutual dislike for each other. No Cute Ass. His response was immediate. Coleman: Cunt Ass? A second squeak from me. Me: NO! I could almost hear him laughing. Coleman: Relax. I know. Clarke’s Ass. That’s how you are in my phone. The tension left my shoulders. Me: See you in the morning. 9 sharp. Coleman: Night. I put my phone down, but then it buzzed once again. Coleman: Ass. I was struggling to wipe this stupid grin off my face. All was right again. I plugged my phone in, pulled my laptop back toward me, and sent a response to Gage’s email. I’ll sit with you, but only if we’re in the opposing team’s section. He’d be pissed, but that was the only way. I turned the computer off, and by then Missy was climbing up the ladder in a bright pink silk shirt. The buttons were left buttoned, and her pajama bottoms were a pair of corduroy khakis. I was pretty sure she didn’t brush her teeth, but before my head even hit the pillow, she was snoring

What’s that big thing up ahead?” “Looks like one of those giant balloons for roadside advertising, except this one’s in front of a church.” “What’s it say?” Serge turned as they went by. “Something about gay marriage ruining everything.” A preacher barked into a bullhorn. Two bullets came down from the sky and popped the balloon. Coleman turned around in his seat. “It deflated on top of the preacher. The others are trying to pull him out.” “The Lord works in mysterious ways.

Totally conscious, and apropos of nothing, you come to see me.

In each human being there is a meeting with the divine. That intersection is the heart.

Fall in love in such a way that it frees you from any connecting.

Rumi (Persian poet of the 13th Century) in a poem translated by Coleman Barks states: "Don't you realize how close to God you are?"   We could interpret Rumi's  "God" as being the Christian God, the Islamic, God (Allah), or the Jewish God, (Jehovah) or whatever else we choose to call our speculation of who "God" is.   The meaning of Rumi is clear, don't we see that we are part of this all or "God."   In another poem called "I AM the One!"  Rumi writes, "God himself lives inside this (Rumi's) patched cloak."  Here Rumi is saying that all that is created exists within him.  Therefore if “God” exists in Rumi, then “God” exists in all of us.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, 
 there is a field. I'll meet you there. 
When the soul lies down in that grass,
 The world is too full to talk about. 
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
 Doesn't make any sense.

Terror is a godson to awe.

during the early morning hours of June 30, 1963, George W. Davidson of Decatur, Illinois, aroused by the sound of dogs barking in the neighborhood

People who insult me are only polishing the mirror.

Strip away your pride, and put on humble clothes.