Coleman Barks Rumi Quotes

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

…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 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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

Inhale autumn, long for spring

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

It's a habit of yours to walk slowly. You hold a grudge for years. With such heaviness, how can you be modest? With such attachments, do you expect to arrive anywhere? Be wide as the air to learn a secret. Right now you're equal portions clay and water, thick mud.

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.

Close both eyes to see with the other eye. Open your hands, if you want to be held. Sit down in this circle. Quit acting like a wolf, and feel the shepherd's love filling you. At night, your beloved wanders. Don't accept consolations. Close your mouth against food. Taste the lover's mouth in yours. You moan, "She left me." "He left me." Twenty more will come. Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought! Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open? Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence. Flow down and down in always widening rings of being.

Close both eyes to see with the other eye. Open your hands, if you want to be held. Sit down in this circle. Quit acting like a wolf, and feel the shepherd's love filling you. At night, your beloved wanders. Don't accept consolations. Close your mouth against food. Taste the lover's mouth in yours. You moan, "She left me." "He left me." Twenty more will come. Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought! Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open? Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence. Flow down and down in always widening rings of being.” (page 3)

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

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.

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.

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. ~ 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. ~ 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.

How does a part of the world leave the world? How can wetness leave water? Don't try to put out a fire by throwing on more fire! Don't wash a wound with blood! No matter how fast you run, your shadow more than keeps up. Sometimes, it's in front! Only full, overhead sun diminishes your shadow. But that shadow has been serving you! What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is your candle. Your boundaries are your quest. I can explain this, but it would break the glass cover on your heart, and there's no fixing that. You must have shadow and light source both. Listen, and lay your head under the tree of awe. (page 20)

THE GRASSES The same wind that uproots trees makes the grasses shine. The lordly wind loves the weakness and the lowness of grasses. Never brag of being strong. The axe doesn't worry how thick the branches are. It cuts them to pieces. But not the leaves. It leaves the leaves alone. A flame doesn't consider the size of the woodpile. A butcher doesn't run from a flock of sheep. What is form in the presence of reality? Very feeble. Reality keeps the sky turned over like a cup above us, revolving. Who turns the sky wheel? The universal intelligence. And the motion of the body comes from the spirit like a waterwheel that's held in a stream. The inhaling-exhaling is from spirit, now angry, now peaceful. Wind destroys, and wind protects. There is no reality but God, says the completely surrendered sheikh, who is an ocean for all beings. The levels of creation are straws in that ocean. The movement of the straws comes from an agitation in the water. When the ocean wants the straws calm, it sends them close to shore. When it wants them back in the deep surge, it does with them as the wind does with the grasses. This never ends. (page 43)

Strip away your pride, and put on humble clothes.

People who insult me are only polishing the mirror.

Build a ship, and there'll be water to float it. The tender-throated infant cries and milk drips from the mother's breast. Be thirsty for the ultimate water, and then be ready for what will come pouring from the spring.

When you look in a mirror, you see yourself, not the state of the mirror. The flute player puts breath into a flute, and who makes the music? Not the flute. The flute player!

Love opens my chest, and thought returns to its confines. Patience and rational considerations leave. Only passion stays, whimpering and feverish. Some men fall down in the road like dregs thrown out. Then, totally reckless, the next morning they gallop out with new purposes. Love is the reality, and poetry is the drum that calls us to that. Don't keep complaining about loneliness! Let the fear-language of that theme crack open and float away. Let the priest come down from his tower, and not go back up!

This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they're a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

Learn about your inner self from those who know such things, but don't repeat verbatim what they say.

An eye is meant to see things. The soul is here for its own joy. A head has one use: for loving a true love. Legs: to run after. Love is for vanishing into the sky. The mind, for learning what men have done and tried to do. Mysteries are not to be solved. The eye goes blind when it only wants to see why. A lover is always accused of something. But when he finds his love, whatever was lost in the looking comes back completely changed.

An eye is meant to see things. The soul is here for its own joy. A head has one use: for loving a true love. Legs: to run after. Love is for vanishing into the sky. The mind, for learning what men have done and tried to do. Mysteries are not to be solved. The eye goes blind when it only wants to see why. A lover is always accused of something. But when he finds his love, whatever was lost in the looking comes back completely changed.

An eye is meant to see things. The soul is here for its own joy. A head has one use: for loving a true love. Legs: to run after. Love is for vanishing into the sky. The mind, for learning what men have done and tried to do. Mysteries are not to be solved. The eye goes blind when it only wants to see why. A lover is always accused of something. But when he finds his love, whatever was lost in the looking comes back completely changed.

Humble living does not diminish. It fills. Going back to a simpler self gives wisdom. When a man makes up a story for his child, he becomes a father and a child together, listening.

The beast you ride is your various appetites. Change your wantings. When you prune weak branches, the remaining fruit get tastier. Lust can be redirected, so that even when it takes you backward, it goes toward shelter. A strong intention can make "two oceans wide" be the size of a blanket, or "seven hundred years" the time it takes to walk to someone you love. True seekers keep riding straight through, whereas big, lazy, self-worshiping geese unload their pack animals in a farmyard and say, "This is far enough.

Observe the wonders as they occur around you. Don't claim them. Feel the artistry moving through, and be silent.

Be friends with your burning. Burn up your thinking and your forms of expression!

What seems wrong to you is right for him. What is poison to one is honey to someone else.

What seems wrong to you is right for him. What is poison to one is honey to someone else.

Tear the binding from around the foot of your soul, and let it race around the track in front of the crowd. Loosen the knot of greed so tight on your neck. Accept your new good luck. Give your weakness to one who helps. Crying out loud and weeping are great resources. A nursing mother, all she does is wait to hear her child. Just a little beginning-whimper, and she's there. God created the child, that is, your wanting, so that it might cry out, so that milk might come. Cry out! Don't be stolid and silent with your pain. Lament! And let the milk of loving flow into you. The hard rain and wind are ways the cloud has to take care of us. Be patient. Respond to every call that excites your spirit. Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back toward disease and death.

Purity and impurity, sloth and diligence in worship, these mean nothing to me. I am apart from all that. Ways of worshiping are not to be ranked as better or worse than one another.

You are so weak. Give up to grace. The ocean takes care of each wave till it gets to shore.

In the early morning hour, just before dawn, lover and beloved wake and take a drink of water. She asks, "Do you love me or yourself more? Really, tell the absolute truth." He says, "There's nothing left of me. I'm like a ruby held up to the sunrise. Is it still a stone, or a world made of redness? It has no resistance to sunlight.

Work. Keep digging your well. Don't think about getting off from work. Water is there somewhere. Submit to a daily practice. Your loyalty to that is a ring on the door. Keep knocking, and the joy inside will eventually open a window and look out to see who's there.

The rooster of lust, the peacock of wanting to be famous, the crow of ownership, and the duck of urgency, kill them and revive them in another form, changed and harmless. There is a duck inside you. Her bill is never still, searching through dry and wet alike, like the robber in an empty house cramming objects in his sack, pearls, chickpeas, anything. Always thinking, "There's no time! I won't get another chance!" A True Person is more calm and deliberate. He or she doesn't worry about interruptions. But that duck is so afraid of missing out that it's lost all generosity, and frighteningly expanded its capacity to take in food. (p. 66)

The rooster of lust, the peacock of wanting to be famous, the crow of ownership, and the duck of urgency, kill them and revive them in another form, changed and harmless. There is a duck inside you. Her bill is never still, searching through dry and wet alike, like the robber in an empty house cramming objects in his sack, pearls, chickpeas, anything. Always thinking, "There's no time! I won't get another chance!" A True Person is more calm and deliberate. He or she doesn't worry about interruptions. But that duck is so afraid of missing out that it's lost all generosity, and frighteningly expanded its capacity to take in food. (page 66)

Whoever acts with respect will get respect. Whoever brings sweetness will be served almond cake. Good women are drawn to be with good men. Honor your friend. Or treat him rudely, and see what happens! (page 27)

These pains that you feel are messengers. Listen to them. Turn them to sweetness. (page 48)

To an Egyptian, the Nile looks bloody. To an Israelite, clear. What is a highway to one is disaster to the other. (page 30)

What is the mirror of being? Non-being. Always bring a mirror of non-existence as a gift. Any other present is foolish. Let the poor man look deep into generosity. Let bread see a hungry man. Let kindling behold a spark from the flint. An empty mirror and your worst destructive habits, when they are held up to each other, that's when the real making begins. That's what art and crafting are. A tailor needs a torn garment to practice his expertise. The trunks of trees must be cut and cut again so they can be used for fine carpentry. Your doctor must have a broken leg to doctor. Your defects are the ways that glory gets manifested. Whoever sees clearly what's diseased in himself begins to gallop on the way.

Are you jealous of the ocean's generosity? Why would you refuse to give this joy to anyone? Fish don't hold the sacred liquid in cups! They swim the huge fluid freedom.

If the wine drinker has a deep gentleness in him, he will show that, when drunk. But if he has hidden anger and arrogance, those appear, and since most people do, wine is forbidden to everyone.

What is the mirror of being? Non-being. Always bring a mirror of non-existence as a gift. Any other present is foolish. Let the poor man look deep into generosity. Let bread see a hungry man. Let kindling behold a spark from the flint. An empty mirror and your worst destructive habits, when they are held up to each other, that's when the real making begins. That's what art and crafting are. A tailor needs a torn garment to practice his expertise. The trunks of trees must be cut and cut again so they can be used for fine carpentry. Your doctor must have a broken leg to doctor. Your defects are the ways that glory gets manifested. Whoever sees clearly what's diseased in himself begins to gallop on the way.

In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest, where no one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.