Topic: Saints and Mystics

[nichi]

STOP BEING SO RELIGIOUS

What
Do sad people have in
Common?

It seems
They have all built a shrine
To the past

And often go there
And do a strange wail and
Worship.

What is the beginning of
Happiness?

It is to stop being
So religious

Like

That.


Hafiz by Ladinsky

[nichi]

Now is the Time
 
Now is the time to know
That all that you do is sacred.
 
Now, why not consider
A lasting truce with yourself and God.
 
Now is the time to understand
That all your ideas of right and wrong
Were just a child's training wheels
To be laid aside
When you finally live
With veracity
And love.
 
Hafiz is a divine envoy
Whom the Beloved
Has written a holy message upon.
 
My dear, please tell me,
Why do you still
Throw sticks at your heart
And God?
 
What is it in that sweet voice inside
That incites you to fear?
 
Now is the time for the world to know
That every thought and action is sacred.
 
This is the time
For you to compute the impossibility
That there is anything
But Grace.
 
Now is the season to know
That everything you do
Is sacred.


~Hafiz by Ladinsky
 

[nichi]

A Golden Compass


Forget every idea of right and wrong
Any classroom ever taught you

Because
An empty heart, a tormented mind,
Unkindness, jealousy and fear 

Are always the testimony
You have been completely fooled!

Turn your back on those
Who would imprison your wondrous spirit
With deceit and lies.

Come, join the honest company
Of the King's beggars -
Those gamblers, scoundrels and divine clowns
And those astonishing fair courtesans
Who need Divine Love every night.

Come, join the courageous
Who have no choice
But to bet their entire world
That indeed,
Indeed, God is Real.

I will lead you into the Circle
Of the Beloved's cunning thieves,
Those playful royal rogues -
The ones you can trust for true guidance -
Who can aid you
In this Blessed Calamity of life.

Hafiz,
Look at the Perfect One
At the Circle's Center:

He Spins and Whirls like a Golden Compass,
Beyond all that is Rational,

To show this dear world

That Everything,
Everything in Existence
Does point to God.


Hafiz by Ladinsky

[nichi]

IN MY SOUL


In
my soul
there is a temple, a shrine, a mosque, a church
where I kneel.

Prayer should bring us to an altar where no walls or names exist.

Is there not a region of love where the sovereignty is
illumined nothing,

where ecstasy gets poured into itself
and becomes
lost,

where the wing is fully alive
but has no mind or
body?

In
my soul
there is a temple, a shrine, a mosque,
a church

that dissolve, that
dissolve in

God.


Rabia
by Ladinsky

[nichi]

WITH THAT MOON LANGUAGE

 

Admit something:

Everyone you see, you say to them, “Love me.”

Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise
someone would call the cops.

Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect.

Why not become the one who lives with a
full moon in each eye that is
always saying,

with that sweet moon language,
what every other eye in
this world is
dying to
hear?


Hafiz

[nichi]

The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.
They’re in each other all along.


~Rumi

Open Secret
Coleman Barks

[nichi]

done with the world

done with the world
and pure
          as darkness
nothing to hold me
nothing restrain
the old guy here
within the grove
before blue cliffs the
                    moon's companion
mad and singing
drunk and dancing
smashed, polluted with the wine
of endless life


Yun-k'an Tzu
13th Century China

[nichi]

A dervish in ecstasy

A frenzied dervish, mad with love for God,
Sought out bare hills where none had ever trod.
Wild leopards kept this madman company --
His heart was plunged in restless ecstasy;
He lived within this state for twenty days,
Dancing and singing in exultant praise:
"There's no division; we two are alone --
The world is happiness and grief has flown."
Die to yourself -- no longer stay apart,
But give to Him who asks for it your heart;
The man whose happiness derives from Him
Escapes existence, and the world grows dim;
Rejoice for ever in the Friend, rejoice
Till you are nothing, but a praising voice.


~Farid ud-Din Attar
12th Century Iran
The Conference of the Birds

[nichi]

OUT OF GOD'S HAT
 

The stars poured into the sky
Out of a Magician's hat last night,
And all of them have fallen into my hair.
Some have even tangled my eyelashes
Into luminous, playful knots.
 
Wayfarer,
You are welcome to cut a radiant tress
That lays upon my shoulders.
Wrap it around your trembling heart and body
That craves divine comfort and warmth.
I am like a pitcher of milk
In the hands of a mother who loves you.
 
All of my contents now
Have been churned into dancing suns and moons.
 
Lean your sweet neck and mouth
Out of that dark nest where you hide,
I will pour effulgence into your mind.
 
Come spring
You can find me rolling in the fields
They are exploding in
Holy battles
 
Of scents, of sounds - everything is
A brilliant colored nova on a stem.
 
Forest animals hear me laughing
And surrender their deepest instincts and fears,
 
They come charging into meadows
To lick my hands and face,
 
This makes me so happy,
I become so happy
 
That my rising wink turns into a magic baton.
When my soft-eyed creatures see that wonderful signal
We all burst into singing
 
And make strange and primal beautiful sounds!
 
My only regret in this world then becomes:
 
That your shyness keeps you from placing
Your starving body against God
 
And seeing the Beloved become so pleased
With your courage
 
That his belly begins to rock and rock,
Then more planets get to leap
Onto the welcome mat of existence
All because
Of your previous love.
 
The friend has turned my verse into sacred pollen.
When a breeze comes by
 
Falcons and butterflies
And playful gangs of young angels
Mounted on emerald spears
 
Take flight from me like a great sandstorm
That can blind you to all but the Truth!
 
Dear one
Even if you have no net to catch Venus
My music will circle this earth for hundreds of years
And fall like resplendent debris,
Holy seed, onto a fertile woman.
 
For Hafiz
Wants to help you laugh at your every
Desire.
 
Hafiz
Wants you to know
 
Your life within God's arms,
Your dance within God's
Arms
 
Is already
 
Perfect!

 
~ Hafiz by Ladinsky ~

[tangerine dream]

This one's beautiful Vicky.  And I especially love the title "Out of God's Hat".
There is something so magickal in that.

[nichi]

When I was with my teacher, I heard a truth
that hurt my heart like a blister,

the tender pain of seeing
something I loved as an illusion.

The flocks I tended are gone.
I am a shepherd without even a memory

of what that means, climbing this mountain.
I feel so lost.

This was my inward way, until I came
into the presence of a Moon, this new knowledge

of how likenesses unite. Good Friend,
everything is You. I see only God.

Now the delightful forms and motions
are transparent. I look through them

and see myself as the Absolute. And here's
the answer to the riddle of this dream:

You leave, so that we two
can do One Dance.


~ Lalla

[nichi]

Reality

In love, nothing exists between heart and heart.
Speech is born out of longing,
True description from the real taste.
The one who tastes, knows;
the one who explains, lies.
How can you describe the true form of Something
In whose presence you are blotted out?
And in whose being you still exist?
And who lives as a sign for your journey?

~Rabia
 

[nichi]

The life brought me so I came; the death takes me away so I go
Neither I came on my own nor I go with my will

There may be a few gamblers as bad as I am
Whatever move I made it proved to be very bad

It’s better that one should not get hooked to the charms of the world
However, what one can do when nothing can be accomplished without getting involved

Who’s come to the rescue of someone who’s about to leave this world!
You too keep moving till you can move on

O Zauq! I’m leaving this garden with a pinning for fresh air
Why should I care now whether zephyr blows or not!


~Ibrahim Zauq
18th Century Urdu

[nichi]

Entering the Shell

Love is alive, and someone borne
along by it is more alive than lions

roaring or men in their fierce courage.
Bandits ambush others on the road.

They get wealth but they stay in one
place. Lovers keep moving, never

the same, not for a second! What
makes others grieve, they enjoy!

When they look angry, don't believe
their faces. It's spring lightning,

a joke before the rain. They chew
thorns thoughtfully along with pasture

grass. Gazelle and lioness, having
dinner. Love is invisible except

here, in us. Sometimes I praise love;
sometimes love praises me. Love,

a little shell somewhere on the ocean
floor, opens its mouth. You and I

and we, those imaginary beings, enter
that shell as a single sip of seawater.

Rumi


Ghazal (Ode) 843
Version by Coleman Barks, with Nevit Ergin
"The Glance"
Viking-Penguin, 1999

[nichi]

"The Whole Place Goes Up"

Today with Spring here finally we ought to be living
outdoors with our friends.
Let's go to those strangers in the field
and dance around them like bees from flower to flower,
building in the beehive air
our true hexagonal homes.

Someone comes in from outside saying,
"Don't play music just for yourselves."
Now we're tearing up the house like a drum,
collapsing walls with our pounding.
We hear a voice from the sky calling the lovers
and the odd, lost people. We scatter lives.
We break what holds us, each one a blacksmith
heating iron and walking to the anvil.
We blow on the inner fire.
With each striking we change.

The whole place goes up, all stability gone in smoke.
Sometimes high, sometimes low, we begin anywhere,
we have no method.
We're the bat swung by powerful arms.
Balls keep rolling from us, thousands of them underfoot.

Now we're still. Silence also is wisdom, a flame
hiding in cotton wool.


-Rumi-
Version by Coleman Barks