Topic: Saints and Mystics

[Nichi]

If you want a kingdom and get it,
you'll have no peace.

If you give it away,
still you won't be content.

Only a soul free of desire
can taste eternity.

Be living, yet dead!
Then knowing comes
to live in you.

- Lalla
14th Century North Indian mystic

[Nichi]

To learn the scriptures is easy,
to live them, hard.
The search for the Real
is no simple matter.

Deep in my looking,
the last words vanished.
Joyous and silent,
the waking that met me there.


~Lalla

[Michael]

the last words vanished.

[Nichi]

You Are the Only Student You Have

You are the only faithful student you have.
All the others leave eventually.

Have you been making yourself shallow
with making others eminent?

Just remember, when you're in union,
you don't have to fear
that you'll be drained.

The command comes to speak,
and you feel the ocean
moving through you.
Then comes, Be silent,
as when the rain stops,
and the trees in the orchard
begin to draw moisture
up into themselves.


Rumi
-- Mathnawi, V, 3195-3219)
Version by Coleman Barks
"Feeling the Shoulder of the Lion,"
Threshold Books, 1991

[Firestarter]

This sounds a bit like what della was talking about after one conjoins with the double and becomes a singularity of consciousness. Thanks V.

[Nichi]

This sounds a bit like what della was talking about after one conjoins with the double and becomes a singularity of consciousness. Thanks V.

Chaikhana's poem of the day -- serendipity/synchronicity.

[Nichi]

Knowledge should mean a full grasp of knowledge:
Knowledge means to know yourself, heart and soul.
If you have failed to understand yourself,
Then all of your reading has missed its call.

What is the purpose of reading those books?
So that Man can know the All-Powerful.
If you have read, but failed to understand,
Then your efforts are just a barren toil.

Don't boast of reading, mastering science
Or of all your prayers and obeisance.
If you don't identify Man as God,
All your learning is of no use at all.

The true meaning of the four holy books
Is found in the alphabet's first letter.
You talk about that first letter, preacher;
What is the meaning of that-could you tell?

Yunus Emre says to you, Pharisee,
Make the holy pilgrimage if need be
A hundred times -- but if you ask me,
A visit to the heart is best of all.


~Yunus Emre
13th Century Turkey

[Nichi]

Above all, don't wish to become a future Buddha;
Your only concern should be,
As thought follows thought,
To avoid clinging to any of them.

Dogen
13th Century Japan

[Nichi]

And if, my friend, you ask me the way,
I'll tell you plainly, it is this:
to turn your face toward the world of life,
and turn your back on rank and reputation;
and, spurning outward prosperity, to bend
your back double in his service;
to part company with those who deal in words,
and take your pace in the presence of the wordless.


Hakim Sanai
11th Century Sufi
Afghanistan

[Nichi]

The soul, like the moon,
is now, and always new again.

And I have seen the ocean
continuously creating.

Since I scoured my mind
and my body, I too, Lalla,
am new, each moment new.

My teacher told me one thing,
live in the soul.

When that was so,
I began to go naked,
and dance.

Lalla
14th Century Shaivite - India

[Nichi]

Let the ascetics sing of the garden of Paradise --
We who dwell in the true ecstasy can forget their vase-tamed bouquet.

In our hall of mirrors, the map of the one Face appears
As the sun's splendor would spangle a world made of dew.

Hidden in this image is also its end,
As peasants' lives harbor revolt and unthreshed corn sparks with fire.

Hidden in my silence are a thousand abandoned longings:
My words the darkened oil lamp on a stranger's unspeaking grave.

Ghalib, the road of change is before you always:
The only line stitching this world's scattered parts.


~Mirza Ghalib
Sufi
19th Century India

[Nichi]

I carry a torch in one hand
And a bucket of water in the other:
With these things I am going to set fire to Heaven
And put out the flames of Hell
So that voyagers to God can rip the veils
And see the real goal.

~Rabia

[Firestarter]

I like that!

[Nichi]

Saints Bowing in the Mountains


Do you know how beautiful you are?

I think not, my dear,

For as you talk of God,
I see great parades with wildly colored bands
Streaming from your mind and heart,
Carrying wonderful and secret messages
To every corner of this world.

I see saints bowing in the mountains
Hundreds of miles away
To the wonder of sounds
That break into light
From your most common words.

Speak to me of your mother,
Your cousins and friends.

Tell me of birds and squirrels you know.
Awaken your legion of nightingales --
Let them soar wild and free in the sky.

And begin to sing to God.
Let's all begin to sing to God!

Do you know how beautiful you are?

I think not, my dear,

Yet Hafiz
Could set you upon a Stage
And worship you forever!



~Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky
I Heard God Laughing

[Nichi]

Beautiful Empty Pages


What kind of work
Can I do in this world?

Who would be kind enough
To hire an old holy Bum,

One with a great reputation
For loving the charms
Of the lawless
And the wild artists and the lewd?

Maybe I could become a poet.

Maybe the Beloved
Will make my love so pure

That He will come to sit upon
All my Beautiful empty pages.
And when you come to look at them,

He might kick you
With His Beautiful Divine Foot.



~Hafiz by Ladinsky
I Heard God Laughing