Let the beauty of who you love be what you do.
Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah…it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.
Suffering is a gift. In it is hidden mercy.
Reason is powerless in the expression of Love.
A mountain keeps an echo deep inside. That’s how I hold your voice.
Take someone who doesn’t keep score,
who’s not looking to be richer, or afraid of losing,
who has not the slightest interest even
in his own personality: he’s free.
And you? When will you begin that long journey into yourself?
Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?
Wear gratitude like a cloak and it will feed every corner of your life.
Hear blessings dropping their blossoms around you.
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.
In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems.
Be melting snow. Wash yourself of yourself.
God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches you by means of opposites, so that you will have two wings to fly – not one.
Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.
Why are you so enchanted by this world, when a mine of gold lies within you?
There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the earth.
As you start to walk out on the way, the way appears.
You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life
Become the sky. Take an axe to the prison wall. Escape.
What I most want is to spring out of this personality, then to sit apart from that leaping. I’ve lived too long where I can be reached.
Very little grows on jagged rock. Be ground. Be crumbled, so wildflowers will come up where you are.
This world’s existence is one night long. There’s a great lively gathering that night, but some people sleep through it.
If you are irritated by every rub, how will you be polished?
There is a morning inside you waiting to burst open into Light.
Out beyond ideas of right doing and wrongdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.
Before death takes away what you are given, give away what there is to give.
Come, whoever you are! Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving. This is not a caravan of despair. It doesn’t matter if you’ve broken your vow a thousand times, still and yet again come!
All day I think about it, then at night I say it. Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing? I have no idea. My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that, and I intend to end up there.
I am iron resisting the most enormous magnet there is.
You sit here for days saying, This is strange business. You’re the strange business. You have the energy of the sun in you, but you keep knotting it up at the base of your spine. You’re some weird kind of gold that wants to stay melted in the furnace, so you won’t have to become coins.
I am iron resisting the most enormous magnet there is.
Keep walking, though there’s no place to get to. Don’t try to see through the distances. That’s not for human beings. Move within, but don’t move the way fear makes you move.
Half-heartedness doesn’t reach into majesty. You set out to find God, but then you keep stopping for long periods at mean spirited roadhouses.
He is a letter to everyone. You open it. It says, Live.
Don’t turn away. Keep your gaze on the bandaged place. That’s where the light enters you.
If all you can do is crawl, start crawling.
Even when tied in a thousand knots, the string is still but one.
Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.
Silence is the language of god, all else is poor translation.
There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled. There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled. You feel it, don’t you?
Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.
Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull of that which you truly love.
Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.
Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.
Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.
Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought!
Why do you stay in prison, When the door is so wide open?
Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.
Never think that you are worthless. God has paid an enormous price for you and the gifts keep arriving. There is something in us that has nothing to do with the night and day, grapes that never saw a vineyard. We are all returning, says the Quran. Enjoy shams, or if you cannot do that, at least consider what honest people tell you.
Don’t complain about autumn. Walk with grief like a good friend. Listen to what he says. Sometimes the cold and dark of a cave give the opening we want most.
Do you think that I know what I am doing? That for one breath or half-breath I belong to myself? As much as a pen knows what it is writing, or the ball can guess where it is going next.
Like lightening I am an expert at dying. Like lightening, this beauty has no language. It makes no difference whether I win or lose.
This talk is like stamping new coins. They pile up here while the real work is being done outside by someone digging in the ground.
I honor those who try to rid themselves of any lying; who empty the self and have only clear being there.
Be a pilgrim to the kaaba inside a human being and mecca will rise into a view on its own.
There is one thing in the world which you must never forget to do. If you forget everything else and not this, there is nothing to worry about; but if you remember everything else and forget this, then you will have done nothing in your life. Remember the deep root of your being, the presence of your lord. Give your life to the one who already owns your breath and your moments.
There is a path from me to you that I am constantly looking for. So I try to keep clear and still as water does with the moon.
This is how a human can change. There is a worm addicted to eating grape leaves. Suddenly he wakes up, call it grace, whatever, something wakes him and he is no longer a worm. He is the entire vineyard and the orchard, the fruits, the trunks, a growing wisdom and joy that does not need to devour.
You are the truth from foot to brow, now what else would you like to know?
The same wind that uproots trees makes the grass to shine. The axe does not worry how thick the branches are. It cuts them to pieces. But it leaves the leaves alone.
When I am with you, we stay up all night. When you are not here, I cannot go to sleep. Praise god for those two insomnias and the difference between.
How to cure bad water, send it back to river. How to cure me, send me back to you. Look as long as you can at the friend you love, it does not matter whether love is moving away or coming back toward you.
Do I love more you or your modesty?
We have talked so much, remember what we have not said
If you do not come, nothing matters. If you do come, nothing matters.
Friend our closeness is this, anywhere you put your foot, feel me in the firmness under you. How is it with this love, I see your world and not you.
One of the marvels of the world is the sight of a soul sitting in prison with the keys in his hands.
The ocean feeds itself, to its fish.
Think of the spider web woven in the cave where Muhammad slept. These are love stories and there is obliteration into love.
Sunlight looks a little different on this wall than it does on that wall, and a lot different on this other one, but it is still one light.
I am a fish and you are the moon. You cannot reach me, but your light fills where I live.
A little while alone in your room will prove more valuable than anything else that could ever be given to you.
Satan thought I am better than Adam, this ‘better than’ is still in us.
Spiritual existence is a modest woman who looks lovingly at only one man.
I will not talk about my Shamas, language cannot touch that presence.
Birds do not resemble eggs, think how different hatching out is
We are being taught like a donkey. A donkey thinks who so ever brings hay, is god.
Life is not for waiting. Do not postpone. Come back. We never left each other.
Hira Nisar Khan 
One thought on “Remembering Maulana Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi”