Rumi

Hafiz

RUMI

Jalaludin Rumi, 1207-1273, is one of the greatest mystics and mystic poets known to history. His influence throughout the Islamic world for over seven hundred years and more recently in Western countries is astounding. Love is the essence of Rumi, love became his very being, love is the impetus of all his poetry. Rumi was often quoted in the writings of Sant Kirpal Singh, who referred to Rumi as a “great saint”.

Hafiz

We have been in love with God for so very, very long.

Hafiz’s given name was Shams-ud-din Muhammad. He chose the name Hafiz which means “memorizer” as a pen name when he began to write poetry; it is a title given to someone who knows the entire Quran by heart, as he apparently did. Hafiz was born about 1320 and died about 1389. He was born in Shiraz, a beautiful city in southern Persia. Hafiz did not have an easy or comfortable life. He was the youngest of three sons of poor parents. His father was a coal merchant who died when Hafiz was in his teens. To help support the family, Hafiz worked as a baker’s assistant by day and put himself through school at night. Hafiz had a natural poetic gift. Even as a child, he was able to improvise poems on any subject in any form and style. When he was in his early twenties he won the patronage of a succession of rulers and wealthy noblemen. One of his benefactors founded a religious college and offered Hafiz a position as a teacher. Thus, during his middle years, he served as a court poet and a college professor. He married and had at least one son. Hafiz’s livelihood depended solely on patronage. Everyone admired his literary brilliance, but his poetry boldly celebrated ideas that bordered on heresy, and he had enemies among the rigorously orthodox who blacklisted him whenever they came to power. Periodically, he would fall out of favor and lose his position both at court and in the college. He would sometimes use his skills in calligraphy to support his family until his fortunes improved. At least once, however, he was forced to leave Shiraz. For several years he lived as an exile, often in dire poverty. Finally, a new, more tolerant regime allowed him to return home and resume his career. During the long, unsettled middle period of his life, first his son and later his wife passed away. By the time he was sixty, Hafiz had become famous as a master poet. A circle of students and companions gathered around him, and he served them as a teacher and counselor until his quiet death at about the age of seventy. Above all, Hafiz was a spiritual seeker and later a Sufi master. As a young

man, he became a disciple of the Sufi teacher Muhammad Attar who guided him through a long and difficult spiritual apprenticeship that lasted most of his adult life. At about the age of sixty, after forty years of discipleship, Hafiz attained the goal of God realization. The relationship between Hafiz and his master was not always an easy one. In many accounts, Muhammad Attar is presented as a stern and demanding figure who sometimes appeared to show no compassion at all for Hafiz. Often Hafiz is portrayed as running to Attar in despair, pleading for enlightenment or spiritual liberation after decades of frustration. Each time, Attar would tell Hafiz to be patient and wait, and all would be revealed. Hafiz’s poems expressed every nuance and stage of his growing understanding of love. He wrote of the game of love, the beauty of the Beloved, the sweet pain of longing, the agony of waiting, the ecstatic joy of union. He explored different forms and levels of love - his delight in nature’s beauty, his sweet affection for his wife, his tender feelings for his child - and his terrible grief and loneliness when both his wife and his son passed away. He wrote of his relationship with his teacher and his adoration of God. Hafiz shares his intoxication with the magic and beauty of divine life that pulsates everywhere around us and within us. He urges us to rise on the wings of love. He challenges us to confront and master the strongest forces of our own nature. He encourages us to celebrate even the most ordinary experiences of life as precious divine gifts. He invites us to “awake awhile” and listen to the delightful music of God’s laughter: “What is this precious love and laughter budding in our hearts? It is the glorious sound of a soul waking up!” (from The Gift)

Sant Kirpal Singh called Hafiz “a great mystic poet” and “a great saint”.

-1-

There is no one in this world who is not looking for God. Everyone is trudging along with as much dignity, courage, and style as they possibly can. (Hafiz)

There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled. You feel it, don’t you? You feel the separation from the Beloved. Invite Him to fill you up; embrace the fire. (Rumi)

God has planted in your heart the desire to search for Him. Do not look at your weaknesses but focus on the Search. Every seeker is worthy of this Search. Strive to redouble your efforts, so that your soul may escape from this material prison. (Rumi)

Our desire for God is fanned by His love: it is His attraction that draws all wayfarers along the path. Does dust rise up without a wind? Does a ship float without the sea? (Rumi)

-2-

Whether you are fast or slow, eventually you will find what you are seeking. Always devote yourself wholeheartedly to your Search. Even though you may limp or be bent double, do not abandon your Search, but drag yourself ever toward Him. (Rumi)

The worm is in the root of the body’s tree; travelers, it is late! Life’s sun is going to set. During these brief days that you have strength, be quick and spare no effort of your wings. (Rumi)

I once had a thousand desires, but in my one desire to know You all else melted away. (Rumi) Until the cloud weeps, how can the garden flourish? Until the baby cries, how can the milk flow? A newborn baby understands: if she cries, a nurse will come. But the Nurse of all nurses only gives milk when you cry out. (Rumi)

-3- If once in this world I win a moment with Thee, I will trample on both worlds, I will dance in triumph forever! (Rumi)

The sweetness and delights of the resting-place are in proportion to the pain endured on the Journey. Only when you suffer the pangs and tribulations of exile will you truly enjoy your homecoming. (Rumi)

Oh, my Beloved, You will find us every night, on Your street, with our eyes glued to Your window, waiting for a glimpse of Your radiant face. (Rumi)

O Master, I know You taught us that we couldn’t get to You without much effort and without Your help, but all this silence is leading me astray. (Hafiz)

-4-

Weeping is like the clouds, and longing is like the heat of the sun. Just as the sun’s heat is the cause of bringing rains from the clouds, by which this world remains in existence; similarly, separation, longing for Him and restlessness - all these are like fires which make the currents of grace and mercy of God burst out, as the rain does from the clouds, and pacify the hearts of devotees. Tears in the eyes and pain in the heart are the two pillars between which we pass to go within. (Rumi)

To die in the sure hope of union with God is a sweet prospect; but to live with the bitterness of banishment from God is to be consumed by fire. (Rumi)

I wish I could give you a taste of the burning fire of love. There is a fire blazing inside of me. If I cry about it, or if I don’t, the fire is at work, night and day.(Rumi)

O Beloved, please come back. My heart is broken, and my body is a wreck and almost dead. Come back: for I’ve been blinded from the lack of Your Light, and only Light from Your window will open my eyes again. Grief has conquered my bleeding heart; only Your face will free me of this pain. (Hafiz)

-5- From my first breath I have longed for Him. This longing has become my life. This longing has seen me grow old. (Rumi)

It is the burn of the heart that I want. It is this burning which is everything - more precious than a worldly empire - because it calls God secretly in the night. (Rumi)

As your lover, all I’ve ever asked for is a glance. If I could only breathe one breath with the Beloved, that would be enough. I have been Your lover and been with You a thousand times; yet each time You see me, Your question is always, “Who is he?” (Hafiz)

O Master, since You went away, Your lovers are drinking poison and are dying off like flies. Why have You abandoned us this way? Have our weeping and our prayers been too much for Your ears? Are there not tears in Your eyes, too? (Hafiz) O Friend, at this banquet You have set before us, how long must we sit here with an empty plate? (Hafiz)

O Master, how many more tears will Hafiz have to cry? Won’t you call for him now that his heart has been broken in two? (Hafiz)

-6- O Master, You are so gracious. After all these years You still remember who I am: the one who wears the dust of Your door like a crown. Tell me, who taught You to be so generous to Your slaves? O Holy Bird, please bless this path I’m on, for I’m new to this traveling, and it’s a long way I have to go. O morning breeze, take my prayers to the Master, and tell Him that each day I am on my knees at dawn. (Hafiz)

O Wayfarer, be like Hafiz: get up and make an effort! Don’t lie around like a bum. He who throws himself at the Beloved’s feet is like a workhorse and will be rewarded with boundless pastures and eternal rest. (Hafiz) O Beloved, please allow us one look at Your face, for life is short and soon You will be gone. Hafiz, when the way to the tower of the Beloved’s palace is blocked, then in the dust of this door’s threshold let us put our head and stay. (Hafiz)

-7- O Master, I’ve spent my whole life loving you and have no regrets. If I die in the dust of your doorway, dreaming of You, I will have lived a full life and will die smiling there. (Hafiz)

My soul endures a magnificent longing. (Hafiz)

When I was separated from You, I closed my eyes to the world; but hope of our union has given me back my life. From now on, I’ll go to no one else’s door, for You are the only one I want to see. I have learned how to pray, and now I can talk to You both night and day. (Hafiz) O Beloved, there is no room left in my heart for anything but You! Please show pity on poor Hafiz. He is wounded and in pain. Even if he seems happy today, he is waiting for sunlight, and all it ever seems to do is rain. (Hafiz) O Winebringer, bring me some wine, for I am surely mad and need Your cure if I am to give up all feasting and happiness for You! (Hafiz)

-8-

What else is there for me to do but to sit here and cry? I wouldn’t wish this sadness on even my worst enemy. You are far away, and day and night I lie grieving. And why shouldn’t I, when my heart says there is no hope? O Beloved, where are You? Since You left, my heart has become a fountain, and blood is pouring from my eyes. From the root of every eyelash trickles a hundred drops of blood, and from my heart pour gallons more! Hafiz has become a slave to this grieving. (Hafiz)

What have I done that was so bad that You won’t even accept my gifts or recognize my name? This is Hafiz, and I am standing at Your door. Where else is there for me to go? Where will I go, what will I do, what will I be, what will be my plan? I’m sick of all this sorrow and deceit. (Hafiz)

As I walk through the beauty of this world praising Your name, not to white rose, red narcissus, or lovely tulip am I drawn - but only to Your face.(Hafiz)

Love is both is own pain and its remedy; This irony is almost more than I can take: the greater my effort, the worse the pain! (Hafiz)

-9-

The heart is right to cry even when the smallest drop of Light, of love, is taken away. Perhaps you may kick, moan, scream in a dignified silence, but you are so right to do so in any fashion until God returns to you. (Hafiz)

When the words stop and you can endure the silence that reveals your heart’s pain of emptiness or that great wrenching-sweet longing, that is the time to try and listen to what the Beloved’s eyes most want to say. (Hafiz)

-10-

I am a tethered falcon with great wings and sharp talons poised, every sinew taut, like a Sacred Bow, quivering at the edge of my Self and Eternal Freedom, though still held in check by a miraculous Divine Golden Cord. Beloved, I am waiting for You to free me into Your Mind and Infinite Being. I am pleading in absolute helplessness to hear, finally, Your words of grace: Fly! Fly into Me! (Hafiz)

O Beloved, even against a thousand armies, with You on my side I have no fear. The promise of union with You has kept me alive, and fearing separation from You, many deaths I’ve already died. If the breeze should take away Your scent, for each breeze that blows I’ll make a rip in my coat. Do you think that I’ve been lying around sleeping all these years? Never! Or that I’ve learned to be patient from all this separation and all this pain? Lord, no! (Hafiz) Patience is crowned with faith: where one has no patience, one has no faith. The Prophet said, “God hasn’t given faith to anyone in whose nature there is no patience.” (Rumi) Faith brings relief to the heart from pain and suffering, weakness of faith leads to despair and torment. (Rumi)

-11-

Beware! Don’t despair if the Beloved turns you down. If He sends you away today, might He not call you to Himself tomorrow? If He shuts the door on you, wait there and don’t go away. After testing your patience, He will give you the seat of honor. (Rumi)

-12-

What happens when your soul begins to awaken your eyes and your heart and the cells of your body to the great journey of love? First there is wonderful laughter and probably precious tears and a hundred sweet promises and those heroic vows no one can ever keep. But still, God is delighted and amused you once tried to be a saint. What happens when your soul begins to awake in this world to our deep need to love and to serve the Beloved? O, the Beloved will send you one of His wonderful, wild companions - like Hafiz! (Hafiz)

Pray to be humble so that God does not have to appear to be so stingy. O pray to be honest, strong, kind, and pure, so that the Beloved is never miscast as a cruel great miser. I know you have a hundred complex cases against God in court, but never mind, wayfarer, let’s just get out of this mess and pray to be loving and humble so that the Friend will be forced to reveal Himself so near. (Hafiz)

Although your desire tastes sweet, doesn’t the Beloved desire you to be desireless? The life of lovers is in death: you will not win the Beloved’s heart unless you lose your own. (Rumi) You’re all mixed up! For the sake of position, you come with reverence before the blind and wait in the hall; but in the presence of those who can see, you behave with disrespect. No wonder you’ve become fuel for the fire of desire. (Rumi)

-13-

If you can disentangle yourself from your selfish self all heavenly spirits will stand ready to serve you. If you can finally hunt down your own beastly self you have the right to claim Solomon’s kingdom. You are that blessed soul who belongs to the garden of paradise! Is it fair to let yourself fall apart in a shattered house? You are the bird of happiness in the magic of existence! What a pity when you let yourself be chained and caged. But if you can break free from this dark prison named body soon you will see you are the Sage and the Fountain of Life! (Rumi)

-14-

Paradise is surrounded by what we dislike; the fires of hell are surrounded by what we desire. (Rumi) Know that every bad habit is a thorn bush. After all, many is the time its thorns have pierced your feet. (Rumi)

Brother, stand the pain! Escape the poison of your impulses! (Rumi)

Beware! Don’t allow yourself to do what you know is wrong, relying on the thought, “Later I will repent and ask God’s forgiveness.” (Rumi) If you are a true believer, arise now, enter the ranks of battle, for a feast has been prepared for you in heaven. Close your lips against food and drink: hasten toward the heavenly table. Keep your gaze steadfastly fixed on heaven, quivering like the willow in your desire to attain it. (Rumi)

To become spiritual, you must die to self, and come alive in the Lord. Only then will the mysteries of God fall from your lips. To die to self through self-discipline causes suffering but brings you everlasting life. (Rumi)

-15-

Little by little God takes away human beauty: little by little the sapling withers. Go recite, “To whomever we give a length of days, we also cause them to decline.” Seek the spirit; don’t set your heart on bones! (Rumi)

People fancy they are enjoying themselves, but they are really tearing out their wings for the sake of an illusion. (Rumi) Fiery lust is not diminished by indulging it, but inevitably by leaving it ungratified. As long as you are laying logs on the fire, the fire will burn. When you withhold the wood, the fire dies, and God carries the water! (Rumi) The intelligent desire self-control; children want candy! (Rumi)

-16-

Let’s ask God to help us to self-control: for one who lacks it, lacks His grace. (Rumi)

Don’t allow your animal nature to rule your reason. (Rumi)

Virtues and graces are the signs of a follower of God; they are the footprints of one who is devoted to Him. (Rumi) The discovery of treasure is by luck, and even more, it is rare: one must earn a living so long as the body is able. Does earning a livelihood prevent the discovery of treasure? Don’t retire from work: that treasure, indeed, follows after the work. (Rumi)

God forbid! I seek nothing from created beings: through contentment there is a world within my heart. (Rumi) Everything, except love of the most beauteous God, even though outwardly it seems as pleasant as eating sweets, is in reality an agony of spirit. What is meant by agony of spirit? It is to advance toward physical death without drinking the Water of Life. (Rumi)

-17- For the lovers of God, He alone is the source of all joy and sorrow. He alone is the true object of desire; every other kind of love is idle infatuation. Love for God is that flame which, when it blazes, burns away everything except God. Love for God is a sword which cuts down all that is not of God. God alone is eternal; all else will vanish. (Rumi) When the heart becomes whole, it will know the flavors of falsehood and truth. When Adam’s greed for the forbidden fruit increased, it robbed his heart of health. Discernment flies from one who is drunken with desire. He who puts down that cup lightens the inner eye, and the secret is revealed. (Rumi)

Your earthly beloved eclipses the face of the Divine; your worldly guide drowns out the words of your true spiritual guide. Do not despair: make yourself cheerful, call for help to Him who comes to the call. (Rumi) I know there is a gold mine in you, when you find it the wonderment of the earth’s gifts you will lay aside as naturally as does a child a doll. (Rumi)

-18- The spiritually enlightened choose freely to devote themselves to the work of the next world; the foolish choose freely the work of this. (Rumi) Your lower, hellish nature tries to lead you into temptation, but you have struggled hard and now your soul is full of purity. You have quenched the fires of lust for God’s sake, and they have been transformed into the light of guidance. The fire of anger has turned to forbearance, the darkness of ignorance to knowledge, the fire of greed to unselfishness, and the thorns of envy to the roses of love. You have extinguished these fires for the love of God, and converted your fiery nature into a verdant orchard. The nightingales of the remembrance and glorification of God sing sweetly in the garden of your heart. Answering the call of God, you have brought the water of the spirit into the blazing hell of your soul. (Rumi)

-19-

You have not danced so badly, my dear, trying to hold hands with the Beautiful One. You have waltzed with great style, my sweet, crushed angel, to have ever neared God’s heart at all. Our Partner is notoriously difficult to follow, and even His best musicians are not always easy to hear. So what if the music has stopped for a while. So what if the price of admission to the Divine is out of reach tonight. So what, my sweetheart, if you lack the ante to gamble for real love. The mind and the body are famous for holding the heart ransom, but Hafiz knows the Beloved’s eternal habits. Have patience, for He will not be able to resist your longings and charms for long. You have not danced so badly, my dear, trying to kiss the Magnificent One. You have actually waltzed with tremendous style, my sweet, O my sweet, crushed angel. (Hafiz)

Why complain about life if you are looking for good fish and have followed some idiot into the middle of the copper market? Why go crazy if you are looking for fine silk and you keep rubbing your hands against burlap and hemp sacks? Why complain if you are looking to quench your spirit’s longing and have followed a rat into a desert? (Hafiz)

-20- I know the voice of depression still calls to you. I know those habits that can ruin your life still send their invitations. But you are with the Friend now and look so much stronger. You can stay that way and even bloom! Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins that may buy you just a moment of pleasure, but then drag you for days behind a farting camel! (Hafiz)

Your tastes have become refined. It used to be if someone stole all your coins or locked your sexual pleasures in a room you could not reach this world would have no meaning and a thirst for a hemlock brew might arise. But that was many lives ago. Now look at yourself: You are often still a mess though these days, at times, you weep because you miss Him. (Hafiz)

Wayfarer, your whole mind and body have been tied to the foot of the Divine Elephant with a thousand golden chains. Now, begin to rain intelligence and compassion upon all your tender, wounded cells and realize the profound absurdity of thinking that you can ever go anywhere or do anything without God’s Will. (Hafiz)

Free will is the salt of our devotion to God, otherwise there would be no merit in it. The earth revolves involuntarily, and its movement deserves neither reward nor punishment. Only actions undertaken as a result of our free will may be weighed on the Day of Judgment. (Rumi)

-21- The soil is faithful to its trust: whatever you have sown in it, you reap the same. But until springtime brings the touch of God, the soil does not reveal its secrets. (Rumi) This world and that world are forever giving birth: every cause is a mother; the effect born is as a child. When the effect was born, it too became a cause, so that it might give birth to wondrous effects. These causes follow generation upon generation, but it takes a very well-illumined eye to see all the links in the chain. (Rumi)

They are the chosen ones who have surrendered. (Rumi)

The world is full of remedies, but you have no remedies until God opens a window for you. (Rumi)

I need more grace than I thought! (Rumi)

-22- No one can keep us from carrying God wherever we go. No one can rob His Name from our hearts as we try to relinquish our fears and at last stand victorious. We do not have to leave Him in the mosque or church alone at night; we do not have to be jealous of tales of saints, those intoxicated souls who can make outrageous love with the Friend. Our yearning eyes, our warm-needing bodies, can all be drenched in contentment and Light. No one anywhere can keep us from carrying the Beloved wherever we go. No one can rob His precious Name from the rhythm of my heart, steps and breath. (Hafiz) Your breath is a sacred clock, my dear - why not use it to keep time with God’s Name? And if your feet are ever mobile upon this ancient drum, the earth, O do not let your precious movements come to naught. Let your steps dance silently to the rhythm of the Beloved’s Name! (Hafiz) When the mind is consumed with remembrance of Him something divine happens to the heart that shapes the hand and tongue and eye into the word love. (Hafiz) Water gets poured through a cloth to become free of impurities. The Beloved’s Name is a mystical weave and pattern - a hidden sieve of effulgence we need to pass through thousands of times. From my constant remembrance of the Friend, all I now say is safe to drink. (Hafiz)

-23-

Never be without the remembrance of God, for His remembrance provides the bird of the spirit with strength, feathers, and wings. (Rumi)

Remembrance of God instills in us a desire for the journey, and makes us into travelers. (Rumi)

Separation from God is like a well; remembrance of Him is the rope. (Rumi)

-24-

Time is a factory where everyone slaves away, earning enough love to break their own chains. (Hafiz)

Birds initially had no desire to fly, what really happened was this: God once sat close to them playing music. When He left they missed Him so much their great longing sprouted wings, needing to search the sky. Listen, Hafiz knows, nothing evolves us like love. (Hafiz)

The birds’ favorite songs you do not hear, for their most flamboyant music takes place when their wings are stretched above the trees and they are smoking the opium of pure freedom. It is healthy for the prisoner to have faith that one day he will again move about wherever he wants, feel the wondrous grit of life - less structured, find all wounds, debts stamped canceled, paid. I once asked a bird, “How is it that you fly in this gravity of darkness?” She responded, “Love lifts me.” (Hafiz)

-25-

God wants to see more love and playfulness in your eyes for that is your greatest witness to Him. (Hafiz) I’ve been dead to this world for a long time. Every day my body grows weaker and soon it will return to the earth. It’s not difficult to renounce this life or this world, but to give up Your love, that is difficult - no, impossible. (Rumi) Because of Your love I have broken with my past. (Rumi)

If destiny comes to help you, love will come to meet you. A life without love isn’t a life. (Rumi)

Love is the energizing elixir of the universe, the cause and effect of all harmonies. (Rumi) Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love. (Rumi)

If God invited you to a party and said, “Everyone in the ballroom tonight will be my special guest,” how would you then treat them when you arrived? Indeed, indeed! And Hafiz knows there is no one in this world who is not upon His Jeweled Dance Floor. (Hafiz)

-26-

Love says, “I will, I will take care of you,” to everything that is near. (Hafiz)

Once a young woman asked me, “How does it feel to be a man?” And I replied, “my dear, I am not so sure.” Then she said, “Well, aren’t you a man?” And this time I replied, “I view gender as a beautiful animal that people often take for a walk on a leash and might enter in some odd contest to try to win strange prizes. My dear, a better question for Hafiz would have been, ‘How does it feel to be a heart?’ For all I know is love, and I find my heart infinite and everywhere!” (Hafiz) This Path to God made me such an old sweet beggar. I was starving until one night my love tricked God Himself to fall into my bowl. Now Hafiz is infinitely rich, but all I ever want to do is keep emptying out my emerald filled pockets upon this tear stained world. (Hafiz)

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)

-27- The heart is the thousand-stringed instrument. Our sadness and fear come from being out of tune with love. (Hafiz)

Come on sweetheart let’s adore one another before there is no more of you and me. (Rumi)

One regret, dear world, that I am determined not to have when I am lying on my deathbed is that I did not kiss you enough! (Hafiz)

When all your desires are distilled you will cast just two votes - to love more, and be happy. (Hafiz)

-28-

We are not in pursuit of formalities or fake religious laws, for through the stairway of existence we have come to God’s Door. We are people who need to love, because love is the soul’s life; love is simply creation’s greatest joy. Through the stairway of existence, O, through the stairway of existence, Hafiz, have you now come, have we all now come to the Beloved’s Door. (Hafiz)

-29- 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) Jealousy and most all of your sufferings are from believing you know better than God. Of course, such a special brand of arrogance as that always proves disastrous, and will rip the seams in your caravan tent, then cordially invite in many species of mean biting flies and strange thoughts - that will beat you up! (Hafiz) Master, why have You given us the power of free will? For all its potential, all it does is make us cry. (Hafiz) Why lay yourself on the torturer’s rack of the past and future? The mind that tries to shape tomorrow beyond its capacities will find no rest. Be kind to yourself, dear - to our innocent follies. Forget any sounds or touch you knew that did not help you dance. You will come to see that all evolves us. (Rumi)

God created pain and sorrow so that happiness is clearly shown in contrast; for hidden things are made manifest by means of their opposites: since God has no opposite, He is hidden. (Rumi) Dear ones, beware of the tiny gods frightened men create to bring an anesthetic relief to their sad days. (Hafiz)

-30- The suffering in the next world is beyond description. By comparison the suffering needed in this world to prepare yourself for the next is light. Happy are those who immerse themselves in the suffering required for spiritual purification, and who take willingly upon themselves the pain of serving God, and thereby mitigate the pain of the next world. (Rumi)

When God wishes to help, He lets us weep; but tears for His sake bring happiness, and laughter will follow. Whoever foresees this is a servant of God. Wherever water flows, life flourishes: wherever tears fall, divine mercy is shown. (Rumi) When God assigns a particular lot to a person, this does not preclude him from exercising consent, desire, and free will. But when God sends suffering, the spiritually weak react by fleeing from God; the lovers of God react by moving closer to Him. In battle all fear death, but the cowards choose to retreat while the brave charge toward the enemy. Fear carries the courageous forward, but the weak-spirited die in themselves. Suffering and fear are the touchstones: they distinguish the brave from the cowards. (Rumi) We should make all spiritual talk simple today; God is trying to sell you something, but you don’t want to buy. That is what suffering is - your fantastic haggling, your manic screaming over the price! (Hafiz)

-31-

If you tan the human soul with harsh discipline and suffering, it will gradually become pure, lovely, and very strong. But if you cannot mortify yourself, accept the sufferings God sends you, for afflictions sent by the Friend are the means of your purification. (Rumi)

Happy are those who immerse themselves in the suffering required for spiritual purification, and who take willingly upon themselves the pain of serving God, and thereby mitigate the pain of the next world. (Rumi)

Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place. (Rumi)

-32-

This discipline and rough treatment are a furnace to extract the silver from the dross. This testing purifies the gold by boiling the scum away. (Rumi) What is the key to untie the knot of your mind’s suffering? What is the esoteric secret to slay the crazed one whom each of us did wed and who can ruin our heart’s and eye’s exquisite tender landscape? Hafiz has found two emerald words that restored me that I now cling to as I would sacred tresses of my Beloved’s hair: Act great. My dear, always act great. What is the key to untie the knot of the mind’s suffering? Benevolent thought, sound and movement. (Hafiz)

Once a man came to me and spoke for hours about “his great visions of God” he felt he was having. He asked me for confirmation, saying, “Are these wondrous dreams true?” I replied, “How many goats do you have?” He looked surprised and said, “I am speaking of sublime visions and you ask about goats!” And I spoke again saying, “Yes, brother - how many do you have?” “Well, Hafiz, I have sixty-two.” “And how many wives?” Again he looked surprised, then said, “four.” “How many rose bushes in your garden, how many children, are your parents still alive, do you feed the birds in winter?” And to all he answered. Then I said, “You asked me if I thought your visions were true, I would say that they were if they make you become more human, more kind to every creature and plant that you know.” (Hafiz)

-33-

It is unanimous where I come from. Everyone agrees on one thing: It’s no fun when God is not near. All are hunters. The wise man learns the Friend’s weaknesses and sets a clever trap. Listen, the Beloved has agreed to play a game called Love. Our sun sat in the sky way before this earth was born waiting to caress a billion faces. The wise man learns what draws God near. It is the beauty of compassion in your heart. (Hafiz)

-34- In the morning when I began to wake, it happened again - that feeling that You, Beloved, had stood over me all night keeping watch, that feeling that as soon as I began to stir You put Your lips on my forehead and lit a Holy Lamp inside my heart. (Hafiz)

It used to be that when I would wake in the morning I could with confidence say, “What am ‘I’ going to do?” That was before the seed cracked open. Now Hafiz is certain: There are two of us housed in this body, doing the shopping together in the market and tickling each other while fixing the evening’s food. Now when I awake all the internal instruments play the same music: “God, what love-mischief can ‘We’ do for the world today?” (Hafiz) It is my goal to raise my head high, like the cypress, above the clouds. From this height I can hear the music on the other side of the world’s sad songs. (Hafiz)

-35-

Sometimes love tastes like this: The pain so sweet I beg God, “May I never open my eyes again and know another image than what I have just seen. May I never know another feeling other than your inconceivable immaculate touch. Why not let Hafiz die in this blessed ruin?” (Hafiz)

-36- My heart sits on the arm of God like a tethered falcon suddenly unhooded. I am now blessedly crazed because my Master’s astounding effulgence is in constant view. My piercing eyes, which have searched every world for tenderness and love, now lock on the Royal Target - the Wild Holy One whose beauty illuminates Existence! (Hafiz)

Hafiz himself is singing tonight in resplendent glory, for the cup in my heart has revealed the Beloved’s face, and I have His oath that He will never again depart. (Hafiz)

-37- From the beginning of my life I have been looking for Your face, but today I have seen it! Today I have seen the charm, the beauty, the unfathomable grace of the face I was looking for. Today I have found You, and those who laughed and scorned me yesterday are sorry that they were not looking as I did. I am bewildered by the magnificence of Your beauty and wish to see You with a hundred eyes! My heart has burned with passion and has searched forever for this wondrous beauty that I now behold! My arrow of love has arrived at the target. My soul is screaming in ecstasy. Every fiber of my being is in love with You! (Rumi)

My soul is like a young doe-eyed maid with lips still bruised from last night’s Divine Passion but my Master makes me live like a humble servant when any king would trade his throne for the splendor my eye can see. (Hafiz)

-38-

I am happy even before I have a reason. I am full of Light even before the sky can greet the sun or the moon. Dear companions, we have been in love with God for so very, very long. What can Hafiz now do but forever dance! (Hafiz)

-39-

Like a great starving beast my body is quivering fixed on the scent of Light. (Hafiz)

-40- Sitting here loving like this alone again in God’s valley after that magnificent storm of Your Presence just passed, I am like an elegant cypress whose face and form your beauty ruined. Why not accuse you of infidelity or much worse when every lover of God in this world would gladly testify on my behalf. (Hafiz)

Feed your heart on the love of God that you may become immortal, and your face illumined with Divine Light. (Rumi)

-41-

Ground yourself, strip yourself down, to blind loving silence. Stay there until you see you are gazing at the Light with its own ageless eyes. (Rumi)

The rewards of a life of faith and devotion to God are love and inner rapture, and the capacity to receive the Light of God. (Rumi)

Looking up gives Light, though at first it makes you dizzy. Get used to this Light, unless you’re a bat! The sign of your having this Light is your vision of the end. The lust of the moment is in truth your dark grave. (Rumi)

In this dreamlike world, the human spirit is shrouded by a veil as clouds block out the stars, so it can no longer see its former spiritual abode. The task of the human spirit on earth is to purify its heart to enable it to see through the veil and focus on the spiritual realm. The heart must pierce the mystery of this life and see the beginning and the end with unclouded vision. (Rumi)

Your task? To work with all the passion of your being to acquire an Inner Light, so you escape and are safe from the fires of madness, illusion, and confusion that are, and always will be, the world. (Rumi)

-42-

One day the sun admitted, I am just a shadow. I wish I could show you the Infinite Incandescence that has cast my brilliant image! I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in darkness, the Astonishing Light of your own Being! (Hafiz)

The world is a prison and we are the prisoners: dig a hole in the prison wall and let yourself out! (Rumi)

-43-

Come, join the honest company of the King’s beggars - those gamblers, scoundrels and divine clowns who need Divine Love every night. Come, join the courageous who have no choice but to bet their entire world that God is Real. (Hafiz)

-44-

For God to make love, for the Divine Alchemy to work, the Pitcher needs a still cup. Why ask Hafiz to say anything more about your most vital requirement? (Hafiz)

Discernment flies from one who is drunk with empty desire. He who puts away that cup illumines his inner eye, and the hidden is revealed. (Rumi)

-45-

The Saints are the true devotees of God, always listening to the Divine Music within. That infuses life into the lovers of God. (Rumi)

I have awakened to find violin and cello, flute, harp and trumpet, cymbal, bell and drum - all within me! From head to toe, every part of my body is chanting and clapping! (Hafiz)

-46-

The ship you are riding on, look where it is heading: Your body’s port is the graveyard. Realizing the destiny of each clay bowl tossed into the sky with no one to catch it I finally accepted the Beloved’s kind offer to enroll in His sublime course of Spirit Love. (Hafiz)

Those to whom death seems as sweet as sugar, how can their sight be dazzled by the temptations of this earthly realm? Physical death holds no bitterness for them, they see it as a blessed refuge from a prison cell into a glorious garden. It will deliver them from a world of torment: no one weeps for the loss of such nothingness! (Rumi) Everyone is so frightened of death, but the true Sufis just laugh; nothing overpowers their hearts. What strikes the oyster shell does not harm the pearl. (Rumi)

-47- Death is a favor to us, but our scales have lost their balance. The impermanence of the body should give us great clarity, deepening the wonder in our senses and eyes of this mysterious existence we share and are surely just traveling through. (Hafiz)

If I were in the Tavern tonight, Hafiz would call for drinks and as the Master poured, I would be reminded that all I know of life and myself is that we are just a midair flight of golden wine between His Pitcher and His Cup. If I were in the Tavern tonight, I would buy freely for everyone in this world because our marriage with the cruel beauty of time and space cannot endure very long. Death is a favor to us, but our minds have lost their balance. The miraculous existence and impermanence of form always makes the illumined ones laugh and smile. (Hafiz)

When I die and you wish to visit me, do not come to my grave without a drum, for at God’s banquet mourners have no place. (Rumi) Our death is our wedding with eternity. (Rumi)

-48-

If I die, don’t say that he died. Say he was dead, became alive, and was taken by the Beloved. (Rumi)

Do not cry, “Alas, you are gone!” at my graveside: For me, this is a time of joyful meeting! Do not bid me, “Farewell” when I am lowered into my grave: I have passed through the curtain to eternal grace! (Rumi) Death is in reality spiritual birth, the release of the spirit from the prison of the senses into the freedom of God, just as physical birth is the release of the baby from the prison of the womb into the freedom of the world. While childbirth causes pain and suffering to the mother, for the baby it brings liberation. (Rumi)

-49-

The body, like a mother, is pregnant with the spirit-child: death is the labor of birth. All the spirits who have passed over are waiting to see how that proud spirit shall be born. (Rumi)

Resist your temptation to lie by speaking of separation from God, otherwise, we might have to medicate you. In the ocean a lot goes on beneath your eyes. Listen, they have clinics there too for the insane who persist in saying things like: “I am independent from the sea, God is not always around gently pressing against my body.” (Hafiz)

With passion pray. With passion make love. With passion eat and drink and dance and play. Why look like a dead fish in this Ocean of God? (Rumi)

-50-

Where does poetry live? In the overpowering felt splendor every sane mind knows when it realizes - our life dance is only for a few magic seconds, from the heart saying, shouting, “I am so damn alive!” (Hafiz)

These sayings of mine are really a prayer to God, words to lure the breath of that sweet One. If you seek an answer from God, how then can you fail to pray? How can you be silent, knowing He always replies to your call, “O Lord” with, “I am here.” His answer is silent but you can feel it from head to toe. (Rumi)

May your soul be happy; journey joyfully. (Rumi)