my dear

  

.

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 dear,
If you do not have 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 longing For Long. 

You have not danced so badly, my dear,
Trying to kiss the Beautiful One. 
You have actually waltzed with tremendous style,
O my sweet, O my sweet crushed angel.


—Hafiz

.

Light the fire.

This is now. Now is
all there is. Don't wait for Then;
strike the spark, light the fire.

Sit at the Beloved's table,
feast with gusto, drink your fill

then dance
the way branches
of jasmine and cypress
dance in a spring wind.

The green earth
is your cloth;
tailor your robe
with dignity and grace.


—Rumi

.

the perfect 0ne

  

.

The moon is most happy 
When it is full. 

And the sun always looks
Like a perfectly minted gold coin 
That was just Polished 
And placed in flight 
By God's playful Kiss. 

And so many varieties of fruit 
Hang plump and round 
From branches that seem like a Sculptor's hands. 

I see the beautiful curve of a pregnant belly 
Shaped by a soul within, 
And the Earth itself, 
And the planets and the Spheres.

I have gotten the hint: 
There is something about circles 
The Beloved likes. 

Hafiz, 
Within the Circle of a Perfect One 
There is an Infinite Community 
Of Light.


—Hafiz
something about circles 

.

When we understand, 

we are at the centre of the circle 

and there we sit 

while Yes and No 

chase each other 

around the circumference.


—Chuang Tzu

.

rest

.

Just rest. 

Just sit there right now
Don’t do a thing
Just rest.

For your separation from God,
From love,
Is the hardest work
In this
World.

Let me bring you trays of food
And something
That you like to
Drink.

You can use my soft words
As a cushion
For your
Head.


—Hafiz 
Daniel Ladinsky version

.

the house we live in

   

.

What we speak
becomes the house
we live in. 
Who will want
to sleep in your bed
if the roof leaks
right above it?

Fear is the 
cheapest room 
in the house,
I would like
to see you living
in better conditions.

There is only one reason
we have followed God
into this world:
to encourage laughter,
freedom,
dance and love ....

God and I are rushing
from every corner of 
existence,
needing to say
we are yours.

The sun never says
to the earth,
even after all this time
“you owe me”.

I once asked a bird
how is it that you 
fly in this gravity
of darkness?
she responded,
love lifts me.

I should not make 
any promises right now
but I know if you pray
somewhere in this world
something good 
will happen.


—Hafiz
Daniel Ladinsky and
Robert Bly version

.

as light pours like rain

  

.

Who gets up early to discover the moment light begins?

Who finds us here circling, bewitched, like atoms?

—Rumi

.

God
pours light
into every cup,
quenching darkness.

The proudly pious
stuff their cups with parchment
and critique the taste of ink
while God pours light

and the trees lift their limbs
without worry of redemption,
every blossom a chalice.

Hafiz, seduce those withered souls
with words that wet their parched lips

as light
pours like rain
into every empty cup
set adrift on the Infinite Ocean.


—Hafiz

.

doer(ship

 

.

is it true 
that your mind is sometimes like
a battering ram
running all through the city,

shouting so madly inside and out
about the ten thousand things
that do not matter?


—Hafiz

.

Why should you bear your load on your head when you are traveling on a train? 

It carries you and your load whether the load is on your head or on the floor of the train. You are not lessening the burden of the train by keeping it on your head but only straining yourself unnecessarily. 

Similar is the sense of doership in the world by individuals.


—Ramana Maharshi

.

Once you realize that the road is the goal and that you are always on the road, not to reach a goal, but to enjoy its beauty and its wisdom, life ceases to be a task and becomes natural and simple, in itself an ecstasy.


—Nisargadatta Maharaj

.

you are that

  

.

Life has no meaning. 
Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. 

It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.


—Joseph Campbell

.

I sometimes forget that I was created for Joy.
My mind is too busy.
My Heart is too heavy
for me to remember
that I have been
called to dance
the Sacred dance of life.

I was created to smile
To Love
To be lifted up
And to lift others up.

O’ Sacred One
Untangle my feet
from all that ensnares.
Free my soul.
That we might
Dance
and that our dancing
might be contagious.


Hafiz

.

questions

  

.

It is every intelligent man's experience ... wrong-doing recoils on the doer sooner or later. Why is this so? 
Because the Self is one in all.

When seeing others you are only seeing yourself in their shapes. 'Love they neighbor as thyself' means that you should love him because he is your Self.


—Ramana Maharshi
S. S. Cohen, 15th August, 1948

.

The picture of names and forms, the one who sees, the cohesive screen, and the pervading light – all these are he, who is oneself.

If oneself is a form, the world and God will be likewise; if oneself is not a form, who can see their forms? How? 

Can the seen be otherwise than the eye? 

The eye is oneself, the infinite eye.

Without a body, is there a world? 

Leaving the body, is there anyone who has seen a world?

The world is a form of five sense-impressions, not anything else. Those five sense-impressions are impressions to the five sense organs. Since the mind alone perceives the world by way of the five sense organs, is there a world besides the mind?


—Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi

.

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 serve the Friend?

Oh, the Beloved

will send you

one of his wonderful, wild companions –

Like Hafiz.

—Hafiz

.

looking for God

  

.

I long for You so much

I follow barefoot Your frozen tracks 

That are high in the mountains

That I know are years old.

I long for You so much 
I have even begun to travel
Where I have never been before.

Hafiz, 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

Daniel Ladinsky translation

.

stay at the center of the circle and let all things take their course. —Lao Tzu

  

      .

They asked al-Hallaj, "To which religious School do you belong?
he answered, "God's own."

He who limned 
a thousand worlds with paint -
you layabout! - do you expect
He'll use your color or mine?

Our paints and tints
are but opinions and fantasy,
He is colorless
and we must adopt His hue.

Look: a shadow lies crooked upon the ground because the very earth is laid rough; but no, that crookedness is straightness itself, for the perfection, the "straightness" of the eyebrow is in its sinuous curve.

Only because it is bent
is this piece of wood a bow.
Reality is a sphere: wherever you place your finger,
there is its dead center.


—Fakhruddin 'Iraqi
Divine Flashes

.

This place where you are right now, 

God circled on a map for you.


—Hafiz

.

not to worry

 

.

An old alchemist gave the following consolation to one of his disciples: No matter how isolated you are and how lonely you feel, if you do your work truly and conscientiously, unknown friends will come and seek you.


―Carl Jung

.

I used to know my name. Now I don’t.

I think a river understands me.

For what does it call itself in that blessed moment when it starts emptying into the Infinite Luminous Sea, and opening every aspect of self wider than it ever thought possible? Each drop of itself now running to embrace and unite with a million new friends.

And you were there, in my union with All, everyone who will ever see this page.


—Hafiz

.

each by all the others held

 

.

Within the circles of our lives
we dance the circles of the years,
the circles of the seasons
within the circles of the years,
the cycles of the moon
within the circles of the seasons,
the circles of our reasons
within the cycles of the moon.

Again, again we come and go,
changed, changing. Hands
join, unjoin in love and fear,
grief and joy. The circles turn,
each giving into each, into all. 

Only music keeps us here,
each by all the others held.
In the hold of hands and eyes
we turn in pairs, that joining
joining each to all again.

And then we turn aside, alone,
out of the sunlight gone
into the darker circles of return.


—Wendell Berry
Closing the Circle

.

And if I forget how many times I have been here, and in how many shapes, this forgetting is the necessary interval of darkness between every pulsation of light.

—Alan Watts

On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

.

Out of a great need
we are all holding hands
and climbing.

Not loving is a letting go.

Listen,

the terrain around here
is
far too
dangerous
for
that.


—Hafiz
  

.

the soul was the song itself

 

. 

I live my life in growing orbits which move out over this wondrous world, I am circling around God, around ancient towers and I have been circling for a thousand years. 

And I still don't know if I am an eagle or a storm or a great song.


―Rainer Maria Rilke

.

People say that the soul, on hearing the song of creation, entered the body, but in reality the soul was the song itself.  


—Hafiz

.

p(raise

.

Lord, the air smells good today,
straight from the mysteries
within the inner courts of God. 

A grace like new clothes thrown
across the garden,
free medicine for everybody. 

The trees in their prayer,
the birds in praise
the first blue violets kneeling. 

Whatever came from Being
is caught up in being,
drunkenly forgetting the way back.


—Jelaluddin Rumi

.

The time of judging
Who is drunk or sober,
Who is right and who is wrong,
Who is closer to god, and who is farther away,
All that is over.

This caravan is led instead by a great delight,
The simple joy that sits with us now.

That is the grace.


—Hafiz

.

note to self

  

.

We have subtle subconscious faculties we are not using. 

Beyond the limited analytic intellect is a vast realm of mind that includes psychic and extrasensory abilities; intuition; wisdom; a sense of unity; aesthetic, qualitative, creative faculties; and image-forming and symbolic capacities. 

Though these faculties are many, we give them a single name with some justification for they are working best when they are in concert. They comprise a mind, moreover, in spontaneous connection to the cosmic mind. 

This total mind we call ‘heart.‘


—Kabir Helminski

.

Someone put
You on a slave block
And the unreal bought
You. Now I keep coming to your owner
Saying
"This one is mine."

You often overhear us talking
And this can make your heart leap
With excitement.
Don't worry,
I will not let sadness
Possess you.

I will gladly borrow all the gold
I need
To get you back.

 

—Hafiz

.

i divide, in the sky, in the the seams, between the beams

  

.

Poetry reveals that there is no empty space.
When your truth forsakes its shyness, 
When your fears surrender to your strengths, 
You will begin to experience 
That all existence 
Is a teeming sea of infinite life. 

In a handful of ocean water
You could not count all the finely tuned
Musicians 
Who are acting stoned 
For very intelligent and sane reasons 
And of course are becoming extremely sweet 
And wild! 

In a handful of the sky and earth, 
In a handful of God, 
We cannot count 
All the ecstatic lovers who are dancing there 
Behind the mysterious veil. 

True art reveals there is no void 
Or darkness. 
There is no loneliness to the clear-eyed mystic 
In this luminous, brimming 
Playful world. 


—Hafiz

.

sweet(hearts

 

.

A leaf says,
“Sweethearts—don’t pick me,
For I am busy doing
God’s work. 

I am lowering my veins and roots
Like ropes
With buckets tied to them
Into the earth’s deep
Lake.  

I am drawing water
That I offer like a rose to
The sky.  

I am a singing cleaning woman
Dusting all the shelves in
The air
With my elegant green
Rags.  

I have a heart.
I can know happiness like
You.


—Hafiz

.

oh please

  

.

Run, my dear,
from anything that may not strengthen
your precious budding wings,

Run like hell, my dear,
from anyone likely to put a sharp knife
into the sacred, tender vision
of your beautiful heart.

We have a duty to befriend
those aspects of obedience
that stand outside of our house
and shout to our reason
"oh please, oh please
come out and play!"

For we have not come here to take prisoners,
or to confine our wondrous spirits,
But to experience ever and ever more deeply
our divine courage, freedom,
and Light.


—Hafiz

.

love is a place

  

.

The Sky where we live
Is no place to lose your wings.

So love, love,

Love.


—Hafiz

 

.

 

 

four words

. 

Every child has known god,

not the god of names,

not the god of don’t,

not the god who does anything
weird,

but the god who only knows four words

and keeps repeating them, saying:

“Come dance with Me."

Come
Dance.

—Hafiz

 

.