Rumi Poems

On the day I die, when I'm being carried toward the grave, don't weep.
Don't say, He's gone! He's gone.
Death has nothing to do with going away.
The sun sets and the moon sets, but they're not gone.
Death is a coming together.
The tomb looks like a prison, but it's really release into union.
The human seed goes down in the ground like a bucket into the well where Joseph is.
It grows and comes up full of some unimagined beauty.
Your mouth closes here and immediately opens with a shout of joy there.
*mevlana jelaluddin rumi - 13th century

I have lived on the lip of insanity,
wanting to know reasons,
knocking on a door. It opens.
I've been knocking from the inside!
*sufi mystic - jelaluddin rumi - 13th century

"... Move beyond any attachment to names." Every war
and every conflict between human beings has happened because
of some disagreement about names.
It's such an unnecessary foolishness, because just beyond the arguing
there's a long table of companionship, set and waiting for us to sit down.
What is praised is one, so the praise is one too, many jugs being poured
into a huge basin.
All religions, all this singing, one song.
The differences are just illusion and vanity.
Sunlight looks slightly different on this wall than it does on that wall
and a lot different on this other one, but it is still one light.
We have borrowed these clothes, these time-and-space personalities,
from a light, and when we praise, we pour them back in.
*mevlana jelaluddin rumi - 13th century

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened.
Don't open the door to the study and begin reading.Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
*sufi mystic - jelaluddin rumi - 13th century

There is some kiss we want with our whole lives, the touch of Spirit on the body.
Seawater begs the pearl to break its shell.
And the lily, how passionately it needs some wild Darling!
At night, I open the window and ask the moon to come and press its face into mine.
Breathe into me.
Close the language-door ,and open the love-window.
The moon won't use the door, only the window.
*sufi mystic - jelaluddin rumi - 13th century

Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing, there is a field.
I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase "each other" doesn't make any sense.
*mevlana jelaluddin rumi - 13th century

Dance, when you're broken open.
Dance, if you've torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance, when you're perfectly free.
*sufi mystic - jelaluddin rumi - 13th century

The grief you cry out from draws you toward union.
Your pure sadness that wants help is the secret cup.Listen to the moan of a dog for its master. That whining is the connection.
There are love dogs no one knows the names of.
Give your lifeto be one of them.
*love dogs - mevlana jelaluddin rumi - 13th century

O love, O pure deep love, be here, be now.
Be all; worlds dissolve into your stainless endless radiance,
Frail living leaves burn with you brighter than cold stars;
Make me your servant, your breath, your core.
*sufi mystic - jelaluddin rumi - 13th century