The Essential Rumi

by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi

If you haven’t left the child’s play, how can you be an adult?

Every object, every being, is a jar full of delight. Be a connoisseur, and taste with caution.

I am not from the East or the West, not out of the ocean or up from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not composed of elements at all. I do not exist, am not an entity in this world or the next, did not descend from Adam and Eve or any origin story. My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless. Neither body or soul.

Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.