The Essential Rumi

by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi

This is the true religion. All others are thrown-away bandages beside it.

When acts of helplessness become habitual, those are the signs.

Lo, I am with you always means when you look for God, God is in the look of your eyes, in the thought of looking, nearer to you than your self, or things that have happened to you There’s no need to go outside.

The body is a device to calculate the astronomy of the spirit.

What is the body? That shadow of a shadow of your love, that somehow contains the entire universe.

All language is a longing for home.

Are these enough words, or shall I squeeze more juice from this?

Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence. Existence: this place made from our love for that emptiness! Yet somehow comes emptiness, this existence goes. Praise to that happening, over and over!

For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness. Then one swoop, one swing of the arm, that work is over. Free of who I was, free of presence, free of dangerous fear, hope, free of mountainous wanting. The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece of straw blown off into emptiness.

Inside this new love, die. Your way begins on the other side. Become the sky. Take an axe to the prison wall. Escape. Walk out like someone suddenly born into color. Do it now. You’re covered with thick cloud. Slide out the side. Die, and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign that you’ve died. Your old life was a frantic running from silence. The speechless full moon comes out now.

Your name has been erased from the roaring volume of speech.

I used to want buyers for my words. Now I wish someone would buy me away from words. I’ve made a lot of charmingly profound images, scenes with Abraham, and Abraham’s father, Azar, who was also famous for icons. I’m so tired of what I’ve been doing. Then one image without form came, and I quit. Look for someone else to tend the shop. I’m out of the image-making business. Finally I know the freedom of madness. A random image arrives. I scream, “Get out!” It disintegrates. Only love. Only the holder the flag fits into, and wind. No flag.

Lovers have nothing to do with existence. They collect the interest without the capital.

To a spirit the foodless scent is food.

for a mystic, the inner world is a weather that contains the universe and uses it as symbolic language.

Stop the words now. Open the window in the center of your chest, and let the spirits fly in and out.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.