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Kindle Notes & Highlights
The word ghazal, the Oxford English Dictionary tells us, is etymologically linked to gazelle and like a gazelle, the ghazal moves by leaps and bounds.
Rumi’s gold is not the precious metal but a feeling-state arrived at through the alchemical process of altering consciousness, of burning through ego, greed, pettiness, and calculation, to arrive at a more relaxed and compassionate state of being. In sum, the prayer of Sufism is “teach me to love more deeply.” Gold is the deepest love.
Every religion has Love but Love has no religion. Love is an ocean— no borders, no shores. Drown there and you won’t lament it. The drowned have no regrets.
In a field of logic, my words are horses with no room to run. Without reason, the voice of my soul soars.
They say there’s a door between one heart and another. How can there be a door where no wall remains?
Sun and moon of mine, you’ve come. My sight, my hearing, you’ve come. Ecstasy, you’ve come. Eyes filled with sun, harvest of all my longing, you’ve come. Desert bandit, penance breaker, silver moon beloved, you’ve come. Lantern in hand, I searched for you last night. Today, you’re on my path, a bouquet of flowers.
rumi starts off by calling himself a thorn that finds itself fleeing to the softness of petals and ends with calling his beloved a bouquet of flowers in the path of love :/
I was pulling a thorn from my foot when you found me. You showered me with flowers from your fertile beds. Dear nightingale, your melodies opened my ears. Like a ladle wanting its fill of light, I plunged into the moon’s halo. At the bottom of that bottomless pot, you found me.
If you’ve made a habit of drinking vinegar, don’t blame the vine.
“Where do you belong? To what clan?” he asked. “This one,” I said. I touched the hand that touched my heart.
