Rumi
Rumi
Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī, Mawlānā/Mevlânâ, Mevlevî/Mawlawī, and more popularly simply as Rumi, was a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic. Rumi's influence transcends national borders and ethnic divisions: Iranians, Tajiks, Turks, Greeks, Pashtuns, other Central Asian Muslims, and the Muslims of South Asia have greatly appreciated his spiritual legacy for the past seven centuries. His poems have been widely translated into many of the world's languages and transposed into...
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth30 September 1207
What can I do my friends, if I do not know? I am neither Christian nor Jew, nor Muslim nor Hindu. What can I do? What can I do? Not of the East, nor of the West, Nor of the land, nor of the sea, Not of nature's essence, nor of circling heavens. What could I be?
Hear this if you can: If you want to reach him You have to go beyond yourself And when you finally arrive at the land of absence Be silent Don’t say a thing Ecstasy, not words, is the language spoken there
This phantom world gave you false signs But you turned from the illusion and journeyed to the land of truth.
Late, by myself, in the boat of myself, no light and no land anywhere, cloudcover thick. I try to stay just above the surface, yet I'm already under and living within the ocean.
That which is false troubles the heart, but truth brings joyous tranquillity.
Listen! Clam up your mouth and be silent like an oyster shell, for that tongue of yours is the enemy of the soul, my friend. When the lips are silent, the heart has a hundred tongues.
This is what love does and continues to do. It tastes like honey to adults and milk to children.
I closed my mouth and spoke to you in a hundred silent ways.
With passion pray. With passion make love. With passion eat and drink and dance and play. Why look like a dead fish in this ocean of God?
I see my beauty in you.
Speak a new language so that the world will be a new world.
Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.
The waterwheel accepts water and turns and gives it away, weeping.
I died as a mineral and became a plant, I died as a plant and rose to animal, I died as an animal and I was Man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?