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
Today I'm out wandering, turning my skull into a cup for others to drink wine from. In this town somewhere there sits a calm, intelligent man, who doesn't know what he's about to do!
And watch two men washing clothes, one makes dry clothes wet. The other makes wet clothes dry. they seem to be thwarting each other, but their work is a perfect harmony. Every holy person seems to have a different doctrine and practice, but there's really only one work.
A man or a woman is said to be absorbed when the water has total control of him, and he no control of the water. A swimmer moves around willfully. An absorbed being has no will but the water's going. Any word or act is not really personal, but the way the water has of speaking or doing. As when you hear a voice coming out of a wall, and you know that it's not the wall talking, but someone inside, or perhaps someone outside echoing off the wall. Saints are like that. They've achieved the condition of a wall, or a door.
You do not see clearly the evil in yourself, else you would hate yourself with all your soul. Like the lion who sprang at his image in the water, you are only hurting yourself, O foolish man. When you reach the bottom of the well of your own nature, then you will know that the vileness was from yourself.
There is none dwelling in the house but God. When a man is awakened he melts and perishes.
Botha swimmer and a drowned man are in the water; the latter is borne by the water and controlled by it, while the swimmer is borne along by his own power and of his own volition. Every movement made by the drowned man - indeed, every act and word that issue from him - comes from the water, not from him... The saints are like this. They have died before death.
The men of God are like fishes in the ocean; they pop up into view on the surface here and there and everywhere, as they please.
Many have been led astray by the Qur'an: by clinging to that rope many have fallen into the well. There is no fault in the rope, O perverse man, for it was you who had no desire to reach the top.
Greed makes man blind and foolish, and makes him an easy prey for death.
Snake's poison is life to the snake; it is in relation to man that it means "death.
Passion is present when a man can distinguish between the wine and the container. Two men see a loaf of bread. One hasn't eaten anything for ten days. The other has eaten five times a day, every day. He sees the shape of the loaf. The other man with his urgent need sees inside into the taste, and into the nourishment the bread could give. Be that hungry, to see within all beings the Friend.
If reason dominates in man, he rises higher than angels. If lust overpowers man, he descends lower than the beast.
New organs of perception come into being as a result of necessity. Therefore, O man, increase your necessity, so that you may increase your perception.
Your depression is connected to your insolence and refusal to praise. Whoever feels himself walking on the path, and refuses to praise--that man or woman steals from others every day--is a shoplifter! The sun became full of light when it got hold of itself. Angels only began shining when they achieved discipline. The sun goes out whenever the cloud of not-praising comes. The moment the foolish angel felt insolent, he heard the door close.