ON A DAY WHEN THE WIND IS PERFECT
 
On a day
when the wind is perfect,
the sail just needs to open and the world is full of beauty.
Today is such a
day.
 
My eyes are like the sun that makes promises;
the promise of life
that it always
keeps
 each morning.
 
The living heart gives to us as does that luminous sphere,
both caress the earth with great
tenderness.
 
This is a breeze that can enter the soul.
This love I know plays a drum.  Arms move around me;
who can contain their self before my beauty?
 
Peace is wonderful,
but ecstatic dance is more fun, and less narcissistic;
gregarious He makes our lips.
 
On a day when the wind is perfect,
the sail just needs to open
and the love starts.
 
Today is such
a day.
 
~ Rumi ~

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Panhala/

#1649 - Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - Editor: joyce (Know_Mystery)

[ Editor's Note: Today's issue of the NDHighlights features the poetry of the Sufi Mystic poet Rumi. December 17, 1273, is remembered as the date of his death, in Konya, Turkey. The anniversary of his death is now referred to as the Shebi Arus, or Wedding Night. It is revered as the occasion of Rumi's wedding to his Beloved (God) for eternal life. ]

I am so small I can barely be seen.
How can this great love be inside me?

Look at your eyes. They are small,
but they see enormous things.

~  Rumi ~ 

BEGIN

This is now.  Now is,
all there is.  Don't wait for Then;
strike the spark, light the fire.

Sit at the Beloved's table,
feast with gusto, drink your fill

then dance
the way branches
of jasmine and cypress
dance in a spring wind.

The green earth
is your cloth;
tailor your robe
with dignity and grace.
 
~ Rumi ~
 
 
(based on a version by Coleman Barks in The Soul of Rumi)
 
  
 
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Love is longing and longing, the pain of being parted;
No illness is rich enough for the distress of the heart,
A lover's lament surpasses all other cries of pain.
Love is the royal threshold to God's mystery.
The carnival of small affections and polite attachments
Which litter and consume our passing time
Is no match to Love which pulses behind this play.
It's easy to talk endlessly about Love,
To live Love is to be seized by joy and bewilderment;
Love is not clear-minded, busy with images and argument.
Language is too precocious, too impudent, too sane
To stop the molten lava of Love which churns the blood,
This practicing energy burns the tongue to silence;
The knowing pen is disabled, servile paper
Shrivels in the fire of Love. Bald reason too is an ass
Explaining Love, deceived by spoilt lucidity.
Love is dangerous offering no consolation,
Only those who are ravaged by Love know Love,
The sun alone unveils the sun to those who have
The sense to receive the senseless and not turn away.
Cavernous shadows need the light to play but light
And light alone can lead you to the light alone.
Material shadows weigh down your vision with dross,
But the rising sun splits the ashen moon in empty half.
The outer sun is our daily miracle in timely
Birth and death, the inner sun
Dazzles the inner eye in a timeless space.
Our daily sun is but a working star in a galaxy of stars,
Our inner sun is One, the dancing nuance of eternal light.
You must be set alight by the inner sun,
You have to live your Love or else
You'll only end in words.

~ Rumi ~

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Ruminations/

  I can't take back my heart from you, not now.
 It's better that I give it up to you.
 And if I don't, what use is it to me?
 The reason that I have a heart is you.
 
~ Rumi ~   

  Hidden from all
I will speak to you without words.
No one but you will hear my story
even if I tell it in the middle of a crowd.   ~ Rumi ~  
Maryam Maffi & Azima Melita Kolin; "Rumi - Hidden Music"; Element Books  

 i've come to take you
with me
even if i must drag you along
but first must steal your heart
then settle you in my soul

i've come as a spring
to lay beside your blossoms
to feel the glory of happiness
and spread your flowers around

i've come to show you off
as the adornment in my house
and elevate you to the heavens
as the prayers of those in love

i've come to take back
the kiss you once stole
either return it with grace
or i must take it by force

you're my life
you're my soul
please be my last prayer
my heart must hold you forever

from the lowly earth
to the high human soul
there are a lot more
than a thousand stages

since i've taken you along
from town to town
no way will i abandon
you halfway down this road

though you're in my hands
though i can throw you around
like a child and a ball
i'll always need to chase after you

~  Rumi  ~

Translation by Nader Khalili; "Rumi, Fountain of Fire"

I would love to kiss you
- the price of kissing is your life

Now my loving is running toward my life shouting
- what a bargain, let's buy it

~ Rumi ~

"The Illuminated Rumi"; Translations and Commentary by Coleman Barks         

THAT LIVES IN US

If you put your hands on this oar with me,
they will never harm another, and they will come to find
they hold everything you want.

If you put your hands on this oar with me, they would no longer
lift anything to your
mouth that might wound your precious land –
that sacred earth that is your body.

If you put your soul against this oar with me,
the power that made the universe will enter your sinew
from a source not outside your limbs, but from a holy realm
that lives in us.

Exuberant is existence, time a husk.
When the moment cracks open, ecstasy leaps out and devours space;
love goes mad with the blessings, like my words give.

Why lay yourself on the torturer's rack of the past and the future?
The mind that tries to shape tomorrow beyond its capacities
will find no rest.

Be kind to yourself, dear – to our innocent follies.
Forget any sounds or touch you knew that did not help you dance.
You will come to see that all evolves us.

~ Rumi ~

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Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/That_Lives_in_Us.html

If you want special ilumination -
look upon the human face;
see deeply within laughter
the essence of ultimate Truth
 
~ Rumi ~

"Gold Becomes" ~ Collage by Rashani

About the Artist/Poet: Rashani Réa, founder of Earthsong Sanctuary, has been an artist and social activist since childhood. She facilitates councils and retreats
throughout the world, integrating self inquiry, shamanism, dreambody
work, deep ecology, mindfulness practice, creativity, "crazy wisdom" and humor.

As part of her personal healing journey, she has recorded 14 audio
cassettes and designed more than 300 unique greeting cards in celebration of the diversity of world wisdom. Earthsong has been her home since 1992.

 THE MOST ALIVE MOMENT

The most living moment comes when
those who love each other meet each

other's eyes and in what flows
between them then. To see your face

in a crowd of others, or alone on a
frightening street, I weep for that.

Our tears improve the earth. The
time you scolded me, your gratitude,

your laughing, always your qualities
increase the soul. Seeing you is a

wine that does not muddle or numb.
We sit inside the cypress shadow

where amazement and clear thought
twine their slow growth into us.

~ Rumi ~

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Panhala/

A lover doesn't figure the odds.

He figures he came clean from God
as a gift without a reason,
so he gives without cause or calculation or limit.

A conventionally religious person
behaves a certain way to achieve salvation.

A lover gambles everything,
the self, the circle around the zero!
He or she cuts and throws it all away.

This is beyond any religion.

Lovers do not require from God any proof,
or any text, nor do they knock on a door
to make sure this is the right street.

They run,
and they run.

~  Rumi  ~

Coleman Barks; "Feeling the Shoulder of the Lion"

Panhala ~ Joe Riley 

Such Singing in the Wild Branches
 
It was spring
and finally I heard him
among the first leaves -
then I saw him clutching the limb
 
in an island of shade
with his red-brown feathers
all trim and neat for the new year.
First, I stood still
 
and thought of nothing.
Then I began to listen.
Then I was filled with gladness -
and that's when it happened,
 
when I seemed to float,
to be, myself, a wing or a tree -
and I began to understand
what the bird was saying,
 
and the sands in the glass
stopped
for a pure white moment
while gravity sprinkled upward
 
like rain, rising,
and in fact
it became difficult to tell just what it was that was singing -
it was the thrush for sure, but it seemed
 
not a single thrush, but himself, and all his brothers,
and also the trees around them,
as well as the gliding, long-tailed clouds
in the perfectly blue sky - all, all of them
 
were singing.
And, of course, yes, so it seemed,
so was I.
Such soft and solemn and perfect music doesn't last
 
for more than a few moments.
It's one of those magical places wise people
like to talk about.
One of the things they say about it, that is true,
 
is that, once you've been there,
you're there forever.
Listen, everyone has a chance.
Is it spring, is it morning?
 
Are there trees near you,
and does your own soul need comforting?
Quick, then - open the door and fly on your heavy feet; the song
may already be drifting away.
 
~ Mary Oliver ~
 
 
 
(Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays)
 

 
Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/Such_Singing.html

Web archive of Panhala postings: www.panhala.net/Archive/Index.html

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music link
(left button to play, right button to save)

from "Be Lost in the Call"

"O prisoner of time,
I was a secret treasure of kindness and generosity,
and I wished this treasure to be known,
so I created a mirror: its shining face, the heart;
its darkened back, the world;
The back would please you if you've never seen the face."

~ Rumi ~

"Love is a Stranger", Kabir Helminski
Threshold Books, 1993

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Sunlight/  

 
Please God, offer honey to musicians
who bring us such joy!
Give them strong and untiring hands
to keep playing their music.
Give them vision so, like birds in Love,
they can bring Your message to our ears.
Let them drink plenty from Your river and
grace them with Your strength
so their music becomes the pillar of Your glory.
~ Rumi ~
Maryam Maffi & Azima Melita Kolin, translators; "Rumi - Hidden Music";
Element Books  

Time to go Home Late and starting to rain,
it's time to go home.
We've wandered long enough
in empty buildings.
I know it's tempting to stay
and meet those new people.
I know it's even more sensible
to spend the night here with them,
but I want to go home.   We've seen enough beautiful places
with signs on them saying
This is God's House.That's seeing the
grain like the ants do,
without the work of harvesting.
Let's leave grazing to cows and go
where we know what everyone really intends,
where we can walk around without clothes on.
~ Rumi ~