I saw many humans on whom there were no clothes, I saw many clothes in which there were no humans.
I am not this Hair, I am not this Skin, I AM THE SOUL That lives within .
Be a lamp, or a lifeboat or a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal.Walk out of your house like a shepherd.
Rumi
Music:
Seven Cloves-Tatlı Dillim
The Rubáiyát(Quatrains) of Omar Khayyam(Excerpt)
The Persian astronomer,mathematician & poet Omar Khayyam
(1048-1131)
Translated by Hans van Rossum
based on the French translation by Franz Toussaint.
(The original in persian language)
Everyone knows that I never mumbled prayers.
Everyone also knows I never tried to hide my faults.
I don’t know whether a higher Judge and a
higher Kindness exist – but still,
I am full of confidence as I have
always been true to myself.
Which is of most value?
To enter a tavern questioning your conscience,or to postrate
In a mosque with a blasted soul?
I do not concern myself with wondering if I have a master and what he will decide of me in the day of judgement.
Look with compassion
at the heavy drinkers. Know, that you too
have your weaknesses. If you want to live in peace
and clarity, then look at the poor and the handicapped
carrying the burden of their misery,
and see how fortunate you are!
Live in such way, that your
righteousness and knowledge does
not trouble others. Be calm and master of yourself.
Don’t allow yourself to be aggressive.
If you truly want to live in peace,
smile at your Fate.
How sad, a heart that
does not know how to love, that
does not know what it is to be drunk with love.
If you are not in love, how can you enjoy
the blinding light of the sun,
the soft light of the moon?
This earthen bowl
may have been made from the ashes
of a man in love, suffering under the indifference
of a woman. The ear of the bowl? It was his arm
around the neck of his beloved.
Look at this
infinite season of hope,
of souls impatient to wake up,
of our search for a lonely place rich with scents.
Is each flower the fragrant hand of Moses,
each breeze the breath of Jesus?
Man cannot confidently go his own way
if he has not eaten of the fruits of truth.
Once Truth is glimpsed within the labyrinth of knowledge,
one knows that the days that have passed and the days that
are still to come do not differ from the disappointing
first day after Creation.
Beyond the earth,
beyond the farthest skies
I try to find Heaven and Hell.
Then I hear a solemn voice that says:
“Heaven and hell are inside.”
Let’s assume that you have finally solved
the riddle of the creation – what’s your fate?
Let’s assume that you found the deepest layers of
truth – what will be your fate? Let’s assume that
you have lived a hundred happy years and
that you will live another hundred –
what will be your fate?
The most outstanding scholars of history
were walking in the darkness of ignorance.
And still, they were considered the torchbearers
of their age. What did they do? They left us
some confused thoughts
and passed away.
My heart asked me:
“I want to know, to understand.
Teach me, Khayyam, you that have worked so hard.”
And I replied by saying: “A.” And then my heart said:
“Now I know; the A is the first letter of
an infinite number of words.”
There are too many tears in my eyes!
The fires of Hell are no more than sparks of fire
as compared to the flames that consume me inside.
Paradise? For me it means
a moment of peace.
Old world, where
the horses of Day and Night
are galloping through, you are like
the old palaces where kings dreamt
of fame and of compassion,
and woke up crying.
The southern wind
has withered the rose
for which the nightingale sang its song.
Should we grieve for that rose or for ourselves?
When death has already paled our cheeks
other roses will be flowering.
Millions of centuries
Have seen dawn, have seen twilight.
Millions of centuries stars have passed through the sky.
Walk the earth cautiously. That lump of soil
you almost trampled down may have been
the eye of a child needing help.
Who knows whether this daffodil,
softly moving on the side of the brook,
touches with its roots the lips of a perished woman.
Let your feet touch the grass lightly. Remind
yourself that that grass grows off the dust
of so many faces shining like tulips.
Listen to what your common sense
tells you all day: “Life is short.
You have nothing in commom with plants
that will grow again
after being pruned.”
The old palace of Bahram
is now a refuge for gazelles.
Lions roam where musicians played their songs.
Bahram, who once caught wild donkeys, now sleeps
under that hill where wild donkeys graze.
I am not afraid of death.
I prefer that inevitable event
to the other, forced upon me at the moment
I was born. For what is life? A posession entrusted
to me without my say, and which I will,
time come, give back indifferently.
I received the blow I expected.
My love left me. While she still loved me
it was easy to look down on the importance of her love
and to praise the renouncing of all possessions.
But let this thought comfort me: I was alone,
even while she still loved me.
When your soul and mine
have left our bodies and we are
burried alongside each other,
a Potter may one day mould
the dust of both of us
into the same clay.
Friend, don’t plan for tomorrow.
Do you even know whether you can finish the
sentence you’ve just started? Tomorrow we may
be far away from this caravan and may already have
joined those that died 7000 years ago.
It’s long since my childhood joined
all things dead. Springtime of my life, you are
now where all past springs have gone. O, my childhood,
you passed by and I didn’t even notice. Your departure was as gradual as the passing of spring – a litle bit each day.
Listen to this great secret:
When the first daybreak brought light
upon earth, Adam had no more power than to
give names to what already was there:
night,death.
Before you can caress a face as beautiful
as a rose, how many thorns you must extract from your flesh?
Look at this comb.It once was a piece of wood.What agony it
suffered when it was cut from its tree.But now it is in full
contact with the sweet-smelling hair of a young woman.
The dome-shaped sky
under which we wander;
I compare it with a magic lantern,
whose lamb is the sun and whose screen
is the world on which our images
are moving.
A rose said: “I am the most beautiful
creation on earth. Would a perfume maker
dare picking me?” Then a nightingale sang:
“One day of happyness is followed
by a year of tears.”
Each morning the rose overshadows tulip, hyacinth
and violet with its bright colour.But then the sun rises
and whithers this radiant competitor.Each new morning
my heart feel heavier again,but your glance
makes me forget my sorrows.
How frail is humanity!
How inevitable our fate!
We make promises we don’t keep and our
failures leave us indifferent. Myself, I often
act like I am intoxicated. But my excuse is
that I am drunk with love.
Dervish, take off that bright nice-coloured garb,
of which you are so proud, and which you didn’t possess
at the time of your birth. Dress yourself instead in the
cloth of the poor. Passers-by may not greet you,
but you will hear the angels sing in your heart.
To a wise man sorrow and joy are inseparable,
as are good and bad. Everything that has a beginning
must have an end. Therefore, do ask yourself whether you have
reason to be happy about the good things that come your way
or to grieve over your unexpected trials.
When you are so full of sorrow
that you can’t walk, can’t cry anymore,
think about the green foliage that sparkles after
the rain. When the daylight exhausts you, when
you hope a final night will cover the world,
think about the awakening of a young child.
How should Spring bring forth a garden on hard stone? Become earth, that you may grow flowers of many colors. For you have been heart-breaking rock. Once, for the sake of experiment,be earth!
Rumi
Compassion is a call, a demand of nature, to relieve
the unhappy as hunger is a natural call for food.
JOSEPH BUTLER
Listen with ears of tolerance!
See through the eyes of compassion!
Speak with the language of love!
Rumi
Kindness has converted more sinners,than zeal,
eloquence or learning.
Frederick William Faber
Music:
Omar Akram – Secret Journey
Excerpts from the novel”The Brothers Karamazov”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Brothers,have no fear of men’s sin.Love a man even in his sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth.Love all God’s creation,the whole of it and every grain of sand in it.Love every leaf,every ray of God’s light.
Love the animals,love the plants,love everything. If you love everything,you will perceive the divine mystery in things.Once you have perceived it,you will begin to comprehend it better every day,and you will come at last to love the world with an all-embracing love.
Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and untroubled joy.So do not trouble it,do not harass them, do not deprive them of their joy,do not go against God’s intent. Man, do not exhale yourself above the animals: they are without sin, while you in your majesty defile the earth by your appearance on it, and you leave the traces of your defilement behind you — alas, this is true of almost every one of us!
Love children especially, for like the angels they too are sinless, and they live to soften and purify our hearts,and, as it were, to guide us.Woe to him who offends a child.
My young brother asked even the birds to forgive him. It may sound absurd, but it is right none the less, for everything, like the ocean, flows and enters into contact with everything else: touch one place, and you set up a movement at the other end of the world. It may be senseless to beg forgiveness of the birds, but, then, it would be easier for the birds, and for the child, and for every animal if you were yourself more pleasant than you are now.
Everything is like an ocean,I tell you. Then you would pray to the birds, too, consumed by a universal love, as though in ecstasy,and ask that they,too,should forgive your sin.Treasure this ecstasy,however absurd people may think it.
I know that heart, it is a wild but noble heart . . . It will bow down before your deed, it thirsts for a great act of love, it will catch fire and resurrect forever. There are souls that in their narrowness blame the whole world. But overwhelm such a soul with mercy, give it love,and it will curse what it has done,for there are so many germs of good in it.
The soul will expand and behold how merciful God is, and how beautiful and just people are. He will be horrified, he will be overwhelmed with repentance and the countless debt he must henceforth repay. And then he will not say,’I am quits’ but will say, ‘I am guilty before all people and am the least worthy of all people.
Fyodor Dostoevsky,The Brothers Karamazov
My friends,ask gladness from God.Be glad as children, as birds in the sky. And let man’s sin not disturb you in your efforts,do not fear that it will dampen your endeavor and keep it from being fulfilled, do not say, ‘Sin is strong, impiety is strong, the bad environment is strong, and we are lonely and powerless,the bad environment will dampen us and keep our good endeavor from being fulfilled.Flee from such despondency.
Fyodor Dostoevsky,The Brothers Karamazov
We don’t understand that life is heaven, for we have only to understand that and it will at once be fulfilled in all its beauty, we shall embrace each other and weep.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
I should dearly love that the world should be ever so little better for my presence.Even on this small stage we have our two sides, and something might be done by throwing all one’s weight on the scale of breadth, tolerance, charity, temperance, peace, and kindliness to man and beast. We can’t all strike very big blows, and even the little ones count for something.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Music:
GIOVANNI MARRADI-Memories<br<
Human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth:
it does not wait for beauty—it flows with resistless force and brings
beauty with it…
George Eliot,Adame Bede
The darkest night that ever fell upon the earth never hid the light, never put out the stars. It only made the stars more keenly, kindly glancing, as if in protest against the darkness.
George Eliot
I wish to use my last hours of ease and strength in telling the strange story of my experience. I have never fully unbosomed myself to any human being; I have never been encouraged to trust much in the sympathy of my fellow-men. But we have all a chance of meeting with some pity, some tenderness, some charity, when we are dead: it is the living only who cannot be forgiven — the living only from whom men’s indulgence and reverence are held off, like the rain by the hard east wind.
While the heart beats, bruise it — it is your only opportunity; while the eye can still turn towards you with moist, timid entreaty, freeze it with an icy unanswering gaze; while the ear, that delicate messenger to the inmost sanctuary of the soul, can still take in the tones of kindness, put it off with hard civility, or sneering compliment, or envious affectation of indifference; while the creative brain can still throb with the sense of injustice, with the yearning for brotherly recognition — make haste — oppress it with your ill-considered judgements, your trivial comparisons, your careless misrepresentations.
George Eliot,The Lifted Veil
There are few prophets in the world; few sublimely beautiful women; few heroes. I can’t afford to give all my love and reverence to such rarities: I want a great deal of those feelings for my every-day fellow-men, especially for the few in the foreground of the great multitude, whose faces I know, whose hands I touch, for whom I have to make way with kindly courtesy.
George Eliot,Adam Bede
We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, “Oh, nothing!” Pride helps; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our hurts— not to hurt others.
George Eliot,Middlemarch
How should all the apparatus of heaven and earth make poetry for a mind that had no movements of awe and tenderness,no sense of fellowship which thrills from the near to the distant, and back again from the distant to the near?
George Eliot,Daniel Deronda
In the checkered area of human experience the seasons are all mingled as in the golden age: fruit and blossom hang together; in the same moment the sickle is reaping and the seed is sprinkled; one tends the green cluster and another treads the winepress. Nay, in each of our lives harvest and spring-time are continually one, until himself gathers us and sows us anew in his invisible fields.
George Eliot,Daniel Deronda
Music:
Sergei Trofanov-L’aube (Dawn)
Excerpt from”CRY OUT IN YOUR WEAKNESS”
Rumi
A dragon was pulling a bear into its terrible mouth
A courageous man went and rescued the bear.
There are such helpers in the world, who rush to save
anyone who cries out. Like mercy itself,
they run toward the screaming.
And they can’t be bought off.
If you were to ask one of those, “Why did you come
so quickly?” he or she would say,
“Because I heard your helplessness.”
Where lowland is,that’s where water goes.
All medicine wants is pain to cure.
And don’t just ask for one mercy.
Let them flood in. Let the sky open under your feet.
Take the cotton out of your ears, the cotton
of consolations, so you can hear the sphere-music.
Tear the binding from around the foot
of your soul, and let it race around the track
in front of the crowd. Loosen the knot of greed
so tight on your neck. Accept your new good luck.
Give your weakness
to one who helps.
Crying out loud and weeping are great resources.
A nursing mother, all she does
is wait to hear her child.
Just a little beginning-whimper,
and she’s there.
God created the child, that is, your wanting,
so that it might cry out, so that milk might come.
Cry out! Don’t be stolid and silent
with your pain. Lament! And let the milk
of loving flow into you.
The hard rain and wind
are ways the cloud has
to take care of us.
Be patient.
Respond to every call
that excites your spirit.
Ignore those that make you fearful
and sad, that degrade you
back toward disease and death.
An act of goodness is of itself an act of happiness. No reward coming after the event can compare with the sweet reward that went with it.
Maurice Maeterlinck
I Know the Only Truth
Marina Tsvetaeva
I know the only truth! The others – cast aside!
There’s no need for the men of Earth to fight with others!
Look, there’s the evening soon and soon it’ll be the night.
What you about,colonels,poets,lovers?
Now wind is near the soil and dew lay on the grass,
The starry blizzard soon will freeze into the heaven,
And soon under the earth will sleep each one of us–
By whom a sleep on it to others hadn’t been given.
symphonylove 