Love Song Rainer Maria Rilke How can I keep my soul in me, so that it doesn't touch your soul? How can I raise it high enough, past you, to other things? I would like to shelter it, among remote lost objects, in some dark and silent place that doesn't resonate when your depths resound. Yet everything that touches us, me and you, takes us together like a violin's bow, which draws *one* voice out of two separate strings. Upon what instrument are we two spanned? And what musician holds us in his hand? Oh sweetest song. Translated by Stephen Mitchell
Say I am You / Rumi I am dust particles in sunlight, I am the round sun. To the bits of dust I say, Stay. To the sun, Keep moving. I am morning mist, and the breathing of evening. I am wind in the top of a grove, and surf on the cliff. Mast, rudder, helmsman, and keel, I am also the coral reef they founder on. I am a tree with a trained parrot in its branches. Silence, thought, and voice. The musical air coming through a flute, a spark of stone, a flickering in metal. Both candle, and the moth crazy around it. Rose, and the nightingale lost in the fragrance. I am all orders of being, the circling galaxy, the evolutionary intelligence, the lift, and the falling away. What is, and what isn't. You who know Jelaluddin, You the one in all, say who I am. Say I am You. Translation by Coleman Barks
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam translation by Edward Fitzgerald 4 Now the New Year reviving old Desires, The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires, Where the White Hand of Moses on the Bough Puts out, and Jesus from the Ground suspires.
Gitanjali - Song Offerings by Rabindranath Tagore 12. The time that my journey takes is long and the way of it long. I came out on the chariot of the first gleam of light, and pursued my voyage through the wildernesses of worlds leaving my track on many a star and planet. It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself, and that training is the most intricate which leads to the utter simplicity of a tune. The traveller has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end. My eyes strayed far and wide before I shut them and said `Here art thou!' The question and the cry `Oh, where?' melt into tears of a thousand streams and deluge the world with the flood of the assurance `I am!'
The Gospel of Thomas Translated by Stephen Patterson and Marvin Meyer 72. A [person said] to him, "Tell my brothers to divide my father's possessions with me." He said to the person, "Mister, who made me a divider?" He turned to his disciples and said to them, "I'm not a divider, am I?"
We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable. ~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn
What Can I Do For You? Bob Dylan You have given everything to me. What can I do for You? You have given me eyes to see. What can I do for You? Pulled me out of bondage and You made me renewed inside, Filled up a hunger that had always been denied, Opened up a door no man can shut and You opened it up so wide And You've chosen me to be among the few. What can I do for You? You have laid down Your life for me. What can I do for You? You have explained every mystery. What can I do for You? Soon as a man is born, you know the sparks begin to fly, He gets wise in his own eyes and he's made to believe a lie. Who would deliver him from the death he's bound to die? Well, You've done it all and there's no more anyone can pretend to do. What can I do for You? You have given all there is to give. What can I do for You? You have given me life to live. How can I live for You? I know all about poison, I know all about fiery darts, I don't care how rough the road is, show me where it starts, Whatever pleases You, tell it to my heart. Well, I don't deserve it but I sure did make it through. What can I do for You?
Absolutely Clear Hafiz Don't surrender your loneliness So quickly. Let it cut more deep. Let it ferment and season you As few human Or even divine ingredients can. Something missing in my heart tonight Has made my eyes so soft, My voice So tender, My need of God Absolutely Clear. Translation by Daniel Ladinsky, The Subject Tonight Is Love
After experience had taught me that all things which frequently take place in ordinary life are vain and futile, and when I saw that all the things I feared, and which feared me, had nothing good or bad in them save in so far as the mind was affected by them; I determined at last to inquire whether there was anything which might be truly good, and able to communicate its goodness, and by which the mind might be affected to the exclusion of all other things; I determined, I say, to inquire whether I might discover and attain the faculty of enjoying throughout eternity continual supreme happiness. . . . 'The Improvement of the Intellect', Spinoza
Spiritual life is like living water that springs up from the very depths of our own spiritual experience. In spiritual life everyone has to drink from his or her own well. ~ St. Bernard of Clairvaux
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