Muslim mystic poet from Persia, whose full name is Jalal al-Din Rumi. Although he was born in Balkh (Korasan), his life was linked to the city of Iconium (now Konya), in Turkey. It was there that he took the name of Rumi, replacing his original Mohamed, in honor of the sultan Alauddín —commonly called Rumi— who invited the poet’s father to settle with his family in the city of Iconium when they were forced to flee from the invasion Mongolian.

After his father died in 1231, Rumi traveled to Aleppo and Damascus to study natural sciences, but it was in Iconium that he finished his scientific studies and completed his literary training. In this city he had as spiritual teacher the mystic Shamsuddín, whose teachings prompted him to become a teacher himself, founding the Sufi order of the mewlevís, whose organizational system was later carried out by his son Sultan Valad, also a mystical poet. Among the practices of this order, the ritual dance performed by the dervishes has become well known, turning on themselves and around a central point until completing a total of four different movements. These turns represent the movement of the celestial spheres and the encounter of the soul with God and with itself.

Rumi wrote numerous poetic compositions (more than 40,000 verses) which he collected in six books grouped under the title of Mathnawi (“The mystical quest”). The stories and poems that collect his teachings penetrated deeply into the Islamic world, which makes him considered one of the best Sufi poets of Persia. The Mathnawi is a collection of ethical precepts dedicated many times to the dervishes; its great literary quality and the deep spirituality that it reflects have made it a revered book for the faithful Sufis.

As in other schools of Muslim mysticism, Rumi considered the body and earthly life to be far inferior to the spirit. In his teachings he emphasizes the importance of the “divine spirit” (ruh) present in man, since it is what the human being generously receives from the divinity. That is why man’s love for God must be infinite.

The influence of this man within Sufism was enormous, and from the very moment of his death he was revered as a saint. Even today his tomb in Konya (ancient Iconium) continues to receive numerous faithful who come on pilgrimage, and many of his followers claim to feel his close presence.

Phrases

-Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

-If you are looking for a friend who is faultless, you will be friendless.

-Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious.

-Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.

-Christian, Jew, Muslim, shaman, Zoroastrian, stone, ground, mountain, river, each has a secret way of being with the mystery, unique and not to be judged.

-Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.

-Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.

-Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.

-Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.

-Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.

-When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.

-Dance, when you’re broken open. Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you’re perfectly free.

-Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

-Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.

-Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation.

-If in the darkness of ignorance, you don’t recognize a person’s true nature, look to see whom he has chosen for his leader.

-The morning wind spreads its fresh smell. We must get up and take that in, that wind that lets us live. Breathe before it’s gone.

-Patience is not sitting and waiting, it is foreseeing. It is looking at the thorn and seeing the rose, looking at the night and seeing the day. Lovers are patient and know that the moon needs time to become full.

-Listen with ears of tolerance! See through the eyes of compassion! Speak with the language of love.

-I searched for God and found only myself. I searched for myself and found only God.

-Very little grows on jagged rock. Be ground. Be crumbled, so wildflowers will come up where you are.

-In the slaughterhouse of love, they kill only the best, none of the weak or deformed. Don’t run away from this dying. Whoever’s not killed for love is dead meat.

-Woman is the light of God.

-Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.

-Clean out your ears, don’t listen for what you already know.

-All your anxiety is because of your desire for harmony. Seek disharmony, then you will gain peace.

-Inside any deep asking is the answering.

-All that you think is rain is not. Behind the veil angels sometimes weep.

-Gratitude is the wine for the soul. Go on. Get drunk.

-Conventional opinion is the ruin of our souls.

-A thousand half-loves must be forsaken to take one whole heart home.”
“The truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth.

-Why should I be weary when every cell of my body is bursting with life?

-This is what love does and continues to do. It tastes like honey to adults and milk to children.

-Be kind and honest, and harmful poisons will turn sweet inside you.

-Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah…it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.

-This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor…Welcome and entertain them all. Treat each guest honorably. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

-Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds’ wings.

-Learn the alchemy true human beings know. The moment you accept what troubles you’ve been given the door with open.

-Do not feel lonely, the entire universe is inside you.

-I don’t want learning, or dignity, or respectability. I want this music, and this dawn, and the warmth of your cheek against mine.

-Your heart is the size of an ocean. Go find yourself in its hidden depths.

-Try not to resist the changes that come your way. Instead let life live through you. And do not worry that your life is turning upside down. How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come?

-The ground’s generosity takes in our compost and grows beauty! Try to be more like the ground.

-At the end of my life, with just one breath left, if you come, I’ll sit up and sing.

-Try something different. Surrender.

-I want to be where your bare foot walks, because maybe before you step, you’ll look at the ground. I want that blessing.

-In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest where no-one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.

-Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

-This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.

-That which God said to the rose, and caused it to laugh in full-blown beauty, He said to my heart, and made it a hundred times more beautiful.

-Be like the sun for grace and mercy. Be like the night to cover others’ faults. Be like running water for generosity. Be like death for rage and anger. Be like the Earth for modesty. Appear as you are. Be as you appear.

-Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.

-When I am with you, we stay up all night. When you’re not here, I can’t go to sleep. Praise God for those two insomnias! And the difference between them.

-Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.

-Become the sky. Take an axe to the prison wall. Escape.

-Love sometimes wants to do us a great favor: hold us upside down and shake all the nonsense out.

-Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.

-Something opens our wings. Something makes boredom and hurt disappear. Someone fills the cup in front of us: We taste only sacredness.

-Seek the wisdom that will untie your knot. Seek the path that demands your whole being.

-Wisdom tells us we are not worthy; love tells us we are. My life flows between the two.

-Seek the sound that never ceases. Seek the sun that never sets.

-Lovers have heartaches that can’t be cured by drugs or sleep, or games, but only by seeing their beloved.

-Why are you knocking at every door? Go, knock at the door of your own heart.

-Death has nothing to do with going away. The sun sets. The moon sets. But they are not gone.

-We carry inside us the wonders we seek outside us.

-I have been a seeker and I still am, but I stopped asking the books and the stars. I started listening to the teaching of my soul.

-Keep silent, because the world of silence is a vast fullness.

-The spirit is so near that you can’t see it! But reach for it… don’t be a jar, full of water, whose rim is always dry. Don’t be the rider who gallops all night and never sees the horse that is beneath him.

-There is a voice that doesn’t use words, listen.

-When the world pushes you to your knees, you’re in the perfect position to pray.

-Let your teacher be love itself.

-I should be suspicious of what I want.

-Life is a balance of holding on and letting go.

-I am not this hair, I am not this skin, I am the soul that lives within.

-Achieve some perfection yourself, so that you may not fall into sorrow by seeing the perfection in others.

-Patience with small details makes perfect a large work, like the universe.

-Let us carve gems out of our stony hearts and let them light our path to love.

-Whoever has heart’s doors wide open, could see the sun itself in every atom.

-When I am silent, I fall into the place where everything is music.

-By God, when you see your beauty you will be the idol of yourself.

-Caught by our own thoughts, we worry about everything.

-I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.

-A thousand half-loves must be forsaken to take one whole heart home.

-You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?

-Suffering is a gift. In it is hidden mercy.

-Take someone who doesn’t keep score, who’s not looking to be richer, or afraid of losing, who has not the slightest interest even in his own personality: he’s free.

-Be an empty page, untouched by words.

-Be drunk with love, for love is all that exists.

-With every breath, I plant the seeds of devotion, I am a farmer of the heart.

-It’s your road and yours alone. Others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.

-Anyone who genuinely and consistently with both hands looks for something, will find it.

-There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled. There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled. You feel it, don’t you?

-The whole universe is contained within a single human being – you.

-In the blackest of your moments, wait with no fear.

-Wherever you are, and whatever you do, be in love.

-You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.

-I know you’re tired but come, this is the way.

-And you? When will you begin that long journey into yourself?

-Study me as much as you like, you will not know me, for I differ in a hundred ways from what you see me to be. Put yourself behind my eyes and see me as I see myself, for I have chosen to dwell in a place you cannot see.

-Who could be so lucky? Who comes to a lake for water and sees the reflection of moon.

-Two there are who are never satisfied — the lover of the world and the lover of knowledge.

-Run from what’s comfortable. Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious. I have tried prudent planning long enough. From now on I’ll be mad.

-In Silence there is eloquence. Stop weaving and see how the pattern improves.

-I closed my mouth and spoke to you in a hundred silent ways.

-Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death.

-The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep.

-You think because you understand ‘one’ you must also understand ‘two’, because one and one make two. But you must also understand ‘and’.

-There is a secret medicine given only to those who hurt so hard they can’t hope. The hopers would feel slighted if they knew.

-God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites so that you will have two wings to fly, not one.

-All people on the planet are children, except for a very few. No one is grown up except those free of desire.

-Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absentminded. Someone sober will worry about things going badly. Let the lover be.

-Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.

-I once had a thousand desires. But in my one desire to know you all else melted away.

-Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

-Not only the thirsty seek the water, the water as well seeks the thirsty.

-Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.

-Moonlight floods the whole sky from horizon to horizon; how much it can fill your room depends on its windows.

-Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull of that which you truly love.

-We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust.

-Remember. The way you make love is the way God will be with you.

-I didn’t come here of my own accord, and I can’t leave that way. Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.

-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.

-When you feel a peaceful joy, that’s when you are near truth.

-Either give me more wine or leave me alone.

-When someone beats a rug, the blows are not against the rug, but against the dust in it.

-They say there is a doorway from heart to heart, but what is the use of a door when there are no walls?

-When someone is counting out gold for you, don’t look at your hands, or the gold. Look at the giver.

-Is it really so that the one I love is everywhere?

-Whoever’s calm and sensible is insane!

-Poetry can be dangerous, especially beautiful poetry, because it gives the illusion of having had the experience without actually going through it.

-Give up to grace. The ocean takes care of each wave ’til it gets to shore. You need more help than you know.

-Gamble everything for love, if you’re a true human being. If not, leave this gathering. Half-heartedness doesn’t reach into majesty.

-In the house of lovers, the music never stops, the walls are made of songs and the floor dances.

-Let silence take you to the core of life.

-You and I have spoken all these words, but for the way we have to go,words are no preparation. I have one small drop of knowing in my soul. Let it dissolve in your ocean.

-If light is in your heart you will find your way home.

-Whenever we manage to love without expectations, calculations, negotiations, we are indeed in heaven.

-You had better run from me. My words are fire.

-The moon stays bright when it doesn’t avoid the night.

-A mountain keeps an echo deep inside. That’s how I hold your voice.

-Everything is emptiness. Everything else, accidental. Emptiness brings peace to your loving. Everything else, disease. In this world of trickery, emptiness is what your soul wants.

-The fault is in the one who blames. Spirit sees nothing to criticize.

-What will our children do in the morning if they do not see us fly?

-When all your desires are distilled; You will cast just two votes – to love more, and be happy.

-Everyone is overridden by thoughts; that’s why they have so much heartache and sorrow.

-The very center of your heart is where life begins. The most beautiful place on earth.

-Whenever sorrow comes, be kind to it. For God has placed a pearl in sorrow’s hand.

-The beauty you see in me is a reflection of you.

-Wear gratitude like a cloak and it will feed every corner of your life.

-A little while alone in your room will prove more valuable than anything else that could ever be given you.

-Prayer clears the mist and brings back peace to the soul.

-The only lasting beauty is the beauty of the heart.

-These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.

-Silence is an ocean. Speech is a river. When the ocean is searching for you, don’t walk into the river. Listen to the ocean.

-Come out of the circle of time and into the circle of love.

-A warm, rainy day-this is how it feels when friends get together. Friend refreshes friend then, as flowers do each others, in a spring rain.

-To me nothing in the world is as precious as a genuine smile, especially from a child.

-Study me as much as you like, you will never know me. For I differ a hundred ways from what you see me to be.