The world is filled with light!

O SUN, fill our house once more with light!
Make happy all your friends and blind your foes!
Rise from behind the hill, transform the stones
To rubies and the sour grapes to wine!
O Sun, make our vineyard fresh again,

And fill the steppes with houris and green cloaks!
Physician of the lovers, heaven's lamp!
Rescus the lovers! Help the suffering!
Show but your face - the world is filled with light!
But if you cover it, it's the darkest night!

- Rumi

Waiting for a gift from the Sea

The sea does not reward those
who are too anxious,
too greedy,
or too impatient.

To dig for treasures shows
not only impatience and greed,
but lack of faith.

Patience, patience, patience,
is what the sea teaches.
Patience and faith.

One should lie empty, open,
choiceless as a beach,
waiting for a gift from the sea.

- Anne Lindberg

The joy of each other

If you were all alone in the universe
with no one to talk to,
no one with which to share
the beauty of the stars,
to laugh with,
to touch,
what would be your purpose in life?

It is other life - it is love,
which gives your life meaning.

This is harmony.
We must discover the joy of each other,
the joy of challenge,
the joy of growth.

- Mitsugi Saotome

To have lived light in the spring

Is it so small a thing
To have enjoy'd the sun,
To have lived light in the spring,
To have loved,
to have thought,
to have done...

- Matthew Arnold

Light! Give me light!

Have you ever been at sea in a dense fog,
when it seemed as if a tangible white darkness
shut you in and the great ship,
tense and anxious, groped her way
toward the shore with plummet
and sounding-line,
and you waited with beating heart
for something to happen?

I was like that ship before my education began,
only I was without compass or sounding line,
and no way of knowing how near the harbor was.

"Light! Give me light!"
was the wordless cry of my soul,
and the light of love
shone on me in that very hour.

- Helen Keller

Three passions have governed my life

Three passions have governed my life:
The longings for love, the search for knowledge,
And unbearable pity for the suffering of [humankind].

Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness.
In the union of love I have seen
In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision
Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge.
I have wished to understand the hearts of [people].
I have wished to know why the stars shine.

Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens,
But always pity brought me back to earth;
Cries of pain reverberated in my heart
Of children in famine, of victims tortured
And of old people left helpless.
I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot,
And I too suffer.

This has been my life; I found it worth living.

- Bertrand Russell

Not Quite Enough

There is a way
that nature speaks,
that land speaks.

Most of the time
we are simply not patient enough,
quiet enough,
to pay attention to the story.

- Linda Hogan

A time to keep silence, and a time to speak

For everything there is a season,
And a time for every matter under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to seek, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to throw away;
A time to tear, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate,
A time for war, and a time for peace.

- Ecclesiastes (Holy Bible)

One moment of Patience

One moment of patience
may ward off great disaster.

One moment of impatience
may ruin a whole life.

(Chinese Proverb)

I keep my answers small and keep them near

I keep my answers small and keep them near;
Big questions bruised my mind but still I let
Small answers be a bulwark to my fear.

The huge abstractions I keep from the light;
Small things I handled and caressed and loved.
I let the stars assume the whole of night.

But the big answers clamoured to be moved
Into my life. Their great audacity
Shouted to be acknowledged and believed.

Even when all small answers build up to
Protection of my spirit, I still hear
Big answers striving for their overthrow

And all the great conclusions coming near.

- Elizabeth Jennings

You love the roses

You love the roses - so do I. I wish
They sky would rain down roses, as they rain
From off the shaken bush. Why will it not?
Then all the valley would be pink and white
And soft to tread on. They would fall as light
As feathers, smelling sweet; and it would be
Like sleeping and like waking, all at once!

- George Eliot

In Salutation to the Eternal Peace

Men say the world is full of fear and hate,
And all life's ripening harvest-fields await
The restless sickle of relentless fate.

But I, sweet Soul, rejoice that I was born,
When from the climbing terraces of corn
I watch the golden orioles of Thy morn.

What care I for the world's desire and pride,
Who know the silver wings that gleam and glide,
The homing pigeons of Thine eventide?

What care I for the world's loud weariness,
Who dream in twilight granaries Thou dost bless
With delicate sheaves of mellow silences?

Say, shall I heed dull presages of doom,
Or dread the rumoured loneliness and gloom,
The mute and mythic terror of the tomb?

For my glad heart is drunk and drenched with Thee,
O inmost wind of living ecstasy!
O intimate essence of eternity!

- Sarojini Naidu

Lies About Love

We are a liars, because
the truth of yesterday becomes a lie tomorrow,
whereas letters are fixed,
and we live by the letter of truth.

The love I feel for my friend, this year,
is different from the love I felt last year.
If it were not so, it would be a lie.
Yet we reiterate love! love! love!
as if it were a coin with a fixed value
instead of a flower that dies, and opens a different bud.

- D H Lawrence

Let Go

Do everything with a mind
that lets go.

Don't accept praise or gain
or anything else.

If you let go a little you will have a
little peace;

if you let go a lot you will have
a lot of peace;

if you let go completely you will have
complete peace.

- Ajahn Chah

The same stream of life

The same stream of life that runs through the world
runs through my veins night and day in rhythmic measure.
It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust
of the earth into numberless waves of flowers."

- Rabindranath Tagore

You must understand the whole of life

You must understand the whole of life, not just
one little part of it. That is why you must read,
that is why you must look at the skies, that is
why you must sing and dance, and write poems,
and suffer, and understand, for all that is life.

- Krishnamurti J.

But I want 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

Its your turn now

It is your turn now,
you waited, you were patient.
The time has come,
for us to polish you.
We will transform your inner pearl
into a house of fire.
You're a gold mine.

Did you know that,
hidden in the dirt of the earth?
It is your turn now,
to be placed in fire.
Let us cremate your impurities.

- Rumi

The heart that has truly loved never forgets

The heart that has truly loved never forgets,
But as truly loves on to the close,
As the sunflower turns on her god when he sets
The same look which she turned when he rose!

- Thomas Moore

The Sun of the First Day

The sun of the first day
Put the question
To the new manifestation of life-
Who are you?
There was no answer.
Years passed by.

The last sun of the last day
Uttered the question
on the shore of the western sea
In the hush of evening-
Who are you?
No answer came again.

- Rabindranath Tagore

I don't know others

The flower invites the butterfly with no-mind;
The butterfly visits the flower with no-mind.
The flower opens, the butterfly comes;
The butterfly comes, the flower opens.
I don't know others,
Others don't know me.
By not-knowing we follow nature's course.

- Ryokan

I slip into the woods

When all thoughts
Are exhausted
I slip into the woods
And gather
A pile of shepherd's purse.

Like the little stream
Making its way
Through the mossy crevices
I, too, quietly
Turn clear and transparent.

- Ryokan

My garden is the universe

Then all at once in late August's heat,
tall leafless stalks crowned
with iridescent pink and purple blossoms
burst from the purgatory in the earth.

This arcane act of nature,
though perceived by us as ordinary,
is a manifestation of Maya's phantom play,
the great immensity expressed in every way.

My garden is the universe.
I am the universe.
I am my garden.
All things are the same.

- Duane Michals

I am the dust in the sunlight

I am the dust in the sunlight, I am the ball of the sun . . .

I am the mist of morning, the breath of evening . . . .
I am the spark in the stone, the gleam of gold in the metal . . . .
The rose and the nightingale drunk with its fragrance.

I am the chain of being, the circle of the spheres,
The scale of creation, the rise and the fall.
I am what is and is not . . .

I am the soul in all.

- Rumi

Every moment is made glorious

Both light and shadow
are the dance of Love.

Love has no cause;
it is the astrolabe of God’s secrets.

Lover and Loving are
inseparable and timeless.

Although I may try to describe Love
when I experience it I am speechless.

Although I may try to write about Love
I am rendered helpless;
my pen breaks and the paper slips away
at the ineffable place
where Lover, Loving and Loved are one.

Every moment is made glorious
by the light of Love.

- Rumi

The lover is left like a bird without wings

When the rose is gone and the garden faded
you will no longer hear the nightingale's song.
The Beloved is all; the lover just a veil.
The Beloved is living; the lover a dead thing.
If love withholds its strengthening care,
the lover is left like a bird without care,
the lover is left like a bird without wings.
How will I be awake and aware
if the light of the Beloved is absent?
Love wills that this Word be brought forth

- Rumi

Not Afraid of Night

Being walkers with the dawn and morning,
Walkers with the sun and morning,
We are not afraid of night,
Nor days of gloom,
Nor darkness--

Being walkers with the sun and morning.

- Langston Hughes

Every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope

Look to this day:
For it is life, the very life of life.

In its brief course
Lie all the verities and realities of your existence.

The bliss of growth,
The glory of action,
The splendour of achievement
Are but experiences of time.

For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow is only a vision;
And today well-lived, makes
Yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Look well therefore to this day;
Such is the salutation to the ever-new dawn!

- Kalidasa (Great Indian Poet)