In the End
In the end, the mountains of imagination were nothing
but a house.
And this grand life of mine was nothing but an excuse.
You've been hearing my story so patiently for a lifetime
Now hear this: it was nothing but a fairy tale.
Out Beyond Ideas
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense
In love
In love, aside from sipping the wine of timelessness,
nothing else exists.
There is no reason for living except for giving one's life.
I said, 'First I know you, then I die.'
He said, 'For the one who knows Me, there is no dying.'
Quatrain 1693
O cupbearer, from that wine which you first gave,
Toss in two [more] cups worth and increase (my) happiness.
Either a taste of it must not be made known,
Or, if you have opened the [jug's] top, you must make (me)drunk and ruined.
There Are A Hundred Kinds Of Prayer
Today, like every day, we are ruined, ruined (by 'wine').
Don't open the door of worry, but take up the lute!
There are a hundred kinds of prayer, bowing, and prostration6
For the one whose prayer-niche, is the beauty of the Beloved
If you Want What Visible Reality
If you want what visible reality
can give, you're an employee.
If you want the unseen world,
you're not living your truth.
Both wishes are foolish,
but you'll be forgiven for forgetting
that what you really want is
love's confusing joy.
Passion makes the old medicine new:
Passion makes the old medicine new:
Passion lops off the bough of weariness.
Passion is the elixir that renews:
how can there be weariness
when passion is present?
Oh, don't sigh heavily from fatigue:
seek passion, seek passion, seek passion!
Who makes these changes?
Who makes these changes?
I shoot an arrow right.
It lands left.
I ride after a deer and find myself
Chased by a hog.
I plot to get what I want
And end up in prison.
I dig pits to trap others
And fall in.
I should be suspicious
Of what I want.
The beauty of the heart
The beauty of the heart
is the lasting beauty:
its lips give to drink
of the water of life.
Truly it is the water,
that which pours,
and the one who drinks.
All three become one when
your talisman is shattered.
That oneness you can't know
by reasoning.
The Breeze at Dawn
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.
