Virginia Woolf---To The Lighthouse

A light here required a shadow there

~

It was a splendid mind. For if thought is like the keyboard of a piano, divided into so many notes, or like the alphabet is ranged in twenty-six letters all in order, then his splendid mind had one by one,firmly and accurately, until it had reached, say, the letter Q. He reached Q. Very few people in the whole of England ever reach Q. Here, stopping for one moment by the stone urn which held the geraniums, he saw, but now far, far away, like children picking up shells, divinely innocent and occupied with little trifles at their feet and somehow entirely defenceless against a doom which he perceived, his wife and son, together,in the window. They needed his protection; he gave it them. But after Q?What comes next? After Q there are a number of letters the last of which is scarcely visible to mortal eyes, but glimmers red in the distance. Z is only reached once by one man in a generation. Still, if he could reach R it would be something. Here at least was Q. He dug his heels in at Q. Q he was sure of. Q he could demonstrate. If Q then is Q--R--. Here he knocked his pipe out, with two or three resonant taps on the handle of the urn,and proceeded. "Then R ..." He braced himself. He clenched himself. Qualities that would have saved a ship's company exposed on a broiling sea with six biscuits and a flask of water--endurance and justice, foresight, devotion, skill, came to his help. R is then--what isR? A shutter, like the leathern eyelid of a lizard, flickered over the intensity of his gaze and obscured the letter R. In that flash of darkness he heard people saying--he was a failure--that R was beyond him.He would never reach R. On to R, once more. R-- Qualities that in a desolate expedition across the icy solitudes of the Polar region would have made him the leader, the guide, the counsellor, whose temper, neither sanguine nor despondent, surveys with equanimity what is to be and faces it, came to his help again. R-- The lizard's eye flickered once more. The veins on his forehead bulged. The geranium in the urn became startlingly visible and, displayed among its leaves, he could see, without wishing it, that old, that obvious distinction between the two classes of men; on the one hand the steadygoers of superhuman strength who, plodding and persevering, repeat the whole alphabet in order, twenty-six letters in all, from start to finish;on the other the gifted, the inspired who, miraculously, lump all the letters together in one flash--the way of genius. He had not genius; he laid no claim to that: but he had, or might have had, the power to repeat every letter of the alphabet from A to Z accurately in order. Meanwhile,he stuck at Q. On, then, on to R. Feelings that would not have disgraced a leader who, now that the snow has begun to fall and the mountain top is covered in mist, knows that he must lay himself down and die before morning comes, stole upon him,paling the colour of his eyes, giving him, even in the two minutes of his turn on the terrace, the bleached look of withered old age. Yet he wouldnot die lying down; he would find some crag of rock, and there, his eyes fixed on the storm, trying to the end to pierce the darkness, he would die standing. He would never reach R. He stood stock-still, by the urn, with the geranium flowing over it. How many men in a thousand million, he asked himself, reach Z afterall? Surely the leader of a forlorn hope may ask himself that, and answer,without treachery to the expedition behind him, "One perhaps." One in ageneration. Is he to be blamed then if he is not that one? provided he has toiled honestly, given to the best of his power, and till he has no more left to give? And his fame lasts how long? It is permissible even for a dying hero to think before he dies how men will speak of him hereafter.His fame lasts perhaps two thousand years. And what are two thousand years? (asked Mr Ramsay ironically, staring at the hedge). What, indeed,if you look from a mountain top down the long wastes of the ages? The very stone one kicks with one's boot will outlast Shakespeare. His own little light would shine, not very brightly, for a year or two, and would then be merged in some bigger light, and that in a bigger still. (He looked into the hedge, into the intricacy of the twigs.) Who then could blame the leader of that forlorn party which after all has climbed high enough to see the waste of the years and the perishing of the stars, if before death stiffens his limbs beyond the power of movement he does a little consciously raise his numbed fingers to his brow, and square his shoulders, so that when the search party comes they will find him dead at his post, the fine figure of a soldier? Mr Ramsay squared his shoulders and stood very upright by the urn. Who shall blame him, if, so standing for a moment he dwells upon fame, upon search parties, upon cairns raised by grateful followers over his bones? Finally, who shall blame the leader of the doomed expedition,if, having adventured to the uttermost, and used his strength wholly to the last ounce and fallen asleep not much caring if he wakes or not, he now perceives by some pricking in his toes that he lives, and does not on the whole object to live, but requires sympathy, and whisky, and some one to tell the story of his suffering to at once? Who shall blame him? Who will not secretly rejoice when the hero puts his armour off, and halts bythe window and gazes at his wife and son, who, very distant at first,gradually come closer and closer, till lips and book and head are clearly before him, though still lovely and unfamiliar from the intensity of his isolation and the waste of ages and the perishing of the stars, and finally putting his pipe in his pocket and bending his magnificent head before her--who will blame him if he does homage to the beauty of the world?

~

A sort of transaction went on between them, in which she was on one side, and life was on another, and she was always trying to get the better of it, as it was of her; and sometimes they parleyed (when she sat alone); there were, she remembered, great reconciliation scenes; but for the most part, oddly enough, she must admit that she felt this thing that she called life terrible, hostile, and quick to pounce on you if you gave it a chance. There were the eternal problems: suffering; death; the poor. There was always a woman dying of cancer even here. And yet she had said to all these children, You shall go through with it. To eight people she had said relentlessly that... For that reason, knowing what was before them — love and ambition and being wretched alone in dreary places — she had often the feeling, Why must they grow up and lose it all? And then she said to herself, brandishing her sword at life, Nonsense. They will be perfectly happy.

~

"Like a work of art," she repeated, looking from her canvas to the drawing-room steps and back again. She must rest for a moment. And, resting, looking from one to the other vaguely, the old question which transversed the sky of the soul perpetually, the vast, the general question which was apt to particularise itself at such moments as these, when she released faculties that had been on the strain, stood over her, paused over her, darkened over her. What is the meaning of life? That was all — a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one. This, that, and the other; herself and Charles Tansley and the breaking wave; Mrs. Ramsay bringing them together; Mrs. Ramsay saying, "Life stand still here"; Mrs. Ramsay making of the moment something permanent (as in another sphere Lily herself tried to make of the moment something permanent) — this was of the nature of a revelation. In the midst of chaos there was shape; this eternal passing and flowing (she looked at the cloud going and the leaves shaking) was struck into stability. Life stand still here, Mrs. Ramsay said. "Mrs. Ramsay! Mrs. Ramsay!" she repeated. She owed it all to her.

~

For him to gaze as Lilysaw him gazing at Mrs Ramsay was a rapture, equivalent, Lily felt, to the loves of dozens of young men (and perhaps Mrs Ramsay had never excited the loves of dozens of young men). It was love, she thought, pretending to move her canvas, distilled and filtered; love that never attempted to clutch its object; but, like the love which mathematicians bear their symbols, or poets their phrases, was meant to be spread over the world and become part of the human gain. So it was indeed. The world by all means should have shared it, could Mr Bankes have said why that woman pleased him so; why the sight of her reading a fairy tale to her boy had upon him precisely the same effect as the solution of a scientific problem, so that he rested in contemplation of it, and felt, as he felt when he had proved something absolute about the digestive system of plants, that barbarity was tamed, the reign of chaos subdued. Such a rapture--for by what other name could one call it?--made Lily Briscoe forget entirely what she had been about to say. It was nothing of importance; something about Mrs Ramsay. It paled beside this"rapture," this silent stare, for which she felt intense gratitude; for nothing so solaced her, eased her of the perplexity of life, and miraculously raised its burdens, as this sublime power, this heavenly gift, and one would no more disturb it, while it lasted, than break up the shaft of sunlight, lying level across the floor. That people should love like this, that Mr Bankes should feel this for Mrs Ramsey (she glanced at him musing) was helpful, was exalting. She wiped one brush after another upon a piece of old rag, menially, on purpose. She took shelter from the reverence which covered all women; she felt herself praised. Let him gaze; she would steal a look at her picture.

~

How, then, she had asked herself, did one know one thing or another thing about people, sealed as they were? Only like a bee, drawn by some sweetness or sharpness in the air intangible to touch or taste, one haunted the dome-shaped hive, ranged the wastes of the air over the countries of the world alone, and then haunted the hives with their murmurs and their stirrings; the hives, which were people.

~

Bertolt Brecht

Ich will mit dem gehen, den ich liebe.

Ich will nicht ausrechnen, was es kostet.

Ich will nicht nachdenken, ob es gut ist.

Ich will nicht wissen, ob er mich liebt.

Ich will mit ihm gehen, den ich liebe.

~~

I want to go with the one I love.

I do not want to calculate the cost.

I do not want to think about whether it's good.

I do not want to know whether he loves me.

I want to go with whom I love.

Rumi

In every breath

if you're the center

of your own desires

you'll lose the grace

of your beloved

but if in every breath

you blow away

your self claim

the ecstasy of love

will soon arrive

in every breath

if you're the center

of your own thoughts

the sadness of autumn

will fall on you

but if in every breath

you strip naked

just like a winter

the joy of spring

will grow from within

all your impatience

comes from the push

for gain of patience

let go of the effort

and peace will arrive

all your unfulfilled desires

are from your greed

for gain of fulfillments

let go of them all

and they will be sent as gifts

fall in love with

the agony of love

not the ecstasy

then the beloved

will fall in love with you!

Ghazal (Ode) 323Translation by Nader Khalili

"Rumi, Fountain of Fire"Cal-Earth Press, 1994

Rainer Maria Rilke

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,

then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,

go to the limits of your longing.

Embody me.

Flare up like flame and make

big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you:

beauty and terror.

Just keep going.

No feeling is final.

Don't let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.

You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

Muhammed Ibn 'Ali Ibn 'Arabi

All that is left to us by tradition

is mere words.
It is up to us to find out what they mean.

From the Journal of Henry David Thoreau

Who looks in the sun will see no light else; but also he will see no shadow. Our life revolves unceasingly, but the centre is ever the same, and the wise will regard only the seasons of the soul.

~

We are as much as we see. Faith is sight and knowledge. The hands only serve the eyes.

~

Friends — They are like air bubbles on water, hastening to flow together. History tells of Orestes and Pylades, Damon and Pythias, but why should not we put to shame those old reserved worthies by a community of such? Constantly, as it were through a remote skylight, I have glimpses of a serene friendship-land, and know the better why brooks murmur and violets grow. This conjunction of souls, like waves which met and break, subsides also backward over things, and gives all a fresh aspect. I would live henceforth with some gentle soul such a life as may be conceived, double for variety, single for harmony — two, only that we might admire at our oneness — one, because indivisible. Such community to be a pledge of holy living. How could aught unworthy be admitted into our society? To listen with one ear to each summer sound, to behold with one eye each summer scene, our visual rays so to meet and mingle with the object as to be one bent and doubled; with two tongues to be wearied, and thought to spring ceaselessly from a double fountain.

~

Have no mean hours, but be grateful for every hour, and accept what it brings. The reality will make any sincere record respectable. No day will have been wholly misspent, if one sincere, thoughtful page has been written. Let the daily tide leave some deposit on these pages, as it leaves sand and shells on the shore. So much increase of terra firma. this may be a calendar of the ebbs and flows of the soul; and on these sheets as a beach, the waves may cast up pearls and seaweed.

~

And the cost of a thing it will be remembered is the amount of life it requires to be exchanged for it.

~

They who know of no purer sources of truth, who have traced up its stream no higher, stand, and wisely stand, by the Bible and the Constitution, and drink at it there with reverence and humility; but they who behold where it comes trickling into this lake or that pool, gird up their loins once more, and continue their pilgrimage toward its fountain-head. The hidden significance of these fables which is sometimes thought to have been detected, the ethics running parallel to the poetry and history, are not so remarkable as the readiness with which they may be made to express a variety of truths. As if they were the skeletons of still older and more universal truths than any whose flesh and blood they are for the time made to wear. It is like striving to make the sun, or the wind, or the sea symbols to signify exclusively the particular thoughts of our day. But what signifies it? In the mythus a superhuman intelligence uses the unconscious thoughts and dreams of men as its hieroglyphics to address men unborn. In the history of the human mind, these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noonday thoughts of men, as Aurora the sun's rays. The matutine intellect of the poet, keeping in advance of the glare of philosophy, always dwells in this auroral atmosphere. The wisest man preaches no doctrines; he has no scheme; he sees no rafter, not even a cobweb, against the heavens. It is clear sky. If I ever see more clearly at one time than at another, the medium through which I see is clearer. My life has been the poem I would have writ,But I could not both live and utter it. It would be worth the while to look closely into the eye which has been open and seeing at such hours, and in such solitudes, its dull, yellowish, greenish eye. Methinks my own soul must be a bright invisible green.

~

What are the earth and all its interests beside the deep surmise which pierces and scatters them? It is so rare to meet with a man out-doors who cherishes a worthy thought in his mind, which is independent of the labor of his hands.

~

Harper Lee

"She was. She had her own view of things, a lot different from mine, maybe... son, I told you that if you hadn't lost your head I'd have made you go read to her. I wanted you to see something about her--- I wanted you to see what REAL courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. Mrs. Dubose won, all ninety-eight pounds of her. According to her views, she died beholden to nothing and anybody. She was the bravest person I ever knew."
---Atticus Finch.

"Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.

That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it."Your father’s right," she said. "Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird

Baba Ashfaq Ahmed

"woh bible wala pyar jo kehta hay k..

Love is patient, Love is kind,

It does not envy, it does not boast,

It is not proud, It is not rude,

It is not self-seeking,It is not easily angered,

It keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil,

but rejoices with the truth.
Love always protects, always trusts,

always hopes, always perseveres.

Love bears all things, believes all things,

hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends.
L o v e N e v e r F a i l s.

mein agar tum sey aisa pyar karoon ga to tumharey paas thori rahoon ga..

phir to mein uuper fizaon mein urr jaoon ga...door buhat door"

Excerpt-Darkness at Noon(Arthur Koestler)

And yet there were ways of approach to him. Sometimes he would respond unexpectedly to a tune, or even the memory of a tune, or of the folded hands of the Pietà, or of certain scenes of his childhood. As if a tuning-fork had been struck, there would be answering vibrations, and once this had started a state would be produced which the mystics called"ecstacy" and saints "contemplation"; the greatest and soberest of modern psychologists had recognized this state as a fact and called it the"oceanic sense." And, indeed, one's personality dissolved as a grain of salt in the sea; but at the same time the infinite sea seemed to be contained in the grain of salt. The grain could no longer be localized in time and space. It was a state in which thought lost its direction and started to circle, like the compass needle at the magnetic pole; until finally it cut loose from its axis and travelled freely in space, like a bunch of light in the night; and until it seemed that all thoughts and sensations, even pain and joy itself, were only the spectrum lines of the same ray of light, disintegrating in the prism of consciousness.

The Waking by Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?

God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,

And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do

To you and me; so take the lively air,

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

What falls away is always. And is near.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I learn by going where I have to go.

Rumi

How could you reach the pearl by only looking at the sea?

If you seek the pearl, be a diver:

the diver needs several qualities:

he must trust his rope and his life to the Friend's hand,

he must stop breathing,

and he must jump.

Fihi ma Fihi

Theodore Roethke

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,

I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;

I hear my echo in the echoing wood-

-A lord of nature weeping to a tree,

I live between the heron and the wren,

Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What's madness but nobility of soul

At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!

I know the purity of pure despair,

My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,

That place among the rocks-

-is it a cave,Or winding path?

The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!

A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,

And in broad day the midnight come again!

A man goes far to find out what he is-

-Death of the self in a long, tearless night,

All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire.

My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,

Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?

A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.

The mind enters itself, and God the mind,

And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

Monet's Waterlilies by Robert Hayden

Today as the news from Selma and Saigon

poisons the air like fallout,

I come again to see

the serene, great picture that I love.

Here space and time exist in light

the eye like the eye of faith believes.

The seen, the known

dissolve in iridescence, become

illusive flesh of light

that was not, was, forever is.

O light beheld as through refracting tears.

Here is the aura of that world

each of us has lost.

Here is the shadow of its joy.

Rumi

These spiritual window-shoppers,

who idly ask, 'How much is that?'

Oh, I'm just looking.

They handle a hundred items and put them down,

shadows with no capital.
What is spent is love and two eyes wet with weeping.

But these walk into a shop,

and their whole lives pass suddenly in that moment, in that shop.
Where did you go?

"Nowhere."

What did you have to eat?

"Nothing much."
Even if you don't know what you want,

buy _

something,_

to be part of the exchanging flow.
Start a huge, foolish project,

like Noah.
It makes absolutely no difference

what people think of you.

The lover wields the sword of Nothingness

in order to dispatch all but God:

consider what remains after Nothing.

There remains but God:

all the rest is gone.

Rumi

Thy love made proclamation to the world
And every heart into confusion hurled,
Then burnt all up and into ashes turned
And to the indifferent wind those ashes spurned

Abu Said Abul-Khair

How much longer?

Chiseling and polishing the words

How much longer?

Your scattered arrows missing the target

If you have ever read

A single page from the book of silence

Much you had laughed

At the vanity of what was said and heard

Frances Anne Kemble

ABSENCE.

What shall I do with all the days and hours

That must be counted ere I see thy face?

How shall I charm the interval that lowers

Between this time and that sweet time of grace?
Shall I in slumber steep each weary sense,

Weary with longing?--shall I flee away

Into past days, and with some fond pretence

Cheat myself to forget the present day?
Shall love for thee lay on my soul the sin

Of casting from me God's great gift of time?

Shall I, these mists of memory locked within,

Leave and forget life's purposes sublime?
O, how or by what means may I contrive

To bring the hour that brings thee back more near?

How may I teach my drooping hope to live

Until that blessèd time, and thou art here?
I'll tell thee; for thy sake I will lay hold

Of all good aims, and consecrate to thee,
In worthy deeds, each moment that is told

While thou, belovèd one! art far from me.
For thee I will arouse my thoughts to try

All heavenward flights, all high and holy strains;

For thy dear sake I will walk patiently

Through these long hours, nor call their minutes pains.
I will this dreary blank of absence make

A noble task-time; and will therein strive

To follow excellence, and to o'ertake

More good than I have won since yet I live.
So may this doomèd time build up in me

A thousand graces, which shall thus be thine;

So may my love and longing hallowed be,

And thy dear thought an influence divine.

Milan Kundera

He recalled the noisy music at dinner and said to himself, ``Noise has one advantage. It drowns out words.'' And suddenly he realized that all his life he had done nothing but talk, write, lecture, concoct sentences, search for formulations and amend them, so in the end no words were precise, their meanings were obliterated, their content lost, they turned into trash, chaff, dust, sand; prowling through his brain, tearing at his head, they were his insomnia, his illness. And what he yearned for at that moment, vaguely but with all his might, was a unbounded music, absolute sound, a pleasant and happy all-encompassing, the futility, the vanity of words.

~The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Gibran's Sand and Foam

I AM FOREVER walking upon these shores, Betwixt the sand and the foam, The high tide will erase my foot-prints, And the wind will blow away the foam. But the sea and the shore will remain Forever.

It was but yesterday I thought myself a fragment quivering without rhythm in the sphere of life. Now I know that I am the sphere, and all life in rhythmic fragments moves within me.

They say to me in their awakening, "You and the world you live in are but a grain of sand upon the infinite shore of an infinite sea." And in my dream I say to them, "I am the infinite sea, and all worlds are but grains of sand upon my shore."

Only once have I been made mute. It was when a man asked me, "Who are you?"

The Sphinx spoke only once, and the Sphinx said, "A grain of sand is a desert, and a desert is a grain of sand; and now let us all be silent again." I heard the Sphinx, but I did not understand.

Remembrance is a form of meeting. Strange, the desire for certain pleasures is a part of my pain.

My house says to me, "Do not leave me, for here dwells your past." And the road says to me, "Come and follow me, for I am your future." And I say to both my house and the road, "I have no past, nor have I a future. If I stay here, there is a going in my staying; and if I go there is a staying in my going. Only love and death will change all things."

Seven times have I despised my soul:The first time when I saw her being meek that she might attain height.The second time when I saw her limping before the crippled.The third time when she was given to choose between the hard and the easy, and she chose the easy.The fourth time when she committed a wrong, and comforted herself that others also commit wrong.The fifth time when she forbore for weakness, and attributed her patience to strength.The sixth time when she despised the ugliness of a face, and knew not that it was one of her own masks.And the seventh time when she sang a song of praise, and deemed it a virtue.

I AM IGNORANT of absolute truth. But I am humble before my ignorance and therein lies my honor and my reward.

There is a space between man's imagination and man's attainment that may only be traversed by his longing.

Paradise is there, behind that door, in the next room; but I have lost the key.Perhaps I have only mislaid it.

You are blind and I am deaf and dumb, so let us touch hands and understand.

The significance of man is not in what he attains, but rather in what he longs to attain.

Some of us are like ink and some like paper.And if it were not for the blackness of some of us, some of us would be dumb;And if it were not for the whiteness of some of us, some of us would be blind.

Give me an ear and I will give you a voice.

Our mind is a sponge; our heart is a stream.Is it not strange that most of us choose sucking rather than running?

When you long for blessings that you may not name, and when you grieve knowing not the cause, then indeed you are growing with all things that grow, and rising toward your greater self.

When one is drunk with a vision, he deems his faint expression of it the very wine.
You drink wine that you may be intoxicated; and I drink that it may sober me from that other wine.

When my cup is empty I resign myself to its emptiness; but when it is half full I resent its half-fulness.

The reality of the other person is not in what he reveals to you, but in what he cannot reveal to you.Therefore, if you would understand him, listen not to what he says but rather to what he does not say.

Half of what I say is meaningless; but I say it so that the other half may reach you.

My loneliness was born when men praised my talkative faults and blamed my silent virtues.

When Life does not find a singer to sing her heart she produces a philosopher to speak her mind.

A truth is to be known always, to be uttered sometimes.

The real in us is silent; the acquired is talkative.

The voice of life in me cannot reach the ear of life in you; but let us talk that we may not feel lonely.

If winter should say, "Spring is in my heart," who would believe winter?

Every seed is a longing.

Should you really open your eyes and see, you would behold your image in all images.And should you open your ears and listen, you would hear your own voice in all voices.

It takes two of us to discover truth: one to utter it and one to understand it.

Though the wave of words is forever upon us, yet our depth is forever silent.

Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth.

Now let us play hide and seek. Should you hide in my heart it would not be difficult to find you. But should you hide behind your own shell, then it would be useless for anyone to seek you.

A woman may veil her face with a smile.

You owe more than gold to him who serves you. Give him of your heart or serve him.

Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky. We fell them down and turn them into paper that we may record our emptiness.

Once I said to a poet, "We shall not know your worth until you die." And he answered saying, "Yes, death is always the revealer. And if indeed you would know my worth it is that I have more in my heart than upon my tongue, and more in my desire than in my hand."

Poetry is wisdom that enchants the heart. Wisdom is poetry that sings in the mind. If we could enchant man's heart and at the same time sing in his mind, Then in truth he would live in the shadow of God.

They say the nightingale pierces his bosom with a thorn when he sings his love song. So do we all. How else should we sing?

A madman is not less a musician than you or myself; only the instrument on which he plays is a little out of tune.

No longing remains unfulfilled.

Your other self is always sorry for you. But your other self grows on sorrow; so all is well.

We live only to discover beauty. All else is a form of waiting.

Sow a seed and the earth will yield you a flower. Dream your dream to the sky and it will bring you your beloved.

If you would possess you must not claim.

When a man's hand touches the hand of a woman they both touch the heart of eternity.

Love is the veil between lover and lover.

Lovers embrace that which is between them rather than each other.

Love is a word of light, written by a hand of light, upon a page of light.

If you do not understand your friend under all conditions you will never understand him.

Your mind and my heart will never agree until your mind ceases to live in numbers and my heart in the mist.

HOW SHALL MY heart be unsealed unless it be broken?

Only great sorrow or great joy can reveal your truth. If you would be revealed you must either dance naked in the sun, or carry your cross.

Should nature heed what we say of contentment no river would seek the sea, and no winter would turn to Spring. Should she heed all we say of thrift, how many of us would be breathing this air?

You are free before the sun of the day, and free before the stars of the night; And you are free when there is no sun and no moon and no star. You are even free when you close your eyes upon all there is. But you are a slave to him whom you love because you love him, And a slave to him who loves you because he loves you.

We are all beggars at the gate of the temple, and each one of us receives his share of the bounty of the King when he enters the temple, and when he goes out. But we are all jealous of one another, which is another way of belittling the King.

I stopped my guest on the threshold and said, "Nay, wipe not your feet as you enter, but as you go out."

Generosity is not in giving me that which I need more than you do, but it is in giving me that which you need more than I do.

I too am visited by angels and devils, but I get rid of them. When it is an angel I pray an old prayer, and he is bored; When it is a devil I commit an old sin, and he passes me by.

Those who give you a serpent when you ask for a fish, may have nothing but serpents to give. It is then generosity on their part.

If your heart is a volcano how shall you expect flowers to bloom in your hands?

A strange form of self-indulgence! There are times when I would be wronged and cheated, that I may laugh at the expense of those who think I do not know I am being wronged and cheated.

Let him who wipes his soiled hands with your garment take your garment. He may need it again; surely you would not.

Please do not whitewash your inherent faults with your acquired virtues. I would have the faults; they are like mine own.

The truly just is he who feels half guilty of your misdeeds.

Only an idiot and a genius break man-made laws; and they are the nearest to the heart of God.

If all they say of good and evil were true, then my life is but one long crime.

Oftentimes I have hated in self-defense; but if I were stronger I would not have used such a weapon.

Your saying to me, "I do not understand you," is praise beyond my worth, and an insult you do not deserve.

How mean am I when life gives me gold and I give you silver, and yet I deem myself generous.

Strange that you should pity the slow-footed and not the slow-minded, And the blind-eyed rather than the blind-hearted.

Should we all confess our sins to one another we would all laugh at one another for our lack of originality. Should we all reveal our virtues we would also laugh for the same cause.

How heedless you are when you would have men fly with your wings and you cannot even give them a feather.

Hate is a dead thing. Who of you would be a tomb?

They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; And I deem them mad because they think my days have a price.

They spread before us their riches of gold and silver, of ivory and ebony, and we spread before them our hearts and our spirits; And yet they deem themselves the hosts and us the guests.

I would not be the least among men with dreams and the desire to fulfill them, rather than the greatest with no dreams and no desires.

The truly free man is he who bears the load of the bond slave patiently.

Solitude is a silent storm that breaks down all our dead branches; Yet it sends our living roots deeper into the living heart of the living earth.

Once I spoke of the sea to a brook, and the brook thought me but an imaginative exaggerator; And once I spoke of a brook to the sea, and the sea thought me but a depreciative defamer.

The deep and the high go to the depth or to the height in a straight line; only the spacious can move in circles.

Perhaps the sea's definition of a shell is the pearl. Perhaps time's definition of coal is the diamond.
Every great man I have known had something small in his make-up; and it was that small something which prevented inactivity or madness or suicide.

I am the flame and I am the dry bush, and one part of me consumes the other part.

We are all seeking the summit of the holy moutain; but shall not our road be shorter if we consider the past a chart and not a guide?

Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too self-ful to seek other than itself.

Had I filled myself with all that you know what room should I have for all that you do not know?

The nearest to my heart are a king without a kingdom and a poor man who does not know how to beg.

Dig anywhere in the earth and you will find a treasure, only you must dig with the faith of a peasant.

A traveler am I and a navigator, and every day I discover a new region within my soul.

I said to Life, "I would hear Death speak." And Life raised her voice a little higher and said, "You hear him now."

My friend, you and I shall remain strangers unto life, And unto one another, and each unto himself, Until the day when you shall speak and I shall listen Deeming your voice my own voice; And when I shall stand before you Thinking myself standing before a mirror.
They say to me, "Should you know yourself you would know all men." And I say, "Only when I seek all men shall I know myself."

MAN IS TWO men; one is awake in darkness, the other is asleep in light.

A hermit is one who renounces the world of fragments that he may enjoy the world wholly and without interruption.

Yestereve I saw philosophers in the market-place carrying their heads in baskets, and crying aloud, "Wisdom! Wisdom for sale!" Poor philosophers! They must needs sell their heads to feed their hearts.

Said a philosopher to a street sweeper, "I pity you. Yours is a hard and dirty task." And the street sweeper said, "Thank you, sir. But tell me what is your task?" And the philosopher answered saying, "I study man's mind, his deeds and his desires." Then the street sweeper went on with his sweeping and said with a smile, "I pity you too."

He is the true prince who finds his throne in the heart of the dervish.

They say to me, "A bird in the hand is worth ten in the bush." But I say, "A bird and a feather in the bush is worth more than ten birds in the hand." Your seeking after that feather is life with winged feet; nay, it is life itself.

Beauty shines brighter in the heart of him who longs for it than in the eyes of him who sees it.

I admire him who reveals his mind to me; I honor him who unveils his dreams. But why am I shy, and even a little ashamed before him who serves me?

Only those with secrets in their hearts could divine the secrets in our hearts.

Yes, there is a Nirvanah; it is in leading your sheep to a green pasture, and in putting your child to sleep, and in writing the last line of your poem.

We choose our joys and our sorrows long before we experience them.
Sadness is but a wall between two gardens.

When either your joy or your sorrow becomes great the world becomes small.

They say to me, "You must needs choose between the pleasures of this world and the peace of the next world." And I say to them, "I have chosen both the delights of this world and the peace of the next. For I know in my heart that the Supreme Poet wrote but one poem, and it scans perfectly, and it also rhymes perfectly."

Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking.

When you reach your height you shall desire but only for desire; and you shall hunger, for hunger; and you shall thirst for greater thirst.

If you reveal your secrets to the wind you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.

When night comes and you too are dark, lie down and be dark with a will. And when morning comes and you are still dark stand up and say to the day with a will, "I am still dark." It is stupid to play a role with the night and the day. They would both laugh at you.

When I stood a clear mirror before you, you gazed into me and saw your image.Then you said, "I love you."But in truth you loved yourself in me.

You may sit at your window watching the passersby. And watching you may see a nun walking toward your right hand, and a prostitute toward your left hand.And you may say in your innocence, "How noble is the one and how ignoble is the other."But should you close your eyes and listen awhile you would hear a voice whispering in the ether, "One seeks me in prayer, and the other in pain. And in the spirit of each there is a bower for my spirit."

May God feed the over-abundant!

A great man has two hearts; one bleeds and the other forbears.

Should one tell a lie which does not hurt you nor anyone else, why not say in your heart that the house of his facts is too small for his fancies, and he had to leave it for larger space?

You may forget the one with whom you have laughed, but never the one with whom you have wept.

There must be something strangely sacred in salt. It is in our tears and in the sea.

Our God in His gracious thirst will drink us all, the dewdrop and the tear.

It is indeed misery if I stretch an empty hand to men and receive nothing; but it is hopelessness if I stretch a full hand and find none to receive.

I long for eternity because there I shall meet my unwritten poems and my unpainted pictures.

Our most sacred tears never seek our eyes.

You may have heard of the Blessed Mountain.It is the highest mountain in our world.Should you reach the summit you would have only one desire, and that to descend and be with those who dwell in the deepest valley.That is why it is called the Blessed Mountain.

Rabindranath Tagore

There is a looker-on who sits behind my eyes.

It seems he has seen things in ages and worlds beyond memory's shore,

and those forgotten sights glisten on the grass and shiver on the leaves.

He has seen under new veils the face of the one beloved,

in twilight hours of many a nameless star.

Therefore his sky seems to ache with
the pain of countless meetings and partings,

and a longing pervades this spring breeze,

-the longing that is full of the whisper of
ages without beginning.
-from Lover's Gifts

Two Wolves - A Cherokee Parable

An old Cherokee chief was teaching his grandson about life..."A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy. "It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves."One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, self-doubt, and ego."The other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. "This same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person, too.

"The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather,

"Which wolf will win?"

The old chief simply replied,

"The one you feed."

Joseph Conrad

And then, I repeat, I was going home — to that home distant enough for all its hearthstones to be like one hearthstone, by which the humblest of us has the right to sit. We wander in our thousands over the face of the earth, the illustrious and the obscure, earning beyond the seas our fame, our money, or only a crust of bread; but it seems to me that for each of us going home must be like going to render an account. We return to face our superiors, our kindred, our friends — those whom we obey, and those whom we love; but even they who have neither, the most free, lonely, irresponsible and bereft of ties, — even those for whom home holds no dear face, no familiar voice, — even they have to meet the spirit that dwells within the land, under its sky, in its air, in its valleys, and on its rises, in its fields, in its waters and its trees — a mute friend, judge, and inspirer. Say what you like, to get its joy, to breathe its peace, to face its truth, one must return with a clear conscience. All this may seem to you sheer sentimentalism; and indeed very few of us have the will or the capacity to look consciously under the surface of familiar emotions. There are the girls we love, the men we look up to, the tenderness, the friendships, the opportunities, the pleasures! But the fact remains that you must touch your reward with clean hands, lest it turn to dead leaves, to thorns, in your grasp. I think it is the lonely, without a fireside or an affection they may call their own, those who return not to a dwelling but to the land itself, to meet its disembodied, eternal, and unchangeable spirit — it is those who understand best its severity, its saving power, the grace of its secular right to our fidelity, to our obedience. Yes! few of us understand, but we all feel it though, and I say all without exception, because those who do not feel do not count. Each blade of grass has its spot on earth whence it draws its life, its strength; and so is man rooted to the land from which he draws his faith together with his life. I don’t know how much Jim understood; but I know he felt, he felt confusedly but powerfully, the demand of some such truth or some such illusion — I don’t care how you call it, there is so little difference, and the difference means so little. The thing is that in virtue of his feeling he mattered.

~Lord Jim

Hafiz

What Happens
~
What happens when your soul

Begins to awaken

Your eyes

And your heart

And the cells of your body

To the great Journey of Love?
First there is wonderful laughter

And probably precious tears
And a hundred sweet promises

And those heroic vows

No one can ever keep.
But still God is delighted and amused

You once tried to be a saint.
What happens when your soul

Begins to awake in this world
To our deep need to love

And serve the Friend?
O the Beloved

Will send you One of His wonderful, wild companions –
Like Hafiz.

Federico García Lorca

New Songs
The afternoon speaks: ‘I am thirsty for shadows!

’The moon speaks: ‘I thirst for stars.’
The crystalline fountain asks for lips
and the wind for sighs.

I am thirsty for perfumes and laughter.
I thirst for new songs
without moons or irises,
and without loves that have died.

A song of the morning that might tremble
the quiet still pools
of the future. And fill with hope
their waves and mud.

A song, luminous and restful,
full of pensiveness,
innocent of miseries and anguish,
innocent of dream.

A song without lyric substance that fills
the silence with laughter.
(A flock of blind doves
thrown into mystery.)

A song that might go to the soul of things
and to the soul of the winds
and that might rest at last in the joy
of the eternal heart.

Wisława Szymborska

UTOPIA

Island where it all becomes clear
solid ground beneath your feet
the only roads are those that offer access
bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs
the tree of valid supposition grows here
with branches disentangled since time immemorial
the tree of understanding, dazzingly straight and simple
sprouts by the spring called now i get it
the thicker the woods, the vaster the vista
the valley of obviously if any doubts arise,
the wind dispels them instantly echoes stir unsummoned
and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds
on the right a cave where meaning lies
on the left the lake of deep conviction
truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface
unshakable confidence towers over the valley
it's peak offers an excellent view of the essence of things
for all its charms, the island is uninhabited
and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches
turn without exception to the sea
all you can do here is leave
and plunge, never to return, into the depths,
into unfathomable life ....
Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

Rainer Maria Rilke

ELEGY(To Marina Tsvetayeva)

Oh the losses in All, Marina, the falling stars!

We can’t add to it, wherever we hurl ourselves
To whatever star! All is already a part of the whole.
So even when we fall, the sacred sum’s not lessened.
Whoever’s given to feeling falls to the source and is healed
Is it all a game, equal exchange, displacement,
Nowhere a name, nowhere natural achievement?
Waves, Marina, we’re sea! Depths, Marina, we’re sky.
Earth, Marina, we’re earth, a thousand times Spring,
Like larks an outpouring of song hurls to the unseen.
We begin as joy: it already utterly exceeds us:
Suddenly our weight bows the song down to lament.
But then: lament? Isn’t that a younger, deeper joy.
Even the gods of the deep wish to be praised, Marina.
Gods are so innocent they wait for praise like children.
Praising, dear one, let’s be generous with praise.
Nothing is ours. We set our hands lightly on the necks
Of unbroken flowers. I saw it at Kom Ombo, on the Nile:
Thus, Marina, those kings offered up gifts they renounced.
As angels mark the doors of those to be saved,
We touch this and that, seemingly tender.
Ah how far off already, ah how careless, Marina,
Even in our innermost pretences. Signposts that’s all.
This gentle commerce, when it no longer suffers
One of our kind, seizes them in its grasp, takes
Its revenge and kills. That it has power to kill
Was clear to all from its delicacy and restraint
And from the strange force that alters us
From living ones to survivors. Non-being. Do you
Remember how often blind command dragged us
Through the icy ante-room of birth…Dragged: us? A body
With eyes under countless eyelids, refusing. Dragged
That heart, a whole race, set down in us. Dragged
To the goal of migratory birds the flock, the form of our
Imminent change. Lovers, Marina, weren’t, are not
Permitted to know utter destruction. Must be as if new.
Only their grave is old, only their grave remembers,
Darkens under the sobbing tree, remembers it all.
Only their grave sinks: they are supple as reeds:
What bends them too far, weaves them richly in garlands.
How they flower on May winds! From the midst of Ever,
Where you breathe and sense, the instant shuts them out.
(O how I comprehend you, feminine flower on the same

Undying stalk. How strongly I scatter myself
Into the night air that will soon reach you) God
Long ago decided to simulate halves. We, drawn into
That orbit, filled ourselves out like the orb of the moon.
Even in times of waning, even in weeks of change
Nothing could ever again help us to richness, but our
Own solitary passage over the unsleeping landscape.

Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Maqam Faiz koi rah mein jacha hi nahin
Jo koo-e- yaar se nikle to soo-e- daar chale
(Nothing attracted Faiz’s attention in between.
Leaving the street of his lover he went straight to the gallows)

Lali ankhian di pai dasdi ay

Roay toosi vi o roay asi vi aan

(The redness of the eyes tells us

That both of us have wept)

USTAD DAMAN

“When reason reaches its peak and the souls of His lovers feel helpless and disabled, they grow restless and stretch their hands in supplication, seeking comfort for their burning souls. When every manner of search within their power has been consumed, the doorway to Him is opened.” -Ali Hujwiri, “The Kashf al-Mahjub”

Talking to yourself is a sign of intelligence. Answering yourself, however, is a sign of insanity - Einstein

William Shakespeare

Sonnet CXVI

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love,

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

Oh, no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests.. and is never shaken.

It is the star to every wandering bark

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love is not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come.

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out.. even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

You give but little when you give of your possessions.It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

E. E. Cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)
i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear;)
and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling
i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)
i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;
which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Al Ghazzali

Only that which cannot be lost in a shipwreck is yours.

Tales of the dervishes-Idries Shah

Once upon a time Khidr, the teacher of Moses, called upon mankind with a warning. At a certain date, he said, all the water in the world which had not been specially hoarded, would disappear. It would then be renewed, with different water, which would drive men mad.
Only one man listened to the meaning of this advice. He collected water and went to a secure place where he stored it, and waited for the water to change its character.
On the appointed date the streams stopped running, the wells went dry, and the man who had listened, seeing this happening, went to his retreat and drank his preserved water.
When he saw, from his security, the waterfalls again beginning to flow, this man descended among the other sons of men. He found that they were thinking and talking in an entirely different way from before; yet they had no memory of what had happened, nor of having been warned. When he tried to talk to them, he realized that they thought that he was mad, and they showed hostility or compassion, not understanding.
At first, he drank none of the new water, but went back to his concealment, to draw on his supplies, every day. Finally, however, he took the decision to drink the new water because he could not bear the loneliness of living, behaving and thinking in a different way from everyone else. He drank the new water, and became like the rest. Then he forgot all about his own store of special water, and his fellows began to look upon him as a madman who had miraculously been restored to sanity!

Où serai-je ?

Master: "So then, according to you, when you die your soul will be in heaven?"
Preacher: "Yes."
Master: "And your body will be in the grave?"
Preacher: "Yes."
Master: "And where, may I ask, will you be?"

E.E.Cummings

somehwere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands...

Faiz Ahmad Faiz

Loneliness

Loneliness like a good, old friend

visits my house to pour wine in the evening.

And we sit together, waiting for the moon,

and for your face to sparkle in every shadow.

Pensée-Blaise Pascal

Qu’est-ce donc que nous crie cette avidité et cette impuissance, sinon qu’il y a eu autrefois en l’homme un véritable bonheur dont il ne lui reste maintenant que la marque et la trace toute vide, qu’il essaye inutilement de remplir de tout ce qui l’environne, en cherchant dans les choses absentes le secours qu’il n’obtient pas des présentes, et que les unes et les autres sont incapables de lui donner, parce que ce gouffre infini ne peut être rempli que par un objet infini et immuable ?

Translation: What does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object.

Alexander Pushkin

It's Time, My Friend...

"It's time, my friend, it's time! The peace is craved by hearts...
Days flow after days -- each hour departs
A bit of life -- and both, you and I,
Plan a long life, but could abruptly die.
The world hasn't happiness, but there is freedom, peace.
And long have I daydreamed the life of bliss --
And long have planned, a tired slave, the flight
To the removed abode of labor and delight.

Why do you ask questions?

If you already knew the flame was fire then the meal was cooked a long time ago.

Two hands clap and there is a sound. What is the sound of one hand?
— Hakuin Ekaku

Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil

Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein.

Translation: He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.
Aphorism 146

Crossing The Bar -Lord Tennyson

Sunset and evening star,

And one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning of the bar,

When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

Too full for sound and foam,

When that which drew from out the boundless deep

Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,

And after that the dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewell,

When I embark;

For though from out of bourne of Time and Place

The flood may bear me far,

I hope to see my Pilot face to face

When I have crossed the bar.

(Alfred, Lord Tennyson)