Yoga & Art

Cast All Your Votes For Dancing

I know the voice of depression

Still calls to you.

I know those habits that can ruin your life
Still send their invitations.

But you are with the Friend now
And look so much stronger.

You can stay that way
And even bloom!

Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions’ beautiful laughter.

Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From the sacred hands and glance of your Beloved
And, my dear,
From the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.

Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins
That may buy you just a moment of pleasure,
But then drag you for days
Like a broken man
Behind a farting camel.

You are with the Friend now.
Learn what actions of yours delight Him,
What actions of yours bring freedom
And Love.

Whenever you say God’s name, dear pilgrim,
My ears wish my head was missing
So they could finally kiss each other
And applaud all your nourishing wisdom!

O keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions’ beautiful laughter

And from the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.

Now, sweet one,
Be wise.
Cast all your votes for Dancing!

Hafiz 

Peaceful

Before me peaceful
Behind me peaceful
Under me peaceful
Over me peaceful
All around me peaceful

-Navajo Prayer

Love Courses Through Everything

Love courses through everything,
No, Love is everything.
How can you say, there is no love
when nothing but Love exists?
All that you see has appeared because of Love.
All shines from Love,
All pulses with Love,
All flows from Love--
No, once again all is Love!

--Fakhruddin Araqi,
Translated by Jonathan Star

The Many Voices of Enlightenment

“What’s in your head — throw it away! What’s in your hand — give it up! Whatever happens — don’t turn away from it.” -Abu Said ibn Abil-Khair

From The New York Times

Your First Eyes

A lover has four streams inside,
of water, wine, honey and milk

Find those in yourself, and pay no attention
what so-and-so says about such-and-such

The rose does not care if someone calls it a thorn,
or a jasmine. Ordinary eyes categorize
human beings, that one is a Zoroastrian,
This one, a Muslim.

Walk instead with the other vision give you,
Your first eyes. Don’t squint,
and don’t stare blankly like a vulture

Those who love fire fall in the fire
A fly slips from the edge into the whey

If you are in love with the infinite,
why grieve over earth washing away in the rain?

Bow to the essence in a human being.
A desert drinks war-blood,
but if it knew this secret,
springs would rise, rose gardens.

Don’t be content with judging people good and bad.
Grow out of that. The great blessing is
that Shams has poured a strength into the ground
that lets us wait and trust the waiting.

-Rumi

(Translation by Coleman Barks)

Microcosm and Macrocosm

"Within this body exist Mount Meru, the seven continents, lakes,
oceans, mountains, plains, and the protectors of these plains.

In it also dwell the seers, the sages, all the stars and planets, the
sacred river crossings and pilgrimage centres, and the deities of these centers.

In it whirl the sun and moon, which are the causes of creation and annihilation.
Likewise, it contains ether, air, fire, water, and earth.

All beings embodied in three world, which are connected to Mount Meru,
exist in the body together with all their activites.

He who knows all this is a yogin. There is no doubt about this."


-Shiva-Samhita translated  by Georg Feuerstein)

The Inner Space Blessing

We join spokes together in a wheel,

but it is the center hole

that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,

but it is the emptiness inside

that holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house,

but is the inner space

that makes it livable.

We work with being,

but non-being is what we use.

From the Tao Te Ching

Translation by Stephen Mitchell

Someone Digging In The Ground

An eye is meant to see things.
The soul is here for its own joy.
A head has one use: for loving a true lover.
Legs: to run after.

Love is for vanishing into the sky. The mind,
for learning what men have done and tried to do.
Mysteries are not to be solved. The eye goes blind
when it only wants to see why.

A lover is always accused of something.
But when he finds his love, whatever was lost
in the looking comes back completely changed.
On the way to Mecca, many dangers: thieves,
the blowing sand, only camel’s milk to drink.
Still each pilgrim kisses the black stone there
with pure longing, feeling in the surface
the taste of the lips he wants.

This talk is like stamping new coins.  They pile up,
while the real work is done outside
by someone digging in the ground

Rumi

Translation by Coleman Barks

The Many Wines

God has given us a dark wine so potent that,
drinking it, we leave the two worlds.

God has put into the form of hashish a power
to deliver the taster from self-consciousness. 

God has made sleep so
that it erases every thought. 

God made Majnun love Layla so much that
just her dog would cause confusion in him.

 There are thousands of wines
that can take over our minds.

Don't think all ecstacies
are the same!

Jesus was lost in his love for God.
His donkey was drunk with barley. 

Drink from the presence of saints,
not from those other jars. 

Every object, every being,
is a jar full of delight. 

Be a conoisseur,
and taste with caution. 

Any wine will get you high.
Judge like a king, and choose the purest, 

the ones unadulterated with fear,
or some urgency about "what's needed." 

Drink the wine that moves you
as a camel moves when it's been untied,

and is just ambling about.

Mathnawi IV, 2683-96
The Essential Rumi, Coleman Barks

Every Movement

I rarely let the word "No" escape

From my mouth

Because it is so plain to my soul

That God has shouted, Yes! Yes! Yes!

To every luminous movement in Existence.

A rendering of Hafiz

By Daniel Ladinsky