Sufi Poets

"Learn meekness from the shell in ocean’s bed And pearls on one who wounds thy head bestow."

"Anonymous, A Century of Ghazels, or, A Hundred Odes, Selected and Translated from the Diwan of Hafiz (1875)"

"Herman Bicknell, Hafiz of Shiraz: Selections from his Poems, Translated from the Persian (1875)"

"Sir William Jones, A Grammar of the Persian Language (1771) · Poems, Consisting Chiefly of Translations from the Asiatick Languages (1772)"

"Herrlich ist der Orient Ubers Mittelmeer gedrungen; Nur wer Hafiz liebt und kennt Weiss was Calderon gesungen."

"And what though all the world should sink! Hafis! with thee, alone with thee Will I contend! joy, misery, The portion of us twain shall be; Like thee to love, like thee to drink,— This be my pride,—this, life to me!"

"Even After All this time The Sun never says to the Earth,"You owe me."Look What happens With a love like that, It lights the whole sky."

"Spend well thy time; drink wine within the bower For when a week is gone, the flower is not; Snatch, snatch the hour that glads the heart so well For the pearl always in the shell is not."

"It is a crime to seek to raise but self, Before all other men to praise but self, The pupil of the eye a lesson gives, Be all submitted to thy gaze but self."

"'Tis writ on Paradise's gate, "Woe to the dupe that yields to Fate!""

"What necessity for a sword to slay the lover, when a glance can deprive him of half his life!"

"Sweet are the garden, the rose, and wine, but they would not be sweet without the company of my darling."

"The dimple that thy chin contains has beauty in its round, That never has been fathomed yet by myriad thoughts profound."

"Boy, let yon liquid ruby flow, And bid thy pensive heart be glad, Whate’er the frowning zealots say: Tell them, their Eden cannot show A stream so clear as Rocnabad, A bow’r so sweet as Mosellay."

"What holds in peace this two-fold world, let this two-fold sentence show Amity to every friend, courtesy to every foe."

"If I build a castle of love [i.e., mystical knowledge] for the suffering people, they kill me! If I don’t build I die!"

"Festivals that common men celebrate, are hunger and thirst to them, intoxicated in Allah's love they fast Eid and joy they never celebrate"

"Those that all night keep awake, And Allah's name unceasingly take, Their yearning Abdul Latif says, For all time unforgotten stays, Among those that come before Allah for adoration, On them countless more shall send their homages and prayers."

"Beggening their voyage with salty deep, By sweet water they returned, Big merchants trade not with Gold but with Pearls and Gemstones...such wealth, these Sailors form distant lands had brought."

"Prince of Medina, listen to my calling-"

"Clouds return and once again, it rains, Lighting's flash from all sides, and with them, Some go to Istanbul others turn to the west, Some shine bright over China and others take care of, Samarqand, some wandered to Rome, to Kabul and Kandahar, some lie on Delhi, Deccan thundering over... My beloved Allah, may you always make Sindh a land of abundance, My beloved Allah, may you make prosperous the whole universe."

"The whole question is knowing whether man possesses a "pre-logical" intuition of Substance or whether he is fundamentally bound up with accidentality; in the first case his intelligence is made for gnosis, and arguments − or imagery − confined to the accidental will ultimately have no hold upon him. For the average man, existence begins with man placed on earth: there is space, and there are things; there is "I" and "other"; we want this, and another wants that; there is good and evil, reward and punishment, and above all this there is God with His unfathomable wishes. But for the born contemplative, everything begins with Truth, which is sensed as an underlying and omnipresent Being; other things can be fully comprehended only through it and in it; outside of it the world is no more than an unintelligible dream. First there is Truth, the nature of things; then there are the consciousnesses that are its receptacles: man is before all else a consciousness in which the True is reflected and around which the True or the Real manifests itself in an endless play of crystallizations. For the contemplative, phenomena and events do not constitute a compact and naive postulate; they are intelligible or bearable only in connection with the initial Truth."

"Metaphysics is the science of the Absolute or the true nature of things."

"The content of the universal and primordial doctrine is the following, expressed in Vedantic terms: "Brahma is Reality; the world is appearance; the soul is not other than Brahma". These are the three great theses of integral metaphysics; one positive, one negative, one unitive."

"Gnosis is essentially the path of the intellect and thus of intellection; the motive force of this path is above all intelligence, not will and sentiment as is the case in the Semitic monotheistic mysticisms—including average Sufism. Gnosis is characterized by its recourse to pure metaphysics: the distinction between Ātmā and Māyā and the consciousness of the potential identity between the human subject, jīvātmā, and the Divine Subject, Paramātmā."

"Metaphysics intends to furnish dialectically only reference points; it offers − and this is its entire reason for being − a system of perfectly sufficient keys, through a language that cannot be other than indicative and elliptical."

"The principal cause of a lack of metaphysical understanding is not so much a fundamental intellectual incapacity as a passional attachment to concepts that are congruent with man’s natural individualism. On the one hand, transcending this individualism predisposes man to such an understanding; on the other hand, total metaphysics contributes to this transcending; every spiritual realization has two poles or two points of departure, one being situated in our thought, and the other in our being."

"The language of Sophia perennis is above all symbolism in all its forms, thus the openness to the message of symbols is a gift proper to primordial man and his heirs in every age."

"A symbolism is abstract inasmuch as it signifies a principial reality; it is concrete inasmuch as it communicates the nature of this reality, that is, inasmuch as it renders it present to our experience."

"The language of religion is symbolism, and symbolism is what both separates and unites. It is the symbolism that constitutes the particularity, at once enlightening and separative, characterizing the different religions, and it is symbolism yet again that on the contrary, owing to its universal validity and its illimitation in depth, permits one to reach the religio perennis; to bring out the oneness of the content − and the raison d’être − of the religious phenomenon."

"What is lacking in today's world is a penetrating and comprehensive knowledge of the nature of things; the fundamental truths are always accessible, but they are not obvious for those who refuse to take them into consideration. It goes without saying that it is not a question here of the altogether outward data with which experimental science can provide us, but of realities with which this science does not deal, and cannot deal, and which are transmitted to us by quite different channels, especially those of mythological and metaphysical symbolism, not to mention intellectual intuition, the possibility of which resides principially in every man. The symbolic language of the great traditions of mankind may seem difficult and disconcerting for certain minds, but it is nevertheless intelligible in the light of the orthodox commentaries; symbolism − it must be stressed − is a real and rigorous science, and nothing is more aberrant than to believe that its apparent naivety issues from a crude and "prelogical" mentality. This science, which we may term "sacred," cannot be adapted to the experimental method of the moderns; the domain of revelation, of symbolism, of pure intellection, obviously transcends the physical and psychic planes and is thus situated beyond the domain of methods termed scientific. If we believe that we cannot accept the language of traditional symbolism because it seems to us fantastical and arbitrary, this only shows that we have not yet understood this language and certainly not that we have gone beyond it."

"Wisdom consists not only in knowing truths and being able to communicate them, but also in the sage’s capacity to recognize the most subtle limitations or hazards of human nature."

"Wisdom consists not only in becoming detached from the reflections, but also in knowing and feeling that the archetypes are to be found within ourselves and are accessible in the depths of our hearts; we possess what we love to the extent that what we love is worthy of being loved."

"The divine Māyā − Femininity in divinis − is not only that which projects and creates, it is also that which attracts and liberates. The Blessed Virgin as Sedes Sapientiae personifies this merciful Wisdom that descends towards us and that we also bear in our very essence, whether we know it or not; and it is precisely by virtue of this potentiality or virtuality that Wisdom comes down upon us. The immanent seat of Wisdom is the heart of man."

"Starting from the axiom that all knowledge, by definition, comprises a subject and an object, we shall specify the following: the subject of the knowledge of sensible phenomena is obviously a particular sensorial faculty or the combination of these faculties; the subject of the knowledge of physical principles, or of cosmic categories, is the rational faculty; and the subject of the knowledge of metaphysical principles is the pure intellect and hence intellectual intuition; intuition or intellection and not discursive operation. A knowledge whose subject is not the intellect could not be metaphysical; starting from the observation of phenomena, one cannot reach a reality that only "God in us" can cause us to perceive. Three subjectivities, three modes of certitude: from the relative to the absolute."

"The principle of knowledge does not of itself imply any limitation; to know is to know all that is knowable, and the knowable coincides with the real, given that a priori and in the Absolute the subject and the object are indistinguishable: to know is to be, and conversely. If we are told that the Absolute is unknowable, this applies, not to our intellective faculty as such, but to a particular de facto modality of this faculty; to a particular husk, not to the substance."

"To know God, the Real in itself, the supremely Intelligible, and then to know things in the light of this knowledge, and in consequence also to know ourselves: these are the dimensions of intrinsic and integral intelligence, the only one worthy of the name, strictly speaking, since it alone is properly human."

"Will for the Good and love of the Beautiful are the necessary concomitants of knowledge of the True, and their repercussions are incalculable."

"Only the science of the Absolute gives meaning and discipline to the science of the relative."

"It is appropriate to distinguish between a knowledge that is active and mental, namely doctrinal discernment, by which we become conscious of the Truth, and a knowledge that is passive, receptive and cardiac, namely invocatory contemplation, by which we assimilate what we have become aware of."

"The passage from distinctive or mental knowledge to unitive or cardiac knowledge follows from the very content of thought: either we understand imperfectly what the notions of Absolute, Infinite, Essence, Substance, Unity mean, in which case we content ourselves with concepts − and this is what is done by philosophers in the conventional sense of the word; or else we understand these notions perfectly, in which case they oblige us, by virtue of their very content, to transcend conceptual separativity in order to find the Real in the depths of the Heart, not as adventurers, but by availing ourselves of the traditional means without which we can do nothing and are entitled to nothing. Transcendent and exclusive Substance then reveals Itself as immanent and inclusive. It could also be said that since God is All that is, it behooves us to know Him with all that we are; and to know What is infinitely lovable − since but for Him nothing would be lovable − is to love Him infinitely."

"Every time man stands before God wholeheartedly − that is, "poor" and without being puffed up − he stands on the ground of absolute certitude, the certitude of his conditional salvation and the certitude of God. And that is why God has given us the gift of this supernatural key that is prayer: in order that we might stand before Him as in the primordial state, and as always and everywhere; or as in eternity."

"Prayer − in the widest sense − triumphs over the four accidents of our existence: the world, life, the body, the soul; we might also say: space, time, matter, desire. It is situated in existence like a shelter, like an islet. In it alone we are perfectly ourselves, because it puts us into the presence of God. It is like a diamond, which nothing can tarnish and nothing can resist."

"The aim of individual prayer is not only to obtain particular favors, but also the purification of the soul: it loosens psychic knots or, in other words, dissolves subconscious coagulations and drains away many secret poisons; it externalizes before God the difficulties, failures and tensions of the soul, which presupposes that the soul be humble and genuine, and this externalization − carried out in the face of the Absolute − has the virtue of reestablishing equilibrium and restoring peace; in a word, of opening us to grace."

"The gift of oneself to God is always the gift of oneself to all; to give oneself to God − though it were hidden from all − is to give oneself to man, for this gift of self has a sacrificial value of an incalculable radiance."

"What is the world if not a flow of forms, and what is life if not a cup which seemingly is emptied between one night and another? And what is prayer, if not the sole stable point − a point of peace and light − in this dream universe, and the strait gate leading to all that the world and life have sought in vain? In the life of a man, these four certitudes are all: the present moment, death, the meeting with God, eternity. Death is an exit, a world which closes down; the meeting with God is like an opening towards a fulgurating and immutable infinitude; eternity is a fullness of being in pure light; and the present moment is, in our duration, an almost ungraspable "place" where we are already eternal − a drop of eternity amid the to-and-fro of forms and melodies. Prayer gives to the terrestrial instant its full weight of eternity and its divine value; it is the sacred ship bearing its load, through life and death, towards the further shore, towards the silence of light − but at bottom it is not prayer which traverses time as it repeats itself, it is time which, so to speak, halts before the already celestial unicity of prayer."

"Man prays, and prayer fashions man. The saint has himself become prayer, the meeting place of earth and Heaven; he thereby contains the universe, and the universe prays with him. He is everywhere where nature prays, he prays with her and in her: in the peaks which touch the void and eternity, in a flower that scatters its scent, or in the carefree song of a bird. He who lives in prayer has not lived in vain."

"Holiness is the sleep of the ego and the wake of the immortal soul − of the ego, fed on sensorial impressions and filled with desires, and of the soul, free and crystallized in God. The moving surface of our being must sleep and must therefore withdraw from images and instincts, whereas the depths of our being must be awake in the consciousness of the Divine, thus lighting up, like a motionless flame, the silence of the holy sleep."

"In order to maintain the world in equilibrium, or in order even to improve it in a particular sector, it is not enough that there should be men capable of taking effective measures in keeping with spiritual principles, it is also necessary that there should be saints who, like the "motionless mover" of Aristotle, realize only the "one thing necessary", namely that which constitutes the reason for being of every human city."

"Original man was not a simian creature barely capable of speaking and standing upright; he was a quasi-immaterial being enclosed in an aura still celestial, but deposited on earth; an aura similar to the "chariot of fire" of Elijah or the "cloud" that enveloped Christ during his ascension. That is to say, our conception of the origin of mankind is based on the doctrine of the projection of the archetypes ab intra; thus our position is that of classical emanationism – in the Neoplatonic or gnostic sense of the term – which avoids the pitfall of anthropomorphism while agreeing with the theological conception of creatio ex nihilo. Evolutionism, for its part, is the very negation of the archetypes and consequently of the divine Intellect; it is therefore the negation of an entire dimension of the real, namely that of form, of the static, of the immutable; concretely speaking, it is as if one wished to make a fabric of the wefts only, omitting the warps."