In a village where everyone has only one leg, the biped will hop about more lamely than anyone else, if he knows what is good for him.
One day we will all wear a garment which has no pockets…
Wisdom is when you understand what, previously, at best you only knew.
SAYING OF SHEIKH ZIAUDIN:Self-justification is worse than the original offence.
It is not Sufism if it does not perform its function for you. A cloak is no longer a cloak if it does not keep a man warm.
If wine is the enemy of religion, I shall devour the enemy of religion.
The function of a nutrient is to become transmuted, not to leave unaltered traces.
Fettered feet in the presence of friends is better than living in a garden with strangers.
If you really want to learn, do not be surprised if someone tries to teach you. And do not lightly reject the method.
Most people, whatever their opinions and protestations, do not want to learn.
One of the basic Sufi needs is to enable people to see themselves as they really are.
The Sufi teacher’s mission is to be in the service of those who can learn.
The teacher works in accordance with the prospects of his students and the possibility of maintaining the community of Sufis.
The Sufis regard systems which treat everyone alike as mechanical and degenerate.
The candle burned the moth:But soon it will vanish in its own fat.
Yes, the world is an illusion. But Truth is always being shown there.
If you want special illumination, look upon the human face:See clearly within laughter the Essence of Ultimate Truth.
The question of divine knowledge is so deep that it is really known only to those who have it.
It is your duty to do your best. It is not, however, your birth-right to prevail.
A man must be a Solomon before his magical ring will work
Any society which enjoins its members to adhere to both of these (politeness and truth) is a fraud.
A man must be a Salomon before his magical ring will work. (Hafiz)
Imagination blocks you like a bolt on a door. Burn that bar. (Rumi)
Our objective is to achieve, by the understanding of the Origin, the Knowledge which comes through experience.
ScrapsThe scraps from the meal of the Emir are larger than the gifts of halwa from the merchant. Timur Fazil
As swords were designed to killThey did well to make them tongue-shaped.(Anwar-i-Suhaili)
Superior experience and knowledge will be made available to a man or woman in exact accordance with his worth, capacity and earning of it
Man (and woman) has an infinite capacity for self-development. Equally, he has an infinite capacity for self-destruction. A human being may be clinically alive and yet, despite all appearances, spiritually dead.
Three ThingsThree things cannot be retrieved:The arrow once sped from the bowThe word spoken in hasteThe missed opportunity.(Ali the Lion, Caliph of Islam, son-in-law of Mohammed the Prophet),
Opinion is usually something which people have when they lack comprehensive information.
Knowledge is something which you can use.Belief is something which uses you.
Sufism,” according to the Sufi, “is an adventure in living, necessary adventure.
Religion, for instance, cannot be accepted or rejected out of hand, until the student knows exactly what religion means.
People in this civilization are starving in the middle of plenty. This is a civilization that is going down, not because it hasn’t got the knowledge that would save it, but because nobody will use the knowledge.
Knowledge cannot be attained except through humility.
Knowledge gives nothing to a man until he gives everything to it.
Sufis (the name for the realised individual, not the learner or follower) are reunited with objective Reality and Unity.
Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaFlattery:One of the most promising of businesses: always brisk.
The teaching must, of course, work with the best part of the individual, must be directed to his or her real capacity.
Why did I do such-and-such a thing?’ is all very well. But what about ‘How otherwise could I have done it?’.
Is your division of Understanding into Greater and Lesser common to all Sufis? Nothing which is put into words is common to all Sufis.
If you assume that it is there, you will generally not be far off the truth.
Man thinks many things. He thinks he is One. He is usually several. Until he becomes One, he cannot have a fair idea of what he is at all.
Sufis deny the absolute reality of time, space and physical form. These things are both relative and local. They only appear to be absolute.
The Sufi saying has it: “God, to the bee, is something which has TWO stings!
The object of Sufi preparatory study, however, being to illustrate, expose and out-manoeuvre superficial ambition.
Right time, right place, right people equals success.Wrong time, wrong place, wrong people equals most of the real human history.
History is not usually what has happened. History is what some people have thought to be significant.
What is humanity? To feel pain at the sorrows of our neighbours, to feel humiliated at the humiliation of fellow-beings.
Definitions from Mulla Do-Piaza.Poverty: The result of marriage.
A man’s capacity is the same as his breadth of vision.
Words, they say, are the food of minds. But, like other foods, they can do little by themselves.
When the mind is full of established biases, it will not be able to graft Sufism on top of them.
Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaEmotionalist:A man or woman who thinks he has experienced the divine.
You call me an unbeliever. I shall therefore call you a True Believer since a lie is best met with one of similar magnitude.
Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaIntellectual: One who knows no craft.
People who cannot trust are themselves not trustworthy, and therefore cannot be entrusted with important things.
You fear tomorrow: yet yesterday is just as dangerous.
Saadi’s dictum, in the Bostan: ‘The Path is not in the rosary, the prayer-mat and the robe
The existence of relative truth does not prove the non-existence of universal truth.
When people believe that the form is more important than the Truth, they will not find truth, but will stay with form.
Remember that greed includes greed for being not greedy.
There is a saying that, according to what a person’s mentality is, even an angel may seem to him to have a devil’s face.
Learning how to learn involves examining assumptions. Mulla Nasrudin tales very often fulfil this funcition.
Show a man too many camels’ bones,or show them to him too often,and he will not be able to recognize a camel when he comes across a live one.
It is axiomatic that the attempt to become a Sufi through a desire for personal power as normally understood will not succeed.
The Way of the Sufis cannot be understood by means of the intellect or by ordinary book learning.
Better to be safe than to be sorry’ is a remark of value only when these are the actual alternatives.
If you seek small things to do, and do them well, great things will seek you, and demand to be performed.
Study the assumptions behind your actions. Then study the assumptions behind your assumptions.
The institution of teachership is there for this reason, that the learner must learn how to learn.
If I knew what two and two were – I would say Four!
They asked Abboud of Omdurman: ‘Which is better, to be young or to be old?’ He said: ‘To be old is to have less time before you and more mistakes behind. I leave you to decide whether this is better than the reverse.
Show a man too many camels’ bones, or show them to him too often, and he will not be able to recognize a camel when he comes across a live one. (Mirza Ahsan of Tabriz)
Knowledge is not gained, it is there all the time. It is the “veils” which have to be dissolved in the mind.
Saying of the ProphetDesireDesire not the world, and God will love you. Desire not what others have, and they will love you.
Two people can illustrate crudity to you.The first is the crude man, whom you see perceiving the diamond as a stone.The other is the refined man, who makes clear to you the crudity of the first one.
The Sufi must be able to alternate his thought between the relative and the Absolute, the approximate and the Real.
The Sufis,’ runs the saying, ‘understand with their hearts what the most learned scholars cannot understand with their minds
When a belief becomes more than an instrument, you are lost. You remain lost until you learn what ‘belief’ is really for.
Almost every day I am reminded of Saadi’s reflection that there is no senseless tyranny like that of subordinates.
Inheritance and culture obscure people’s higher capacities.
Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaBribe Substitute for law, which is a substitute for justice.
Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaSupporter: Someone who will say anything.
Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaAdherent:Someone who will believe anything except what he should.
Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaPatience: A support for the disappointed.
Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaCommunity: Irrationals unified by hope of the impossible.
From the beginning, from the age of Adam to the time of kingship: from the powerful, pardon: from the poor, sins.
Forms are vehicles and instruments, and vehicles and instruments cannot be called good or bad without context.
Virtually all organisations known to you work largely by means of your greed. They attract you because… they appeal to your greed.
Forms have changed through the centuries in obedience to the external world to which all forms belong.
…most systems end up by making imagined humility into a form of vanity, so they end up with vanity just the same.
Virtually all organisations known to you work largely by means of your greed.
You say that this society will come to an end, because societies always have done so. I wonder whether they have ended because they were not really societies at all.
Has it not occurred to you that, conversely, other people do not have your difficulties because they do not react as you do to what happens?
Take the wheat, not the measure in which it is contained
Our heads are filled with ‘knowledge’, a knowledge that in some areas pre-empts our seeing anything at all.
Presence and AbsenceA certain person may have, as you say, a wonderful presence: I do not know. What I do know is that he has a perfectly delightful absence.
People carry on whole conversations in proverbs. But they are not LIVING the proverbs.
Proverbs and truisms are for this reason dangerous, because they produce blindness or non-thought.
The significance of the dwelling is in the dweller.
Rumi speaks of people who rely upon the written word as sometimes being no more than donkeys laden with books.
Why do people always wonder whether books are any good, without wondering whether they are themselves in a state to profit from them?
Well-meant techniques such as arbitrary self-mortification, are useless.
People change and needs change. So what was Sufism once is Sufism no more.
The would-be Sufi needs guidance precisely because books, texts, while telling you what is needed, do not tell you when.
It is as true as anything else which can be spoken to say that all knowledge is really available everywhere.
Man (as he imagines himself to be), in general, is a possibility, not a fact.
I am an idol worshipper; for I understand what idol worship means, and the idolater does not.
The basic urge toward mysticism is never, in the unaltered man, clear enough to be recognized for what it is.
Certain levels of human understanding cannot be attained, it is claimed, until the brain can work in more than one way.
Saadi: Be a true renouncer, (zahid) and [you can even] ware satin.
Humility is a teacher of itself. It is learnt by means of its practise.
Disappointment cannot exist without expectation. “The expected apricot is never as sweet when it reaches the mouth.
A Sufi school comes into being in order to flourish and disappear, not to leave traces in mechanical ritual, or anthropologically survivals.
Do not think that your magic ring will work if you are not yourself Solomon.
EXPECTATION If, from time to time, you give up expectation, you will be able to perceive what it is you are getting.
You must improve yourself on a higher level if you are to be able to help people, and not just weep over them.
There is something in man which can detect real love. We rub it out, or muffle it, by substitute-love.
Life: sometimes the man on the saddle, sometimes the saddle on the man.
In the distorting mirror of your mind, an angel can seem to have a devil’s face.
The happiness of the superficial: when a man who has lost his donkey finds it again.
To bind one free man with love is better than to release a thousand slaves.
A man must be a Salomon before his magical ring will work
The process of learning is the process of discovering what really exists.
How many friends would you have if you went from one to another asking them to conceal a dead body?
The door of illumination is open to those for whom other doors are closed.
Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaWisdom: Something you can learn without knowing it.
Because sugar is not arsenic, many graves are full.
Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaPoverty: The result of marriage.
Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaPenitent: Someone who has been made incapable of enjoying himself.
Definitions from Mulla Do-Piaza. Worry: Something to make you unnecessarily ill.
Saying of the ProphetUnderstandingSpeak to everyone in accordance with his degree of understanding.
Poor greedy one, wherever he runs He’s after food, and death is after him.(Saadi)
Saying of the ProphetThe TongueA man slips with his tongue more than with his feet.
Saying of the ProphetThe JudgeA man appointed to be a judge has been killed without a knife.
Saying of the ProphetAngerYou ask for a piece of advice. I tell you: ‘Do not get angry.’ He is strong who can withhold anger.
Saying of the ProphetEnvyEnvy devours good deeds, as a fire devours fuel.
What you are seeking in your retreat, I see clearly in every road and alleyway.
In the realm of Greater Understanding, the workshop is dismantled after the work is finished.
The barren branches may appear inelegant: They are, to the cook, the means to make his fire.
A Sufi is alive to the value of time, and is given, every moment, to what that moment demands.
Sufism, they say, is that which enables one to understand religion, irrespective of its current outward form.
None should say: ‘I can trust,’ or ‘I cannot trust’ until he is master of the option, of trusting or not trusting.
The lightning said to the oak tree: ‘Stand aside, or take what is coming to you!
However fast you run, or however skilfully, you can’t run away from your own feet.
Most of the supposedly Sufi organizations, exercises and “orders” are in fact only of archaeological interest.
The Sufi is one who does what others do – when it is necessary. He is also one who does what others cannot do – when it is indicated.
if… says: ‘Do not be greedy, be generous’, you may inwardly interpret this in such a manner that you will develop a greed for generosity
Greed harms you: generosity helps you. This is why it has been said: ‘Greed is the mother of incapacity’.
Remember the proverb: ‘A sign is enough for the alert, but a thousand counsels are not enough for the negligent.
Laziness is always your fault. It is the sign that a man has persevered in uselessness for too long.
One of the great Sufis said: ‘A saint is a saint unless he knows that he is one.
Premature independence is the daughter of conceit.
There can be no spirituality, according to the Sufi masters, without psychology, psychological insight and sociological balance.
When humility is exercised, people begin to realise that they do not, as it were, exist at all.
Sufis are those who have expunged from their minds the human tendencies of envy and enmity.
RemedyYour medicine is in you, and you do not observe it. Your ailment is from yourself, and you do not register it.Hazrat Ali
When you realise the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge.
The stupidest man I ever met had a favourite saying. It was: ‘What do you think I am, stupid, or something?
The word ‘choice’ is a fraud while people choose only what they have been taught to choose.
The colour of the water seems to be the colour of the glass into which it has been poured
When you realise the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge
When Fortune knocks, open the door,’ they say. But why should one make fortune knock, by keeping the door shut?
The laziness of adolescence is a rehearsal for the incapacity of old age.
Show me a person who really knows what ‘good’ is, and I will show you that he almost never uses the word.
Knowledge is something which you can use. Belief is something which uses you.
If a Manx cat tells you that it is trying to preserve its long, beautiful tail, you don’t have to believe it – especially if you have eyes.
TeachingOne hour’s teaching is better than a whole night of prayer.
Q: What is a fundamental mistake of man’s?A: To think that he is alive, when he has merely fallen asleep in life’s waiting-room.
Real generosity is anonymous to the extent that a man should be prepared even to be considered ungenerous rather than explain it to others.
Deep in the sea are riches beyond compare. But if you seek safety, it is on the shore.
Saying of the ProphetInk and BloodThe ink of the learned is holier than the blood of the martyr.
Learn about hornets from those who have been stung by them.
Progress comes through capacity to learn, and is irresistible.
The real generosity is when a man does something generous when nobody knows about it.
…action is in fact knowledge in operation. Right action stems from right knowledge. Right knowledge is acquired through the teacher.
Why did I do such-and-such a thing?’ is all very well. But what about ‘How otherwise could I have done it?
All approaches to a study or an individual may start with a desire for attention. However they start, they must never end up in this manner.
You have come a long way, and you do not know it. You have a long way to do, and you do know what that means.
They say: ‘Seek wisdom while you have the strength, or you may lose the strength without gaining wisdom.
The person that you feel yourself to be, according to the Sufis, is a false person, which has no true reality.
He who knows himself, knows his Lord’ means, among other things, that self-deception prevents knowledge.
It has truly been said that ‘Humility is not so much a virtue as a necessity, in order to learn.
Study institutions may become visible when the head is more emptied of imaginings.
The Sufi is ‘One who does not care when something is taken from him, but who does not cease to seek for what he has not.
Man (and woman) has an infinite capacity for self-development. Equally, he has an infinite capacity for self-destruction.
Never follow any impulse to teach, however strong it might be. The command to teach is not felt as an impulsion.
If your desire for ‘good’ is based on greed, it is not good, but greed.
To copy a virtue in another is more copying than it is virtue. Try to learn what that virtue is based upon.
If you seek a teacher, try to become a real student. If you want to be a student, try to find a real teacher.
If you cannot laugh frequently and genuinely, you have no soul.
Assume that you are part-hypocrite and part heedless, and you will not be far wrong.
The man who knows must discharge a function. The one who does not, cannot arrogate one to himself; he can only try to do so.
There is no wisdom where there is no common sense: it cannot under those conditions find any expression.
None should say: ‘I can trust’ or ‘I cannot trust’ until he is a master of the option, of trusting or not trusting.
You have come a long way, and you do not know it. You have a long way to go, and you do know what that means.
Many things which are called ‘secrets’ are only things withheld from people until they can understand or effectively experience them.
You can learn more in half an hour’s direct contact with a source of knowledge (no matter the apparent reason for the contact or the subject of the transaction) than you can in years of formal effort.
Anybody or anything may stand between you and knowledge if you are unfit for it.
Please, not again what you studied, how long you spent at it, how many books you wrote, what people thought of you – but: what did you learn?
The Sufis are unanimous that a Guide (Sheikh) is absolutely essential, though never available on demand: ‘the Sufis are not merchants’.
If the path has been laid down, why the successive appearance of different teachers? Why would anyone reinvent the wheel, if everything were as cosy and sequential as primitive longing so easily convinces us?
Inner Knowledge — You want to become wise in one lesson: First become a real human being.
The human being, whether he realises it or not, is trusting someone or something every moment of the day.
None should say : ‘I can trust,’ or ‘I cannot trust’ until he is a master of the option, of trusting or not trusting.
Because there is a word for perfection, people will always imagine that they know it.
Enemies are often former or potential friends who have been denied – or think that they have been denied – something.
From imperial, economic and ideological causes, many cultures are the inheritors, and hence the prisoners, of attitudes of scorn and disdain for other faiths – outlooks which are not ennobling to anyone.
Much travel is needed before the raw man is ripened.
When you are still fragmentated, lacking certainty — what difference does it make what your decisions are?
Neither imagine that you are false, nor lash yourself, for both may be forms of self-indulgence.
I will not serve God like a labourer, in expectation of my wages. Rabia
When the human being says:’It is not true…’He may mean:’I don’t know about it, so I think it is untrue.’Or:’I don’t like it.
You can keep going on much less attention than you crave.
Advice is priceless: when it becomes interference it is preposterous.
A man is deficient in understanding until he perceives that there is a whole cycle of evolution possible within himself: repeating endlessly, offering opportunities for personal development.
Anyone can see that an ass laden with books remains a donkey. A human being laden with the undigested results of a tussle with thoughts and books, however, still passes for wise.
Talent is the presence of ability and absence of understanding about the source and operation of knowledge.
People are always trying to understand.There is only one way to do that.It is to discover < + i + >why< + i + > you want to understand.
We are adjured not to burn the candle at both ends.But how many people have verified that physically possible?
Sufism is therefore not ‘Do as I say and not as I do’, or even ‘Do as I do’, but ‘Experience it and you will know’.
There is a Persian proverb: ‘To test that which has been tested is ignorance.’ To try to test something without the means of testing is even worse.
Sufism is experiential. Capacities, even those for learning beyond a certain point, are provoked by Sufis, by one’s own efforts and what results from them, and by an element of what is referred to by Sufis as the Divine.
A real secret is something which only one person knows.
People think that they think things, and they also think that they know things. They could usefully give some attention to the question of whether they know what they think and know what they think they know.
Day and NightThe night is long: do not shorten it by sleep. The day is fair: do not darken it with wrongdoing.
Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaTruthful man:He who is, secretly, regarded by everyone as an enemy.
Teach honesty by all means – you do know what it is, don’t you?
From time to time ponder whether you are unconsciously saying:’Truth is what I happen to be thinking at this moment.
The proverb says that ‘The answer to a fool is silence’. Observation, however, indicates that almost any other answer will have the same effect in the long run.
The sight of God in woman is the most perfect of all.” Ibn Arabi.
You will always have doubts, but only discover them at a useful time for your weakness to point them out.
Sufis aim to refine human consciousness. This is Sufi mysticism: not mystification or magic, but a specific Path.
Deteriorated science is a cult, so is imitative or deteriorated Sufism.
Much religious teaching in the world is in reality a confused or deteriorated form, very different from its roots.
We and all our existences are non-entities. Thou art the absolute being whose appearance is transitory.
Sufism is the doing in this lifetime what any fool will be doing in then thousand years’ time.
The practice of the Sufis is too sublime to have a formal beginning,
The degree of necessity determines the development of organs in man… therefore increase your necessity.
Sufism was formerly a reality without a name: now it is a name without a reality.
ANDAKI: EFFORT IS NOT EFFORT WITHOUT ZAMAN, MAKAN, IKHWAN (RIGHT TIME, RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT PEOPLE).
An old fool is worse than a young one: For the young may always grow wise. (Zohair)
If you do not understand, you cannot love. You can only imagine that you love.
People talk about ‘service, effort, love, knowledge’. But with knowledge you know what love is, and what it is not.
Sufi secrets are perceived, not understood by words.
The Sufis have said: ‘The importance of something is in inverse proportion to its attractiveness.
You may have forgotten the Way: But those who came beforeDid not forget you.Saying of Master Bahaudin Naqshband of Bokhara
Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaDrugs: Source of the mystical experience of the ignorant.
Saying of the ProphetStruggleThe holy warrior is he who struggles with himself.
Saying of the ProphetHumilityHumility and courtesy are themselves a part of piety.
You yourself are your own barrier – rise from within it.
The donkey which brought you to this door must be dismissed if you want to get through it’.
DeathIf he is a good man, death will be a release;If he is a bad one, it will release others from him.
Saying of the ProphetSleepSleep is the brother of death.
They have fixed our nutrition and arranged our life-span. More than this, and ahead of this, efforts will not be productive.
But the world itself, as well as special attitudes, properly understood, constitute the Sufi school.
What you have to learn is how to find the unworldly in everything.
Trying to force something is the best way to stop it from happening.
If you assume that it is there, you will generally not be far off the truth…
The Path is not to be found anywhere except in human service
it was being written in the East that ‘Sufism was formerly a reality without a name: now it is a name without a reality’.
But the Sufis work IN the world, and therefore WITH ‘things of the world’.
Sufis are not here to satisfy a demand. They exist to share what they have got. These two things are not always the same.
You can perceive a person’s aspiration if it is genuine, because this creates a change in the emanations from such a person.
The automatism of man is overcome, in the words of Dhun’Nun, by aiming for ‘being as you were, where you were, before you were’.
Only the search for truth is valid, the desire for wisdom the motive. The method is assimilation, not study.
If you are ‘humble’, it may help you in ordinary life. If you are not, you will get nowhere in higher things.
The secret of Sufism is that it has no secret at all’.
Not to be greedy is, paradoxically, the highest form of looking after one’s true interests.
Exercise power by means of kindness, and you may be causing more damage than you could by cruelty. Neither approach is correct.
Sufis hold that the superior experience and knowledge comes to a man or woman in exact accordance with his worth,capacity,and earning of it.
Sufism is transmitted by means of the human exemplar, the teacher.
Laziness – The laziness of adolescence is a rehearsal for the incapacity of old age.
Mediation – Before you learn how to meditate, you must unlearn what you think meditation might be.
… the Sufi attitude is: ‘Let the real truth, whatever it may be, be revealed to me’.
People who have fallacious objectives are like the barren soil. The flowers grow from soil which is composed of the right objectives.
Sometimes a pessimist is only an optimist with extra information.
The more wakeful a man is to the things which surround him, the more asleep is he, and his waking is worse than his sleep.
Materialism, attachment to things of the world, includes pride. Many religious people suffer from pride: taking pleasure or even delight in being good, or religious.
Saying of the Prophet. The Bequest: I have nothing to leave you except my family.
Saying of the ProphetAngerYou ask for a piece of advice. I tell you : ‘Do not get angry.’ He is strong who can withhold anger.
Saying of the ProphetHelping othersI order you to assist any oppressed person, whether he is a Muslim or not.
Teaching:One hour’s teaching is better than a whole night of prayer.Saying of the Prophet
Saying of the ProphetMonkishnessNo monkery in Islam.
Saying of the ProphetObligation to LearnThe pursuit of knowledge is obligatory on every Muslim.
Saying of the ProphetTruthSpeaking the truth to the unjust is the best of holy wars.
Saying of the ProphetTHE PEOPLEIt is the people who are God’s family.(Muhammad the Prophet)
Saying of the ProphetSome behaviourI am like a man who has lighted a fire, and all the creeping things have rushed to burn themselves in it.
Saying of the ProphetThe BequestI have nothing to leave you except my family.
Saying of the ProphetFoodNobody has eaten better food than that won by his own labour.
Saying of the ProphetAccusationsAnyone reviling a brother for a sin will not himself die before committing it.
Saying of the Prophet.Lies, promises, trustHe is not of mine who lies, breaks a promise or fails in his trust.
Saying of the ProphetTasksWhoever makes all his tasks one task, God will help him in his other concerns.
Saying of the ProphetPracticeWho are the learned? Those who put into practice what they know.
Saying of the ProphetOppressionWhen oppression exists, even the bird dies in its nest.
Helping othersI order you to assist any oppressed person, whether he is a Moslem or not.
Saying of the ProphetDistributionGod it is who gives: I am only a distributor.
Saying of the ProphetWomenWomen are the twin-halves of men.
Saying of the ProphetReflectionThe Faithful are mirrors, one to the other.
Saying of the ProphetPrivacyWhoever invades people´s privacy corrupts them.
Saying of the ProphetLoveDo you think you love your Creator? Love your fellow-creature first.
Treat this world as I do, like a wayfarer; like a horseman who stops in the shade of a tree for a time, and then moves on.
Saying of the ProphetObjectsIt is your attachment to objects which make you blind and deaf.
When people have a hard task to do – one which stretches them – they become less concerned with trivial matters.
It is not ‘Have I got a chance?’ It is more often: ‘Have I seen my chance?
Trying to force something is the best way to stop it happening.
If you will not reprove yourself,’ Saadi says, ‘you will not welcome reproof from another.
Whoever is to be wise despises himself. Only the ignorant trust their own judgement.
Great men are great until they know it. Saints are holy until they know it.
The major barrier to understanding is wishful thinking and following that which pleases one.
A Sufi has a right to be served, but he has no right to demand. Maruf Karkhi of Khorasan
That which is capable of perceiving objective reality is, in Sufism, the human soul (ruh).
All forms are limited. Some of the limitations are time, place, culture, language.
Careful preparation is necessary before people can perceive something which is there all the time.
The colour of the water seems to be the colour of the glass into which it has been poured’.
If, from time to time, you give up expectation, you will be able to perceive what it is you are getting.
Enlightenment must come little by little – otherwise it would overwhelm.
Sandals. The Sufi teacher Ghulam-Shah was asked what pattern he used in formulating his courses for disciples. He said: ‘Barefoot until you can get sandals, sandals until you can manage boots.
When the Higher Man does something worthy of admiration, it is an evidence of his Mastership, not the object of it.
Angels are the powers hidden in the faculties and organs of man
He who sleeps on the Road will lose either his hat or his head.
Before the antidote arrives from Iraq The man with snake-bite will be dead.
There are as many paths to Truth as there are souls of men.
The Sufis say, “This is not a religion; it is religion
SOVEREIGNTYSovereignty is a wind of change. (Hariri)
The hearts of the noble are the graves of confidences.
He who is fortunately enlightened [the Sufi]Knows that sophistry is from the devil and love from Adam.
Satisfaction is a treasure which does not decay.Proverb
Nothing can defile the Sufi, and he in fact purifies everything.” Abu-Turab al-Nakhsabi.
Rumi himself once said that counterfeit gold is only to be found because there is such a thing as real gold to be copied.
Hariri says, in his Maqamat: ‘Safety is on the river’s BANK.
The skilled artisan uses the same iron to make a horseshoeAs he does for a polished mirror for the King.
The great poet Hafiz says that you should dye your prayer-carpet with wine if your teacher tells you to do so.
Q: How can I help myself?A: By remembering the proverb: ‘The Path is not to be found anywhere except in human service’, from Saadi.
Ibn El-Arabi wrote, ‘The Teacher is he who hears you, then unveils you to yourself
And Rumi tells us, ‘Soul receives from soul that knowledge, therefore not by book nor from tongue’.
The selection and following of a spiritual guide is the most important duty of a Sufi.
It is necessary to note,” says Rumi, “that opposite things work together, even though nominally opposed” (Fihi Ma Fihi).
At His door, what is the difference between Moslem and Christian, virtuous and guilty? At his door all are seekers and He the sought.
Saying of the Prophet.Ink and Blood:The ink of the learned is holier than the blood of the martyr.
At His door, what is the difference between Muslim and Christian, virtuous and guilty? At his door all are seekers and He the sought.
The pathways into Sufic thinking are, it is traditionally said, almost as varied as the number of Sufis in existence.
The totality of life cannot be understood, so runs Sufi teaching, if it is studied only through the methods which we use in everyday living.
Practise your knowledge, for knowledge without practice is a body without life
As with any other specialisation, teaching is a vocation, open only to those who are truly capable of discharging its functions.
When you get a principle on which everyone is agreed, you get the beginning of complacency and deterioration.
When you feel least interested in following the Way which you have entered, this may be the time when it is most appropriate for you.
The secret protects itself. It is found only in the spirit and practice of the Work.
Unbelief and belief are both marching on His road, while both are saying, ‘He is one and He has no associates’.
Understanding and knowledge are completely different sensations in the realm of Truth than they are in the realm of society.
If you forsake a path, it is because you were hoping for conviction from it. You seek conviction, not self-knowledge.
Do not dwell upon whether you will put yourself into the hands of a teacher. You are always in his hands.
Debating whether one trusts or not is a sign that one does not want to trust at all, and therefore is still incapable of it.
The aspirant has to be guided by a mentor. The stage at which this guidance can take effect is seldom, if ever, perceptible to the learner.
Those who say ‘I am ready to learn’, or ‘I am not ready to learn’ are as often mistaken as they are correct in their surmise.
A Sufi is one who is not bound by anything nor does he bind anything
Things which are seemingly opposed may in fact be working together
Like calls to like, truth to truth and deceit to deceit.
It is experience which teaches, not controversy based on supposed logic and assumptions of what is likely to be true.
Sufism is education, in that it has a body of knowledge which it transmits to those who have not got it.
Sufi Teachers are not, as you might hope, people who make you feel peace and harmony.
Of whom can we think well when it is believed that if nothing bad is done to you, this has been a kindness?
Sufism is that which succeeds in bringing to man the High Knowledge.
What you are pleased to call Sufism is merely the record of past method.
Before garden, vine or grape was in the world,” writes one, “our soul was drunken with immortal wine.
Brave is the thief who carries a lamp in his hand.
The definition of the word ‘finished’ is: ‘This word means finished.
I will not serve God like a labourer, in expectation of my wages.
Your medicine is in you, and you do not observe it. Your ailment is from yourself, and you do not register it.
Information about the activities of one body of Sufis may be harmful to the potential of another.
Until you can understand illogicality, and the meaningfulness of it, shun the Sufis except for limited, precise, self-evident services.
When sense has left a head, it should be called a tail.
Generosity is also marked by doing what one says one will do. Saadi teaches: ‘when the generous promise, they perform
BARQI: AESTHETICS IS ONLY THE LOWEST FORM OF PERCEPTION OF THE REAL.
If you want to be a calligrapher, write, and write, and write.
A book, for the Sufis, is an instrument as much as it is something to give information.
I am the Real, for I have not ceased to be real – through the Real.
If the father cannot, the son will finish the task.
Pick up a bee from kindness, and learn the limitations of kindness.
Have the nature of a dervish: then wear a stylish cap.
The sort of man who, throwing a stone upon the ground, would miss.
Better the demon which makes you improve than the angel who threatens.
As Ibn Arabi says: ‘Absolute existence is the source of all existence’.
One day the cub will become a wolf, even if it has been reared among the sons of man.
Each flies with its own kind: pigeon with pigeon, hawk with hawk.
MAGHRIBI: Learning is in activity. Learning through words alone is minor activity.
I ask about the sky, but the answer is about a rope.
Much smoke has been seen, and caused great fear of fire — even when no fire ensued.
Man has less than he suspects of: Time, Friends, Hopes, Qualities.Proverb
You will never reach Mecca, I fear: for you are on the road to Turkestan.
You make me a sinner if you stop me giving you hospitality.
Take the straight path, even if it is long: marry no widow, even if she is a houri.
The power of Allah: no sound, no shape, no form. But when it manifests, none can resist it.
SENTENCES OF THE KHAJAGANRUDBARI : Heart to heart is an essential means of passing on the secrets of the Path.
Sufism is experience, and hence not to be defined – imprisoned – in perennial, static categories.
Sufism is, in fact, not a mystical system, not a religion, but a body of knowledge.
Learning without action is like wax without honey.(Anwar-i-Suhaili)
Even if false gold makes a man happy:At the mint it will be identified.
A loan is the scissors of friendship.A man’s own tongue may cut his throat.The cage has no value without the bird.
Dye your hair, certainly. But what can you do for your face?
EPITAPH OF JALALUDIN RUMIWhen we are dead, seek not our tomb in the earth, but find it in the hearts of men.
THE HEAVENSTo the mallet of the Highest MindThe heavens are the smallest possible ball.(Akhlaq-i-Mohsini)
THE BIRD AND THE WATERA bird which has not heard of fresh waterDips his beak in salt-water year after year.(Anwar-i-Suhaili)
You may be able to get the bone down your throat But if it reaches your stomach it will tear your navel.(Gulistan)
Knowledge. How curious that a man who closes his hand upon air so often thinks that he has a ruby within his grasp.
When there is a true or useful thing, there is sure to be a counterfeit.
Miracles, to the Sufi, are not evidential, they are instrumental.
Continuously, in commemoration of the FriendWe drank wine, even before the creation of the vine.
Whoever knows God, does not (any longer) say “God”.
He is the completed Man who, from his completeness, performs, with his Mastership, the work of a slave.
Everyone does not know the secrets of TruthThe States of Truth are not evidential.
Sufism is always systematised only for limited or transitory periods: because Sufism is primarly instrumental, not for enjoyment or display.
To Him who has sense, a sign is enoughFor the heedless, however, a thousand expositions are not enough.
Whoever has taught me one letter has made me his slave.
The bird which has no knowledge of pure water, has his beak in salt water all year round.
If you cannot sit on a throne like a king, seize, like a tent-pitcher, the rope of the Royal tent.
Those who can’t, try: those who can, don’t have to.
Give and TakeThe Chief takes less than he is givenAnd gives more than he has taken.
Give and TakeThe Chief takes less than he is givenAnd gives more than he has taken
Now that I have found thee, I know that in the first step I took, I moved away from thee.
Hazrat Ali, in a saying attributed to him, says: ‘Man is in disguise, covered by his tongue’.
If you are covetous, you are a prisoner: If you are greedy, you will never be filled.
If you have two shirts, sell one and with the money buy a flower’.
A short time in the presence of the Friends (the Sufis) is better than a hundred years’ sincere, obedient dedication.
Do not tell your secrets to everyone in this headquarters, Earth. We have surveyed it well. There was nobody to whom to entrust secrets.
Abu-Yaqub al-Susi: the Sufi is ‘One who does not care when something is taken from him, but who does not cease to seek for what he has not.
Better to quarrel with a friend than to support enemies.
Whoever has not first dug a well, should not steal a minaret.
I longed to teach, but I had to wait until the desire had left me before I could really do so.
Nobody can stand between you and knowledge if you are fit for it.
Whoever might perfume a scorpionWill not thereby escape its sting. Bahaudin Naqshband
A book, for the Sufis, is an instrument as much as it is something to give information….The key is the teacher.
That which is given free is never knowledge. It may be information….but knowledge does not come in that manner.
To say “yes” to the Sufi way is to say “no” to imagined escapes.
When prayer, rituals and ascetic life are just a means of self-indulgence, they are harmful rather than beneficial.
Three things cannot be retrieved:The arrow once sped from the bowThe word spoken in hasteThe missed opportunity. Ali, the Lion of Islam.
Feeling important is a vice, not a virtue, however concealed as participation in something noble.
With enough information, it is almost impossible “not” to predict people’s action.
But the minimum human duty is to serve others: it is no great attainment.
Sayings of the ProphetTrust: Trust in God – but tie your camel first.
Whoever gives knowledge to a fool loses itAnd who keeps it from the deserving does wrong.
ServiceI will not serve God like a labourer, in expectation of my wages.Rabia el-Adawia.
Generosity is also marked by doing what one says one will do.
Sufism is therefore not ‘Do as I say and not as I do’, or even ‘Do as I do’, but ‘Experience and you will know’.
The people of the world have a fixed destiny. But the spiritually developed receive what is “not” in their destiny.
Voice in the nightA voice whispered to me last night: ‘There is no such thing as a voice whispering in the night!
As the Eastern saying, by the sage Hilali, has it, ‘one person who understands is worth a hundred who merely obey a custom.
WisdomSufian said: ‘The wisdom which is invisible but which sustains is a hundred times better than the appearance of wisdom, for that has itself to be sustained.
Sufism, the “secret tradition,” is not available on the basis of assumptions which belong to another world, the world of intellect.
Dramatic. A well developed sense of the dramatic has values beyond what people usually imagine. One of these is to realise the limitations of a sense of the dramatic.
Saying of the Mulla Nasrudin. If I survive this life without dying, I’ll be surprised.
You are still adrift while you still think that a means is an end.
I have heard all that you have had to say to me on your problems.You ask me what to do about them.It is my view that your real problem is that you are a member of the human race.Face that one first.
If you want to strengthen an enemy and make him exult – hate him.
When the ignorant have become numerous or powerful enough, they have been referred to by a special name. This names is ‘the Wise’.
Learn to be as analytical about things of which you are credulous as you are of those which you criticise.
Greed harms you: generosity helps you. This is why is has been said: ‘Greed is the mother of incapacity’.
To be obsessed by the idea of freedom, for instance, is itself a form of slavery. Such people are in the chains of the hope of freedom, and are therefore able to do little else than struggle with them.
Water shrinks wool, urgency shrinks time.Shrinkage may be an advantage or the reverse, according to expectation.
A great deal of thought is only a substitute for the thoughts that the individual would really find useful at the time.
Prescribing hard work for the soft, or easy work for the hardy, is generally nonsense. What is always needed in any aim is right effort, right time, right people, right materials.
The stupidest man I ever met had a favourite saying.It was:’What do you think I am, stupid, or something?
What is sometimes thought to be clever is, significantly often, merely an advanced form of foolishness.
It is the message, not the man, which is important to the Sufis.
You must empty out the dirty water before you fill the pitcher with clean.
The sufis believe that they can experience something more complete.
The union of the mind and intuition which brings about illumination, and the development which the Sufis seek, is based upon love.
Good. Show me a man who thinks that he knows what ‘good’ is, and I will probably be able to show you a horror of a person. Show me a person who really knows what ‘good’ is, and I will show you that he almost never uses the word.
The Sufi way is through knowledge and practice, not through intellect and talk.
But one may say something and yet not be able to do it. Try, for instance, lifting yourself up by the bootstraps.
Self-mortification, far from producing liberation from material things, is far more likely to cause either an unhinged mind, delusions or a masochistic taste for more suffering, experienced, of course, as joy.
Have you noticed how many people who walk in the shade curse the Sun?
People cannot handle prejudice because they try to deal with the symptom. Prejudice is the symptom, wrong assumptions are the cause.’Prejudice is the daughter of assumption.
Banality is like boredom: bored people are boring people, people who think that things are banal are themselves banal.Interesting people can find something interesting in all things.
A motto of the human race: Let me do as I like, and give me approval as well.
To ‘see both sides’ of a problem is the surest way to prevent its complete solution. Because there are always more than two sides.
It is not only a matter of not caring who knows – it is also a matter of knowing who cares.
People today are in danger of drowning in information; but, because they have been taught that information is useful, they are more willing to drown than they need be. If they could handle information, they would not have to drown at all.
People used to play with toys.Now the toys play with them.