Don’t surrender your loneliness so quickly. Let it cut you more deep. Let it ferment and season you as few humans and even divine ingredients can. Something missing in my heart tonight has made my eyes so soft, my voice so tender, my need for God absolutely clear.
– Hafiz
Tag: hafiz
Hafiz: The tide of my love
The tide of my love
Has risen so high let me flood over
You.Close your eyes for a moment
And maybe all of your fears and fantasies
Will end.If that happened
God would become an infant in your
arms.And then you
– Hafiz in the words of Daniel Ladinsky, from The Gift: Poems by Hafiz The Great Sufi Master
Would have to nurse all
Creation!
Short film: Thursday Appointment
Two minutes that shows the depth and beauty of the Iranian (Persian) culture, and of the human heart. Written and directed by Sayed Mohammad Reza Kheradmandan.
Hafiz: God and I
God and I have become like two giant
fat people living in a tiny boat.We keep bumping into each other and
– Hafiz & Daniel Ladinsky in The Gift: Poems by Hafiz
laughing.
Hafiz: Everyone Is God speaking
Everyone
Ladinsky + Hafiz
Is God speaking.
Why not be polite and
Listen to
Him?
Everyone and everything is God speaking. We can realize that when we temporarily break through the veils, or when the veils fall away.
Or, simply, when we notice what everything happens within and as, and we notice that’s what we already are.
We can also use this as a pointer in daily life.
What if this is God speaking? This man? This woman? This person I love? This other one I dislike? This animal? This sun? This rain? This ecosystem? This planet? The stars?
Hafiz: This place where you are right now, God circled on a map for you
This place where you are right now, God circled on a map for you.
– Hafiz & Daniel Ladinsky
Hafiz through the translation of Daniel Ladinsky is often very beautiful. There is a simplicity and truth to it, and it often comes from a refreshing angle.
We can say that all is God’s will. And more than that, all is God so all is an expression of God and is God. In that sense, where we are is somewhere God has circled on a map for us. And God is also the map, the circle, and the circling.
Hafiz: Everyone you see, you say to them, “Love me.”
Admit something: Everyone you see,
You say to them, “Love me.”
Of course you do not do this out loud,
Otherwise someone would call the cops.
Still though, think about this,
This great pull in us to connect.
Why not become the one who lives
With a full moon in each eye that is always saying,
With that sweet moon language,
What every other eye in this world is dying to hear?
– Hafiz & Daniel Ladinsky
Yes. That is the deepest longing in us, and it’s the deepest longing for all parts of us as well. Everyone and everything in us wish to be met in love. In a very real way, any experience is asking for love. And any action that comes from hurt or a sense of lack is asking for love.
Hafiz: This place where you are right now
This place where you are right now, God circled on a map for you.
– Hafiz
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
– Jelaluddin Rumi,
translation by Coleman Barks
I wish I could show you
I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.
– Hafiz
A hundred complex cases against God in court
I know you have a hundred complex cases
Against God in court,
But never mind, wayfarer,
Let’s just get out of this mess
A hundred complex cases
We all have a hundred complex cases against God in court. A hundred complaints. A hundred reasons why God should do things differently.
So let’s get out of this mess. Let’s explore these cases, thoroughly investigate them, evaluate the testimonies and the evidence. Let’s have a clear verdict, based on what is revealed.
Let’s get out of this mess. (Through one of the many forms of inquiry.)
Hafiz: Lousy at Math
Lousy at Math
Larger than a goose egg.
Its value could have easily bought
One thousand horses
And two thousand acres
Of the most fertile land in Shiraz.
The thieves got drunk that night
To celebrate their great haul,
But during the course of the evening
The effects of the liquor
And their mistrust of each other grew to such
An extent
They decided to divide the stone into pieces.
Of course then the Priceless became lost.
Most everyone is lousy at math
And does that to God –
Dissects the Indivisible One,
By thinking, saying,
“This is my Beloved, he looks like this
And acts like that,
Once a group of thieves stole a rare diamond
Larger than a goose egg.
Its value could have easily bought
One thousand horses
And two thousand acres
Of the most fertile land in Shiraz.
The thieves got drunk that night
To celebrate their great haul,
But during the course of the evening
The effects of the liquor
And their mistrust of each other grew to such
An extent
They decided to divide the stone into pieces.
Of course then the Priceless became lost.
Most everyone is lousy at math
And does that to God –
Dissects the Indivisible One,
By thinking, saying,
“This is my Beloved, he looks like this
And acts like that,
How could that moron over there
Really
Be
God.”
– Hafiz, from The Gift translated by Daniel Ladinsky.
How can Bush, republicans, liberals, terrorists, fundamentalists, cancer, nuclear war, hatred, suffering, death, confusion, how can it really be God? God is everything that I believe is good, and not everything I believe is not good. Right there, the world is split. The Priceless became lost. Right there.
Hafiz: Why Aren’t We All Screaming Drunks?
Why Aren’t We All Screaming Drunks?
The sun once glimpsed God’s true nature
And has never been the same.
Thus that radiant sphere
Constantly pours its energy
Upon this earth
As does He from behind
The veil.
With a wonderful God like that
Why isn’t everyone a screaming drunk?
Hafiz’s guess is this:
Any thought that you are better or less
Than another man
Quickly
Breaks the wine
Glass.
– Hafiz, from The Gift translated by Daniel Ladinsky.
Any belief in any thought, and the wine glass is broken. Any belief splits the world, creates a sense of I, sets up an identity for this I, and then creates a sense of I and Other.
Hafiz: Until
According to the introduction in The Gift, Meher Baba saw the poems of Hafiz as a complete teaching in themselves. And I don’t find any reason to disagree.
Until
I think we are frightened every
Moment of our lives
Until we
Know
Him.
– Hafiz, from The Gift translated by Daniel Ladinsky.
When our center of gravity, our main identifiaction, is with the seen, with our human self, there is bound to be a sense of unease, dissatisfaction and fear.
This is a natural effect of filtering the world into I and Other.
The only remedy is to shift the center of gravity, the sense of I, into the seeing itself, into pure awareness.
And then to realize the absence of any I anywhere, in the seing and in the seen.