The heart is
The thousand-stringed instrument.
Our sadness and fear come from being
Out of tune with love.
All day long God coaxes my lips
To speak,
So that your tears will not stain
His green dress.
It is not that the Friend is vain,
It is just your life we care about.
Sometimes the Beloved
Takes my pen in hand,
For Hafiz is just a simple man.
The other day the Old One
Wrote on the Tavern wall:
“The heart is
The thousand-stringed instrument
That can only be tuned with
Love.”
On
the way to God
the difficulties feel like
being ground by a millstone,
like night coming at noon,
like lightning through
the clouds.
But
don’t worry!
What must come, comes.
Face everything with love, as
your mind dissolves
in God.
Love is to see
what is good and beautiful in
everything. It is to learn from everything,
to see the gifts of God and the generosity
of God in everything. It is to
be thankful for all of
God’s bounties.
This is the first step
on the road to the love of God.
This is just a seed of love. In time,
the seed will grow and become a tree
and bear fruit. Then, whoever tastes of
that fruit will know what real love is.
It will be difficult for those who
have tasted to tell of it to
those who have not.
Reality
and the buddha dharma
are one and the
same.
The spiritual athlete often changes the color of his clothes,
and his mind remains gray and loveless.
He sits inside a shrine room all day,
so that the Guest has to go outdoors and praise the rocks.
Or he drills holes in his ears, his hair grows
enormous and matted,
people mistake him for a goat…
He goes out into wilderness areas, strangles his impulses,
and makes himself neither male nor female…
He shaves his skull, puts his robe in an orange vat,
reads the Bhagavad-Gita, and becomes a terrific talker.
Kabir says: Actually you are going in a hearse
to the country of death,
bound hand and foot!
An unspectacular life
may be a garden rich in delight,
in queer paths, perfumed herbs, and
marble cloisters. “I live a life of no major
accomplishments,” said the oldest man
alive. High living is ephemeral, quick
to change; the light soon dims
among tower peaks.