Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī (1207–73,) better known as Rūmī, was a Persian poet and Sūfī mystic. He is often referred to as Mevlānā, meaning “Our Guide.”
Rūmī was born north of the Amu Darya (Oxus) River, in Persian-speaking Tajikistan or Afghanistan, from where Rūmī’s family fled a Mongol annexation. They settled in Konya, then the capital city of the Seljuk Empire, now in Turkey. Rūmī’s father was a practicing mystic who preached to devout disciples in Persian.
Rūmī was sent to study in the highly regarded Arabic-speaking madrasa schools of Damascus and Aleppo and returned to Konya in his thirties to take on his late father’s position as an Islāmic cleric and legal scholar.
Rūmī remained in Konya for the rest of his life. He founded the Mevlevi Sūfī order, which survives to this day. His followers, the whirling dervishes, lose themselves in trance and dance, occasionally spinning like tops for hours on end. Rūmī’s great poetic works are the Masnavi or “spiritual couplets” and the Divan, a compendium of thousands of lyric poems.
Rūmī is respected as an icon not only of the Islāmic civilization (or of Afghan, Iranian, Tajik, or Turkish heritage,) but also of the global culture. Rūmī’s poetry and religious writings are among the most beloved and respected in Islām and elsewhere. The Mevlāna Museum in Konya, consisting of Rūmī’s mausoleum and the dervish lodge (Dergah,) is Turkey’s second most-visited tourist attraction after Istanbul’s Topkapi Palace.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Travelers, it is late. Life’s sun is going to set. During these brief days that you have strength, be quick and spare no effort of your wings.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Win, Effort, Life, Action
Listen, open a window to God and begin to delight yourself by gazing upon Him through the opening. The business of love is to make that window in the heart, for the breast is illumined by the beauty of the Beloved. Gaze incessantly on the face of the Beloved! Listen, this is in your power, my friend.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
That which is false troubles the heart, but truth brings joyous tranquility.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Joy, Truth, Wisdom
Give up to grace. The ocean takes care of each wave ’til it gets to shore. You need more help than you know.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Stay with friends who support you in these. Talk with them about sacred texts, and how you are doing, and how they are doing, and keep your practices together.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Love, Friendship, Friend, Support
No mirror ever became iron again; No bread ever became wheat; No ripened grape ever became sour fruit. Mature yourself and be secure from a change for the worse. Become the light.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Courage, Growth
The sword of reality is the saint’s protection.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Truth, Wisdom
Dance, when you’re broken open. Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you’re perfectly free.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Little by little, wean yourself.This is the gist of what I have to say.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Courage, Growth
Beware! Don’t allow yourself to do what you know is wrong, relying on the thought, Later I will repent and ask God’s forgiveness.’
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: God, Action
There is no worse sickness for the soul, o you who are proud, than this pretense of perfection.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Wisdom, Perfection
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Love
An eye is meant to see things.
The soul is here for its own joy.
A head has one use: For loving a true love.
Feet: To chase 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.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
When the remedy you have offered only increases the disease, then leave him who will not be cured, and tell your story to someone who seeks the truth.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Teach, Truth, Love
We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
I didn’t come here of my own accord, and I can’t leave that way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
My friend, the sufi is the friend of the present moment. To say tomorrow is not our way.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Friend, Action
The rain-weeping and the sun burning twine together to make us grow. Keep your intelligence white-hot and your grief glistening, so your life will stay fresh. Cry easily like a little child.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Win, Life, Courage, Growth
I am burning. If anyone lacks tinder, let him set his rubbish ablaze with my fire.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Enthusiasm
When your heart becomes the grave of your secrets, that desire of yours will be gained more quickly. The prophet said that anyone who keeps secret his inmost thought will soon attain the object of his desire. When seeds are buried in the earth, their inward secrets become the flourishing garden.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Courage, Fear, Earth
Be occupied, then, with what you really value and let the thief take something else.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Focus, Action
Fasting is the first principle of medicine.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Energy
Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Give your weakness to one who helps.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
The morning wind spreads its fresh smell. We must get up and take that in, that wind that lets us live. Breathe before it’s gone.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Do not be satisfied with the stories that come before you. Unfold your own myth.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Loosen the bonds of avarice from your hands and neck.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Wisdom, Desire
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