Be a connoisseur, and taste with caution

God has given us a dark wine so potent that,
drinking it, we leave the two worlds.

God has put into the form of hashish a power
to deliver the taster from self-consciousness.

God has made sleep so
that it erases every thought.

God made Majnun love Layla so much that
just her dog would cause confusion in him.

There are thousands of wines
that can take over our minds.

Don't think all ecstasies
are the same!

 

Jesus was lost in his love for God.
His donkey was drunk with barley.

Drink from the presence of saints,
not from those other jars.

Every object, every being,
is a jar full of delight.

Be a connoisseur,
and taste with caution.

Any wine will get you high.
Judge like a king, and choose the purest,

the ones unadulterated with fear,
or some urgency about "what's needed."

Drink the wine that moves you
as a camel moves when it's been untied,
and is just ambling about.

  Mathnawi IV, 2683-96
Version by Coleman Barks
"The Essential Rumi"
Castle Books, 1997

A Rare Event

(HAQQ - by Samir Malik)

If anybody goes traveling without a guide,
every two day's journey
becomes a journey of a hundred years.

The one who takes up a profession
without having had a teacher
becomes a laughing-stock,
no matter where he lives.

Except perhaps for a single occurrence,
in all the world, is a descendant of Adam
ever born without parents?

The one who earns gains wealth;
it's a rare event
to find a buried treasure.

Mathnawi III: 588; 590-592
Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski
"Rumi: Jewels of Remembrance"
Threshold Books, 1996

I Will Meet You There

Let yourself be silently drawn
by the strange pull of what you really love.
It will not lead you astray.

~ Rumi ~

(Essential Rumi, versions by Coleman Barks)