Great Throughts Treasury

"This is how we are with wine and beautiful food... we want and we get drunk with wanting, then the headache and bitterness afterward."

"This is how I would die into the love I have for you: as pieces of cloud dissolve in sunlight."

"This love is the rose that blooms forever."

"This mirror inside me shows. I can’t say what, but I can’t not know. I run from body. I run from spirit. I do not belong anywhere."

"This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First, to let go of life. In the end, to take a step without feet; to regard this world as invisible, and to disregard what appears to be the self. Heart, I said, what a gift it has been to enter this circle of lovers, to see beyond seeing itself, to reach and feel within the breast."

"This silence, this moment, every moment, if it's genuinely inside you, brings what you need. There's nothing to believe. Only when I stopped believing in myself did I come into this beauty. Sit quietly, and listen for a voice that will say, 'Be more silent.' Die and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign that you've died. Your old life was a frantic running from silence. Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence."

"This outward spring and garden are a reflection of the inward garden."

"This that is tormented and very tired, tortured with restraints like a madman, this heart."

"This phantom world gave you false signs but you turned from the illusion and journeyed to the land of truth."

"This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say. I don't plan it. When I'm outside the saying of it, I get very quiet and rarely speak at all."

"This world is a mountain, in which your works are echoed back to you."

"This place is a dream. Only a sleeper considers it real. Then death comes like dawn, and you wake up laughing at what you thought was your grief."

"This world's existence is one night long. There's a great lively gathering that night, but some people sleep through it."

"Those who don't feel this love pulling them like a river, those who don't drink dawn like a cup of spring-water or take in sunset like a supper, those who don't want to change, let them sleep."

"Though Destiny a hundred times waylays you, in the end it pitches a tent for you in Heaven. It is God's loving kindness to terrify you, in order to lead you to His Kingdom of safety."

"Through love scraps of copper are turned to gold."

"Thou art not that body: thou art this spiritual Eye."

"To Love is to be God. Never will a Lover's chest feel any sorrow. Never will a Lover's robe be touched by mortals. Never will a Lover's body be found buried in the earth. To Love is to be God."

"To change, a person must face the dragon of his appetites with another dragon, the life-energy of the soul."

"Through love the devil becomes an angel. Through love stones become soft as butter. Through love grief is like delight. Through love demons become the servants of God."

"To live without you is to be robbed of love and what is life without it? To live without you is death to me, my love but some call it life."

"To praise the sun is to praise your own eyes."

"Today I'm out wandering, turning my skull into a cup for others to drink wine from. In this town somewhere there sits a calm, intelligent man, who doesn't know what he's about to do!"

"To praise is to praise how one surrenders to the emptiness."

"Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don't open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground."

"Tonight we go to that place of eternity. This is the wedding Night- a never ending union of Lover and beloved. We whisper gentle secrets to each other and the child of the universe, takes its first breath."

"Tonight we go to that place of eternity. Come out of the circle of time and into the circle of love."

"Traditional words are just babbling in that presence, and babbling is a substitute for sight."

"Trust means you're ready to risk what you currently have."

"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."

"Travel brings power and love back into your life."

"Try another way of looking. Try you looking and the whole universe seeing."

"Until the juice ferments a while in the cask; it isn't wine. If you wish your heart to be bright, you must do a little work."

"Two there are who are never satisfied — the lover of the world and the lover of knowledge."

"Until you've found pain, you won't reach the cure. Until you've given up life, you won't unite with the supreme soul. Until you've found fire inside yourself, like the friend, You won't reach the spring of life.."

"Wash in the wisdom-water, so you will have no regrets about the time here. Love is the vital core of the soul, and of all you see, only love is infinite. Your non-existence before you were born is in the sky in the east. Your death is the western horizon, with you here between. The way leads neither east nor west, but in. Test your love-wings and make them strong. Forget the idea of religious ladders. Love is on the roof. Your senses are water sprouts. Drink rain directly off the roof. Water-sprouts are easily damaged and often must be replaced. Say this poem in your chest. Don't worry about how it sounds going through your mouth. A human body is a bow. Breathing and speech are arrows. When the quiver and arrows are used up or lost, there is nothing more for the bow to do."

"Very little grows on jagged rock. Be ground. Be crumbled, so wildflowers will come up where you are."

"Wash the dust from your Soul and Heart with wisdom’s water."

"We are all the same. Listen to the reeds as they sway apart; hear them speak of lost friends. At birth, you were cut from your bed, crying and grasping in separation. Everyone listens, knowing your song. You yearn for others who know your name and the words to your lament. We are all the same, all the same, Longing to find our way back; back to the one, back to the only one."

"We are as the flute, and the music in us is from thee; we are as the mountain and the echo in us is from thee."

"We can only learn to love by loving."

"We are pain and what cures pain, both. We are the sweet cold water and the jar that pours. I want to hold you close like a lute, so that we can cry out with loving. Would you rather throw stones at a mirror? I am your mirror and here are the stones."

"We began as mineral. We emerged into plant life, and into the animal state, and then into being human, and always we have forgotten our former states, except in early spring when we slightly recall being green again."

"We love that s why life is full of so many wonderful gifts."

"We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust"

"We can't help being thirsty, moving toward the voice of water. Milk drinkers draw close to the mother. Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, shamans, everyone hears the intelligent sound and moves with thirst to meet it."

"We gather at night to celebrate being human. Sometimes we call out low to the tambourine. Fish drink the sea, but the sea does not get smaller! We eat the clouds and evening light. We are slaves tasting the royal wine."

"We must die to become true human beings."

"We rarely hear the inward music, but we're all dancing to it nevertheless."

"We may know who we are or we may not. We may be Muslims, Jews or Christians but until our hearts become the mold for every heart we will see only our differences."