Other Voice

"The colour of Allah is upon us! And what better dye than that of Allah. It is Him we worship." 2:138

"The colour of my [[love]] is deep and permanent." — Mirabai

"Allah is not loved but by Allah, Allah is not known but by Allah, Allah is not remembered but by Allah, and there is nothing in existence but Allah, His names, His attributes and His works. Thus, everything is Him, by Him, from Him, and to Him." — Hadith Qudsi

"I gave my [[soul]] to him
and all the things I owned were his:
I have no flock to tend
nor any other trade
and my one ministry is love.

If I'm no longer seen
following sheep about the hills,
say that I am lost, that
wandering in love I let
myself be lost and then was won." — St John of the Cross

"True singing is a different breath. You burn
and breath is nothing. Gusts in a god. Wind." — Rainer Maria Rilke

"My lover is mine
and I am his." — The Song of Songs

"If the veil was lifted I could not be any more certain." — Iman `Ali

"My Earth and My Heaven cannot contain Me, but the heart of My faithful servant contains Me." — Hadith Qudsi

"Out of all things comes oneness
and from oneness comes all things" — Herakleitos

"Allah has not placed two hearts within a man." (33:4)

"In one [[moment]] of attraction the beggar becomes the king and in one instant a mountain mass is reduced to straw.
Step out on the path of the master Muhammad's mi'raj and delight in all the mighty signs." — Shaykh Sa'd ud-Dīn Mahmūd Shabistārī

"Whoever acts without insight is like the one who chases after a mirage in the desert: his haste will only increase his distance." — Iman Ja`far alSadiq

"Now in my
[[heart]] I
see clearly

a beautiful
face
shining,

etched
by love." — Sappho

"Dusk inks the crystal ripples.
Leisurely the [[white]] moon comes out.
Tonight I am with my oar, alone, and cad do
everything
yet waver, not willing to return." — Wang Wei

"All perfected things come home" — Rainer Maria Rilke

"Set me as a seal on your heart,
as a seal on your arm,
for love is as strong as death." — The Song of Songs

"As a poet of the sublime, of the bliss of Edenic companionship, of the whirlwind blast and burn of rapture, of paralysis before impossible love, she confides her words to Aphrodite, and to us. She writes prophetically, 'Someone, I tell you, [[will]] [[remember]] us'." — Willis Barnstone, describing Sappho

"I am a man: little do I last
and the [[night]] is enormous.
But I look up:
the stars [[write]].
Unknowing I understand:
I too am written,
and at this very moment
someone spells me out." — Octavio Paz

"Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to long for nothing more fervently than for this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal? [...] Of course you can choose anything you want, to raise children or get married, but don’t pretend to do it because these things have some sort of intrinsic value — they don’t. Do it solely because you chose them and are willing to own up to them. In the story of our lives, these choices are ours and ours alone, and this is what gives things, all things, value. Only when one realizes this is he or she prepared to face the eternal recurrence, the entire cycle, without the risk of being crushed. Only then is one able to say with Yeats, '[A]nd yet again,' and truly mean it [...] Perhaps the hardest part of the eternal return is to own up to the tortures that we create for ourselves and those we create for others. Owning up: to recollect, to regret, to be responsible, ultimately to forgive and love." — John J. Kaag

"What is common we must do.
Though the word is both common and universal,
we live as if we possessed a private intelligence. — Herakleitos

"Tranquility has brought me happiness,
[[life]] is slow and full of leisure." — Wang Wei

"It was the perfect realm
of holiness and [[peace]].
In deepest solitude
I found the narrow [[way]]:
a secret giving such release
that I was stunned and stammering,
rising beyond all science.

I was so far inside,
so dazed and far away
my senses were released
from feeling of my own.
My mind had found a surer way:
a knowledge by unknowing,
rising beyond all science." — St John of the Cross

"The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think." — Edwin Schlossberg

"Purity does not lie in separation from but in deeper penetration into the universe [...] The world is filled, and filled with the Absolute. To see this is to be made free." — Teilhard de Chardin

"[[Time]] is one spreading ring wrapped around another, outward and outward until the thinnest skin of [[Now]] depends for its being on the enormous mass of everything that has al[[read]]y died." — Richard Powers

"At every second the young and old advance in age - every moment is new, yet instantly old.
There is a gathering together and a dispersal contained in every breath.
[[Nothing]] remains for more than a second - in the very moment a thing dies it is born again." — Shaykh Sa'd ud-Dīn Mahmūd Shabistārī

"True storytellers do not know their own story... Neither do they know anyone else's story in its entirety. The primary work of historians [[...] is to reveal continuity where we have assumed something to be ended." — James Carse

"Who pours out like a spring knows cognizance;
who leads him spellbound in serene creation,
ending inside beginning, in ending begins." — Rainer Maria Rilke

"Thin branches have the winged noise of chaos.
A cold [[moon]] tumbles into random [[shadow]]s.
Musicians shape bamboo into dragon pipes,
fisherman cut them into fishing poles.
How can ordinary bamboo compare with green crystal
inside this Gate of the Dao, by altars of eternity?" — Wang Wei

"All things stay at rest:
darkness and [[holy]] [[light]],
flower and [[book]]." — Rainer Maria Rilke

"In change is rest" — Herakleitos

"Their bodies obey the law of place
but their minds soar in meditation.
They don't mourn the sinking sun
for in them is a [[burn]]ing lamp." — Wang Wei

"rise singing, praising back to pure relation.
Be [[here]] among the vanished; near the tree
of death, be ringing glass that shatters even

as it rings. Know conditions of nonbeing,
the endless ground of your vibration down
in you: one day you'll be wholly fulfilled." — Rainer Maria Rilke

"Worship as though it is the last act in your life." — Hadith Qudsi

"O soothing cautery!
O wound that is a [[joy]]!
O gentle hand! O delicate touch
tasting of eternity,
repaying every debt.
Killing, you turn my [[death]] to life." — St John of the Cross

"On a true mystical path, one has lost so much. One is so lost. And at the same time, life becomes more alive, more dynamic. It has always been the emptiness at the center that allows things to happen." — Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

"The god of true mercy
would enter differently the pure, the vast
the gatelike open heart [...]

Not less than the subtle [[secret]] sum
of intuition winning us inside in [[silence]]
like a quietly playing child of cosmic union." — Rainer Maria Rilke

"He unrolled the scroll of the air, extended it, and bent it into Möbius strips; he furled line in a thousand new ways, as if he were inventing a script and writing it in one infinitely recurving utterance until I thought the bounds of beauty must break." — Annie Dillard, writing about Dave Rahm

"O Allah! Illuminate my exterior with my obedience to You, my interior with Your love, my heart with [[witness]]ing of You, my soul with the most profound knowledge of You, and my innermost being with the contemplation of Your divine presence, O You Who are the Possessor of glory and noble generosity." — Iman `Ali

"Do not listen to me
but to the word.

It is wise to agree,
'all things are one.'" — Herakleitos

"The path of the traveler is no more than two steps although it holds several dangers.
One step is to leave the duality of the ha, and the second is to abandon the arena of existence.
From this position of direct witnessing, separation and gatheredness are one, just as the number one is present in all members.
You are the gatheredness which becomes oneness itself. You are that one that becomes separation." — Shaykh Sa'd ud-Dīn Mahmūd Shabistārī

"And he came and took it from the right hand
of the one seated on the throne. And when he took
the book the four animals and twenty-four elders
fell before the lamb, each holding a harp and gold bowls
filled with incense, which are the [[prayer]]s of saints.
And they sang a new [[song]], saying:
You are worthy to take up the book scroll
and to open the seals upon it
since you were slaughtered and by your blood you bought people for God" — The Apocalypse of John of Patmos

"The world
will therefore clarify at last
what I esteem of highest [[grace]]:
my soul revealing it can rest
without a place and with a place.

Although I suffer a dark night
in mortal life, I also know
my agony is slight, for though
I am in darkness without light,
a clear [[heaven]]ly life I know;
for love gives power to my life,
however black and blind my day,
to yield my soul, and free of strife
to rest - living darkly with no ray." — St John of the Cross

"This is his one guiding god. In him goeth man to his rest. Toward him goeth the long journey of the soul after death. In him shineth forth as light all that man bringeth back from the greater world. To this one god man shall pray." — Carl Gustav Jung

"I have found complete abstention from the world (zuhd) in two phrases of the Qur'an: "...in order that you not be saddened over what has passed you by nor rejoice over what He has given you. [57:23]" — Iman `Ali

"One day, in a mood of sublime emptiness, Subhuti was resting under­neath a tree when flowers began to fall about him. “We are praising you for your discourse on emptiness,” the gods whispered to Subhuti. “But I have not spoken of empti­ness,” replied Subhuti. “You have not spoken of emptiness, we have not heard emptiness,” responded the gods. “This is the true emptiness.” The blos­soms showered upon Subhuti as rain." — related by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

"It is not perfected except by one who possesses the utmost sagacity and passion, who is not distracted and does not allow his attention to stray. He knows, therefore he is humble and steadfast while standing in resignation, longing, patience and anticipation; he envisages his goal and his heart is completely humbled before Allah." — Hadith Qudsi

"When his Lord said to him: Submit! He said: I submit myself to the Lord of all the worlds." 2:131