Sufi Life Quotes & Sayings

In Islam, and especially among the Sufi Orders, siyahat or 'errance' - the action or rhythm of walking - was used as a technique for dissolving the attachments of the world and allowing men to lose themselves in God. The aim of a dervish was to become a 'dead man walking': one whose body stays alive on the earth yet whose soul is already in Heaven. A Sufi manual, the Kashf-al-Mahjub, says that, toward the end of his tourney, the dervish becomes the Way not the wayfarer, i.e. a place over which something is passing, not a traveller following his own free will...it was quite similar to an Aboriginal concept, 'Many men afterwards become country, in that place, Ancestors.' By spending his whole life walking and singing his Ancestor's Songline, a man eventually became the track, the Ancestor and the song. The Wayless Way, where the Sons of God lose themselves and, at the same time, find themselves. — Meister Eckhart

... the work of the (Muslim Sufi) dervish community
was to open the heart,
explore the mystery of union,
to fiercely search for and try to say the truth,
and to celebrate the glory and difficulty
in being in human incarnation. — Coleman Barks

There is a life-force within your soul, seek that life. — Rumi

There can only be two contexts of your life. Either you are the author of your life, or He (the Creator) is the author of your life.
People who feel that their creation is the responsibility of the Creator, find opportunities unexpectedly.
Those who feel that their lives are their own, have to fashion their own means. — Wasif Ali Wasif

Death is the protector of life and life is the process of death. — Wasif Ali Wasif

Life abides between life as if it were an island amidst its own ocean — Wasif Ali Wasif

Linus closes his eyes and puts his arms out at his sides. "Look to this day. For it is life. The very life of life." I stand beside him. Quiet. He continues. "It its brief course lie all the verities and realities of your existence. The splendor of beauty, the bliss of growth, the glory of action. Today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope." He opens his eyes and looks at me. "It's an ancient Sufi text." He smiles. "My mantra." He folds his paper, bats me over the head with it and walks away. — Dana Reinhardt

Practise your knowledge, for knowledge without practice is a body without life — Idries Shah

Love is an involuntary gift that manifests unplanned. — Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi

My life is on loan, like money borrowed from a bank. God is the lender, and He retains the right to call in the loan any time. Though I am responsible for taking care of it, I do not own this life; it is borrowed. Why should I fear its loss or the loss of anything else in this world when I must surrender it all anyway? — James Dillehay

In order to spend out our time (life) we sell some of this time. We work for someone, we labour. In freedom we do slavery. — Wasif Ali Wasif

Sufism is known by means of itself. — Idries Shah

This life is but a dream. A state of sleep but how unfortunate that man's eyes open only when they are about to be closed (forever). — Wasif Ali Wasif

Sleep is a mirror of life in which can be seen the reflection of death. — Wasif Ali Wasif

A Sufi is alive to the value of time, and is given, every moment, to what that moment demands. — Idries Shah

Life is not only Newton, it is also Milton. — Wasif Ali Wasif

Sufi poetry is, in a sense, self-help poetry about how to live a decent life, how to deal with your mortality. — Mohsin Hamid

As a Sufi I had sworn to protect life and do no harm. In this world of illusions, so many people were readt ti fight without any reason, and so many others fought for a reason. But the Sufi was the one who wouldn't fight even if he had a reason. — Elif Shafak

If you are 'humble', it may help you in ordinary life. If you are not, you will get nowhere in higher things. — Idries Shah

To be a Sufi is to detach from fixed ideas and from preconceptions; and not to try to avoid what is your lot. — Idries Shah

The totality of life cannot be understood, so runs Sufi teaching, if it is studied only through the methods which we use in everyday living. — Idries Shah

Islam and Christianity promise eternal paradise to the faithful. And that is a powerful opiate, certainly, the hope of a better life to come. But there's a Sufi story that challenges the notion that people believe only because they need an opiate. Rabe'a al-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint of Sufism, was seem running through the streets of her hometown, Basra, carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered, 'I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven of fear of hell, but because He is God. — John Green

Sufism," according to the Sufi, "is an adventure in living, necessary adventure. — Idries Shah

Where Ibn al-Arabi had written for the intellectual, Rumi was summoning all human beings to live beyond themselves, and to transcend the routines of daily life. The Mathnawi celebrated the Sufi lifestyle which can make everyone an indomitable hero of a battle waged perpetually in the cosmos and within the soul. The Mongol invasions had led to a mystical movement, which helped people come to terms with the catastrophe they had experienced at the deeper levels of the psyche, and Rumi was its greatest luminary and exemplar. — Karen Armstrong

Ibn Bassani, a Sufi mystic, all his life prayed, asking God to make his body the size of hell and send him there in the place of the world. I see my Lord Christ having done that for humanity. — Paul-Gordon Chandler

The Jesus Trajectory Love is recklessness, not reason. Reason seeks a profit. Loves comes on strong, consuming herself, unabashed. Yet in the midst of suffering, Love proceeds like a millstone, hard-surfaced and straight forward. Having died to self-interest, she risks everything and asks for nothing. Love gambles away every gift God bestows. The words above were written by the great Sufi mystic Jalalludin Rumi.6 But better than almost anything in Christian scripture, they closely describe the trajectory that Jesus himself followed in life. — Cynthia Bourgeault

The dance had distilled her and she had become one with the essence of all that is. — Holly Lynn Payne

The most complete gift of God is a life based on knowledge. — Imam Ali Ibn Abu Talib

The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life. If any item on the list clashes with any other item, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness. Better to live a life of single-pointed focus, he taught. But what about the benefits of living harmoniously among extremes? What if you could somehow create an expansive enough life that you could synchronize seemingly incongruous opposites into a worldview that excludes nothing? — Elizabeth Gilbert

A craftsman pulled a reed from the reedbed,
cut holes in it, and called it a human being.
Since then, it's been wailing a tender agony
of parting, never mentioning the skill
that gave it life as a flute — Rumi

The new Sufi tariqahs founded at this time stressed the unlimited potential of human life. Sufis could experience on the
spiritual plane what the Mongols had so nearly achieved in terrestrial politics — Karen Armstrong

The poor Sufi dressed in rags walked into a jewelry store owned by a rich merchant and asked him, "Do you know how you're going to die." And the Sufi said, "I do.""How?" asked the merchant.
And the Sufi lay down, crossed his arms, said, "Like this," and died, whereupon the merchant promptly gave up his store to live a life of poverty in pursuit of the kind of spiritual wealth the dead Sufi had acquired. — John Green

It is no accident that Sufis find that they can connect most constructively with people who are well integrated into the world, as well as having higher aims, and that those who adopt a sensible attitude towards society and life as generally known can usually absorb Sufi teachings very well indeed — Idries Shah