Sufi Quotes & Sayings

Ignorance is the Mother of Opposition — Idries Shah

They say: 'Seek wisdom while you have the strength, or you may lose the strength without gaining wisdom. — Idries Shah

Being human, we struggle constantly to stay with the miracle of what is and not to fall constantly into the black hole of what is not. This is an ancient challenge. As the Sufi poet Ghalib said centuries ago, Every particle of creation sings its own song of what is and what is not. Hearing what is can make you wise; hearing what is not can drive you mad. — Mark Nepo

One day the cub will become a wolf, even if it has been reared among the sons of man. — Idries Shah

Unsettled, a bird lost from the flock --
Keeps flying by itself in the dusk.
Back and forth, it has no resting place,
Night after night, more anguished its cries.
Its shrill sound yearns for the pure and distant --
Coming from afar, how anxiously it flutters!

It chances to find a pine tree growing all apart;
Folding its wings, it has come home at last.
In the gusty wind there is no dense growth;
This canopy alone does not decay.
Having found a perch to roost on,
In a thousand years it will not depart. — Tao Yuanming

Exercise power by means of kindness, and you may be causing more damage than you could by cruelty. Neither approach is correct. — Idries Shah

We view Sufism not as an ideology that molds people to the right way of belief or action, but as an art or science that can exert a beneficial influence on individuals and societies, in accordance with the needs of those individuals and societies ... Sufi study and development gives one capacities one did not have before. — Idries Shah

I longed to teach, but I had to wait until the desire had left me before I could really do so. — Idries Shah

If behaviors become equivalent it is possible for knowledge to become equivalent (for any two individuals). — Wasif Ali Wasif

Ibn El-Arabi wrote, 'The Teacher is he who hears you, then unveils you to yourself — Idries Shah

Please, not again what you studied, how long you spent at it, how many books you wrote, what people thought of you - but: what did you learn? — Idries Shah

I don't know what to make of the Muslim mystics, especially those who have come to be known as the Sufis. What do they experience in their mystic experiences? Could they have encountered the same God we do in our Christian mysticism? — Tony Campolo

The sort of man who, throwing a stone upon the ground, would miss. — Idries Shah

Sufi service has to be the right kind of service; neither servitude nor hypocrisy. — Idries Shah

When I talk of primordial innocence, I hear it in Sufi music with the nay flute. I see it in Coptic icons, in most traditional art, particularly art of the American Indian. I find the texts extraordinarily beautiful and very childlike and very simple. I've been particularly interested in American Indian texts. — John Tavener

I was you
and never knew it. — Rumi

To copy a virtue in another is more copying than it is virtue. Try to learn what that virtue is based upon. — Idries Shah

In Sufi terms the crushing of the ego is called Nafs Kushi. And how do we crush it? We crush it by sometimes taking ourselves to task. When the self says, 'O no, I must not be treated like this,' then we say, 'What does it matter?' When the self says, 'He ought to have done this, she ought to have said that,' we say, 'What does it matter, either this way or that way? Every person is what he is; you cannot change him, but you can change yourself.' That is the crushing ... It is only in this way that we can crush our ego. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

When people have a hard task to do - one which stretches them - they become less concerned with trivial matters. — Idries Shah

Most of the supposedly Sufi organizations, exercises and "orders" are in fact only of archaeological interest. — Idries Shah

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

People talk of the Sufi way. Wrong. If there is a way, it's not Sufism. — Art Hochberg

When the child is ill, the mother will know how to pray. — Wasif Ali Wasif

But promoting philosophical skepticism is not quite the mission of this book. If awareness of the Black Swan problem can lead us into withdrawal and extreme skepticism, I take here the exact opposite direction. I am interested in deeds and true empiricism. So, this book was not written by a Sufi mystic, or even by a skeptic in the ancient or medieval sense, or even (we will see) in a philosophical sense, but by a practitioner whose principal aim is not to be a sucker in things that matter, period. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

A modern story of Mullah Nasrudin, the Sufi teacher and holy fool, tells of him entering a bank and trying to cash a check. The teller asks him to please identify himself. Nasrudin reaches in his pocket and pulls out a small mirror. Looking into it, he says, "Yep, that's me all right." Meditation — Jack Kornfield

Be kind to the hawk and harm the sparrow. — Idries Shah

He who is fortunately enlightened [the Sufi]
Knows that sophistry is from the devil and love from Adam. — Idries Shah

There came one and knocked at the door of the Beloved.
And a voice answered and said, 'Who is there?'
The lover replied, 'It is I.'
'Go hence,' returned the voice;
'there is no room within for thee and me.'
Then came the lover a second time and knocked and again the voice demanded,
'Who is there?'
He answered, 'It is thou.'
'Enter,' said the voice, 'for I am within. — Rumi

Each flies with its own kind: pigeon with pigeon, hawk with hawk. — Idries Shah

The Hole and the Thread A CERTAIN great Sufi was asked about the role and status of some of his predecessors. He said: 'To erect a small building you may first have to excavate a large hole. 'To make a large carpet you may have to start with a single thread. 'When you can see the building or the carpet, your question is answered. 'But when your question is about the hole in the ground and the thread in the hand, you can only be answered in this parable.' * * * — Idries Shah

You will always have doubts, but only discover them at a useful time for your weakness to point them out. — Idries Shah

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

One of the outstanding sources of resistance to imperial power in the Muslim world came from Sufi groups. While Sufi brotherhoods are generally known for a more quietist and mystic approach to Islam, they traditionally rank among the best organized and most coherent groupings in society. They constitute ready-made organizations - social-based NGOs, if you will - for maintaining Islamic culture and practices under periods of extreme oppression and for fomenting resistance and guerrilla warfare against foreign occupation. The history of Sufi participation in dozens of liberation struggles is long and widespread across Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Sufi groups were prominent in the anti-Soviet resistance, and later against the American in Afghanistan and against US occupation forces in Iraq. — Graham Fuller

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

No practice exists in isolation. — Idries Shah

Why Aren't We Screaming Drunks?

by Hafiz (Daniel Ladinsky)
(1945? - ) Timeline


Original Language
English
Muslim / Sufi


Contemporary


The sun once glimpsed God's true nature
And has never been the same.

Thus that radiant sphere
Constantly pours its energy
Upon this earth
As does He from behind
The veil.

With a wonderful God like that
Why isn't everyone a screaming drunk?

Hafiz's guess is this:

Any thought that you are better or less
Than another man

Quickly
Breaks the wine
Glass. — Daniel Ladinsky

Similitude of the heart is like that of a telephone operator between man and God. — Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi

The Sufi saint Rabi'a Al-Adawiyya was seen carrying a firebrand and a jug of water - the firebrand to burn Paradise, the jug of water to drown Hell ...
So that both veils disappear, and God's followers worship, not out of hope for reward, nor fear of punishment, but out of love. — Craig Thompson

An old fool is worse than a young one: For the young may always grow wise. (Zohair) — Idries Shah

The would-be Sufi needs guidance precisely because books, texts, while telling you what is needed, do not tell you when. — Idries Shah

From the Muslims I learned from the extraordinary pluralism of the Koran, the fact that the Koran endorses every single one of the major world faiths, but I was particularly enthralled by the Sufi tradition, the mystical tradition of Islam, which is so open to other religious faiths. — Karen Armstrong

A fish wants to dive from dry land
into the ocean
when it hears the roaring waves.
A falcon wants to return from the forest
to the King's wrist
when it hears the drum beating "Return."
A Sufi, shimmering with light,
wants to dance like a sunbeam
when darkness surrounds him. — Rumi

A Sufi is one who is not bound by anything nor does he bind anything — Idries Shah

I ask about the sky, but the answer is about a rope. — Idries Shah

The door of illumination is open to those for whom other doors are closed. — Idries Shah

Like the bat, the Sufi is asleep to 'things of the day' - the familiar struggle for existence which the ordinary man finds all-important - and vigilant while others are asleep. In other words, he keeps awake the spiritual attention dormant in others. That 'mankind sleeps in a nightmare of unfulfillment' is a commonplace of Sufi literature — Idries Shah

Many Sufis are not guides. — Idries Shah

Intellect is the knowledge obtained by experience of names and forms; wisdom is the knowledge which manifests only from the inner being; to acquire intellect one must delve into studies, but to obtain wisdom, nothing but the flow of divine mercy is needed; it is as natural as the instinct of swimming to the fish, or of flying to the bird. Intellect is the sight which enables one to see through the external world, but the light of wisdom enables one to see through the external into the internal world. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

The selection and following of a spiritual guide is the most important duty of a Sufi. — Idries Shah

A Sufi manual, the Kashf-al-Mahjub, says that, towards the end of his journey, 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. — Bruce Chatwin

He had found riches beyond worldly imagination. He had found the never ending well of love. — Soroosh Shahrivar

Sufi Teachers are not, as you might hope, people who make you feel peace and harmony. — Idries Shah

Sufis aim to refine human consciousness. This is Sufi mysticism: not mystification or magic, but a specific Path. — Idries Shah

With faith one attains and realises peace and harmony. With doubt one destroys and gains freedom to move ontowards. — Fazal Inayat-Khan

The religion of the Sufi is the religion of the heart. The principal moral of the Sufi is to consider the heart of others, so that in the pleasure and displeasure of his fellow-man he sees the pleasure and displeasure of God. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

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

Do not try to be humble: learn humility. — 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

The Sufi must be able to alternate his thought between the relative and the Absolute, the approximate and the Real. — Idries Shah

It is necessary to note," says Rumi, "that opposite things work together, even though nominally opposed" (Fihi Ma Fihi). — Idries Shah

If a society has no moral foundations then success is a threat. Every successful person thinks everyone else is a failure, and this is the proof of failure. Conquering the world and dying empty-handed on foreign shores is a paradox of such success. — Wasif Ali Wasif

Not to be greedy is, paradoxically, the highest form of looking after one's true interests. — Idries Shah

Prescribing hard work for the soft, or easy work for the hardy, is generally nonsense. What is always needed in any aim is right effort, right time, right people, right materials. — Idries Shah

Learning how to learn involves examining assumptions. Mulla Nasrudin tales very often fulfil this funcition. — Idries Shah

The aspirant has to be guided by a mentor. The stage at which this guidance can take effect is seldom, if ever, perceptible to the learner. — Idries Shah

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

The main problem is that most commentators are accustomed to thinking of spiritual schools as 'systems', which are more or less alike, and which depend upon dogma and ritual: and especially upon repetition and the application of continual and standardised pressures upon their followers.
The Sufi way, except in degenerate forms which are not to be classified as Sufic, is entirely different from this. — Idries Shah

Show a man too many camels' bones,or show them to him too often,and he will not be able to recognize a camel when he comes across a live one. — Idries Shah

When the eye becomes the heart, the heart becomes the eye. — Wasif Ali Wasif

Definitions from Mulla Do-Piaza
Wisdom: Something you can learn without knowing it. — Idries Shah

In Sufi terms, there are two very interesting notions of transcendence. One is to gaze out at the universe and to comprehend that what you see out there reflects what you are. The other one is to look inside yourself and recognise that the universe is present there. — Mohsin Hamid

If your desire for 'good' is based on greed, it is not good, but greed. — Idries Shah

He that is purified by love is pure; and he that is absorbed in the Beloved and hath abandoned all else is a Sufi.
Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah. — Idries Shah

To say "yes" to the Sufi way is to say "no" to imagined escapes. — Idries Shah

One cannot learn from someone whom one distrusts. — Idries Shah

The institution of teachership is there for this reason, that the learner must learn how to learn. — Idries Shah

It's about a love song to myself, and a love song to the universe, kind of like the way that Song of Solomon consists of love songs to God or like the way Sufi poems are erotic love songs to God, I kind of wanted something like that. Because I was getting to know myself more deeply at this point. I've always been on this track where I wanted to be enlightened. — Larkin Grimm

The major barrier to understanding is wishful thinking and following that which pleases one. — Idries Shah

If you seek a teacher, try to become a real student. If you want to be a student, try to find a real teacher. — Idries Shah

You must empty out the dirty water before you fill the pitcher with clean. — Idries Shah

Khusrau darya prem ka, ulti wa ki dhaar,
Jo utra so doob gaya, jo dooba so paar.

English Translation.

Oh Khusrau, the river of love
Runs in strange directions.
One who jumps into it drowns,
And one who drowns, gets across. — Amir Khusrau

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

In your beauty, how to make poems. — Rumi

One day a man came running to a Sufi and said, panting, "Hey, they are carrying trays, look over there!"
The Sufi answered calmly, "What is it to us? Is it any of my business?"
"But they are taking those trays to your house!" the man exclaimed.
"Then is it any of your business?" the Sufi said.

Unfortunately, people always watch the trays of others. Instead of minding their own business, they pass judgment on other people. It never ceases to amaze me the things they fabricate! Their imagination knows no limit when it comes to suspicion and slander. — Elif Shafak

The person that you feel yourself to be, according to the Sufis, is a false person, which has no true reality. — Idries Shah

There is a Persian proverb: 'To test that which has been tested is ignorance.' To try to test something without the means of testing is even worse. — Idries Shah

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 sufis believe that they can experience something more complete. — Idries Shah

The human being, whether he realises it or not, is trusting someone or something every moment of the day. — Idries Shah

Study the assumptions behind your actions. Then study the assumptions behind your assumptions. — Idries Shah

The impatient man is his own enemy; he slams the door on his own progress. — Idries Shah

I searched for my Beloved in the strangest of places, until the day I realized I couldn't take my eyes off Her. — Eric Micha'el Leventhal

Everyone in Iran is perceived to be a child with a paternal authority vested in the Guardian Council and the Sufi elders. They're supposed to be grateful. They can never for a moment not be afforded this wonderful protection. The father who will never go away. The father who will never quit caring for them. — Christopher Hitchens

Have the nature of a dervish: then wear a stylish cap. — Idries Shah

Do we find ourself or does our self get demolished? — Donna Goddard

A man is happy who is happy with his Naseeb(allotted portion). — Wasif Ali Wasif

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

Farsi Couplet:
Mun tu shudam tu mun shudi,mun tun shudam tu jaan shudi
Taakas na guyad baad azeen, mun deegaram tu deegari


English Translation:
I have become you, and you me,
I am the body, you soul;
So that no one can say hereafter,
That you are someone, and me someone else. — Amir Khusrau