Sufis Quotes - Page 7

Salute to the Thief. Junaid of Baghdad was passing the scene of a public hanging, where a thief was on the scaffold. Junaid bowed towards the criminal. Someone asked him: 'What did you do that?' Junaid said: 'I was bowing before his single-mindedness. For his aim, that man has given his life.

Saying of the ProphetSome behaviourI am like a man who has lighted a fire, and all the creeping things have rushed to burn themselves in it.

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.

Definitions from Mulla Do-Piaza. Worry: Something to make you unnecessarily ill.

You can perceive a person's aspiration if it is genuine, because this creates a change in the emanations from such a person.

You may have forgotten the Way: But those who came beforeDid not forget you.Saying of Master Bahaudin Naqshband of Bokhara

When a belief becomes more than an instrument, you are lost. You remain lost until you learn what 'belief' is really for.

BARQI: AESTHETICS IS ONLY THE LOWEST FORM OF PERCEPTION OF THE REAL.

...most systems end up by making imagined humility into a form of vanity, so they end up with vanity just the same.

Saying of the ProphetTHE PEOPLEIt is the people who are God's family.(Muhammad the Prophet)

The liar has a bad memory.

There are as many paths to Truth as there are souls of men.

There is a saying that, according to what a person's mentality is, even an angel may seem to him to have a devil's face.

Ibn El-Arabi wrote, ‘The Teacher is he who hears you, then unveils you to yourself

The tongue is the best masseur of furrowed brows.

If you seek small things to do, and do them well, great things will seek you, and demand to be performed.

Patience is bitter, but bears a sweet fruit.

Knowledge cannot be attained except through humility.

Worry is a cloud which rains destruction.

Better the demon which makes you improve than the angel who threatens.

As the Eastern saying, by the sage Hilali, has it, 'one person who understands is worth a hundred who merely obey a custom.

Voice in the nightA voice whispered to me last night: 'There is no such thing as a voice whispering in the night!

You must improve yourself on a higher level if you are to be able to help people, and not just weep over them.

That which is capable of perceiving objective reality is, in Sufism, the human soul (ruh).

People talk about ‘service, effort, love, knowledge’. But with knowledge you know what love is, and what it is not.

A man must be a Salomon before his magical ring will work

The secret of Sufism is that it has no secret at all'.

Better to quarrel with a friend than to support enemies.

Presence and AbsenceA certain person may have, as you say, a wonderful presence: I do not know. What I do know is that he has a perfectly delightful absence.

As swords were designed to killThey did well to make them tongue-shaped.(Anwar-i-Suhaili)

Most people, whatever their opinions and protestations, do not want to learn.

If you are uninterested in what I say, there's an end to it. If you like what I say, please try to understand which previous influences have made you like it. If you like some of the things I say, and dislike others, you could try to understand why. If you dislike all I say, why not try to find out what formed your attitude?

A stolen kiss is not easily returned.

But the world itself, as well as special attitudes, properly understood, constitute the Sufi school.

The happiness of the superficial: when a man who has lost his donkey finds it again.

People who have fallacious objectives are like the barren soil. The flowers grow from soil which is composed of the right objectives.

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

Sufism is experience, and hence not to be defined – imprisoned – in perennial, static categories.

I am an idol worshipper; for I understand what idol worship means, and the idolater does not.

What goes into a salt-mine becomes salt.

A man's capacity is the same as his breadth of vision.

When you realise the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge.

Humility has to precede instruction.

Man (and woman) has an infinite capacity for self-development. Equally, he has an infinite capacity for self-destruction. A human being may be clinically alive and yet, despite all appearances, spiritually dead.

ScrapsThe scraps from the meal of the Emir are larger than the gifts of halwa from the merchant. Timur Fazil

Ali, Son of the Father of the SeekerAli said: 'None may arrive at the Truth until he is able to think that the Path itself may be wrong. This is because those who can only believe that it must be right are not believers, but people who are incapable of thinking otherwise than they already think. Such people are not men at all. Like animals they must follow certain beliefs, and during this time they cannot learn. Because they cannot be called “humanity”, they cannot arrive at the Truth.

Like calls to like, truth to truth and deceit to deceit.

Nothing can defile the Sufi, and he in fact purifies everything.” Abu-Turab al-Nakhsabi.

Miracles, to the Sufi, are not evidential, they are instrumental.

… the Sufi attitude is: ‘Let the real truth, whatever it may be, be revealed to me’.

A book, for the Sufis, is an instrument as much as it is something to give information....The key is the teacher.

Imagination blocks you like a bolt on a door. Burn that bar. (Rumi)

Has it not occurred to you that, conversely, other people do not have your difficulties because they do not react as you do to what happens?

Give and TakeThe Chief takes less than he is givenAnd gives more than he has taken.

Better to be safe than to be sorry' is a remark of value only when these are the actual alternatives.

How many friends would you have if you went from one to another asking them to conceal a dead body?

Whoever might perfume a scorpionWill not thereby escape its sting. Bahaudin Naqshband

Before garden, vine or grape was in the world," writes one, "our soul was drunken with immortal wine.

The would-be students wish to transcend books.But, ask yourselves: if someone says that books do not contain wisdom, and yet he writes books; books do not contain Sufism, and yet he continues to publish books on Sufism, what is really happening? It really is your duty, and not mine, to ask and to find the answer to that question, if you are interested enough.

Trying to force something is the best way to stop it from happening.