The Coming of the Ship
“How often have you sailed in my dreams. And now you come in my awakening, which is my deeper dream.”
“Shall the day of parting be the day of gathering? And shall it be said that my eve was in truth my dawn?”
“Love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.”
Love
“When love beckons to you, follow him … And when he speaks to you believe in him …”
“Love is sufficient unto love.”
“When you love you should not say, ‘God is in my heart’, but rather, ‘I am in the heart of God’.”
“Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.”
Marriage
“You were born together, and together you shall be for evermore.”
“Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.”
Children
“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come
through you but not from you, and though they are with you yet they
belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but their
souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot
visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek
not to make them like you, for life goes not backward not tarries with
yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows
are sent forth. The Archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the Archer’s hand be for gladness, for even as He
loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.”
Giving
“It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.”
“And there are those who have little and
give it all. These are the believers in life and the bounty of life, and
their coffer is never empty.”
“For in truth it is life that gives unto life –while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness.”
Eating and Drinking
“But since you must kill to eat, and rob
the newly born of its mother’s milk to quench you thirst, let it then be
an act of worship.”
Work
“Always you have been told that work is a
curse and labour a misfortune. But I say to you that when you work you
fulfil a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream
was born. And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving
life, and to love life through labour is to be intimate with life’s
inmost secret.”
“And I say that life is indeed darkness
save when there is urge, and all urge is blind save when there is
knowledge. And all knowledge is vain save when there is work, and all
work is empty save when there is love; and when you work with love you
bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.”
And what is it to work with love? “It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit.”
“Work is love made visible.”
Joy and Sorrow
“Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.”
“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”
“Some of you say, ‘Joy is greater than
sorrow’, and others say, ‘Nay, sorrow is the greater’. But I say unto
you, they are inseparable. Together they come, and when one sits alone
with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.
Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and you joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.”
Houses
“Your house is your larger body.”
“Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast.”
“You shall not dwell in tombs made by the dead for the living.”
Clothes
“Forget not that modesty is for a shield against the eye of the unclean.”
“And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.”
Buying and Selling
“And before you leave the market-place, see that no one has gone his way with empty hands.”
Crime and Punishment
“And as a single leaf turns not yellow
but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree, so the wrongdoer cannot
do wrong without the hidden will of you all.”
“You are the way and the wayfarers.”
“You cannot separate the just from the
unjust and the good from the wicked; for they stand together before the
face of the sun even as the black thread and the white are woven
together.”
“And you who would understand justice,
how shall you unless you look upon all deeds in the fullness of light?
Only then shall you know that the erect and the fallen are but one man
standing in twilight between the night of his pigmy-self and the day of
his god-self. And that the cornerstone of the temple is not higher than
the lowest stone in its foundation.”
Laws
“You delight in laying down laws, yet you
delight more in breaking them. Like children playing by the ocean who
build sand-towers with constancy and then destroy them with laughter.
But while you build your sand-towers the ocean brings more sand to the
shore, and when you destroy them the ocean laughs with you. Verily the
ocean laughs always with the innocent.”
Freedom
“If it is an unjust law you would
abolish, that law was written with your own hand upon your own forehead.
You cannot erase it by burning your law books nor by washing the
foreheads of your judges, though you pour the sea upon them. And if it
is a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within
you is destroyed.”
Reason and Passion
“Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield,
upon which your reason and your judgement wage war against your passion
and your appetite.”
“Surely you would not honour one guest above the other; for he who is more mindful of one loses the love and the faith of both.”
“… then let your heart say in silence,
‘God rests in reason’ … then let your heart say in awe, ‘God moves in
passion’. And since you are a breath in God’s sphere, and a leaf in
God’s forest, you too should rest in reason and move in passion.”
Pain
“Much of your pain is self-chosen.”
Self-Knowledge
“For self is a sea boundless and
measureless. Say not, ‘I have found the truth’, but rather, ‘I have
found a truth.’ Say not, ‘I have found the path of the soul.’ Say
rather, ‘I have met the soul walking upon my path.’ For the soul walks
upon all paths.”
Teaching
“The teacher who walks in the shadow of
the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of
his faith and his lovingness. If he is indeed wise he does not bid you
enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of
your own mind … For the vision of one man lends not its wings to another
man.”
Friendship
“When your friend speaks his mind you
fear not the ‘nay’ in your own mind, nor do you withhold the ‘ay’. And
when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart; for
without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all
expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed … Seek
him always with hours to live. For it is his to fill your need, but not
your emptiness.”
Talking
“You talk when you cease to be at peace
with your thoughts; and when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of
your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a
pastime. And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered.”
Time
“Yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.”
“Let today embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing.”
Good and Evil
“Surely the fruit cannot say to the root,
‘Be like me, ripe and full and ever giving of your abundance’. For to
the fruit giving is a need, as receiving is a need to the root.”
Prayer
“It is enough that you enter the temple invisible.”
Pleasure
“Pleasure is a freedom-song, but it is not freedom. It is the blossoming of your desires, but it is not their fruit.”
“Your body is the harp of your soul.”
“Go to your fields and your gardens, and
you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of
the flower, but it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey
to the bee. For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life, and to the
flower a bee is a messenger of love, and to both, bee and flower, the
giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.”
Beauty
“Beauty is not a need but an ecstasy … a
heart inflamed and a soul enchanted … an image you see though you close
your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears … beauty is life
when life unveils her holy face, but you are life and you are the veil.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror, but you are eternity
and you are the mirror.”
Religion
“Your daily life is your temple and your religion. Whenever you enter into it take with you your all.”
“And if you would know God, be not
therefore a solver of riddles. Rather look about you and you shall see
Him playing with your children. And look into space; you shall see Him
walking in the cloud, outstretching His arms in the lightning and
descending in rain. You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising
and waving His hands in tress.”
Death
“If you would indeed behold the spirit of
death, open your heart wide unto the body of life; for life and death
are one, even as the river and the sea are one. In the depth of your
hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond.”
The Farewell
“I go with the wind, people of Orphalese,
but not down into emptiness; and if this day is not a fulfillment of
your needs and my love, then let it be a promise till another day.”
“How can one be indeed near unless he be far?”
“Patient, over patient, is the captain of my ship.”
“A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.”
