sufi

We cannot hunt for love. We can only surrender and become love__ prey.

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

Then Gai told me about the famous cup of the heart, which I should now begin to empty. The Sufis compare our spiritual heart, the seat of God within us, with a cup into which the love of God flows. This cup, however, needs to be emptied before it can be filled with Divine love. This emptying is a long process that requires courage, strength of character, determination, and, above all, sincerity. It is a process of reining in and eventually extinguishing the ego, of letting go of material needs, bad and unhealthy habits and emotional attachments in order to make room for God. Sufis often likened it to the process of dying and being born again. __ie before you die_ is a famous Sufi saying. This was the essence of every spiritual path, Gai told me.

The Sufi Islam practiced in northern India is quite different from the Shi'a Islam practiced in Lebannon, which in turn is different from the Sunni Islam practiced in Pakistan. Even within a single branch of Islam there are customs and practices that vary by region and across time. Thus, the Islam of seventh-century Arabia is different from the Wahhabism that exists today in Saudi Arabia.

The true saint goes in and out amongst the people and eats and sleeps with them and buys and sells in the market and marries and takes part in social intercourse, and never forgets God for a single moment.

The most complete gift of God is a life based on knowledge.

Saying of the ProphetMonkishnessNo monkery in Islam.

Materialism, attachment to things of the world, includes pride. Many religious people suffer from pride: taking pleasure or even delight in being good, or religious.

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

No practice exists in isolation.

Only the search for truth is valid, the desire for wisdom the motive. The method is assimilation, not study.

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

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

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

An educated man believing in a this-that vile sky-god rewarding him-her, but punishing your enemies with hell and fire, is uneducated.

Love is an involuntary gift that manifests unplanned.

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.