Quotes about sufis

The impatient man is his own enemy he slams the door on his own progress.

The worst of sages is a visitor of princes the best of princes is a visitor of sages.

IMPRESSIONSTime brought a thousand impressions. Not one of them had I seen in the mirror of the imagination.(Anwar-i-Suhaili)

The spirit is the mirror the body is the rust.(Divan-i-Shamsi Tabriz)

SENTENCES OF THE KHAJAGANGURGANI:The teacher and the taught together produce the teaching.

The means through which people may perceive Truth have forms Truth has no form.

Remembering and ForgettingYou have not forgotten to remember You have remembered to forget.But people can forget to forget. That is just as important as remembering to remember – and generally more practical.

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.

Many people who are in reality dead are walking in the streets many who are in their graves are in reality alive.

Question 3: Why should a person study Sufism?Answer: Because he was created to study it it is his next step.

HE is a Master who may teach without it being totally labelled teaching HE is a student who can learn without being obsessed by learning.

A MOTTO OF THE HUMAN RACETell me what to do but it must be what I want you to tell me.

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

Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaA fool:A man trying to be honest with the dishonest.

If you really want to learn, do not be surprised if someone tries to teach you. And do not lightly reject the method.

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

One of the basic Sufi needs is to enable people to see themselves as they really are.

The Sufi teacher’s mission is to be in the service of those who can learn.

The teacher works in accordance with the prospects of his students and the possibility of maintaining the community of Sufis.

The Sufis regard systems which treat everyone alike as mechanical and degenerate.

Fettered feet in the presence of friends is better than living in a garden with strangers.

My father used to tell me that stories offer the listener a chance to escape but, more importantly, he said, they provide people with a chance to maximize their minds. Suspend ordinary constraints, allow the imagination to be freed, and we are charged with the capability of heighetned thought.Learn to use your eyes as if they are your ears, he said, and you become connected with the ancient heritage of man, a dream world for the waking mind.

The candle burned the moth:But soon it will vanish in its own fat.

Yes, the world is an illusion. But Truth is always being shown there.

If you want special illumination, look upon the human face:See clearly within laughter the Essence of Ultimate Truth.

One day we will all wear a garment which has no pockets...

Wisdom is when you understand what, previously, at best you only knew.

In a village where everyone has only one leg, the biped will hop about more lamely than anyone else, if he knows what is good for him.

SAYING OF SHEIKH ZIAUDIN:Self-justification is worse than the original offence.

It is not Sufism if it does not perform its function for you. A cloak is no longer a cloak if it does not keep a man warm.

If wine is the enemy of religion, I shall devour the enemy of religion.

The function of a nutrient is to become transmuted, not to leave unaltered traces.

Haste is from the Devil.

Any society which enjoins its members to adhere to both of these (politeness and truth) is a fraud.

A man must be a Salomon before his magical ring will work. (Hafiz)

Our objective is to achieve, by the understanding of the Origin, the Knowledge which comes through experience.

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

The question of divine knowledge is so deep that it is really known only to those who have it.

It is your duty to do your best. It is not, however, your birth-right to prevail.

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

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

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

Superior experience and knowledge will be made available to a man or woman in exact accordance with his worth, capacity and earning of it

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.

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

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.

It is axiomatic that the attempt to become a Sufi through a desire for personal power as normally understood will not succeed.

The Way of the Sufis cannot be understood by means of the intellect or by ordinary book learning.

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

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

Study the assumptions behind your actions. Then study the assumptions behind your assumptions.

Worry is a cloud which rains destruction.

The existence of relative truth does not prove the non-existence of universal truth.

When people believe that the form is more important than the Truth, they will not find truth, but will stay with form.

Remember that greed includes greed for being not greedy.

Saadi’s dictum, in the Bostan: ‘The Path is not in the rosary, the prayer-mat and the robe

They asked Abboud of Omdurman: 'Which is better, to be young or to be old?' He said: 'To be old is to have less time before you and more mistakes behind. I leave you to decide whether this is better than the reverse.

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

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.

There is a succession of experiences which together constitute the educational and developmental ripening of the learner, according to the Sufis. People who think that each gain is the goal itself will freeze at any such stage, and cannot learn through successive and superseding lessons.

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. (Mirza Ahsan of Tabriz)

If I knew what two and two were – I would say Four!

People who cannot trust are themselves not trustworthy, and therefore cannot be entrusted with important things.

Patience is the food of understanding.

When the mind is full of established biases, it will not be able to graft Sufism on top of them.

Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaEmotionalist:A man or woman who thinks he has experienced the divine.

You call me an unbeliever. I shall therefore call you a True Believer since a lie is best met with one of similar magnitude.

Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaIntellectual: One who knows no craft.

You fear tomorrow: yet yesterday is just as dangerous.

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

A donkey eats a melon, it remains a donkey

Words, they say, are the food of minds. But, like other foods, they can do little by themselves.

Saying of the ProphetDesireDesire not the world, and God will love you. Desire not what others have, and they will love you.

Definitions from Mulla Do-Piaza.Poverty: The result of marriage.

Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaFlattery:One of the most promising of businesses: always brisk.

The teaching must, of course, work with the best part of the individual, must be directed to his or her real capacity.

Knowledge cannot be attained except through humility.

Knowledge gives nothing to a man until he gives everything to it.

Sufis (the name for the realised individual, not the learner or follower) are reunited with objective Reality and Unity.

Why did I do such-and-such a thing?' is all very well. But what about 'How otherwise could I have done it?'.

Is your division of Understanding into Greater and Lesser common to all Sufis? Nothing which is put into words is common to all Sufis.

If you assume that it is there, you will generally not be far off the truth.

Man thinks many things. He thinks he is One. He is usually several. Until he becomes One, he cannot have a fair idea of what he is at all.

The clothes may vary, but the person is the same.

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

Religion, for instance, cannot be accepted or rejected out of hand, until the student knows exactly what religion means.

Correct teaching brings out human excellence.

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.

Three ThingsThree things cannot be retrieved:The arrow once sped from the bowThe word spoken in hasteThe missed opportunity.(Ali the Lion, Caliph of Islam, son-in-law of Mohammed the Prophet),

Sufis deny the absolute reality of time, space and physical form. These things are both relative and local. They only appear to be absolute.

Show me a person who really knows what 'good' is, and I will show you that he almost never uses the word.

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

One should not pray if that prayer is vanity.

TeachingOne hour's teaching is better than a whole night of prayer.

Assume that you are part-hypocrite and part heedless, and you will not be far wrong.

The man who knows must discharge a function. The one who does not, cannot arrogate one to himself; he can only try to do so.

There is no wisdom where there is no common sense: it cannot under those conditions find any expression.

None should say: 'I can trust' or 'I cannot trust' until he is a master of the option, of trusting or not trusting.

You have come a long way, and you do not know it. You have a long way to go, and you do know what that means.