Abu Bakr al-Shibli was a Sufi mystic and poet of Persian descent born in Samarra. SHIBLI WAS ASKED: `WHO GUIDED YOU IN THE PATH?’ SHIBLI SAID: `A DOG. ONE DAY I SAW HIM, ALMOST DEAD WITH THIRST, STANDING BY THE WATER’S EDGE. EVERY TIME HE LOOKED AT HIS REFLECTION IN THE WATER HE WAS FRIGHTENED […]
What is the difference between reaction and response? There is much, a lot of difference, not only in quantity but quality. A reaction is out of the past, a response is out of the present. You react out of the past old patterns. Somebody insults you: suddenly the old mechanism starts functioning. In the past people have insulted
REJOICE LIFE WITH SIMPLICITY OF THE HEART…. Life can be known only with a simple heart. Head is very complex, and life is very simple. It is difficult from a complex head to understand the simple life. Life is simply simple. You have also to be simple. A child understands more. He has a rapport
Jesus is tremendously beautiful his beauty has a dimension of its own. Buddha is beautiful, but Jesus is totally different from Buddha. In Buddha a different type of silence was incarnated. l once heard about a Chinese emperor who had two great painters in his court, and there was always rivalry. They were always fighting
Once it happened that a man was very ill. The illness was that he continually felt that his eyes were popping out and his ears were ringing – continually. By and by, he became crazy because it went on twenty-four hours a day. He couldn’t sleep, he couldn’t do his work. So he consulted doctors.
There are three steps in the spiritual growth– steps or stages. They can differ with each individual but there are always three. One is independence. That is an egoistic state: you want to be independent of all which is false, which is not possible because you are not independent, you cannot be. You are a
SHOULD WE BE SELFISH? There is no other way. Nobody can be unselfish– except hypocrites. The word ‘selfish’ has taken a very condemnatory association, because all the religions have condemned it. They want you to be unselfish. But why? To help others…. I am reminded: a small child was talking to his mother, and the
It is a known fact that great poets cannot explain why they are writing certain poetry. When Coleridge died, he left near about forty thousand poems incomplete. His whole life his friends were saying, ”These poems are so beautiful, why don’t you complete them? And it is not much work! Some poem is missing only
A man with three hairs on his otherwise bald head came into a hair saloon and asked to get his hair shampooed and braided. The hairdresser got on with his job but just as he was about to finish combing it, one of the hairs fell out. The hairdresser was very embarrassed but the man
A religion is to be sought. A religion has to be chosen consciously. Nobody should be made a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Jain by birth. Birth has nothing to do with religion. Because of this association with birth, the whole world seems to be religious, and nobody is religious. Everybody
