If you are covetous, you are a prisoner: If you are greedy, you will never be filled.

Saying of the Mulla Nasrudin. If I survive this life without dying, I’ll be surprised.

Dicho del ProfetaAyudando a otrosLes ordeno ayudar a cualquier persona oprimida, tanto si es musulmán como si no.

Saying of the ProphetThe BequestI have nothing to leave you except my family.

Saying of the ProphetReflectionThe Faithful are mirrors, one to the other.

Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaCommunity: Irrationals unified by hope of the impossible.

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.

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

Enemies are often former or potential friends who have been denied – or think that they have been denied – something.

Dicho del ProfetaVerdadDecir la verdad a los injustos es la mejor de las guerras santas.

Saying of the ProphetSleepSleep is the brother of death.

Definiciones de Mulla Do-PiazaDrogas: fuente de la experiencia mística del ignorante.

Conocimiento sin acción es como cera sin miel.

Tú temes el mañana, sin embargo el ayer es igual de peligroso.

La historia no es generalmente lo que ha sucedido. La historia es lo que algunas personas han considerado significativo.

La codicia os daña: la generosidad os ayuda. Por eso se ha dicho: “La codicia es la madre de la incapacidad”.

Los sufis, reza el dicho, comprenden con sus corazones lo que los académicos más ilustrados no pueden comprender con sus mentes.

Nunca sigas ningún impulso para enseñar, sin importar lo fuerte que pudiera ser. El mandato para enseñar no se siente como un impulso.

De acuerdo con los sufis, existe una sucesión de experiencias, que en conjunto constituyen la maduración educativa y evolutiva del estudiante. La gente que piensa que cada logro es la meta misma se congelará en...

To bind one free man with love is better than to release a thousand slaves.

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

Sufism is, in operation, pragmatic.

If a pot can multiply. One day Nasrudin lent his cooking pots to a neighbour, who was giving a feast. The neighbour returned them, together with one extra one – a very tiny pot. ‘What...

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.

From imperial, economic and ideological causes, many cultures are the inheritors, and hence the prisoners, of attitudes of scorn and disdain for other faiths – outlooks which are not ennobling to anyone.

Poor greedy one, wherever he runs He’s after food, and death is after him.(Saadi)

The stupidest man I ever met had a favourite saying. It was: ‘What do you think I am, stupid, or something?

To copy a virtue in another is more copying than it is virtue. Try to learn what that virtue is based upon.

Anyone can see that an ass laden with books remains a donkey. A human being laden with the undigested results of a tussle with thoughts and books, however, still passes for wise.

Dicho del ProfetaLuchaEl guerrero santo es aquél que lucha consigo mismo.

Form is useful, but it is secondary.

Los secretos Sufis son percibidos, no entendidos a través de palabras.

Aquello que buscas en tu retiro, yo lo veo claramente en todas las carreteras y caminos.

Dios”.

Si alguien dice: “no seas codicioso, sé generoso” debes interpretar internamente que así desarrollarás una codicia por la generosidad.

Cuando te des cuenta de la diferencia entre el contenedor y el contenido, tendrás conocimiento.

La institución de la enseñanza existe por esta razón: el aprendiz debe aprender a aprender.

La generosidad también se caracteriza por hacer lo que uno dice que hará.

Ser viejo es tener menos tiempo ante ti y más errores detrás. Dejo a tu elección si esto es mejor que lo contrario.

Sufis are not here to satisfy a demand. They exist to share what they have got. These two things are not always the same.

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

Sayings of the ProphetTrust: Trust in God – but tie your camel first.

What is sometimes thought to be clever is, significantly often, merely an advanced form of foolishness.

Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaDrugs: Source of the mystical experience of the ignorant.

Saying of the ProphetHumilityHumility and courtesy are themselves a part of piety.

Scholars of the East and West have heroically consecrated their whole working lives to making available, by means of their own disciplines, Sufi literary and philosophical material to the world at large. In many cases...

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

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

It is a Sufi contention that truth is not discovered or maintained by the mere repetition of teachings. It can only be kept understood by the perpetual experience of it. And it is in the...

People think that they think things, and they also think that they know things. They could usefully give some attention to the question of whether they know what they think and know what they think...