Hearken to the reed-flute, how it complains, lamenting its banishment from its home:

'Ever since they tore me from the reed-bed, my plaintive notes have moved men and women to tears. I burst my breast, striving to utter sighs, to declare the bitter pangs of yearning for my homeland. Everyone who is left far from his original source longs ever for the day when he was united with it.'

'In every company I uttered my lamentful notes; I consorted alike with the unhappy and the joyful. Each person fancied through his own surmise that he was my companion, but none penetrated into the secrets of my heart.'

'My secret is not alien from my lamentation, yet the earthly ear and the bodily eye lack the light to perceive it. The body is not veiled from the soul, nor the soul from the body, yet no mortal man is permitted to behold the naked soul.'

This cry of the reed is fire, it is not mere air! Whoever possesses not this fire, let him be accounted as nothing. It is the fire of Love that is in the reed; it is the ferment of Love that is in the wine.

This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they are a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond the veil.

Do not grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form. The child weaned from milk consumes bread and honey; when youth departs, wisdom arrives with silver hair.

The wound is the place where the Light enters you. When you feel a deep sorrow in your chest, do not flee from it: it is the chisel of the master sculptor shaping a cup capable of holding infinite light.

You wander from room to room hunting for the diamond necklace that is already around your neck. You knock on a hundred closed doors, not knowing the portal was never locked from the outside.

Silence is the language of God; all else is poor translation. Close your eyes, let your speech cease, and listen to the silent hum of eternity.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase 'each other' doesn't make any sense anymore.

Let the beauty of what you love be what you do. There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground.