33 Quotes by Coleman Barks

Longing becomes more poignant if in the distance you can’t tell whether your friend is going away or coming back. The pushing away pulls you in.

Just being sentient and in a body with the sun coming up is a state of rapture.

The mystics always say that the experience they’re talking about is ineffable, that you can’t say it. Rumi was asked one time why he talked so much about silence. He said, “The radiant one inside me has never said a word.”

It’s such a foolish thing to argue about names, when what we’re doing is all one thing.

Anything you grab hold of on the bank breaks with the river’s pressure. When you do things from your soul, the river itself moves through you. Freshness and a deep joy are signs of the current.

A man once asked Rumi, “Why is it you talk so much about silence?” His answer: “The radiant one inside me has never said a word.

When you meet a new friend, the world has more light in it, doesn’t it? Things become more spontaneous, and more full of laughing and freedom and novelty.

I like to walk around my neighborhood, late in the afternoon. I sometimes wind up at the wonderful, old Shell station that’s been changed into a coffee shop. Right where Johnny used to change my oil, I have a latte and take out my little book bag. It doesn’t sound very austere.

If you think there’s an important difference between being a Christian or a Jew or a Hindu or a Muslim or a Buddhist, then you’re making a division between your heart, what you love with, and the way you act in the world.