From The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks. New York: HarperCollins, 1995, p. 13.
Lo, I am with you always means when you look for God,
God is in the look of your eyes,
in the thought of looking, nearer to you than your self,
or things that have happened to you.
There’s no need to go outside.
Be melting snow.
Wash yourself of yourself.
A white flower grows in the quietness.
Let your tongue become that flower.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr. “The Wisdom of the Body” in Religion and the Order of Nature, Oxford University Press: New York, 1996.
As long as we consider the body as a mere machine, it is not possible to take seriously the religious understanding of the order of nature nor to live in harmony with it. To rediscover the body as the theater of Divine Presence and manifestation of Divine Wisdom as well as an aspect of reality that is at once an intimate part of our being and a part of the natural order is to reestablish a bridge between ourselves and the world of nature beyond the merely physical and utilitarian. To rediscover the body as the abode of the Spirit, worthy of Resurrection before the Lord, and intimate companion in the soul’s journey in this world, sacred in itself and in the life which permeates it, is to rediscover at the same time the sacredness of nature.
Max Picard. The World of Silence. Wichita, Kansas: Eighth Day Press, 2002, p.110.
Animals are creatures that lead silence through the world of man and language and are always putting silence down in front of man. Many things that human words have upset are set at rest again by the silence of animals. Animals move through the world of words like a caravan of silence . . . A whole world, that of nature and that of animals, is filled with silence. Nature and animals seem like protuberances of silence. The silence of animals and the silence of nature would not be so great and noble if it were merely a failure of language to materialize. Silence has been entrusted to the animals and to nature as something created for its own sake.
