The Circle Around the Zero ~ by Rumi

“Your task is not to seek for love,
but merely to seek and find
 all the barriers within yourself
that you have built against it.”
~ Rumi

“When you do things from your soul,
you feel a river moving in you,
a joy.”
~ Rumi

“I have lived on the lip
of insanity,
wanting to know reasons,
knocking on a door.
It opens.
I’ve been knocking from the inside.”
~ Rumi

The Circle Around the Zero ~ by Rumi

A lover doesn’t figure the odds.

He figures he came clean from God
as a gift without a reason,
so he gives without cause
or calculation or limit.

A conventionally religious person
behaves a certain way
to achieve salvation.

A lover gambles everything, the self,
the circle around the zero!
He or she cuts and throws it all away.

This is beyond any religion.

Lovers do not require from God any proof,
or any text, nor do they knock on a door
to make sure this is the right street.

They run,
and they run.

~ Rumi

Translation: Coleman Barks, Feeling the Shoulder of the Lion