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Quote by Coleman Barks

“I had been a kind of natural mystic my whole life, growing up there in Tennessee next to the river. Somehow, that was important for my consciousness. I still don't study [mysticism]. I just wait for experiences.”

Quote by Coleman Barks

Author

Coleman Barks is an American poet renowned for his translations of Rumi's poetry. Born on April 23, 1937, Barks has introduced the essence of Rumi's work to a modern English-speaking audience, capturing the spiritual and philosophical depth of the original Persian texts. more

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“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."”

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“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.”

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“As human beings, we are always torn between individual freedom and the ability of choose our actions, and the need for at least enough social structure so that anarchy, chaos, and warlordery - or the war of all against all - can be avoided.”

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“I think my life is tremendously interesting, and surely, other people do too.”

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“There's some sort of exchange that goes on between human beings that is one of the highest things we do.”

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

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“It's a beautiful lucid dream that has language that I can fiddle with.”

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“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.”

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“I was raised a nice Jewish boy in a Conservative household. Went to Camp Ramah. It's funny actually. I think I enacted my queerness there unconsciously. I was kind of one of the weirdos. I was on staff and definitely interested in alternatives to what that social structure was supposed to be.”

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“I thought that coming out was going to be the end of my religious life but actually it was the beginning. Because it only afterwards that I could be honest about who I was, what I wanted, how I understood spirituality.”

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