Loaves of bread remind us of sunlight, but when we are inside that orb,we lose interest in building ovens,in millwork and the preparation of fields before the planting.

You left ground and sky weeping, mind and soul full of grief. No one can take your place in existence, or in absence. Both mourn, the angels, the prophets, and this sadness I feel has taken from me the taste of language, so that I cannot say the flavor of my being apart.

The intellectual quest, though fine as pearl or coral, is not the spiritual search. That spiritual search is on another level. Spiritual wine is a different substance.

Just as the heart becomes carefree in a place of green, growing plants, goodwill and kindness are born when our souls enter happiness.

Make my heart, O heart of the universe, a divine bird that nests only on the throne of God.

Thinking gives off smoke to prove the existence of fire. A mystic sits inside the burning. There are wonderful shapes in rising smoke that imagination loves to watch. But it's a mistake to leave the fire for that filmy sight. Stay here at the flame's core.

Creatures are cups. The sciences and the arts and all branches of knowledge are inscriptions around the outside of the cups. When a cup shatters, the writing can no longer be read. The wine's the thing! The wine that's held in the mold of these physical cups. Drink the wine and know what lasts and what to love. The man who truly asks must be sure of two things: One, that he's mistaken in what he's doing or thinking now. And two, that there is a wisdom he doesn't know yet. Asking is half of knowing.