Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi: "The Jar with the Dry Rim"

The mind is an ocean … and so many worlds

are rolling there, mysterious, dimly seen!

And our bodies? Our body is a cup, floating

on the ocean; soon it will fill, and sink …

Not even one bubble will show where it went down.

The spirit is so near that you can’t see it!

But reach for it … don’t be a jar

full of water, whose rim is always dry.

Don’t be the rider who gallops all night

and never sees the horse that is beneath him.

"The Jar with the Dry Rim" by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, from The Soul Is Here for Its Own Joy: Sacred Poems from Many Cultures, edited by Robert Blue. © Ecco, 1999.

Photography credit: Unknown (originally color).