Mahmud Shabistari (1288 – 1340) is one of the greatest poets of the Sufi mystical tradition. He was born in the last half of the thirteenth century at Shabistar, a small village near Tabriz. His most famous work is a mystic text called The Secret Rose Garden. This poem was written in response to seventeen questions of Harawi, which were posed to the Sufi masters of Tabriz.
Quotations by Mahmud Shabistari…
The stakes are high for real prayer.
You must gamble yourself
and be willing to lose.
When you have done this,
and your self shakes off
what you believed your self to be,
then no prayer remains,
only a sparkle of the eyes.
Knower and known are one.
If you penetrate the center of time and space,
You can bypass the addictions of the world,
You can become the world yourself.
Go sweep out the chamber of your heart.
Make it ready to be the dwelling place of the Beloved.
When you depart out,
He will enter it.
In you,
void of yourself,
will He display His beauties.