| YUNUS EMRE |
| We love the created For the Creator's sake |
| When love arrives, all needs and needs are gone.
He glorified love as the soul's highest pride and joy: Can there be anything better than love? |
| I am not here on earth for strife,
Love is the mission of my life. |
| Burning, burning, I drift and tread.
Love spattered my body with blood, I'm not in my senses nor mad, Come, see what love has done to me. |
| Death should give you no fear at all;
Fear not, your life is eternal |
| The universe is the oneness of Deity,
The true man is he who knows this unity. You better seek Him in yourself, You and He aren't apart-you're one. |
| One should aim to acquire knowledge to know oneself
If you don't know yourself, you are worse than a beast. |
| I took shape in flesh and bones,
And came into sight as Yunus |
| See all people as equals,
See the humble as heroes. |
| For those who truly love God and his ways
All the people of the world are brothers |
| Come, come again, whoever, whatever you may be, come;
Heathen, fire-worshipper, sinful of idolatry, come. Come, even if you have broken your vows a hundred times; Ours is not the portal of despair or misery, come. |
| We regard no one's religion as contrary to ours,
True love is born when a11 faiths are united as a whole. |
| I bear malice against no one,
Even strangers are friends of mine. |
| Mystic is what they call me,
Hate is my only enemy; I harbor a grudge against none. To me the whole wide world is one. |
| True faith is in the head, not in the headgear.
A single visit into the heart is Better than a hundred pilgrimages |
| For heaven's sake, what is faith or creed without love?
The heart is where God's truth rests. The true lovers of God have no craving for 'Paradise. They strive beyond Paradise to arrive at His domain |
| In public I am pious, always seen with my prayer beads;
My tongue arms the ways of God, not that my heart accedes. They kiss my hands, they take my cap and cape for religion; They think I am the way I look, they think I commit no sin. |
| Yunus Emre says to you, pharisee,
Make the holy pilgrimage if need be A hundred times-but if you ask me, The visit to a heart is best of all. |
| Love is minister to us, our lock is the inmost soul,
The Friend's face is our Mecca, our prayers are eternal. |
| God's truth is an ocean and the dogma a ship,
Most people don't leave the ship to plunge in that sea |
| Don't look on anyone as worthless, no one is worthless
It's not nice to seek out people's defects and deficiencies |
| Don't look down on anyone, never break a heart;
The mystic must love all seventy-two nations |
| To Yunus Gori opened his door, Yunus made God his lessor;
Mine is the enduring state; I was a slave, I became the Sultan. |
| Before I came into the world, my soul loved God.
I was born with divine love. |
| Wherever I look I see God's face.
It gives the mystic God-like powers: Earth is mine, sky is mine, heavens are mine. The mystic, deified through love, claims eternal life: I am before, I am after. |
| I love you in depths beyond my soul.
There is an I deeper in me than I. You are closer to us than ourselves. |
| What I say to the loveless is an echo from a rock;
He who has not one drop of love lives in the wilderness. It is love that gives the mystic the gift of immortality: I love you, so the hand of death can never touch me. If I am a lover, I can never die |
| Come, let us a1l be friends for once,
Let us make life easy on us, Let us be lovers and loved ones, The earth shall be left to no one. |
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