Ocean Quote by Coleman Barks

I think we all have a core that's ecstatic, that knows and that looks up in wonder. We all know that there are marvelous…

— Coleman Barks

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…

— Coleman Barks

[Rumi] is trying to get us to feel the vastness of our true identity... like the sense you might get walking into a cathedral...

— Coleman Barks

“ In the front yard lives the oldest thing around, a white oak That I used to say is my love for the world,…

— Coleman Barks

“…the work of the (Muslim Sufi) dervish community was to open the heart, explore the mystery of union, to fiercely search for and try…

— Coleman Barks

Just being sentient and in a body with the sun coming up is a state of rapture.

— Coleman Barks

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

— 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…

— Coleman Barks

If you teach three university courses a day, you need something to turn your mind off.

— Coleman Barks

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…

— Coleman Barks

What I deeply want... is for Rumi to become vitally present for readers, part of what John Keats called our soul-making, that process that…

— Coleman Barks

Longing becomes more poignant if in the distance you can't tell whether your friend is going away or coming back. The pushing away pulls…

— Coleman Barks