Excerpts from the poems of Maulana Jami
(may Allah be pleased with him)

Maulana Jami on the Importance of Seeking Tasawwuf from a True Teacher

The day cloud, waterless, can have no rain-giving quality.

Maulana Jami on the Need to Reflect on Our Prayer

I saw a man prostrating himself in prayer, and exclaimed:

"You lay the burden of your nose on the ground on the excuse that it is a requirement of prayer."

Maulana Jami on the Path (of Tasawwuf)

It is recorded in the tradition of the Shaykhs that Jami once said, when asked about hypocrisy and honesty:

"How wonderful is honesty and how strange hypocrisy! I wandered to Mecca and to Baghdad, and I made a trial of the behavior of men.

When I asked them to be honest, they always treated me with respect, because they had been taught that good men always speak thus, and they had learned that they must have their eyes downcast when people speak of honesty.

When I told them to shun hypocrisy, they all agreed with me.

But they did not know that when I said 'truth', I knew that they did not know what truth was, and that therefore both they and I were then being hypocrites.

They did not know that when I told them not to be hypocrites they were being hypocrites in not asking me the method. They did not know that I was being a hypocrite in merely saying, 'Do not be hypocrites', because words do not convey the message by themselves.

They respected me, therefore, when I was acting hypocritically. They had been taught to do this. They respected themselves while they were thinking hypocritically; for it is hypocrisy to think that one is being improved simply by thinking that it is bad to be a hypocrite.

The Path (of Tasuwwuf) leads beyond: to the practice and the understanding where there can be no hypocrisy, where honesty is there and not something which is man's aim.