When a Madman Smiles at You

by Rumi

Galen, the great physician,asked one of his assistants
to give him a certain medicine.
"Master, that medicine
is for crazy people! You're far from needing that!"

Galen: "Yesterday a madman turned and smiled at me,
did his eyebrows up and down and touched my sleeve.
He wouldn't have done that if he hadn't recognized
in me someone congenial."

Anyone that feels drawn,
for however short a time, to anyone else,
those two share a common consciousness.

It's only in the grave that unlike beings associate.
A wise man once remarked, "I saw a crow and a stork
flying together, and I couldn't understand it,
until I investigated and found what they shared.
They were both lame."

There's a reason why the beetle
leaves the rose garden. He can't stand
all that loveliness.

He wants to live in rotten dung,
not with nightingales and flowers.
Watch who avoids you.
That, too, reveals your inner qualities.

The mark of eternity in Adam was not only
that the angels bowed to him,
but that Satan wouldn't.