RUMI
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweeps your house
empty of it's furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
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ONLY BREATHNot Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion or cultural system. I am not from the East or the West, not out of the ocean or up from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not composed of elements at all. I do not exist, am not an entity in this world or the next, did not descend from Adam and Eve or any origin story. My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless. Neither body or soul. I belong to the beloved, have seen the two worlds as one and that one call to and know, first, last, outer, inner, only that breath breathing human being
*****************************COME ALL
"Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, idolator, worshipper of fire,
come even though you have broken your vows a thousand times,
Come, and come yet again.
Ours is not a caravan of despair."
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These spiritual windowshoppers,
who idly ask, 'How much is that?' Oh, I'm just looking.
They handle a hundred items and put them down,
shadows with no capital.
What is spent is love, and two eyes wet with weeping.
But these walk into a shop,
and their whole lives pass suddenly in that moment,
in that shop.
Where did you go? "Nowhere."
What did you have to eat? "Nothing much."
Even if you don't know what you want,
buy something, to be part of the exchanging flow.
Start a hugh, foolish project,
like Noah.
It makes absolutely no difference
what people think of you.
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Love has taken away my practices....
Love has taken away my practices
and filled me with poetry.I tried to keep quietly repeating,
No strength but Yours,
but I couldn't.I had to clap and sing.
I used to respectable and chaste and stable,
but who can stand in this strong wind
and remember those things?A mountain keeps an echo deep inside itself.
That's how I hold your Voice.I am scrap wood thrown in in your Fire,
and quickly reduced to smoke.I saw You and became empty.
This Emptiness, more beautiful than existence,
it obliterates existence, and yet when It comes,
existence thrives and creates more existence!The sky is blue. The world is a bilnd man
squatting on the road.But whoever sees Your Emptiness
sees beyond blue and beyond the blind man.A great soul hides like Muhammed, or Jesus,
moving through a crowd in a city
where no one knows Him.To praise is to praise
how one surrenders
to the Emptiness.To praise the sun is to praise your own eyes.
Praise, the Ocean. What we say, a little ship.So the sea-journey goes on, and who knows where!
Just to be held by the Ocean is the best luck
we could have. It's a total waking-up!Why should we grieve that we've been sleeping?
It doesn't matter how long we've been unconcscious.We're groggy, but let the guilt go.
Feel the motions of tenderness
around you, the buoyancy.[By Jalaluddin Rumi, from the Divani Shamsi Tabrizi, version by Coleman Barks, From "Rumi: Like This," p. 51.]
ONLY BREATH Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion or cultural system. I am not from the East or the West, not out of the ocean or up from the ground, not natural or etheral, not composed of elements at all. I do not exist, am not an entity in this world or the next, did not decend from Adam or Eve or any origin story. My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless. Neither body or soul. I belong to the beloved, have seen the two worlds as one and that one call to and know, first, last, outer, inner, only that breath breathing human being. by Jelaluddin Rumi (1207 - 1273) from "The Essential Rumi" translations by Coleman Barks ____________________________________________________________________Dervishes
You've heard descriptions of the ocean of non-existence. Try, continually, to give yourself into that ocean. Every workshop has its foundations set on that emptiness. The Master of all masters works with nothing. The more nothing comes into your work, the more God is there. Dervishes gamble everything. They lose, and win the Other, the emptiness which animates this. We've talked so much! Remember what we haven't said. And keep working. Exert yourself toward the pull of God. Laziness and disdain are not devotions. Your efforts will bring a result. You'll watch the wings of divine attraction lift from the nest and come toward you! As dawn lightens, blow out the candle. Dawn is in your eyes now. (Mathnawi, VI, 1466-1482, from "One Handed Basket Weaving", versions of Rumi by Coleman Barks, where it is titled "Dervishes".) ____________________________________________________________________Saladin's Begging Bowl
Of these two thousand "I" and "We" people, which am I? Don't try to keep me from asking! Listen, when I'm this out of control! But don't put anything breakable in my way! There is an original inside me. What's here is a mirror for that, for you. If you are joyful, I am. If you grieve, or if you're bitter, or graceful, I take on those qualities. Like the shadow of a cypress tree in the medow, like the shadow of a rose, I live close to the rose. If I separated myself from you, I would turn entirely thorn. Every second, I drink another cup of my own blood-wine. Every instant, I break an empty cup against your door. I reach out, wanting you to tear me open. Saladin's generosity lights a candle in my chest. Who am I then? His empty begging bowl. --------- The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne _______________________________________________________________In Truth
In truth, love for the Illuminator of hearts keeps lovers awake all night without food and sleep. Oh friend, if you are a lover, be like a candle: Melt all night long, burn joyfully till morning! He who is like cold weather in autumn is no lover - in autumn's midst the lover's heart is burning summer. Dear friend, if you have a love you want to proclaim, then shout like a lover! Shout! Shout! But if you are chained by sensuality, make no claims to Love - enter the spiritual retreat and burn away your chains! Oh simple man, how can a lover be joined to sensuality? How could Jesus eat from the same trough as his ass? If you want to catch the fragrance of these symbols, then turn your eyes away from everything but Shams ad-Din of Tabriz! But if you cannot see that he is greater than the two worlds, you are still a wretch drowned in the ocean of heedlessness. So go before the teachers of jurisprudence and become a master of the science of "This is permitted and that is forbidden." My spirit has passed beyond childhood in love for Shams ad-Din - love for him is not mixed with raisins and nuts. My intellect has left me and my verses are incomplete - that is why my bow has no more designs and wrappings. Oh Jalal ad-Din, sleep and abandon speech! No leopard will ever catch _that_ lion! [From the Jalal ad-Din Rumi's Divani Shamsi Tabrizi, translated by W. C. Chittick in "The Sufi Path of Love," p. 339-340.]_________________________________________________________
The Lover and the BelovedIndeed, no lover seeks union without his beloved seeking him. But the love of lovers makes their bodies into bowstrings, while the love of beloveds makes them happy and plump. When the lightning of love for the loved one flashes in _this_ heart, know that there is also love in _that_ heart. When love for God has doubled in your heart, without doubt God has love for you. You have never heard one hand clapping without the other. The thirsty man laments, "Oh sweet water!" The water also laments, "Where is the drinker!" This thirst in our souls is the attraction of the Water - we belong to It and It belongs to us. [Jalaluddin Rumi's Mathnawi, book 3, vv. 4393-4399, from "The Sufi Path of Love," translated by W. C. Chittick, p.209.] ___________________________________________________________________He is All and None
He is All and None. He creates joy and sorrow. Why don't you see That you are nothing but Him. Jalaluddin Rumi (From "Crazy as we are," selected Rubais from Divan-i Kebir, translated by Nevid O. Ergin, p. 24.) _____________________________________________________________ Why Wine is ForbiddenWhen the Prophet's ray of intelligence struck the dim-witted man he was with, the man got very happy, and talkative. Soon, he began unmannerly raving. This is the problem with a selflessness that comes quickly, as with wine. If the wine drinker has a deep gentleness in him, he will show that, when drunk. But if he has hidden anger and arrogance, those appear, and since most people do, wine is forbidden to everyone. (From "The Essential Rumi," translations by Coleman Barks with John Moyne, p. 111.) ______________________________________________________ The World of LoveSince I have heard of the world of Love, I've spent my life, my heart And my eyes this way. I used to think that love And beloved are different. I know now that they are the same. I was seeing two in one. Jalaluddin Rumi (From "Crazy as we are," selected Rubais from the Divan-i Kebir, translated by Nevid O. Ergin, p. 8.) ________________________________________________________________ Each NoteAdvice doesn't help lovers! They're not the kind of mountain stream you can build a dam across. An intellectual doesn't know what the drunk is feeling! Don't try to figure what those lost inside love will do next! Someone in charge would give up all his power, if he caught one whiff of the wine-musk from the room where the lovers are doing who-knows-what! One of them tries to dig a hole through a mountain. One flees from academic honors. One laughs at famous mustaches! Life freezes if it doesn't get a taste of this almond cake. The stars come up spinning every night, bewildered in love. They'd grow tired with that revolving, if they weren't. They'd say, "How long do we have to _do_ this!" God picks up the reed-flute world and blows. Each note is a need coming through one of us, a passion, a longing-pain. Remember the lips where the wind-breath originated, and let your note be clear. Don't try to end it. _Be your note._ I'll show you how it's enough. Go up on the roof at night in this city of the soul. Let _everyone_ climb on their roofs and sing their notes! Sing loud! (From "The Essential Rumi," translations by Coleman Barks, pp.102-3.)______________________________________________________ The Dog in the DoorwayThis is how it is when your animal energies, the _nafs_, dominate your soul: You have a piece of fine linen that you're going to make into a coat to give to a friend, but someone else uses it to make a pair of pants. The linen has no choice in the matter. It must submit. Or, it's like someone breaks into your house and goes to the garden and plants thornbushes. An ugly humiliation falls over the place. Or, you've seen a nomad's dog lying at the tent entrance, with his head on the threshold and his eyes closed. Children pull his tail and touch his face, but he doesn't move. He loves the children's attention and stays humble within it. But if a stranger walks by, he'll spring up ferociously. Now, what if that dog's owner were not able to control it? A poor dervish might appear: the dog storms out. The dervish says, "I take refuge with God when the dog of arrogance attacks," and the owner has to say, "So do I! I'm helpless against this creature even in my own house! Just as you can't come close, I can't go out!" This is how animal energy becomes monstrous and ruins your life's freshness and beauty. Think of taking this dog out to hunt! You'd be the quarry. (From "The Essential Rumi," translations by Coleman Barks with John Moyne, p.73.) __________________________________________________Ghazal Number 1375 i've come again like a new year to crash the gate of this old prison i've come again to break the teeth and claws of this man-eating monster we call life i've come again to puncture the glory of the cosmos who mercilessly destroys humans i am the falcon hunting down the birds of black omen before their flights i gave my word at the outset to give my life with no qualms i pray to the Lord to break my back before i break my word how do you dare to let someone like me intoxicated with love enter your house you must know better if i enter i'll break all this and destroy all that if the sheriff arrives i'll throw the wine in his face if your gatekeeper pulls my hand i'll break his arm if the heavens don't go round to my heart's desire i'll crush its wheels and pull out its roots you have set up a colorful table calling it life and asked me to your feast but punish me if i enjoy myself what tyranny is this ghazal number 1375, translated March 17, 1991 Soul Inside of Your SoulThere is a Soul inside of your Soul. Search that Soul. There is a jewel in the mountain of body. Look for the mine of that jewel. Oh, Sufi, passing by, Search inside if you can, not outside. (By Jalaluddin Rumi, translated by Nevit O. Ergin, in "Crazy as we are," Hohm Press, 1992.)________________________________________________ Ghazal Number 1591 Rumi, Fountain of Fire: A Celebration of Life and Love _________________________________________________________________ ghazal number 1591, translated March 6, 1991 _________________________________________________________________ the time has come to break all my promises tear apart all chains and cast away all advice disassemble the heavens link by link and break at once all lovers' ties with the sword of death put cotton inside both my ears and close them to all words of wisdom crash the door and enter the chamber where all sweet things are hidden how long can i beg and bargain for the things of this world while love is waiting how long before i can rise beyond how i am and what i am _________________________________________________________________ Ghazal Number 1205 don't tell me i had enough don't stop me from having more my soul isn't yet satisfied last night an intoxicated friend handed me his wine jar i broke the jar in spite of my desire i'm not enslaved by my craving body i'll not pollute this endless longing i've broken the barriers of the past and the future without being drunk love's message came to me this morning hiding itself as a healer taking my pulse and declaring i'm weak "don't drink wine given by anyone but your beloved" if i can only find i said the fountainhead named love what use is any wine _________________________________________________________________ Ghazal Number 840 Rumi, Fountain of Fire: A Celbration of Life and Love _________________________________________________________________ ghazal number 840, translated April 16, 1992 _________________________________________________________________ where did it all go the dancing the love and the music could it be that none was there or it was but all went to the vanishing point it is better not to be skeptic look at Moses' magic cane one minute a cane the next a dragon or was it a dragon first and as it devoured the world within its existence it changed to a cane every situation is like an arrow when it is gone my friend seek and find it in the target though a pearl has stolen a grain of sand from the nearby shore a wise diver will seek it out in the depth of the ocean floor _________________________________________________________________ From 'Magnificent One: Selected new verses from Divan-i Kebir" _________________________________________________________________ (From "Magnificent One: Selected new verses from Divan-i Kebir" by Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, translated by Nevit Oguz Ergin (Larson Publications, 1993), p. 46.) O birds who have flown from your cages, Show your faces and tell where you are. Your boat has been shattered, wrecked on the shore. Seize this instant. Appear like a fish from the water. Either you broke your shell And reached Love, Or you missed the trap And are lost in hunting. Today you are either wood for your fire, Or the fire has been extinguished Because you became the Glory of God. This wind either became Too cold and froze you, Or blows like a morning wind In every garden where you arrive. You don't open your mouth for an answer, But there is an answer For every word in your Heart. It is salve to the eyes. _________________________________________________________________ The Intellectual The Intellectual The intellectual is always showing off; the lover is always getting lost. The intellectual runs away, afraid of drowning; the whole business of love is to drown in the sea. Intellectuals plan their repose; lovers are ashamed to rest. The lover is always alone, even surrounded with people; like water and oil, he remains apart. The man who goes to the trouble of giving advice to a lover gets nothing. He's mocked by passion. Love is like musk. It attracts attention. Love is a tree, and lovers are its shade. (From "Love is a Stranger: selected lyric poetry of Jelaluddin Rumi," by Maulana Jalal al-Din Rumi, translated by Kabir Helminski, (Threshold Books, Brattleboro, 1993), p.21.) _________________________________________________________________ Ghazal Number 911 _________________________________________________________________ ghazal number 911, translated May 18, 1992 when i die when my coffin is being taken out you must never think i am missing this world don't shed any tears don't lament or feel sorry i'm not falling into a monster's abyss when you see my corpse is being carried don't cry for my leaving i'm not leaving i'm arriving at eternal love when you leave me in the grave don't say goodbye remember a grave is only a curtain for the paradise behind you'll only see me descending into a grave now watch me rise how can there be an end when the sun sets or the moon goes down it looks like the end it seems like a sunset but in reality it is a dawn when the grave locks you up that is when your soul is freed have you ever seen a seed fallen to earth not rise with a new life why should you doubt the rise of a seed named human have you ever seen a bucket lowered into a well coming back empty why lament for a soul when it can come back like Joseph from the well when for the last time you close your mouth your words and soul will belong to the world of no place no time _________________________________________________________________ If you are a lover.. - by Rumi _________________________________________________________________ If you are a lover.. - by Rumi If you're a lover, leave all grief and sorrow! Look at the wedding! Leave the mourning choir! You be an ocean and throw out the boat! You be a world and throw away the world! Repent like Adam, regain Paradise And leave behind you Adam's pit and jail! Rise to the heaven as did Jesus once, Leave back your donkey just as Jesus did! And if you, Yusuf's lovers, cut your hands, Then seize him, and thus find the healing balm! From "Look! This is Love. Poems of Rumi," translated by Annemarie Schimmel (Shambhala Publications, 1991), p. 43. _________________________________________________________________ Heartache _________________________________________________________________ The following is from a "raw" translation of a poem of Rumi (i.e. it hasn't been reworked into an English poem, but is a pure translation). _________________________________________________________________ Learn from the Prophet an alchemy: Whatever God gives you, be content. At the very moment you become content in affliction, the door of paradise will open. If the messenger of heartache comes to you, embrace him like a friend! A cruelty that comes from the Beloved -- bestow upon it a warm welcome! Then that heartache can throw off its veil, rain down sugar, and be gentle and heart-ravishing. Seize the edge of heartache's veil, for she is beautiful but deceptive. In this lane, I am the whoremonger, I -- I have pulled off the veil from every beautiful face. They all put on ugly veils so that you will think they are dragons. But I am fed up with my spirit -- I worship dragons! If you are fed up with your spirit, then hear their calls of welcome! Heartache can never find me without laughter -- I call the pain the "cure." Nothing is more blessed than heartache, for its reward has no end. If you do not show your manliness, you will find nothing. I will be silent, lest a mistake jump from my mouth. ___________________________________________________________________ Divan-i Shams-i Tabrizi, poem 2675, from W. C. Chittick, "The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi," (State University of New York Press, 1983), pp. 293-4. ___________________________________________________________________ The Many Wines ___________________________________________________________________ The Many Wines God has given us a dark wine so potent that, drinking it, we leave the two worlds. God has put into the form of hashish a power to deliver the taster from self-consciousness. God has made sleep so that it erases every thought. God made Majnun love Layla so much that just her dog would cause confusion in him. There are thousands of wines that can take over our minds. Don't think all ecstasies are the same! Jesus was lost in his love for God. His donkey was drunk with barley. Drink from the presence of saints, not from those other jars. Every object, every being, is a jar full of delight. Be a connoisseur, and taste with caution. Any wine will get you high. Judge like a king, and choose the purest, the ones unadulterated with fear, or some urgency about "what's needed." Drink the wine that moves you as a camel moves when it's been untied, and is just ambling about. (From "RUMI: One-Handed Basket Weaving," versions of Rumi by Coleman Barks (Maypop, 1991), p. 75. The original is from Rumi's Mathnawi, Book IV, 2683-2696.) _________________________________________________________________ The Seed Market Can you find another market like this? Where, with your one rose, you can buy hundreds of rose gardens? Where, for one seed, you get a whole wilderness? For one weak breath, the divine wind? You've been fearful of being absorbed in the ground, or drawn up by the air. Now, your waterbead lets go and drops into the ocean, where it came from. It no longer has the form it had, but it's still water. The essence is the same. This giving up is not a repenting. It's a deep honoring of yourself. When the ocean comes to you as a lover, marry, at once, quickly, for God's sake! Don't postpone it! Existence has no better gift. No amount of searching will find this. A perfect falcon, for no reason, has landed on your shoulder, and become yours. (From "RUMI: One-Handed Basket Weaving," versions of Rumi by Coleman Barks (Maypop, 1991), p. 92. The original is from Rumi's Mathnawi, Book IV, 2611-2625.) _________________________________________________________________ Love is a Boundless Ocean Love is a boundless ocean in which the heavens are but a flake of foam. All the turning heavens are turned by waves of Love were it not for Love, the world would be frozen. How else would a mineral turn into a plant? How would plants sacrifice themselves to become filled with spirit? How would spirit sacrifice itself for the sake of that Breath by which Mary was made pregnant? All of them would be solid and immovable as ice, not flying and seeking like locusts. Every particle is in love with that Perfection and mounts upward like a sapling. Their silent aspiration is, in effect, a song for the Glory of God. (From Jalaluddin Rumi's Mathnawi, Book 5, v. 3853 ff, based on the translation by R. A. Nicholson.) _________________________________________________________________ This is LoveThis is Love! Flying to the heavens, tearing, every instant, a hundred veils! The first moment to renounce life, The last step to travel without feet! To see this world as invisible. Not to see what appears to your self. "O Heart," I said, "may you be blessed to have entered the lovers' circle! To look beyond the range of the eye's vision, to penetrate the passages of the soul! How did this breath come to you, my Soul? How this throbbing, my Heart? Bird - speak the birds' language, I can understand your hidden meaning!" The Soul answered, "I was in the Divine Factory, while the dwelling of clay and water was baking. I was flying away from this material workshop, while the workshop was being created. When I could resist no more, they dragged me, and moulded me into shape, like a ball." (From Jalaluddin Rumi's Divani Shamsi Tabrizi, based on the translation by R. A. Nicholson.)_________________________________________________________________ Not Like This BeforeI wasn't like this before. I wasn't out of my mind and senses. Once I used to be wise like you, not crazy, insane and broken down like I am now. I wasn't the admirer of life which has no trace, no being. I used to ask, "Who is this? What is that?," and search all the time. Since you have wisdom, sit and think that probably I was like this before. I haven't changed much. I used to try to make myself better than everybody. I hadn't been hunted with the ever-growing Love before. I tried to rise above the sky with my ambition yet I didn't know I was just wandering in the desert. At the end, I have raised a treasure from the ground. (Jalaluddin Rumi, from his "Divani Shamsi Tarbrizi", translated by Nevit Orguz Ergin in "Magnificent One".)_________________________________________________________________ the time has come to break all my promises tear apart all chains and cast away all advice disassemble the heavens link by link and break at once all lovers' ties with the sword of death put cotton inside both my ears and close them to all words of wisdom crash the door and enter the chamber where all sweet things are hidden how long can i beg and bargain for the things of this world while love is waiting how long before i can rise beyond how i am and what i am