Rumi's Poems

Rumi is a 13th century mystic and poet - I thought maybe we could discuss his poetry, ideas, thoughts, and wisdom.



Shadow and Light Source Both,
By Rumi,
Translated by Coleman Barks


How does a part of the world leave the world?
How does wetness leave water? Dont' try to

put out fire by throwing on more fire! Don't
wash a wound with blood. No matter how fast

you run, your shadow keeps up. Sometimes it's
in front! Only full overhead sun diminishes

your shadow. But that shadow has been serving
you. What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is

your candle. Your boundaries are your quest.
I could explain this, but it will break the

glass cover on your heart, and there's no
fixing that. You must have shadow and light

source both. Listen, and lay your head under
the tree of awe. When from that tree feathers

and wings sprout on you, be quieter than
a dove. Don't even open your mouth for even a coo.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by NikolaiI

Rumi is a 13th century mystic and poet - I thought maybe we could discuss his poetry, ideas, thoughts, and wisdom.



Shadow and Light Source Both,
By Rumi,
Translated by Coleman Barks


How does a part of the world leave the world?
How does wetness leave water? Dont' try to

put out fire by throwing on more fire! Don't
wash a wound with blood. No matter how fast

you run, your shadow keeps up. Sometimes it's
in front! Only full overhead sun diminishes

your shadow. But that shadow has been serving
you. What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is

your candle. Your boundaries are your quest.
I could explain this, but it will break the

glass cover on your heart, and there's no
fixing that. You must have shadow and light

source both. Listen, and lay your head under
the tree of awe. When from that tree feathers

and wings sprout on you, be quieter than
a dove. Don't even open your mouth for even a coo.

---

Rumi was a great poet and I never got tiered of reading him. What I like of Rumi is he was a great mystic. The idea that a part of the world cannot be different from the earth is really a great idea. I find all of Rumi's poetry really appealing and enlightening.

Yes actually I posted it because of that one line :)

How can part of the world leave the world?


It's something I realized while pondering and meditating a long time ago...

The Beatle's song... Dear Prudence, there is a nice line,

"The wind is low, the birds will sing
that you are part of everything..."

Anyway it's pretty. But the idea is that we are part of everything.

Part of everything. Part of the world. Part of the universe. Rumi is saying what I also realized - part of the universe... which has a lifetime of no less than that of the whole universe...

I was happy that I had come up with the same thought as such a brilliant poet as Rumi, although I never could reach his level of poetry.



There is also definitely a parallel between this idea and Nietzsche's idea of Eternal Recurrence. :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by NikolaiI

Yes actually I posted it because of that one line :)

How can part of the world leave the world?


It's something I realized while pondering and meditating a long time ago...

The Beatle's song... Dear Prudence, there is a nice line,

"The wind is low, the birds will sing
that you are part of everything..."

Anyway it's pretty. But the idea is that we are part of everything.

Part of everything. Part of the world. Part of the universe. Rumi is saying what I also realized - part of the universe... which has a lifetime of no less than that of the whole universe...

I was happy that I had come up with the same thought as such a brilliant poet as Rumi, although I never could reach his level of poetry.



There is also definitely a parallel between this idea and Nietzsche's idea of Eternal Recurrence. :)

---

Of course the song of the Beatles is also marvelous. I like the idea that we all belong to the same source. When you take a bucket of water from the sea the water contained in the bucket and the sea is constitutionally is the same.

This idea seems simple yet the meaning behind it is very convoluted and one needs a great amount of introspection to comprehend this truth in point of fact.

I always meditate on this truth but yet I have not arrived at the truth of it and the moment I can understand this truth I will be enlightened.

This is to Love - Rumi

This is love: to fly to heaven, every moment to rend a hundred veils;
At first instance, to break away from breath --
first step, to renounce feet;
To disregard this world, to see only that which you yourself have seen I said, "Heart, congratulations on entering the circle of lovers,
"On gazing beyond the range of the eye,
on running into the alley of the breasts."
Whence came this breath, O heart?
Whence came this throbbing, O heart?
Bird, speak the tongue of birds: I can heed your cipher!
The heart said, "I was in the factory whilst the home of water and clay was abaking.
"I was flying from the workshop whilst the workshop was being created.
"When I could no more resist, they dragged me; how shall I
tell the manner of that dragging?"

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by NikolaiI

This is to Love - Rumi

This is love:
"On gazing beyond the range of the eye,

Whence came this breath, O heart?

Bird, speak the tongue of birds: I can heed your cipher!

"

---

This is really a very beautiful poem and Nikolia, your choice is always exclusive. If we can gaze beyond the range of the eye.

This poem has substance and that touches us.

This World Which Is Made of Our Love for Emptiness,

-by Rumi

Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence. Existence:
This place made from our love for that emptiness!

Yet somehow comes emptiness,
this existence goes.

Praise to that happening, over and over!
For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness.

Then one swoop, one swing of the arm,
that work is over.

Free of who I was, free of presence, free of dangerous fear, hope,
free of mountainous wanting.

The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece of straw
blown off into emptiness.

These words I'm saying so much begin to lose meaning:
Existence, emptiness, mountain, straw:

Words and what they try to say swept
out the window, down the slant of the roof.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by NikolaiI

This World Which Is Made of Our Love for Emptiness,

-by Rumi

Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence.

Yet somehow comes emptiness,
this existence goes.


:iagree:The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece of straw
blown off into emptiness.

These words I'm saying so much begin to lose meaning:
Existence, emptiness, mountain, straw:

Words and what they try to say swept
out the window, down the slant of the roof.

---

:iagree: These ideas are pregnant with great ideas and I seek the meaning in between the lines, and the writer left unsaid. The said does not contain the thing that is unsaid.

One Swaying Being
-Rumi

Love is not condescension, never
that, nor books, nor any marking


on paper, nor what people say of
each other. Love is a tree with


branches reaching into eternity
and roots set deep in eternity,


and no trunk! Have you seen it?

The mind cannot. Your desiring


cannot. The longing you feel for
this loves comes from inside you.



When you become the Friend, your
longing will be as the man in


the ocean who holds to a piece of
wood. Eventually, wood, man, and

oceans become one swaying being,
shams Tabriz, the secret of God.

wow, that is such a nice poem, full of sentiment and feeling.

WoW.. Nikolai...! its great that you posted his poems in the forum.. :)

It is remarkable.
Truth is beauty

"Silence is the language of God,
all else, poor translation"-Rumi-

I just discovered him today. Oh how it was like a great epiphany from Heaven itself! Not since my first reading of The Waste Land have I been so utterly enchanted and entranced by the introduction of one poet. His emotion and power and insight transcends at most times even the great Romantic poets of the West. He possesses the human insight and power of Shakespeare, and yet he posesses the religious and natural subtly of classical Chinese poetry. He is truly universal and speaks for all human souls. Tonight I read at least one-hundred pages of him and I still have yet to read a poem of his that I was indifferent towards.

I could drown myself in his words.

I got a little Shambala edition of some of his stuff a while back, and read it every day on the subway during the first couple weeks of a new love. He isn't always so mystical--plenty of drunkeness and passion, too. But passion is tricky, not something to get carried away with. "Wings of Desire" is one of the most famous, I guess, and deservedly so.

(cut and pasted off of a webpage: http://aprilillumination.blogspot.co...of-desire.html . I *think* this is the whole poem, but maybe just an excerpt.)


Wings Of Desire

People are distracted by objects of desire,
and afterward repent of the lust they've indulged,
because they have indulged with a phantom
and are left even farther from Reality than before.
Your desire for the illusory could be a wing,
by means of which a seeker might ascend to Reality.
When you have indulged in lust, your wing drops off;
you become lame, abandoned by a fantasy.
Preserve the wing and don't indulge in such lust,
so that the wing of desire may bear you to Paradise.
People fancy they are enjoying themselves,
but they are really tearing out their wings
for the sake of an illusion.

Some short ones I liked...



With the Beloved's water of life, no illness remains
In the Beloved's rose garden of union, no thorn remains.
They say there is a window from one heart to another
How can there be a window where no wall remains?

From Thief of Sleep
by Shahram Shiva



A Smile and A Gentleness

There is a smile and a gentleness
inside. When I learned the name

and address of that, I went to where
you sell perfume. I begged you not

to trouble me so with longing. Come
out and play! Flirt more naturally.

Teach me how to kiss. On the ground
a spread blanket, flame that's caught

and burning well, cumin seeds browning,
I am inside all of this with my soul.

From Essential Rumi
by Coleman Barks



Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy,
absentminded. Someone sober
will worry about things going badly.
Let the lover be.

From Essential Rumi
by Coleman Barks



One thing that I learned about Rumi a couple weeks ago, was that his followers were the ones who founded the Mevlevi Order, otherwise known as the Whirling Dervishes. I am now very interested in them. I hope I could meet them sometime...

I found about them through a Sufi group here which is part of the Chisti Order. The Mevlevi Order is another order within Sufism.

I think, after reading this passage, if I'm to respect Rumi's wishes, I have to quote this one before I can quote any more poems of his. :)

Man bandeye qor'Anam agar jAn dAram
man khAke rAhe mohammade mokhtAram
gar naghal konad joz in kas az goftAram
bizAram az o v-az in sokhan bizAram.

I am the servant of the Qur'an as long as I have life.
I am the dust on the path of Muhammad, the Chosen One.
If anyone quotes anything except this from my sayings,
I am quit of him and outraged by these words.