First Post: The Essential Rumi

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Perhaps the following Rumi poem is one intention for starting this blog. Rumi was a 13^th century Persian scholar, mystic, jurist, and poet. Here, in ‘The Essential Rumi’ by Coleman Barks, we get a look at some powerful words..

The hesitation and hypocrisy line really stuck out. I mean, many lines stuck out, as well as many Rumi poems. A whole post or page could be written on Rumi poems. I couldn’t even find this poem online, or in the pdf version, so it must be a rarer poem in this expanded edition of the book, and had to be transcribed from the book. I recommend ‘The Essential Rumi’ to any seeker or mystic on the path:

 

The Freedom of a Place

 

With the steam room so hot it hurts,

we get no relief until we leave

 

If you put shoes that are too tight

and walk out across an empty plain

you will not feel the freedom of the place

unless you take off your shoes.

 

People at a distance see you walking there

and wish they were out in the open like you

but as the saying goes, they are not in your shoes.

 

Your shoe-constriction has you confined.

at night before sleeping, you take off

the tight shoes, and your soul releases

into a space it knows. Dream and glide deeper.

 

Physical existence is so cramped.

we are old and bent over like embryos.

nine months pass, and it’s time to be born.

this lamb wants to graze green daylight                                        

 

There are ways of being born twice,

of coming to where you fly not individually

like birds, but as the sun moves with its bride, sincerity.

 

Without location intelligence rejoices

like the jurist who finds the original statue

and no longer depends on analogous precedents.

 

Loaves of bread remind us of sunlight,

but when we’re inside that orb,

we lose interest in building ovens,

in millwork and the patient preparation of fields

before the planting. Fish love the ocean.

snakes move like earth-fish inside a mountain,

well away from seawater. That avoidance

reveals their hypocrisy

 

Certain sunfish, though, turn snakes

into ocean-lovers. What was thought absurd

becomes natural. An odd light point

wanders and becomes auspicious.

 

I could speak about this through a thousand resurrections, and still nothing said.

 

People tire of listening to me

Because I they think I repeat myself, but I hear unique and lively variations

 

There is a law about revealing what’s hidden.

Even where hundreds of seekers are waiting

For truth, a messenger will stay silent

If one cynic sits in the audience.

 

Normally when a horse gets the scent of a lion, it keeps a distance. But there are exceptions.

Every now and then a horse comes

That will gallop into the blazing moat.

 

Do not hold back what you know to say a

About our inmost self. Say everything, no mat

No matter how much hypocrisy and hesitation

You sense is here. Don’t guard the mystery.

 

Heat this horse so hot it rises off the track

Into the emptiness of soul.

 

The metaphors Rumi uses here are brilliant. A few lines really are powerful if you look past the surface of them or what they mean..

‘Being born twice’ as in your physical birth comparing to your second spiritual birthright and seeing everything with fresh eyes.

‘Without location’, as in physical location, spiritual intelligence rejoices. The jurist found the original statue, the core law, discovering the simplicity of it not depending on the additional precedents and writings. As if the jurist had discovered the truth. Rumi, being a jurist, must have liked this comparison.

The last lines speak to the reader…The animal lines relate to the communication of it. Rumi feels like those won’t understand or be skeptical of it. And really the last lines spoke to me so strongly, with hypocrisy and hesitation included, it is tough to write about.

What do you think? Is physical existence ‘cramped’? Is it that there’s maybe a lot of good in physical existence but it just doesn’t compare to spiritual ecstasy? Perhaps as time as gone on I’ve come to enjoy physical existence more, but part of me is always ‘as above so below,’ and always will be. When you’ve flown so high how on earth (pun intended) do you come back down to share it with others? What are your thoughts in general?

Thank you for reading this first post. The next post should arrive within about a month, and will touch on the movie ‘Waking Life’ along with an analytical paper on the film, adventures and experiences in Chile (for those family members and friends who aren’t as into the heavy stuff), or anything else. What would you like to see?

More on the way thanks for joining! I’ll be adding more pages and side links soon.