Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi: Untitled ["The clear bead at the center changes everything"]

The clear bead at the center changes everything.
There are no edges to my loving now.

You've heard it said there's a window
that opens from one mind to another,

but if there's no wall, there's no need
for fitting the window, or the latch.

Untitled ["The clear bead at the center changes everything"] by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi. Text as published in Rumi: The Book of Love (HarperCollins, 2003), translated from the original Persian by Coleman Barks.

Art credit: "The marble door that leads to nowhere," photograph taken in Naxos, Greece, by the unnamed blogger at legless birds. 

Curator's note: Only seven days left until the New Year and the conclusion of A Year of Being Here. Please be sure to complete my survey regarding a possible anthology of mindfulness poetry.

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi: Untitled ["Thanksgiving is sweeter than bounty itself"]

Thanksgiving is sweeter than bounty itself.
One who cherishes gratitude does not cling to the gift!
Thanksgiving is the true meat of God’s bounty;
the bounty is its shell,
For thanksgiving carries you to the hearth of the Beloved.
Abundance alone brings heedlessness, thanksgiving gives
birth to alertness.
The bounty of thanksgiving will satisfy and elevate you,
and you will bestow a hundred bounties in return.
Eat your fill of God’s delicacies,
and you will be freed from hunger and begging.




Untitled ["Thanksgiving is sweeter than bounty itself"], attributed to Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi. Source unknown. If you have bibliographic information for this poem, please share.

Curator's note: This poem is offered in celebration of the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States.

Art credit: "Hunger," photograph by Suzanne Tucker (digitally altered by curator).

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi: "Zero Circle"

Be helpless, dumbfounded,
Unable to say yes or no.
Then a stretcher will come from grace
     to gather us up.

We are too dull-eyed to see that beauty.
If we say we can, we're lying.
If we say No, we don't see it,
That No will behead us
And shut tight our window onto spirit.

So let us rather not be sure of anything,
Beside ourselves, and only that, so
Miraculous beings come running to help.
Crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute,
We shall be saying finally,
With tremendous eloquence, Lead us.
When we have totally surrendered to that beauty,
We shall be a mighty kindness.



"Zero Circle" by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi. Text as published in Ten Poems to Change Your Life, edited by Roger Housden (Harmony, 2001). Poem translated from the original Farsi by Coleman Barks.

Curator's note: Confronted by the terrible news out of Beirut, Lebanon, and Paris, France, I've set aside today's scheduled post and turned to Rumi. As I watch the coverage of these tragedies, it strikes me that the attacks were deliberate assaults not only on public places but on beauty—the beauty of cookery (restaurant), the beauty of drama (theater), the beauty of music (concert hall), the beauty of sport (stadium), the beauty of learning (school), and more generally, the beauty of human fellowship. Let us grieve the dead and wounded together, and in the name of beauty and our shared humanity, let us join together to be "a mighty kindness" in a world torn by the ugliness of violence and hatred.

Art credit: "Mysterious Blue Tunnel to the Light, Way to Another World," image by unknown photographer.

 

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi: "A Community of the Spirit"

There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street
and being the noise.

Drink all your passion,
and be a disgrace.

Close both eyes
to see with the other eye.

Open your hands,
if you want to be held.

Sit down in this circle.

Quit acting like a wolf, and feel
the shepherd's love filling you.

At night, your beloved wanders.
Don't accept consolations.

Close your mouth against food.
Taste the lover's mouth in yours.

You moan, "She left me." "He left me."
Twenty more will come.

Be empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought!

Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.

Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.

"A Community of the Spirit" by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi. Text as published in The Essential Rumi, translated from the original Farsi by Coleman Barks with John Moyne (HarperCollins Publishers, 1995). An online version of the original Farsi text couldn't be located.

Art credit: "Metal bar door and cell in a prison," photograph by Anthony Brown.

 

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi: "In Every Breath"

in every breath
if you’re the center
of your own desires
you’ll lose the grace
of your beloved

but if in every breath
you blow away
your self claim
the ecstasy of love
will soon arrive

in every breath
if you’re the center
of your own thoughts
the sadness of autumn
will fall on you

but if in every breath
you strip naked
just like a winter
the joy of spring
will grow from within

all your impatience
comes from the push
for gain of patience
let go of the effort
and peace will arrive

all your unfulfilled desires
are from your greed
for gain of fulfillments
let go of them all
and they will be sent as gifts

fall in love with
the agony of love
not the ecstasy
then the beloved
will fall in love with you

"In Every Breath" by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, from Rumi: Fountain of Fire. Translated from the original Persian by Nader Khalili (Cal-Earth Press, 1994 edition). Text as posted on Jahane Rumi (05/12/07).

Art credit: "Phuket Sunset Dance," photograph by Karim (Kim) Khamzin.

 

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi: "You Are the Only Student You Have"

You are the only faithful student you have.
All the others leave eventually.

Have you been making yourself shallow
with making others eminent?

Just remember, when you're in union,
you don't have to fear
that you'll be drained.

The command comes to speak,
and you feel the ocean
moving through you.
Then comes, Be silent,
as when the rain stops,
and the trees in the orchard
begin to draw moisture
up into themselves.


(Mathnawi, V, 3195-3219)



"You Are the Only Student You Have" by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, from Feeling the Shoulder of the Lion: Poetry and Teaching Stories of Rumi, versions by Coleman Barks (Shambhala, 2000).

Art credit: "Rain in the Orchard," 12"x12" oil on panel painting of a Sauvie Island (Oregon, USA) landscape by Randall David Tipton.

 

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi: Untitled ["Look at love"]

look at love
how it tangles
with the one fallen in love

look at spirit
how it fuses with earth
giving it new life
why are you so busy
with this or that or good or bad
pay attention to how things blend

why talk about all
the known and the unknown
see how the unknown merges into the known

why think separately
of this life and the next
when one is born from the last

look at your heart and tongue
one feels but deaf and dumb
the other speaks in words and signs

look at water and fire
earth and wind
enemies and friends all at once

the wolf and the lamb
the lion and the deer
far away yet together

look at the unity of this
spring and winter
manifested in the equinox

you too must mingle my friends
since the earth and the sky
are mingled just for you and me

be like sugarcane
sweet yet silent
don’t get mixed up with bitter words

my beloved grows right out of my own heart
how much more union can there be


 

Untitled ["Look at love"] by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, from Rumi: Fountain of Fire, translated from the original Farsi by Nader Khalili (Cal-Earth Press, 1994). Text as presented on Poetry Chaikhana (September 23, 2011).

Art credit: Untitled image by unknown photographer, taken at Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia. During the wet season, the salt flat in the Bolivian Andes (3800 square miles) turns into a shallow salt lake and the world’s largest natural mirror.

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi: "Eyes-Shut Facing Eyes-Rolling-Around" [excerpt]

Pay close attention to your mean thoughts.

That sourness may be a blessing,
as an overcast day brings rain for the roses
and relief to dry soil.

Don't look so sourly on your sourness!
It may be it's carrying what you most deeply need
and want. What seems to be keeping you from joy
may be what leads you to joy.

Don't call it a dead branch.
Call it the live, moist root.

Don't always be waiting to see
what's behind it. That wait and see
poisons your Spirit.

Reach for it.
Hold your meanness to your chest
as a healing root,
and be through with waiting.

"Eyes-Shut Facing Eyes-Rolling-Around" [excerpt] by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, from Delicious Laughter: Rambunctious Teaching Stories from the Mathnawi of Jelaluddin Rumi, edited and translated from the original Persian by Coleman Barks. © Maypop, 1990.

Curator's note: I hesitate to use excerpts. In this case it feels reasonable, and not only because the final two stanzas of the original text, not included here, are distinctly different in both content and tone. Coleman Barks himself admits that the poems in this rowdy collection are "not discrete (or discreet) poems in any sense" but rather "buckets lifted from a whole." Even the titles are his own "whims." Rumi used none. So, in deleting the final stanzas for our purposes, I've basically just slopped a few lines from the bucket. I encourage you to read the full original text sometime. I'd happily point you to it online, but tellingly, I can't find it anywhere.

Art credit: "Dead Branch," drawing by Eisen Feuer (originally black and white).

 

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi: Untitled ["Today Like Every Other Day"]

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty

and frightened. Don't open the door of your study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Untitled ["Today Like Every Other Day"] by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, from The Essential Rumi, translated from the Persian and edited by Coleman Barks. © HarperOne, 2004.

Image credit: "Christian and Muslim Playing Ouds," illustration from the Cantigas de Santa Maria, often attributed to King Alphonse X (13th century, originally color).

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi: "Begin"

This is now. Now is. Don’t
postpone till then. Spend

the spark of iron on stone.
Sit at the head of the table;

dip your spoon in the bowl.
Seat yourself next to your joy

and have your awakened soul
pour wine. Branches in the

spring wind, easy dance of
jasmine and cypress. Cloth

for green robes has been cut
from pure absence. You’re

the tailor, settled among his
shop goods, quietly sewing.

"Begin" by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, from The Soul of Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks. © HarperCollins Publishers, 2001.  

Photography credit: "Rustic Spoon and Bowl," by corbisrffancy (originally color).

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi: "The Jar with the Dry Rim"

The mind is an ocean … and so many worlds

are rolling there, mysterious, dimly seen!

And our bodies? Our body is a cup, floating

on the ocean; soon it will fill, and sink …

Not even one bubble will show where it went down.

The spirit is so near that you can’t see it!

But reach for it … don’t be a jar

full of water, whose rim is always dry.

Don’t be the rider who gallops all night

and never sees the horse that is beneath him.

"The Jar with the Dry Rim" by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, from The Soul Is Here for Its Own Joy: Sacred Poems from Many Cultures, edited by Robert Blue. © Ecco, 1999.

Photography credit: Unknown (originally color).


 

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi: "That Lives in Us"

If you put your hands on this oar with me,
they will never harm another, and they will come to find
they hold everything you want.

If you put your hands on this oar with me, they would no longer
lift anything to your
mouth that might wound your precious land—
that sacred earth that is your body.

If you put your soul against this oar with me,
the power that made the universe will enter your sinew
from a source not outside your limbs, but from a holy realm
that lives in us.

Exuberant is existence, time a husk.
When the moment cracks open, ecstasy leaps out and devours space;
love goes mad with the blessings, like my words give.

Why lay yourself on the torturer’s rack of the past and the future?
The mind that tries to shape tomorrow beyond its capacities
will find no rest.

Be kind to yourself, dear—to our innocent follies.
Forget any sounds or touch you knew that did not help you dance.
You will come to see that all evolves us.

"That Lives in Us" by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, from Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West, edited by Daniel Ladinsky. © Penguin Books, 2002.

Photography credit: Untitled image shot in Vietnam by Lex Linghorn (originally color).


 

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi: "Birdwings"

[image deleted at request of artist on 9/21/23]

Your grief for what you’ve lost lifts a mirror

up to where you’re bravely working.

Expecting the worst, you look, you look, and instead,
here's the joyful face you’ve been wanting to see.

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you would be paralyzed.

Your deepest presence is in every small contracting
                                                                            and expanding,
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birdwings.

"Birdwings" by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, from The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne. © HarperCollins Publishers, 1995.



 

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi: "The Guest House"

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 sweep your house
empty of its 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.

"The Guest House" by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, from The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne. © HarperCollins Publishers, 1995.