Rumi
Polishing the mirror
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When Abu Bakr met Muhammad, he said,
“This is not a face that lies.”
Abu Bakr was one whose bowl has fallen from the roof.
There’s no hiding the fragrance that comes from an ecstatic.
A polished mirror cannot help reflecting.
Muhammad once was talking to a crowd of chieftains,
princes with great influence,
when a poor blind man interrupted him.
Muhammad frowned and said to the man,
“Let me attend to these visitors.
This is a rare chance, whereas you are already my friend.
We’ll have ample time.”
Then someone nearby said,
“That blind man may be worth a hundred kings.
Remember the proverb,
Human beings are mines.”
World-power means nothing.
Only the unsayable, jeweled inner life matters.
Muhammad replied,
“Do not think that I’m concerned
with being acknowledged by these authorities.
If a beetle moves toward rosewater,
it proves that the solution is diluted.
Beetles love dung, not rose essence.
If a coin is eager to be tested by the touchstone,
that coin itself may be a touchstone.
A thief loves the night.
I am day.
I reveal essences.
A calf thinks God is a cow.
A donkey’s theology changes when someone new pets it
and gives what it wants.
I am not a cow,
or thistles for camels to browse on.
People who insult me are only polishing the mirror.”
Talking through the door
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“What do you want from me?”
“Where have you been most comfortable?”
“Where can you live safely then?”
You said, “Who’s at the door?”
I said, “Your slave.”
You said, “What do you want?”
“To see you and bow.”
“How long will you wait?”
“Until you call.”
“How long will you cook?”
“Till the Resurrection.”
We talked through the door.
I claimed a great love and that I had given up
what the world gives to be in that love.
You said, “Such claims require a witness.”
I said, “This longing, these tears.”
You said, “Discredited witnesses.”
I said, “Surely not!”
You said, “Who did you come with?”
“The majestic imagination you gave me.”
“Why did you come?”
“The musk of your wine was in the air.”
“What is your intention?”
“Friendship.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Grace.”
Then you asked,
“Where have you been most comfortable?”
“In the palace.”
“What did you see there?”
“Amazing things.”
“Then why is it so desolate?”
“Because all that can be taken away in a second.”
“Who can do that?”
“This clear discernment.”
“Where can you live safely then?”
“In surrender.”
“What is this giving up?”
“A peace that saves us.”
“Is there no threat of disaster?”
“Only what comes in your street, inside your love.”
“How do you walk there?”
“In perfection.”
Now silence.
If I told more of this conversation,
those listening would leave themselves.
There would be no door, no roof or window either!
Talking in the night
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just as the beautiful inhabitants of Chigil in Turkestan
In the middle of the night, I cried out,
“Who lives in this love I have?”
You said, “I do, but I’m not here alone.
Why are these other images with me?”
I said, “They are reflections of you,
just as the beautiful inhabitants of Chigil in Turkestan
resemble each other.”
You said, “But who is this other living being?”
“That is my wounded soul.”
Then I brought that soul to you as a prisoner.
“This one is dangerous,” I said.
“Don’t let him off easy.”
You winked and gave me one end of a delicate thread.
“Pull it tight, but don’t break it.”
I reached my hand to touch you.
You struck it down.
“Why are you so harsh with me?”
“For good reason. But certainly not to keep you away!
Whoever enters this place saying
Here I am
must be slapped.
This is not a pen for sheep.
There are no separating distances here.
This is love’s sanctuary.
Saladin is how the soul looks.
Rub your eyes, and look again with love at love.”
Not a day on any calendar
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Spring, and everything outside is growing,
even the tall cypress tree.
We must not leave this place.
Around the lip of the cup we share, these words,
My Life Is Not Mine.
If someone were to play music,
it would have to be very sweet.
We’re drinking wine, but not through lips.
We’re sleeping it off, but not in bed.
Rub the cup across your forehead.
This day is outside living and dying.
Give up wanting what other people have.
That way you’re safe.
“Where, where can I be safe?” you ask.
This is not a day for asking questions,
not a day on any calendar.
This day is conscious of itself.
This day is a lover, bread, and gentleness,
more manifest than saying can say.
Thoughts take form with words,
but this daylight is beyond and before thinking and imagining.
Those two, they are so thirsty,
but this gives smoothness to water.
Their mouths are dry, and they are tired.
The rest of this poem is too blurry for them to read.
Unfold your own myth
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Who gets up early to discover the moment light begins?
Who finds us here circling,
bewildered, like atoms?
Who comes to a spring thirsty
and sees the moon reflected in it?
Who, like Jacob blind with grief and age,
smells the shirt of his lost son and can see again?
Who lets a bucket down and brings up a flowing prophet?
Or like Moses goes for fire and finds what burns inside the sunrise?
Jesus slips into a house to escape enemies,
and opens a door to the other world.
Solomon cuts open a fish, and there’s a gold ring.
Omar storms in to kill the prophet and leaves with blessings.
Chase a deer and end up everywhere!
An oyster opens his mouth to swallow one drop.
Now there’s a pearl.
A vagrant wanders empty ruins.
Suddenly he’s wealthy.
But don’t be satisfied with stories,
how things have gone with others.
Unfold your own myth,
without complicated explanation,
so everyone will understand the passage,
We have opened you.
Start walking toward Shams.
Your legs will get heavy and tired.
Then comes a moment of feeling the wings you’ve grown,
lifting
Only Breath
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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 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.
There is a way between voice and presence
where information flows.
In disciplined silence it opens.
With wandering talk it closes.
Bismillah
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It’s a habit of yours to walk slowly.
You hold a grudge for years.
With such heaviness, how can you be modest?
With such attachments, do you expect to arrive anywhere?
Be wide as the air to learn a secret.
Right now you’re equal portions clay and water, thick mud.
Abraham learned how the sun and moon and the stars all set.
He said, No langer will I try to assign partners for Cod.
You are so weak. Give up to grave.
The ocean takes care of each wave till it gets to shore.
You need more help than you know.
You’re trying to live your life in open scaffolding.
Say Bismillah,
In the name of God,
as the priest does with a knife when he offers an animal.
Bismillah your old self to find your real name.
Muhammed and the huge eater
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Husam demands that we begin
Book V. Ziya-Haqq,
the radiance of truth,
Husamuddin, master to the pure masters,
if my human throat were not so narrow,
I would praise you as you should be praised,
in some language other than this word-language,
but a domestic fowl is not a falcon.
We must mix the varnish we have and brush it on.
I’m not talking to materialists.
When I mention Husam,
I speak only to those who know spiritual secrets.
Praise is simply drawing back the curtains to let his qualities in.
The sun, of course, remains apart from what I say.
What the sayer of praise is really praising is himself,
by saying implicitly, “My eyes are clear.”
Likewise, someone who criticizes is criticizing himself,
saying implicitly,
“I can’t see very well with my eyes so inflamed.”
Don’t ever feel sorry for someone who wants to be the sun,
that other sun, the one that makes rotten things fresh.
And don’t ever envy someone who wants to be this world.
Husam is the sun I mean.
He can’t be understood with the mind,
or said, but we’ll stumble and stagger trying to.
Just because you can’t drink all that falls
doesn’t mean you give up taking sips of rainwater.
If the nut of the mystery can’t be held,
at least let me touch the shell.
Husam, refresh my words, your words.
My words are only a husk to your knowing,
an earth atmosphere to your enormous spaces.
What I say is meant only to point to that, to you,
so that whoever ever hears these words
will not grieve that they never had a chance to look.
Your presence draws me out from vanity and imagination and opinion.
Awe is the salve that will heal our eyes.
And keen, constant listening.
Stay out in the open like a date palm lifting its arms.
Don’t bore mouse holes in the ground,
arguing inside some doctrinal labyrinth.
That intellectual warp and woof keeps you wrapped in blindness.
And four other characteristics keep you from loving.
The Qur’an calls them four birds.
Say Bismillah, “In the name of God,”
and chop the heads off those mischief-birds.
The rooster of lust, the peacock of wanting to be famous,
the crow of ownership, and the duck of urgency,
kill them and revive them in another form,
changed and harmless.
There is a duck inside you.
Her bill is never still, searching through dry and wet alike,
like the robber in an empty house cramming objects in his sack,
pearls, chickpeas, anything.
Always thinking,
“There’s no time! I won’t get another chance!”
A True Person is more calm and deliberate.
He or she doesn’t worry about interruptions.
But that duck is so afraid of missing out that it’s lost all generosity,
and frighteningly expanded its capacity to take in food.
A large group of unbelievers once came to see Muhammad,
knowing he would feed them.
Muhammad told his friends,
“Divide these guests among you and tend to them.
Since you are all filled with me, it will be as though I am the host.”
Each friend of Muhammad chose a guest,
but there was one huge person left behind.
He sat in the entrance of the mosque like thick dregs in a cup.
So Muhammad invited the man to his own household,
where the enormous son of a Ghuzz Turk ate everything,
the milk of seven goats and enough food for eighteen people!
The others in the house were furious.
When the man went to bed,
the maid slammed the door behind him and chained it shut,
out of meanness and resentment.
Around midnight, the man felt several strong urges at once.
But the door! He works it, puts a blade through the crack.
Nothing.
The urgency increases.
The room contracts.
He falls back into a confused sleep and dreams of a desolate place,
since he himself is such a desolate place.
So, dreaming he’s by himself, he squeezes out a huge amount,
and another huge amount.
But he soon becomes conscious enough
to know that the covers he gathers around him are full of shit.
He shakes with spasms of the shame
that usually keeps men from doing such things.
He thinks, “My sleep is worse than my being awake.
The waking is just full of food.
My sleep is all this.”
Now he’s crying, bitterly embarrassed,
waiting for dawn and the noise of the door opening,
hoping that somehow he can get out
without anyone seeing him as he is.
I’ll shorten it.
The door opens. He’s saved.
Muhammad comes at dawn.
He opens the door and becomes invisible
so the man won’t feel ashamed,
so he can escape and wash himself
and not have to face the door-opener.
Someone completely absorbed in Allah like Muhammad can do this.
Muhammad had seen all that went on in the night,
but he held back from letting the man out,
until all happened as it needed to happen.
Many actions which seem cruel are from a deep friendship.
Many demolitions are actually renovations.
Later, a meddlesome servant brought Muhammad the bedclothes.
“Look what your guest has done!”
Muhammad smiles, himself a mercy given to all beings, “
Bring me a bucket of water.”
Everyone jumps up, “No! Let us do this.
We live to serve you, and this is the kind of hand-work we can do.
Yours is the inner heart-work.”
“I know that, but this is an extraordinary occasion.”
A voice inside him is saying,
“There is great wisdom in washing these bedclothes. Wash them.”
Meanwhile, the man who soiled the covers and fled
is returning to Muhammad’s house.
He has left behind an amulet that he always carried.
He enters and sees the hands of God
washing his incredibly dirty linen.
He forgets the amulet.
A great love suddenly enters him.
He tears his shirt open.
He strikes his head against the wall and the door.
Blood pours from his nose.
People come from other parts of the house.
He’s shrieking, “Stay away!”
He hits his head,
“I have no understanding!”
He prostrates himself before Muhammad
“You are the whole.
I am a despicable, tiny, meaningless piece.
I can’t look at you.”
He’s quiet and quivering with remorse.
Muhammad bends over and holds him and caresses him and
opens his inner knowing.
The cloud weeps, and then the garden sprouts.
The baby cries, and the mother’s milk flows.
The nurse of creation has said,
Let them cry a lot.
This rain-weeping and sun-burning twine together to make us grow.
Keep your intelligence white-hot and your grief glistening,
so your life will stay fresh.
Cry easily like a little child.
Let body needs dwindle and soul decisions increase.
Diminish what you give your physical self.
Your spiritual eye will begin to open.
When the body empties and stays empty,
God fills it with musk and mother-of-pearl.
That way a man gives his dung and gets purity.
Listen to the prophets,
not to some adolescent boy.
The foundation and the walls of the spiritual life
are made of self-denials and disciplines.
Stay with friends who support you in these.
Talk with them about sacred texts,
and how you’re doing,
and how they’re doing,
and keep your practices together.
Dissolver of sugar
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