Two poems by Rumi

This is love: to fly toward a secret sky,
to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment.
First, to let go of life.
In the end, to take a step without feet;
to regard this world as invisible,
and to disregard what appears to be the self.

Heart, I said, what a gift it has been
to enter this circle of lovers,
to see beyond seeing itself,
to reach and feel within the breast.

 The Divani Shamsi Tabriz, XIII

—

Love is reckless; not reason.
Reason seeks a profit.
Love comes on strong,
consuming herself, unabashed.

Yet, in the midst of suffering,
Love proceeds like a millstone,
hard surfaced and straightforward.

Having died of self-interest,
she risks everything and asks for nothing.
Love gambles away every gift God bestows.

Without cause God gave us Being;
without cause, give it back again.

 Mathnawi VI, 1967-1974

The Arrival

What shall we call the presence that arrives?
Beloved, friend? Pride and joy, love-thief, gratitude, patience?
I have no patience anymore.
Go away, you names and mental formations.
A new shape has come that flies our flag upside down,
the form no door lets in.
Rather, the walls around us fall outward.
Floor and roof too drop away.

–Rumi (Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī)

How will you know the difficulties
of being human, if you’re always
flying off to blue perfection?

Where will you plant your grief seeds?
Workers need ground to scrape and hoe,
not the sky of unspecified desire.

The Soul of Rumi
~ a new collection of ecstatic poems

translations by Coleman Barks 

This We Have Now

This we have now
is not imagination.

This is not
grief or joy. 

Not a judging state,
or an elation,
or sadness. 

Those come and go. 
This is the presence that doesn’t.

From Essential Rumi

by Coleman Barks

The way is full of genuine sacrifice.

The thickets blocking the path are anything
that keeps you from that, any fear
that you may be broken to bits like a glass bottle.
This road demands courage and stamina,
yet it’s full of footprints!  Who are
these companions?  They are rungs in your ladder.  Use them!
With company you quicken your ascent.

Rumi

There is some kiss we want with
our whole lives, the touch of

spirit on the body.  Seawater
begs the pearl to break its shell.

And the lily, how passionately
it needs some wild darling!  At

night, I open the window and ask
the moon to come and press its

face against mine.  Breathe into
me.  Close the language-door and

open the love-window.  The moon
won’t use the door only the window.

Rumi

transl. by Coleman Barks

Your grief for what you’ve lost lifts a mirror
up to where you are bravely working.

Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,
here’s the joyful face you have been waiting 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.

Rumi

catching the Ox

blossoms of desire
brew a strong tea
~ firing separation

to be intimate
~ we struggle

mirrored and reflecting

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Ox and I dance.  He turns the horns of delusion towards me and the ferocity of wanting overwhelms me.  Infused with my desires, he reflects what I believe will make me whole; blinded by the need to fulfill my desires, true intimacy eludes me.  I cannot see with my whole body and mind.  This is the karma of desire: I see in the Other what I believe will make me whole.  This is the nature of spiritual infatuation which, as with lust, will fail me consistently and inevitably.  Driven only by the heat of longing, the faith beyond labels evaporates and my spiritual practice becomes calcified – rigid and girdled by form.  Already, I long for the early days of heady excitement, the mystery that fired the search.  I mistake this for intimacy and the longing makes our dance a ritual of possession.  Slowly, in the space between steps, I see how the illusion of ownership is protective – surely against loss but inexorably against love.

If I can let go of these shields – the acquired knowledge, the labels, the constructed self – there’s a chance to connect with true intimacy. Something may come of this dance as the Ox and I create each other.  In each moment we can embrace each other.  Or, we can battle for domination over each other.

I see my illusions fused to the Ox and he catches me in his gaze.  “The most living moment,” Rumi says, “comes when those who love each other meet each other’s eyes and in what flows between them then.”  We become transparent to each other and dance as one.

At this stage, still pendulating between desire and intimacy, the connection cannot last.  The Ox pulls off into the mountains of intellectualizing and vanishes into the mists of doubt and ignorance.  It doesn’t matter.  We are caught now, tied by the same love for connection.

Thank you for practicing,

Genju

For this second week of my journey, I’ve prepared a few poems and what-nots I hope you will enjoy.  I wonder if this will also reflect my process over this week?

A Necessary Autumn Inside Each

You and I have spoken all these words, but as for the way
we have to go, words

are no preparation.  There is no getting ready, other than
grace.  My faults

have stayed hidden.  One might call that a preparation!
I have one small drop

of knowing in my soul.  Let it dissolve in your ocean.
There are so many threats to it.

Inside each of us, there’s continual autumn.  Our leaves
fall and are blown out

over the water.  A crow sits in the blackened limbs and talks
about what’s gone.  Then

your generosity returns: spring, moisture, intelligence, the
scent of hyacinth and rose

and cypress.  Joseph is back!  And if you don’t feel in
yourself the freshness of

Joseph, be Jacob!  Weep and then smile.  Don’t pretend to know
something you haven’t experienced.

There’s a necessary dying, and then Jesus is breathing again.
Very little grows on jagged

rock.  Be ground.  Be crumbled, so wildflowers will come up
where you are.  You’ve been

stony for too many years.  Try something different.  Surrender.

Rumi

From The Soul of Rumi translated by Coleman Barks

If I flinched at every grief, I
would be an intelligent idiot.  If

I were not the sun, I’d ebb and
flow like sadness.  If you were not

my guide, I’d wander lost in Sanai.
If there were no light, I’d keep

opening and closing the door.  If
there were no rose garden, where

would the morning breezes go?  If
love did not want music and laughter

and poetry, what would I say?  If
you were not medicine, I would look

sick and skinny.  If there were no
leafy limbs in the air, there would

be no wet roots.  If no giftes were
given, I’d grow arrogant and cruel.

If there were no way into God, I
would not have lain in the grave of

this body so long.  If there were no
way from left to right, I could not

be swaying with the grasses.  If
there were no grace and no kindness,

conversation would be useless, and
nothing we do would matter.  Listen

to the new stories that begin every
day.  If light were not beginning

again in the east, I would not now
wake and walk out inside this dawn.

Rumi

(from The Soul of Rumi: a new collection of ecstatic poems

translated by Coleman Barks)