The Music We Are

Did you hear that winter’s over?

The basil and the carnations cannot control their

laughter.

The nightingale, back from his wandering,

has been made singing master over the birds.

The trees reach out their congratulations.

The soul goes dancing through the king’s doorway.

Anemones blush because they have seen the rose naked.

Spring, the only fair judge, walks in the courtroom,

and several December thieves steal away,

Last year’s miracles will soon be forgotten.

New creatures whirl in from non-existence,

galaxies scattered around their feet.

Have you met them?

Do you hear the bud of Jesus crooning in the cradle?

A single narcissus flower has been appointed

Inspector of Kingdoms.

A feast is set.

Listen: the wind is pouring wine!

Love used to hide inside images: no more!

The orchard hangs out its lanterns.

The dead come stumbling by in shrouds.

Nothing can stay bound or be imprisoned.

You say, “End this poem here,

and wait for what’s next.”

I will.

Poems are rough notations for the music we are.

Grief

Your grief for what you've lost holds a mirror
up to where you're bravely working.

Expecting the worst, 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 expand
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birdwings.

my dad died on February 4th. I meditated and read Rumi all night. It was very helpful. I'll be back later with more but that is it for now. I miss him.

Love Dogs

One night a man was crying,

            "Allah, Allah!"

His lips grew sweet with the praising,

until a cynic said,

         "So! I have heard you

calling out, but have you ever

gotten any response?"

The man had no answer for that.

He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.

He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,

in a thick, green foliage,

            "Why did you stop praising?"

“Because I've never heard anything back."

"This longing you express 

is the return message."

The grief you cry out from

draws you toward union.

Your pure sadness that wants help

is the secret cup.

Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.

That whining is the connection.

There are love dogs no one knows the names of.

Give your life to be one of them.

The Guest House

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.

From Essential Rumi

by Coleman Barks

 

 

For many reasons I wish to contemplate this poem right now. I think it was the first Rumi poem I read - it is definitely one that gets attention in the world I run around in.  The more I contemplate these poems the more I realize that each one could be one - that I could spend all year contemplating one and it would be the same as spending all year contemplating eight hundred. Do you understand?
I am grateful for whoever comes - scared, sad, screwed-up and grateful. Come away. You will anyway.

The Sunrise Ruby

In the early morning hour,
just before dawn, lover and beloved wake
and take a drink of water.

She asks, "Do you love me or yourself more?

Really, tell the absolute truth."

He says, "There's nothing left of me.

I'm like a ruby held up to the sunrise.

Is it still a stone, or a world

made of redness? It has no resistance

to sunlight."

This how Hallaj said, I am God,

and told the truth!

The ruby and the sunrise are one.

Be courageous and discipline yourself.

Completely become hearing and ear,

and wear this sun-ruby as an earring.

Work. Keep digging your well.

Don't think about getting off from work.

Water is there somewhere.

Submit to a daily practice.

Your loyalty to that

is a ring on the door.

Keep knocking, and the joy inside

will eventually open a window

and look out to see who's there.

Contemplation - I have sat with this poem many times over the past two weeks. I have read it to friends, my lover and the people who come to me for counsel. The first time I read it, I was on my cushion and it brought instant relief and joy to my heart. Here are the phrases that do this - Water is there somewhere. Submit to a daily practice. The joy inside will eventually open a window and look out to see who's there.

All Rivers at Once contemplated

As if that were it. As if I could read it several times and then I would be done with it.
I want to share with all my readers - what it is nobody? Well then, nobody - sit down! I want to share with you that this process is all I wanted and more. I'm loving it. Rumi has entered my dreaming world. His words shine on my interactions in the world. I am quoting him in my therapy practice and to my beloved.

This poem - All Rivers at Once

Don't unstring the bow - Yes! Don't even think of stopping the hunt. You who are weary of chasing after what? Longing, the other, true love. To find love you must use this special four-feathered arrow. You haven't used it yet? Why not?! All that I am is decisive, clear, strong. Or comforting like a hat you pull down over your ears, a bit of a constriction like draw-strings around your chest. How do you find what you are longing for? With love which is gratitude. Because dear heart - I am already here - in you - hidden in your chest with laughter, with compassion. Love is both the searched for and what is created with the searched for - love is the hands and feet and the sprouting-bed.  All at once - the riverwater moving in all rivers at once. The truth that lives in the beloved - in the other that is not other. At once.

All Rivers at Once

All Rivers at Once

Don't unstring the bow,
I am your four-feathered arrow
that has not been used yet.

I am a strong knifeblade word,
not some if or maybe,
dissolving in air.

I am sunlight slicing the dark.
Who made this night?
A forge deep in the earth-mud.

What is the body?
Endurance.

What is love?
Gratitude.

What is hidden
in our chests?
Laughter.

What else?
Compassion.

Let the beloved be a hat pulled down firmly on my head.
Or drawstrings pulled and tied around my chest.

Someone asks, How does love have hands and feet?
]Love is the sprouting-bed for hands and feet!

Your father and mother were playing love games,
They came together, and you appeared!

Don't ask what love can make or do!
Look at the colours of the world.

The riverwater moving in all rivers at once.
The truth that lives in Shams' face.

I'm not finished with The King etc... but I needed a break! This poem speaks to me in a thousand and one voices and all the voices say the same thing.  When we strip everything else away, love is what is important.

The King and The Handmaiden and the Doctor

I'm still struggling with this. I read it, then sit, then usually read it again. I've gone on line and seen other translations - one that makes more sense has the doctor giving the goldsmith poison but to just reveal his true nature - not handsome - then the handmaiden realizes she doesn't love him and she has an awareness that this king loved her so much he gave her what she wanted - the goldsmith- and then she loves him, the king.
Suddenly, when I was reading this particular translation I thought of one of Chaucer's tales - The Clerk's Tale of Patient Griselda. Here is a bit on her I took it from Wikipedia:

Griselda first came into prominence when Chaucer adapted her for a story in the Canterbury Tales called “Clerk's Tale.” In Chaucer’s tale Griselda is chosen to be the wife of the Marquis even though she is only a poor peasant girl. The one condition that he gives her is that she must promise to always obey him. After they have been married for several years, Griselda gives birth to a baby girl. When the baby turns six weeks old the Marquis tells Griselda that she has to give it up, so she does. Four years later Griselda gives birth to a son. She has to also give this child up after two years because it angers the other members of the court. Twelve years after she gave up her last child, the Marquis tells her to go home, which she obeys, The Marquis then comes to Griselda’s father’s house and instructs her to start preparing his palace for his wedding. Upon her arrival she sees a young girl and boy and it is revealed that these are her children. All of this suffering was a trial to test her obedience to the Marquis.

Now I'll stop for a bit because I think we all need to digest this a bit more.

The King and the Handmaiden and the Doctor

The poem I chose to look at for today's post is rather large so we'll have to look at it in bits! First I'll post it in its entirety then we'll go through it a bit at a time. OK?

a photo I took of rust on a wreck in the bay...

The King and the Handmaiden and the Doctor

Do you know why your soul-mirror does not reflect as clearly as it might?

Because rust has begun to cover it. It needs to be cleaned. Here’s a story about the inner state that’s meant by

soul-mirror.

In the old days there was a king who was powerful in both kingdoms, the visible as well as the spirit world.

One day as he was riding on the hunt, he saw a girl and was greatly taken with her beauty. As was the custom, he paid her family handsomely and asked that she come to be a servant at the palace. He was in love with her.

The feelings trembled and flapped in his chest like a bird newly put in a cage.

But as soon as she arrived, she fell ill.

He brought doctors together. "You have both our lives in your hands. Her life is my life. Whoever heals her will receive the finest treasure I have, the coral inlaid with pearls, anything!"

So the doctors began, but no matter what they did, the girl got worse.

The king saw that his doctors were helpless. He ran barefooted to the mosque. He knelt on the prayer rug and soaked the point of it with his tears.

He dissolved to an annihilated state. He cried out loud for help, and the ocean of grace surged over him. He slept on the prayer rug in the midst of his weeping.

In his dream an old man appeared. "Good king, tomorrow a stranger will come. He is the physician you can trust. Listen to him."

As dawn rose, the king was sitting up in the belvedere on his roof. He saw someone coming, a person like the dawn.

He ran to meet this guest. Like two swimmers who love the water, their souls knit together without being sewn, no seam. The king said, "You are my beloved,

not the girl!" He opened his arms and held the saintly doctor to him. He kissed his hand and his forehead and asked how his journey had been. He led him to the head table.

"At last, I have found what patience can bring, this one whose face answers any question, who simply by looking can loosen the knot of intellectual discussion."

They talked and ate a spirit-meal. Then the king took the doctor to where the girl lay.

The secret of her pain was opened to him, but he didn’t tell the king. It was love, of course.

Love is the astrolabe that sights into the mysteries of God. Earth-love, spirit-love, any love looks into that yonder, but whatever I try to say

A pen went scribbling along. When it tried to write

If you want to expound on love, take your intellect out and let it lie down in the mud. It’s no help.

Nothing is so strange in this world as the sun. The sun of the soul even more so. You want proof that it exists, so you stay up all night

Finally you sleep as the sun comes up. Look at it!

Word of that sun, Shams, came, and everything hid. Husam touches my arm. He wants me to say more about Shams.

Not now, Husam. I don’t know how to make words make sense, or praise. In the Friend-place nothing true can be said. Let me just be here.

But Husam begs, "Feed me. Hurry! Time is a sharp downstroke. A Sufi is supposed to be a child of the moment! Don’t say

explaining love is embarrassing! love, it broke. talking about it. tomorrow or later." I reply,

"It’s better that the way of the Friend  

be concealed in a story. Let the mystery come through what people say around the lovers, not from what lovers say to each other."

"No! I want this as naked and true as it can be. I don’t wear a shirt when I lie down with my beloved."

"Husam! If the Friend came to you naked, your chest could not stand it. Ask for what you want, but within some limits!" This has no end.

Go back to the beginning, the end of the story of the king and the lovesick maiden and the holy doctor, who said,

"Leave me alone with the girl." He quietly began, "Where are you from? Who are your relatives? Who else are you close to in that region?"

He held her hand to feel the pulse. She told many stories mentioning many names. He would say the names again to test the response of her pulse.

Finally he asked, "When you visit other towns, where are you most likely to go?" She mentioned one town and another, where she bought bread and where salt,

until he happened to say

"Where exactly does he live?" "At the head of the bridge on Ghatafar Street." "Now I can heal you."

Samarkand! The dear city sweet as candy. She blushed. Her breath caught. Oh, she loves a goldsmith in Samarkand! She misses him so.

The doctor went to the king and told him only part of the story. "On some pretext we must bring a certain goldsmith from Samarkand."

The king’s messengers went and easily persuaded the man to leave his town for a while. He arrived, and the doctor said,

"Marry the girl to this man and she will be completely cured." It was done, and for six months those two loved and made love and completely satisfied themselves with each other. The girl was restored to perfect health.

Then the physician gave the goldsmith a potion, so that he began to sicken. His handsomeness faded. He became sunken-cheeked and jaundiced and ugly.

The girl stopped loving him. Any love based on physical beauty is not the deepest love. Choose to love what does not die. The generous one is not hard to find.

But what about the doctor’s poisoning the poor goldsmith! It was not done for his friend the king’s sake.

The reason is a mystery, like Khidr’s cutting the boy’s throat. When someone is killed by a doctor like this one, it’s a blessing, even though it might not seem so.

Such a doctor is part of a larger generosity. Don’t judge his actions. You are not living so completely within the truth as he is.

commentary: First of all - this is a slightly shorter and different version than in the Essential Rumi but it is still a translation by Bark.
Can you understand my dilemma? This is a very complicated poem and really I don't much love it when I read it. Even as I sat with this story in my mind it seemed a trick - a story about a King who has to have someone they've fixated on - someone who like Dante's Beatrice they've had a glimpse of - so they buy that person, essentially. The girl does not love the King back, she pines for someone she's met once. The King calls for a wise doctor,  the doctor comes and WHAT? The King falls in love with the doctor but still needs to go through with the farce of making the woman well so she can love him. Huh? The doctor, being all wise, figures out that the girl is in love with someone she's probably glimpsed once - that person is brought (bought) and married to the girl. Like slaves would be treated fundamentally. OK - so I'm looking at this within the wrong context. I am not understanding that these things stand for other things - this is poetry - these are metaphors! The Handmaiden perhaps stands for the material world. In order to fix the fixation on the material world, the King asks for spiritual healing - the spiritual healer, the doctor, indulges the King and in fact intensifies the desire to own this person. But then we see that trying to grasp our passion makes the passion itself wither and die. I wish I could get away from the story of this but I am struggling. I will try again tonight. Sorry this is so blathery but I'm trying to be honest here. What do you Rumi folks think? I couldn't believe all the stuff on the net about this poem being an anthem for gay guys. Hmmm...

I'm just going up to meditate and I'm going to try to meditate just on the first bit. Please be patient with me:

Do you know why your soul-mirror
does not reflect as clearly as it might?

Because rust has begun to cover it.
It needs to be cleaned.
                           Here's a story
about the inner state that's meant by soul-mirror.

The Turn: Dance in Your Blood - the turning poems of Rumi

Last evening I meditated on some of the turning poetry that Rumi wrote. The 'turn' is the moving meditation done by Mevlevi dervishes and it originated with Rumi. You have heard of the 'whirling dirvishes' perhaps your mother even called you one of these now and then? Well, Rumi is the fellow who came upon this way to connect ecstatically with the spirit. Dervish means doorway and Rumi believed that by turning in ecstatic whirls one could dissolve ego and become one with the all.

Here are a few of them from the collection in the Essential Rumi starting on page 277:

Inside water, a waterwheel turns.

A star circulates with the moon.

We live in the night ocean wondering,

What are these lights?

~   ~     ~

Walk to the well.

Turn as the earth and the moon turn,

circling what they love.

Whatever circles comes from the center.

~   ~   ~

Dance, when you're broken open.

Dance, if you've torn the bandage off.

Dance in the middle of the fighting.

Dance in your blood.

Dance, when you're perfectly free.

commentary: I felt I hit my sweet spot meditating on this set of poems. I have loved seeing photos and film of the whirling dirvishes - something in it seems so right to me. Often when I sit I find that I get into this small vibration with my body - like a pendulum - sometimes just back and forth and sometimes in circles. No one could see it - it is pretty much internal although I feel it - I usually don't let myself do it - it seems a guilty pleasure or an avoidance of the technique of shamata - the practice of calm abiding. Last evening I let myself feel it for a bit longer than I normally would. I remember back in my hippy days when I was interested in the notion of astral projection and that feeling, the same feeling, would be generated throughout my body. Hmmm...

The last line of the first poem 'We live in the night ocean wondering, what are those lights?' - I think of our planet whirling through space and of course from the night ocean we can see the stars as they whirl by. Those time lapse photos of the night sky show the incredible movement and as Rumi says - it comes from the center. The earth is moving. And so might we.

The Cat and The Meat

There was once a sneering wife

who ate all her husband brought home

and lied about it.

One day it was some lamb for a guest

who was to come. He had worked two hundred days

in order to buy that meat.

When he was away, his wife cooked a kabob

and at it all, with wine.

The husband returns with his guest.

The cat has eaten the meat, she says.

Buy more, if you have any money left.

He asks a servant to bring the scales

and the cat. The cat weighs three pounds.

The meat was three pounds, one ounce.

If this is the cat, where is the meat?

If this is the meat, where is the cat?

Start looking for one or the other.

If you have a body, where is the spirit?

If you are spirit, what is the body?

This is not our problem to worry about.

Both are both. Corn is corn grain

and cornstalk. The divine butcher

cuts us a piece from the thigh

and a piece from the neck.

Invisible, visible, the world

does not work without both.

If you throw dust at someone's head,

nothing will happen.

If you throw water, nothing.

But combine them into a lump.

That marriage of water and earth

cracks open the head,

and afterward, there are other marriages.

 

 

I found this to be a tough one on the cushion. I think I was too compelled by the story to let go and see what was going on. That mean wife! 200 days of work for some lamb! But then I just settled down a bit and considered whether it was that or the fact that my mind struggles with duality all the time. Dust - nothing. Water, nothing. So...I should marry my body and spirit if I want to crack someone's head open? And afterward, those other marriages? What is that about? I'll keep on keeping on.

 

small note: I won't post the poems twice - it is too tedious. I have chosen the poem for today and will post on it tomorrow. I'll just tell you the title if you want to keep up! It is a series of poems in The Turn: Dance in Your Blood.  - starting on page 278, in The Essential Rumi by Barks.

contemplation on On Gambling & If you want what visible reality

As promised I contemplated these two poems when I did my sitting practice this morning.  Here are some of my thoughts -

ON GAMBLING

to a frog that's never left his pond the ocean seems like a gamble.

Look what he's giving up: security, mastery of his world, recognition!

The ocean frog just shakes his head. "I can't really explain what it's

like where I live, but someday I'll take you there."

This poem makes me think about the practise of meditation itself. It cannot be read about or discussed because the discursive mind cannot articulate what meditation is. It is an ocean of awareness that cannot be explained - but someday someone might take you there. To leave your cocoon of this and that - the material known world for something so unknown is of course a gamble. You do lose mastery of your world, your security, recognition - your very ego is at risk.

~     ~       ~

If you want what visible reality

can give, you're an employee.

If you want the unseen world,

you're not living your truth.

Both wishes are foolish,

but you'll be forgiven for forgetting

that what you really want is

love's confusing joy.

I love this poem. I kept reciting it as I sat. I especially like the first two lines. An employee is such a bizarre term for what Rumi meant but yet it is so perfect. You are an employee of the material world if you are attached to what you can hold and own. You think you are buying things or peace of mind or recognition but you are enslaving yourself to a very grasping boss.  The next two lines are a little more difficult - how can you be not living your truth to want the unseen world? I think it is the notion of spiritual materialism here - I am going to separate myself from the world and live in a cave. Or I'm going to live for my next life in heaven. Doesn't quite work either way. So both wishes are foolish - the one for samsara or the one for nirvana - but we will be forgiven for thinking so - for wanting this and that when really it is love's confusing joy we want. I remember that Rumi is a mystic - the love he speaks of is not only the love for another although it includes that - it is the ecstatic love of the divine within and without that I think he is writing about.

Next Poem:

The Cat and The Meat

There was once a sneering wife

who ate all her husband brought home

and lied about it.

One day it was some lamb for a guest

who was to come. He had worked two hundred days

in order to buy that meat.

When he was away, his wife cooked a kabob

and at it all, with wine.

The husband returns with his guest.

The cat has eaten the meat, she says.

Buy more, if you have any money left.

He asks a servant to bring the scales

and the cat. The cat weighs three pounds.

The meat was three pounds, one ounce.

If this is the cat, where is the meat?

If this is the meat, where is the cat?

Start looking for one or the other.

If you have a body, where is the spirit?

If you are spirit, what is the body?

This is not our problem to worry about.

Both are both. Corn is corn grain

and cornstalk. The divine butcher

cuts us a piece from the thigh

and a piece from the neck.

Invisible, visible, the world

does not work without both.

If you throw dust at someone's head,

nothing will happen.

If you throw water, nothing.

But combine them into a lump.

That marriage of water and earth

cracks open the head,

and afterward, there are other marriages.

My intention...

My intention with this new blog is to spend some time exploring the poetry of Rumi. I will use The Essential Rumi - Coleman Barks as the translator. I'm not a scholar nor much of a poet but just think this is how I would like to spend some part of each day in 2011.  I will write down the poem or poems (if they are of the shorter variety). The following day I will meditate on them as part of my practice. Then I will write about what came up and write down the next poem. Let's just see how it goes...dreaming with Rumi.

a short biographical note:
Rumi was born September 30, 1207 in Balkh, Afghanistan, which was then part of the Persian empire.  Rumi followed in his father, Bahauddin Walad's footsteps by becoming a theologian and a mystic. At his father's death Rumi took over the position of sheikh in the dervish learning community in Konya, Turkey where they'd emigrated around 1216. Rumi led a fairly straight-forward life as a religious scholar until the late fall of 1244 when he met  the wandering dervish, Shams of Tabriz, who had traveled throughout the Middle East searching for someone who could "endure my company." The two became inseparable and their friendship caused problems with Rumi's students and family. Shams disappeared as suddenly as he appeared and it is believed that this loss led to Rumi's transformation into a mystical artist. They met again to continue their long and marvelous conversation. But alas Shams was murdered or so it is believed. Rumi searched for him and journeyed to Damascus and it was there that he realized,

Why should I seek? I am the same as

he. His essence speaks through me,  

I have been looking for myself!         

He spent the rest of his life writing poetry for both Sham and a new companion, Saladin Zarkub, the goldsmith, followed upon Zarkub's death by Rumi's scribe and favorite student, Husam Chelebi.  For the last twelve years of his life, Rumi dictated the six volumes of his master-work, the Mathnawi, to Husam. He died on December 17, 1273.



Choosing the poems to contemplate:

I will choose the poems that I wish to contemplate by chance - opening the book at random or letting passing family members shout out a number. I will label each post with the name of the poem and that way make it through the book. Barks has divided the poetry into 28 sections with numerous poems in each one. I will try and move between the sections but I want to see how it goes before I tie myself down. Ah, yes - a trial marriage.

Section 18 The Three Fish: Gamble Everything for Love

ON GAMBLING

to a frog that's never left his pond the ocean seems like a gamble.

Look what he's giving up: security, mastery of his world, recognition!

The ocean frog just shakes his head. "I can't really explain what it's

like where I live, but someday I'll take you there."

~     ~       ~

If you want what visible reality

can give, you're an employee.

If you want the unseen world,

you're not living your truth.

Both wishes are foolish,

but you'll be forgiven for forgetting

that what you really want is

love's confusing joy.