This blog includes excerpts from my book entitled The Lover's Gaze: Rumi's Guide for Lovers and Spiritual Seekers. In it I try to provide balanced (not too literal, yet not diverging from the original Persian) translations and commentary on the poetry and practical philosophy of Rumi, the Persian Sufi Mystic and Poet. The translations in this blog are copyrighted. If you wish to use them send me an email and I will need to verify usage then send you a formal email of permission of usage.
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Friday, October 9, 2009
Rumi on Love: Part 4:
Love is apparent when there's a malady of heart;
No malady compares to that of the heart.
The malady of the Lover is beyond normal cause;
Love is the Navigator, through the mysteries of God.
Even if your love, shifts from this to that,
To that True love it will finally lead!
However hard, I strive, to describe,
elusive love;
When I come to it, I am still filled with shame.
Even if my words bring clarity,
Yet clearer indeed, is Speechless Love!
Hastening, in its path of writing, the Pen,
It broke in two when it came upon love!
[Hastening, the Pen, when in its path,
it came upon Love, it split in two!]
A stallion, thrashing in quicksand,
the Intellect in vain seeks to describe:
[for] the story of lovers and their love
can only be told through love itself!
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
The dawn and the faint crescent
The faint glimmer of light yawns upon the world, asleep, dormant
the moon gazes down upon the light and smiles
smiling, takes its own shape
"how welcome the light, but only if it shines on me and through me", it thinks.
My light does not come from me but from the Sun,
I reflect the powerful light of the Sun
So in the grand presence of the Sun, I bow
and recede into the background....
the moon gazes down upon the light and smiles
smiling, takes its own shape
"how welcome the light, but only if it shines on me and through me", it thinks.
My light does not come from me but from the Sun,
I reflect the powerful light of the Sun
So in the grand presence of the Sun, I bow
and recede into the background....
Monday, October 5, 2009
Creation from that Faint Wisp of a Thought
"To nadani bahre andishe kojast"
You know not where the ocean of thought resides...
it approaches:
Nothingness.
Coming into being
but from the form of a thought,
Nearly Nothingness,
the thoughts flowing through our mind
riding on a thought, behold -- a world
From a single thought;
their peace and their war
and from a thought,
their honor and disgrace
Those thoughts
the traps of
those close to the Divine
reflect the pictures
of those beauties,
moon-like,
of the garden of God
Manavi - Book I, Verse 70-76
The Ocean of Divine Mercy starts to Flow
During his storytelling, Rumi has the welcome habit of providing you with additional insight using what we would in modern times, possibly call a sidebar: a small divergence from the main story to explain a principle that is to be encountered now within the story.
This insight is very helpful in understanding some of the profound concepts on which he is giving us practical guidance.
In the King and the Maiden, when the King reverts to deep and desperate prayer to save his beloved from sickness that none of his renowned physicians have been able to cure. He hastens to prostrate and pray, to sing praises of divine gratitude and glory, to beseech the Lord for guidance and relief; he gets a response when "the ocean of self is drowned in the Self" as Rumi puts it aptly; "then the ocean of mercy starts to flow".
Falling asleep, he dreams of a physician, divinely sent to guide and to cure his ailing beloved. The next morning he gets up and sees someone faintly visible in the horizon, knowing, as was told to him in his dream that this indeed is sent by the Lord, a potent healer of mind and body.
And then Rumi breaks out in a sidebar.... talking of the faint Idea, the "Khial"; the thought...
Sunday, October 4, 2009
The Full Moon
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Rumi is born
September 30, 1207 marks one of the significant milestones in the development of human thought. Ruby was born to a family of scholars. He himself was a renowned scholar. When he encountered his master, Shams, he gradually and systematically began to shed the artificial burden of erudite scholars. This was not necessarily a conscious decision on his part. By analyzing his writings we see that this process was an inner transformation that was based grounded in experience. He was not merely the adoption of a worldview, but rather letting go of the ego. This letting go of the ego, is characteristic of many traditions of mystical philosophy. In Taoist traditions this is marked as a wuwei or nonaction, as it is often translated to. It is actually the relinquishing of our bondage to the results of the action we perform. In the Vedic tradition this moksha or liberation occurs when one is no longer bound by the fruits of action as depicted in the Bhagavad-Gita.
Formerly, as well as other great seekers of truth, the direct realization of the divine was not just the ultimate goal put the needs to an even deeper experience of the divine.
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