"The Minute I Heard My First Love Story"

Selections from the Teachings and Poetry of Jelaluddin Rumi

Compiling Editor's Note: The italicized Rumi selections below are variations on Professor Coleman Barks' rendering of Rumi's poetry and teachings, most from his amazing book, Feeling the Shoulder of the Lion. Thanks also to his frequent collaborator, the Persian linguist John Moyne.   Prahaladan (Philip Mandelkorn)

Dec. 19       

The minute I heard my first love story

I started looking for you

Not knowing how blind I was.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.

They're in each other all along.

  -- Rumi  (from Coleman Barks' Unseen Rain)

Finally I found Jelaluddin Rumi, the mystic Sufi poet from 13th century Turkey. Better to have found him late than not at all. How fortunate I am -- and grateful.

Dec. 22.  I've been reading Rumi. Wow, what a brother, a kindred dervish. The only danger is, once we've read Rumi, we'll never be the same. But what can we do? A Bodhisattva vows to enter all the gate of wisdom. Now the Sufis. Joseph is the bridge, Joseph who married Zuleika and had two sons.

In his coat of many colors, Joseph asked about his brothers:

"Why do they hate me so?"   (You're shining too bright.)

"What can I do?"   (Turn down your light.)

Rumi:  Joseph was sold into slavery for 40 pieces of silver.

A man had 40 silver coins. Each day he threw one into ditch water

He was teaching his soul how to give up greed.

"Give it up all at once," begged his soul,

So I can be delivered from this torture."

"No," said the man. "Deliberation is my way."

Wounded again and again the Sufi finally falls and dies

Into the source of truth.                   

The truth is going to make you so old

You'll have no birth or death.

Die inside your life and go on living.

When that part dies, completely empties, God takes its place.

Then your only food is divine love.

When God sings over parts of nonexistence, that moment

They dance into existence. When God sings

Over existing beings, immediately

They return to the source.

God talks to a rose, it blooms.

To a stone, it changes into transparent crystal.

Union with God is not compelled and yet

A vast freedom can live inside you.

Jan.15.  I've been on this path a number of years trying to give myself over to that unseen force that is carrying us along. It doesn't come overnight. In past journals I found a sort of poem:

                 Hill of Light

With a fluttering heart like a butterfly dying

I offer myself in total surrender

Leaving all my life in your hands.

Wherever I bow my head, Lord

I touch your lotus feet.

Hey, it's snowing in this room,

Flower petals falling all around,

I'm covered with them.                    

Just leaning easy on this left hand, listening.

Rumi:                          The Lion

True surrender is rare.  Even the pious often avoid a perfect saint

That is to say, one utterly surrendered (and that much free)

May startle others treading the paths of their various religious labels.

But such a person is a lion!

Try to be friends with one and you'll be torn to pieces instantly.

In fact, you'll become a lion.

If you want to stay a cow, then stay away.

A real person can detach you completely from the dregs of your lower nature so you behold everything from outer space.

With your toe you touch Orion's belt.

Warriors headed for the source, confront the world openly.

I'm not allowed to say anything more about this, says Rumi,

or I'd create a Bhagdad in the wilds of the Georgia mountains

 and no one would ever doubt anything again.

(If anyone is looking at this journals, remember I warned you about reading Rumi. Now there's no going back.)

Jan. 10:  My business flopped today. All my best jobs were canceled. Even past assignments that I thought were in the bag -- fell through. Fees I thought were coming in this month have evaporated like dew in the sun, and I've got rent to pay, a car to repair and bills piling up. Sometimes this life game's a puzzle.

Rumi:  If you're in some particular trouble, a tight spot, be patient which is the way out of anxiety. And try to avoid distracting thoughts.  Such abstinence is the best medicine.

Keep your donkey under control and the pack saddle will be there.

Tend to your vital heart and all your worries will be solved.

Don't burn a blanket because of one flea

Don't waste a day on trivial irritation, a gnat's headache.

Take your attention off the forms and focus on what's inside.

The Sin and the Fall

Why was paradise lost? Why was Eve tossed out of Eden?

Why does a date palm lose its leaves in autumn

And a lion's strength weaken to nothing?

 (Messages from the fall. What fault was committed?)

The crime, says God, is that they put on borrowed robes and pretended

"These are mine." I take them back so you'll learn

The robe of appearance is only a loan.

The earth-colored glass makes everything seem diverse.

That glass eventually shatters.

Lend is the divine command. Make God a loan from your existence

See what fortunes accumulate!

Don't ask Moses for provisions that you can get from Pharoah.

Don't worry so much about your livelihood which will turn out as it should.

Instead be constantly occupied listening to God.

Death

Feb. 10  At just this hour three years ago today, my father died and vanished. Gone. into blue gray skies like disappearing ink. Three years gone except for memories, momentary visions feeling his presence and a few dreams in which I saw and talked with him and hugged him. Three years ago today my sweet Dad left this world for a better land, I hope, while I'm here in a car wash place waiting for my car which I'm hoping to sell. It's been a long time and it makes my heart ache a little as I sit here writing on my knee while eyeing the nylon stockinged leg of the dressy young woman seated to my left waiting for her car.

   Oh, the contradictions in life, paradoxes and polarities, tragedies and ironies. I hope he's free of all this shit. I miss him. Life is sort of grim these days, but hey -- they're killing civilians and babies in Yugoslavia. Guys are sleeping on sidewalk grates in every American city, and I complain? I remember the intensive care unit in the hospital. Dad shuttered and left. (Gone

Rumi:  To one who knows, death isn't bitter.

An earthquake opens the prison walls.

Do you think an escaping prisoner will complain

of the damage done to the stone and marble work?

People will say, "So-and-so is dead. But you'll know how alive you've become. The soul soars when it's freed from its body. Like a sleeping convict in his cell dreaming of a rose garden, he knows he's dreaming and doesn't want to go back to his body dungeon. So he prays, "Let me keep walking here like a prince." God says, "Yes, your prayer is granted. Don't go back." He dies in his sleep and stays in that rose garden

with no regrets for what he left back in his prison cell.

Expect the best and most noble dishes

and the host will bring them out.

A mountain lifts its elegant head

like a guest who receives the dawn.

One might think this place would be fine if it weren't for dying. If there were no death, the world would be just a tangle of straw unthreshed in the field. No one who has died is grieving because of death. The only grief is not being well enough prepared for dying. No one objects to exchanging sour buttermilk for choice wine.

An illumined life can happen no

in the moments we have left

Allow your ego to die and become truly human.

Though you have an address here, live in the nowhere

That you came from.

You have eyes that see from that nowhere

and eyes that judge distances -- how high, how low.

You own two shops and you run back and forth

Close the fearful trap shop (checkmate this, checkmate that).

Keep open the shop that no longer sells fishhooks.

You're the free-swimming fish.

 (The only rest comes when you're alone with God.)

March 30   Livia is moving away from me, I think. I thought we'd be together this. One never knows. I grew attached to her and our love. So I'm feeling a little sad watching the scarf unravel. My life with this woman lives and dies by the toss of a coin. Life or death by the toss of a coin.

Rumi:

A lover doesn't figure the odds.

He gives without cause, calculation or limit.

A lover gambles everything, the very self: the circle around the zero,

Throw it away. (What you have now is beyond religion.)

Free will is the perplexity of being pulled in opposite directions.

O Destination of Both Pullers, help us!

The loaded camel said, "This Two-way Way feels like a fight.

This Oneness Path feels like a banquet.

"We keep asking, 'Is this better or that?

Will I succeed or fail?' Source Who Gave me This Perplexity,

Unperplex me! Free will scrapes a bad sore on me.

Let the unbalanced baskets drop from my back.

Then I'll look up and see the meadow of union

Where I need not decide which of ten roads to take.

I'll just roll about anywhere, involuntarily, like a ball."

The mystery of loving is God's sweetest secret.

God's wisdom makes us lovers of one another.

The desire of lovers is that the work of the other is perfected.

Night and day meet in a mutual hug.

Be with God at dawn. Practice resurrection.

Dip yourself in the acid that cleans copper. Keep meditating.

Now the punishment for all your sins, says God, is this:

"Henceforth, your practices must be joyful.

There must be a tastiness, a seed of delight."

May 1    I dreamed this morning of being in my teacher's house and we were talking intimately. I told him the mistake I made was trying to be close with him through Maria, trying to use her friendship with him to come closer instead of using my own relationship to define our friendship.

   "You used another's friendship to be my friend," he remarked.

   "Yes," I admitted. Then we hugged warmly.

    Two of his children came running, a boy and a girl. One said, "Father, someone is buying our house, this house." We smiled and then noticed the roof needed support, some underpinning because the pillars that held up the roof seemed weak here and there. He looked at me for some assistance.

   Quickly I went out and called a few people, "Friends, can you spare a few moments to help us shore up this roof?" Of course, people came right over and we shored the roof laughing as we did so. (I noticed that it took us a while to let go of each other, so closely were we bonded.)

   As I was waking from this dream I remembered Rumi saying: if you try to be friends with a lion, you'll be instantly torn to pieces.

   Someone asked, "Did you try to be friends with a lion?"

  "Yes, I did."

  "Are you a lion now yourself?"

  "I don't know about that, but I have been torn to pieces."

Rumi: This confused story, like the doings of lovers

May be told up, down and sideways

Because it's not a story. No beginning, no end.

It's water. Each incident drop is self-contained

And yet is not.

One part of you is gliding in a high stream

while your ordinary notions take little steps.

Forget safety. Live where you fear to live.

Be willing to destroy your reputation.

Be notorious, be mad.

July 2 notes:

   Take your teacher's picture off the wall and put him in your daily life, and don't keep holding your stomach in because you've gained some weight. Just be who you are.

   Livia says her favorite bumper sticker would be "Free Tibet."

   I suggested:  "Free Tibet. Free Yourself." Today Livia looks like a Victoria's Secret model. When a Sagitarius boy gets a Gemini girl, he gets a whole harem. O boy, all fantasies fulfilled. Invisible service is the key. In Exodus it's written: "The sea returned to its strength when the morning appeared." (What a difference a day makes.)

Late afternoon sun diagonals mark the wall with a message: "Close the books and listen to the humming in your ears. Look, the sky is covered with millions of angels while under your feet serpents are rising. Don't be afraid. Drink the water. The whole thing's made of love. Look in the center of the silence."

How I love it up in these Blue Ridge Mountains. Like flying in heaven and walking on the wind.

Camels on the Roof

Rumi:    When you fast for two days, a piece of bread tastes like layered pastry. If I deny my appetite a little, I can eat delicacies with every meal.

   King Ibrahim was resting at night. He heard footsteps on his roof.

"Who?" he wondered, "spirits?" 

   Marvelous beings put their heads down over the roof's ledge. We're looking for camels."

   "Who ever heard of camels on the roof?" said Ibrahim.

   "Yes, they answered, ”and who ever heard of trying to be in union with God while acting as head of state?"

   That's all it took for Ibrahim. He was gone, vanished. His beard and robe were still there. But his real self went on an ecstatic dervish retreat to Mount Qaf.

   Ibrahim dreamed of true reality and freed himself. No words are necessary to see into reality. Just be.

Joseph in prison asked a fellow prisoner to help obtain his release.

But one prisoner cannot free another prisoner.

Joseph asked a prickly shrub for help.

Don't make a brace of rotten wood.

Joseph spent several more years confined.

God seemed to punish Joseph,

but actually God absorbed him in such intimate joy

that the dungeon disappeared.

The beloved is a lion and I am a deer with a bad leg.

There's no escape. I can't run any more.

The only thing left is surrender.

Give up everything.

                                                *  *  *

The italicized Rumi selections above are variations on Professor Coleman Barks' rendering of Rumi's poetry and teachings, most from his amazing book, Feeling the Shoulder of the Lion. Thanks also to his frequent collaborator, the Persian linguist John Moyne. 

                            -- Prahaladan (Philip Mandelkorn)