where amazement and clear thought twine their slow growth into us

.

.

The most living moment comes when

those who love each other meet each

.

other's eyes and in what flows

between them then.  To see you face

.

in a crowd of others, or alone on a 

frightening street, I weep for that.

.

Our tears improve the earth.  The

time you scolded me, your gratitude,

.

your laughing, always your qualities

increase the soul.  Seeing you is a 

.

wine that does not muddle or numb.

We sit inside the cypress shadow

.

where amazement and clear thought

twine their slow growth into us.

.

~  Rumi

.

there is some kiss

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

spirit on the body. Ocean water 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 

a community of the spirit

 

There is a community of the spirit.

Join it, and feel the delight

of walking in the noisy street

and being the noise.

Drink all your passion,

and be a disgrace.

Close both eyes

to see with the other eye.

Open your hands,

if you want to be held.

Sit down in the circle.

Quit acting like a wolf, and feel

the shepherd’s love filling you.

At night, your beloved wanders.

Don’t accept consolations.

Close your mouth against food.

Taste the lover’s mouth in yours.

You moan, “She left me.” “He left me.”

Twenty more will come.

Be empty of worrying.

Think of who created thought!

Why do you stay in prison

when the door is so wide open?

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.

Live in silence.

Flow down and down in always

widening rings of being.

~ Rumi

 from Selected Poems 

Translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne

imagine

Imagine the time the particle you are

returns where it came from!

The family darling comes home.   Wine

without being contained in cups,

is handed around.

A red glint appears in a granite outcrop,

and suddenly the whole cliff turns to ruby.

~ Rumi

Unconditional love really exists in each of us. 

It is part of our deep inner being.

 It is not so much an active emotion as a state of being.

 It's not 'I love you' for this or that reason,

 not 'I love you if you love me.' 

It's love for no reason, love without an object.

a silence that watches itself

 

There is a silence that watches itself. 

The silence and that which watches it may appear separate

 but are in fact one.

There is a voice that doesn’t use words — Listen!

~   Rumi

art found at DU Arts and Humanities

the public bath

 

Imagine the phenomenal world as a furnace

heating water for the public bath.

Some people carry baskets of dung

to keep the furnace going,  Call them

materialists, energetic, fire-stoking citizens.

One of those brags how he's collected

and carried twenty dung baskets today,

while his friend has brought six!

They think the counting up at nightfall

is where truth lies. They love the smoke smell

of dried dung, and how it blazes up like gold!

If you give them musk or any fragrance

of soul intelligence, they find it unpleasant

and turn away. Others sit in the hot bathwater

and get clean. They use the world differently.

They love the feel of purity, and they have

dust marks on their foreheads from bowing down.

They are separated by a wall from those

who feed the fires, busy in the boiler room

belittling each other. Sometimes, though,

one of those leaves the furnace,

takes off the burnt smelling rags,

and sits in the cleansing water.

The mystery is how the obsessions

of the furnace stokers keep the bathwater

of the others simmering perfectly.

They seem opposed, but they're necessary

to each other's work: the proud piling up

of fire worship, the humble disrobing

and emptying out of purification.

As the sun dries wet dung to make it

ready to heat water, so dazzling

sparks fly from the burning filth.

~ Rumi

from The Book of Love

translations by Coleman Barks

close your eyes

 

Close your eyes.

Fall in love.

Stay there.

~ Rumi

Image: NASA/Chandra X-Ray Center

Once we dreamt that

we were strangers,

We wake up to find that

we were dear to

each other.

~ Tabindranath Tagore

This story began many years ago as two planets

journeyed from far distant regions to circle 

each other in the light and warmth of the sun.

In such company, 

fears fell away,

protective barriers disolved in the light.

Their essences were revealed in 

the flow of their magma. 

Each saw themselves within the living

core of the other.

What joy!

other desires are substitutes

A spirit that lives in this world

and does not wear the shirt of love,

such an existence is a deep disgrace.

Be foolishly in love,

because love is all there is.

There is no way into presence

except through a love exchange.

If someone asks, But what is love?

answer, Dissolving the will.

True freedom comes to those

who have escaped the questions

of freewill and fate.

Love is an emperor.

The two worlds play across him.

He barely notices their tumbling game.

Love and lover live in eternity.

Other desires are substitutes

for that way of being.

How long do you lay embracing a corpse?

Love rather the soul, which cannot be held.

Anything born in spring dies in the fall,

but love is not seasonal.

With wine pressed from grapes,

expect a hangover.

But this love path has no expectations.

You are uneasy riding the body?

Dismount. Travel lighter.

Wings will be given.

Be clear like a mirror

reflecting nothing.

Be clean of pictures and the worry

that comes with images.

Gaze into what is not ashamed

or afraid of any truth.

Contain all human faces in your own

without any judgment of them.

Be pure emptiness.

What is inside that? you ask.

Silence is all I can say.

Lovers have some secrets

That they keep.

~ Rumi
photo by Eliot Porter

the hurt you embrace

The hurt you embrace becomes joy.

Call it to your arms where it can

change.  A silkworm eating leaves

makes a cocoon.  Each of us weaves

a chamber of leaves and sticks.

Silkworms begin to truly exist

as they disappear inside that room.

Without legs, we fly.  When I stop

speaking, this poem will close,

and open its silent wings...

~ Rumi

an unexpected visitor, a joy, a depression, a meanness

.

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival,
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
Some momentary awareness come 

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 

They may be clearing you out
For some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, 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 above.


.
~ Rumi

.

one

.

.

I asked for one kiss.  You gave me six.

Who was teacher is now student.

Things good and generous take form in me,

and the air is clear.

There is a strange frenzy in my head,
of birds flying,
each particle circulating on its own.

Is the one I love everywhere?

We take long trips.
We puzzle over the meaning of a painting or a book,
when what we are wanting to see and understand in this world,
we are that.

 

 
.

 

 

 

~ Rumi

from the big red book

.

 

the many wines

God has given us a dark wine so potent that,

drinking it, we leave the two worlds.

God has put into the form of hashish a power

to deliver the taster from self-consciousness.

God has made sleep

so that it erases every thought.

God made Majnun love Layla so much

that just her dog would cause confusion in him.

There are thousands of wines

that can take over our minds.

Don't think all ecstasies 

are the same!

Jesus was lost in his love for God.

His donkey was drunk on barley.

Drink from the presence of saints,

not from those other jars.

Every object, every being,

is a jar full of delight.

Be a connoisseur,

and taste with caution.

Any wine will get you high.

Judge like a king, and choose the purest,

and ones unadulterated with fear,

or some urgency about "what's needed."

Drink the wine that moves you

as a camel moves when it's been untied,

and is just ambling about.

~ Rumi

from The Book of Love

translation by Coleman Barks

the sail just needs to open

.

.

On a day

when the wind is perfect,

the sail just needs to open and the world is full of beauty.

Today is such a

day.

My eyes are like the sun that makes promises;

the promise of life

that it always

keeps

each morning.

The living heart gives to us as does that luminous sphere,

both caress the earth with great

tenderness.

This is a breeze that can enter the soul.

This love I know plays a drum. Arms move around me;

who can contain their self before my beauty?

Peace is wonderful,

but ecstatic dance is more fun, and less narcissistic;

gregarious He makes our lips.

On a day when the wind is perfect,

the sail just needs to open

and the love starts.

Today is such

a day.

~ Rumi 

from Love Poems From God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West

translations by Daniel Ladinsky

.

judge like a king, and choose the purest

 

God has given us a dark wine so potent that,
drinking it, we leave the two worlds. 

 
God has put into the form of hashish a power
to deliver the taster from self-consciousness. 

 
God has made sleep so
that it erases every thought. 

 
God made Majnun love Layla so much that
just her dog would cause confusion in him. 

 
There are thousands of wines
that can take over our minds.
Don’t think all ecstasies
are the same!

 
Jesus was lost in his love for God.
His donkey was drunk with barley. 

 
Drink from the presence of saints,
not from those other jars. 

 
Every object, every being,
is a jar full of delight.
Be a connoisseur,
and taste with caution. 

 
Any wine will get you high.
Judge like a king, and choose the purest,
the ones unadulterated with fear,
or some urgency about “what’s needed.” 

 
Drink the wine that moves you
as a camel moves when it’s been untied,
and is just ambling about. 

 

 

 

 

~ Rumi
Translated by Coleman Barks
from The Essential Rumi

 

 

 

open your hands

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street,
and being the noise.

Drink all your passion,
and be a disgrace.

Close both eyes
to see with the other eye.

Open your hands,
if you want to be held.

Sit down in this circle.

Quit acting like a wolf, and feel
the shepherd’s love filling you.

At night, your beloved wanders.
Don’t accept consolations.

Close your mouth against food.
Taste the lover’s mouth in yours.

You moan, “She left me.” “He left me.”
Twenty more will come.

Be empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought!

Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.

Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.






~ Rumi
Translation: Coleman Barks 

 

 

 

the silent articulation of a face

Love comes with a knife, not some

shy question, and not with fears

for its reputation! I say

these things disinterestedly. Accept them

in kind. Love is a madman

working his wild schemes, tearing off his clothes,

running through the mountains, drinking poison,

and now quietly choosing annihilation.

A tiny spider tries to wrap an enormous wasp.

Think of the spiderweb woven across the cave

where Mohammad slept! There are love stories,

and there is obliteration into love.

You've been walking the ocean’s edge,

holding up your robes to keep them dry.

You must dive naked under and deeper under,

a thousand times deeper! Love flows down.

The ground submits to the sky and suffers

what comes. Tell me, is the earth worse

for giving in like that?

Don’t put blankets over the drum!

Open completely. Let your spirit-ear

listen to the green dome’s passionate murmur.

Let the cords of your robe be untied.

Shiver in this new love beyond all

above and below. The sun rises, but which way

does night go? I have no more words.

Let soul speak with the silent

articulation of a face.

* * *

~ Jelalludin Rumi 
(1207 – 1273)

 translated by Coleman Barks

here

 

 

 

 

 

I see the lamp, the face, the eye, 

an alter where the soul bows, a

 

gladness and refuge. My loving says,

"Here. I can leave my personality

 

here." My reason agrees! "How can 

I object when a rose makes the bent

 

backs stand up like cypresses?" Such

surrender changes everything. Turks

 

understand Armenian! Body abandons

boldness. Soul goes to the center.

 

Rubies appear in the begging bowl.

But don't brag when this happens.

 

Be secluded and silent. Stay in 

the delight, and be brought the

 

cup that will come. No artfulness.

Practice quiet and this new joy.

 

 

 

 

 ~ Rumi

from The Soul of Rumi 

translations by Coleman Barks

 

 

 

there is a candle

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
There is a candle in the heart of man, waiting to be kindled.
In separation from the Friend, there is a cut waiting to be
stitched. 

Love comes of its own free will, 

it can’t be learned
in any school.

There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired,
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.
With such intelligence you rise in the world.
You get ranked ahead or behind others
in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablets.

There is another kind of tablet, one
already completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness
in the center of the chest. This other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid,
and it doesn’t move from outside to inside
through conduits of plumbing-learning.
This second knowing is a fountainhead
from within you, moving out.

 

 

 ~ Rumi

 

the art you practice

A wealth you cannot imagine

flows through you.

Do not consider what strangers say.

Be secluded in your secret heart-house,

that bowl of silence.

Talking, no matter how humble-seeming,

is really a kind of bragging.

Let silence be the art 

you practice.

~ Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks

from Rumi: Bridge to the Soul

a healing calm

Cry out all your grief, your

disappointments! Say them in

Farsi, then Greek.  It doesn't 

matter whether you're from Rum

or Arabia.  Praise the beauty

and kindness praised by every

living being.  You hurt and have 

sharp desire, yet your presence

is a healing calm.  Sun, moon,

bonfire, candle, which?  Someone

says your flame is about to be 

dowsed, but you're not smoke or

fire. You're infinitely more

alive.  Say how that is! This

fluttering love will not stay

much longer in my chest.  Soon it 

will fly like a falcon to its

master, like a owl saying HU.

~ Rumi

from The Soul of Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks