Here are more sections from Rumi’s Mathnawi, the six books of “spiritual couplets” he dictated to his scribe, Husam Chelebi, between 1260 and 1273. Rumi and Husam would walk together around Konya or through the vineyards of Meram nearby, letting the subjects flow into poetry. Passages from the Qur’an, folk tales, jokes, all intrusions were allowed swimming room in this ocean of sublime jazz that perhaps has no parallel in world literature. The Mathnawi is a house of mirrors. Relationship is everywhere, and everywhere we are shown ourselves. The other reveals us. Rumi’s stories are full of reflections, comic janitors and stealthy maids, judges and impudent lovers who disclose our hidings and hypocrisies. The whole always throws the parts into relationship, polishing the mirrors. What we see happening in the external drama we can be sure is part of ourselves. It is said that a cow walked across the entire city of Baghdad and saw only some hay that had fallen off a wagon. Likewise, some people travel all around the world and report back that everyone tried to cheat them.
No more muffled drums!
Uncover the drumheads!
Plant your flag in an open field!
No more timid peeking around.
Either you see the beloved,
or you lose your head!
If your throat’s not ready for that wine, cut it!
If your eyes don’t want the fullness of union,
let them turn white with disease.
Either this deep desire of mine
will be found on this journey,
or when I get back home!
It may be that the satisfaction I need
depends on my going away, so that when I’ve gone
and come back, I’ll find it at home.
I will search for the Friend with all my passion
and all my energy, until I learn
that I don’t need to search.
The real truth of existence is sealed,
until after many twists and turns of the road.
As in the algebraical method of “the two errors,”
the correct answer comes only after two substitutions,
after two mistakes. Then the seeker says,
“If I had known the real way it was,
I would have stopped all the looking around.”
But that knowing depends
on the time spent looking!
Just as the sheikh’s debt could not be paid
until the boy’s weeping, the story we told in Book II.
You fear losing a certain eminent position.
You hope to gain something from that, but it comes
from elsewhere. Existence does this switching trick,
giving you hope from one source,
then satisfaction from another.
It keeps you bewildered
and wondering, and lets your trust in the unseen grow.
You think to make your living from tailoring,
but then somehow money comes in
through goldsmithing,
which had never entered your mind.
I don’t know whether the union I want will come
through my effort, or my giving up effort,
or from something completely separate
from anything I do or don’t do.
I wait and fidget and flop about
as a decapitated chicken does, knowing that
the vital spirit has to escape this body
eventually, somehow!
This desire will find an opening.
There was once a man
who inherited a lot of money and land.
But he squandered it all too quickly. Those who inherit
wealth don’t know what work it took to get it.
In the same way, we don’t know the value of our souls,
which were given to us for nothing!
So the man was left alone without provisions,
an owl in the desert.
The Prophet has said
that a true seeker must be completely empty like a lute
to make the sweet music of Lord, Lord.
When the emptiness starts to get filled with something,
the one who plays the lute puts it down
and picks up another.
There is nothing more subtle and delightful
than to make that music.
Stay empty and held
between those fingers, where where
gets drunk with nowhere.
This man was empty,
and the tears came. His habitual stubbornness
dissolved. This is the way with many seekers.
They moan in prayer, and the perfumed smoke of that
floats into heaven, and the angels say, “Answer
this prayer. This worshiper has only you
and nothing else to depend on. Why do you go first
to the prayers of those less devoted?”
God says,
“By deferring my generosity I am helping him.
His need dragged him by the hair into my presence.
If I satisfy that, he’ll go back to being absorbed
in some idle amusement. Listen how passionate he is!
That torn-open cry is the way he should live.”
Nightingales are put in cages
because their songs give pleasure.
Whoever heard of keeping a crow?
When two people, one decrepit and the other young
and handsome, come into a bakery where the baker
is an admirer of young men, and both of them
ask for bread, the baker will immediately
give what he has on hand to the old man.
But to the other he will say, “Sit down and wait awhile.
There’s fresh bread baking in the house. Almost ready!”
And when the hot bread is brought, the baker will say,
“Don’t leave. The halvah is coming!”
So he finds ways of detaining the young man with,
“Ah, there’s something important I want to tell you about.
Stay. I’ll be back in a moment. Something very important!”
This is how it is when true devotees
suffer disappointment
in the good they want to do,
or the bad they want to avoid.
So this man with nothing, who had inherited everything
and squandered it, kept weeping, Lord, Lord!
Finally in a dream he heard a voice, “Your wealth
is in Cairo. Go there to such and such a spot
and dig, and you’ll find what you need.”
So he left on the long journey,
and when he saw the towers of Cairo,
he felt his back grow warm with new courage.
But Cairo is a large city,
and before he could find the spot,
he had to wander about.
He had no money, of course, so he begged
among the townspeople, but he felt ashamed doing that.
He decided, “I will go out at night
and call like the night-mendicants that people
throw coins into the street for.”
Shame and dignity and hunger
were pushing him forward and backward and sideways!
Suddenly, he was seized by the night patrol.
It so happened that many had been robbed recently
in Cairo at night, and the caliph had told the police
to assume that anyone out roaming after dark
was a thief.
It’s best not to let offenders go unpunished.
Then they poison the whole body of society. Cut off
the snakebitten finger! Don’t be sympathetic
with thieves. Consider instead
the public suffering. In those days
robbers were expert, and numerous!
So the night patrol grabbed the man.
“Wait!
I can explain!”
“Tell me.”
“I am not a criminal.
I am new to Cairo. I live in Baghdad.” He told the story
of his dream and the buried treasure,
and he was so believable in the telling that
the night patrolman began to cry. Always,
the fragrance of truth has that effect.
Passion
can restore healing power, and prune the weary boughs
to new life. The energy of passion is everything!
There are fake satisfactions that simulate passion.
They taste cold and delicious,
but they just distract you and prevent you
from the search. They say,
“I will relieve your passion.
Take me. Take me!”
Run from false remedies
that dilute your energy. Keep it rich and musky.
The night patrol said, “I know you’re not a thief.
You’re a good man, but you’re kind of a fool.
I’ve had that dream before.
I was told, in my dream,
that there was a treasure for me in Baghdad,
buried in a certain quarter of the city
on such and such a street.”
The name of the street
that he said was where this man lived!
“And the dream-
voice told me, ‘It’s in So-and-so’s house.
Go there and get it!’”
Without knowing,
he had described the exact house,
and mentioned this man’s name!
“But I didn’t do
what the dream said to do, and look at you,
who did, wandering the world, fatigued,
and begging in the streets!”
So it came quietly
to the seeker, though he didn’t say it out loud,
“What I’m longing for lived in my house in Baghdad!”
He filled with joy. He breathed continuous praise.
Finally he said,
“The water of life is here.
I’m drinking it. But I had to come
this long way to know it!”
A lover was telling his beloved
how much he loved her, how faithful
he had been, how self-sacrificing, getting up
at dawn every morning, fasting, giving up
wealth and strength and fame,
all for her.
There was a fire in him.
He didn’t know where it came from,
but it made him weep and melt like a candle.
“You’ve done well,” she said, “but listen to me.
All this is the decor of love, the branches
and leaves and blossoms. You must live
at the root to be a true lover.”
“Where is that!
Tell me!”
“You’ve done the outward acts,
but you haven’t died. You must die.”
When he heard that, he lay back on the ground
laughing, and died. He opened like a rose
that drops to the ground and died laughing.
That laughter was his freedom,
and his gift to the eternal.
As moonlight shines back at the sun,
he heard the call to come home, and went.
When light returns to its source,
it takes nothing
of what it has illuminated.
It may have shone on a garbage dump, or a garden,
or in the center of a human eye. No matter.
It goes, and when it does,
the open plain becomes passionately desolate,
wanting it back.
They were outdoors in some sort of fake
spiritual state, the hypocrite
and his friend, the mayor.
It was midnight, and raining.
A wolf appeared on the edge of the hill.
The mayor let fly an arrow that felled the wolf,
who moaned and farted
and died.
The hypocrite yelled, “You’ve killed my donkey.
I know my donkey’s farts as well as I know
water from wine.”
“Not so. I shot a wolf.
Go and see. It’s too dark to tell anything
from here.”
“Among twenty farts from twenty animals,
I would know the wind from my young donkey.
Some things I know perfectly.”
“You impostor!
In the rain, at midnight, at fifty yards,
you can distinguish one fart from another!
You didn’t even recognize me today,
and we’ve known each other for ten years!
You’re just pretending with this God-drunkenness too,
so I guess you’ll be excused for other forgetfulnesses,
as a child is, or someone truly dissolved in that joy.
You’re not. You’re too proud of your ‘dervishhood,’
and your cries of ‘selfless surrender.’
‘O, both worlds
are here! I can’t tell which is which!
My donkey’s farts prove the sensitivity of my state!’”
This is the way hypocrisy gets exposed.
Anyone who claims, “I am the keeper of the doorway,”
will be tested by the adepts,
as when some fellow claims
to be a tailor, but when the king throws down
a piece of satin and says,
“Make me a vest,”
he has no idea what to do.
The wine God loves
is human honesty.
That hypocrite had been drinking
buttermilk. He was saying, “Leave me alone
in my bewilderment. I don’t know a hatchet
from a key. I am Junnaiyd. I am Bestami!”
Spiritual sloth and spiritual greed
will not stay hidden.
If you pretend to be Hallaj
and with that fake burning
set fire to your friends,
don’t think that you’re a lover.
You’re crazy and numb.
You’re drinking our blood,
and you have no experience
of the nearness.
The King of Tirmid
has urgent business in Samarcand.
He needs a courier to go there and return
in five days. He offers many rewards to anyone
who will make the journey—horses, servants, gold,
and the robes of honor.
Dalqak, the court clown,
is out in the country when he hears of this.
He quickly mounts a horse and rides toward town.
He rides furiously. Two horses drop dead
of exhaustion under his whip.
He arrives
covered with dust at some ungodly hour,
demanding an audience with the king.
A panic sweeps the city. What calamity
could be imminent that Dalqak, the buffoon,
should be so distraught? Everyone gathers
at the palace.
“An evil omen is upon us!”
“Something has certainly been spilled on the rug
this time!”
The king himself is worried.
“What is it, Dalqak?”
Whenever anyone asks Dalqak
for particulars about anything, he first puts his finger
to his lips,
Shhhhh …
Everyone gets very quiet.
Dalqak makes another gesture as though to say
he needs more time to catch his breath.
Another long wait. No one has ever seen Dalqak
like this. Usually, he’s a constant stream
of new jokes. Usually, the king would be
laughing so hard he’d fall on the floor
holding his stomach. This quietness
is very odd and foreboding.
Everyone’s worst fears
come up.
“The tyrant from Khwarism
is coming to kill us!”
“Dalqak, say what it is!”
“I was far from the court when I heard
that you needed a courier, someone who could go
to Samarcand and come back in five days.”
“Yes!”
“I hurried here to tell you
that I will not be able to do it.”
“What!”
“I don’t have the stamina or the agility.
Don’t expect me to be the one.”
“This
is what you made such a commotion about,
that you won’t do it?”
Dalqak is like those who pretend
to be on a brave spiritual path.
The bridegroom’s house
is in an uproar of preparation, always making ready
to receive the bride,
but the girl’s family
knows nothing. Any message yet?
“No.”
Any sign of activity?
“No.”
Letters have been written
and sent, but have any of them reached
the Friend? Has your inner
lover read them?
There once was 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 ate it all, with wine.
The husband returns with the 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’re 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 dirt cracks open the head,
and afterward there are other marriages.
Don’t look at me.
Fall into the safety of God.
I’m already drowned.
Do I have a beard?
I can’t remember.
Rescue this man from his mustache,
curling so proudly, while inside he tears
his hair. Married to God, married
to God, but pretending not!
We see distinctly what this imposture
becomes in a hundred years. A sheikh
looks into a chunk of iron like it’s a mirror.
What this bushy-bearded man does not discover in his house
a boy could find so easily.
Dive into the ocean.
You’re caught in your own pretentious beard
like something you didn’t eat.
You’re not garbage! Pearls want to be
like you. You should be with them
where waves and fish and pearls and seaweed and wind
are all one. No linking, no hierarchy,
no distinctions, no perplexed wondering, no speech.
Beyond describing.
Either stay here and talk or go there and be silent.
Or do both, by turns.
With those who see double, talk double-talk.
Make noise, beat a drum, think of metaphors!
With friends, say only mystery.
Near roses, sing.
With deceptive people, cover the jar, and shield it.
But be calm with those in duality.
Speak sweetly and reasonably.
Patience polishes and purifies.
Here’s the story of a man looking for Sheikh Kharraqani.
A certain dervish goes out from Talaqan, over the mountains
and through a long valley. The injuries and troubles he suffered
deserve mention, but I’ll make it short. The young man
arrives at the sheikh’s house and knocks.
The sheikh’s wife sticks her head out, “What do you want?”
“I come with the intention of seeing the sheikh.”
“Oho,” laughs the wife, “look at His Reverence! Was there
nothing to do where you live that you came on such an idle
sight-seeing expedition? Do you hate your hometown? Or maybe
Satan led you here by the nose?” I won’t tell you
all she said.
“Still, I would like to see the sheikh.”
“Better you should turn around and go home.
Hundreds of your kind have come like Israelites
to rub their hands on this arrogant gold calf,
parasite, licker-of-platters-on-the-floor,
heavy-slumbering good-for-nothing.
They say, O,
this is ecstasy, O. They forget any real religious ceremony
and ritual prayers.”
The young man could stand it no more.
“What is this? I’ve been ambushed by a night patrol
in full daylight! Your blitherings try to keep me
from the presence of a holy man,
but I know what light led me here, the same
that turned the golden calf into words in a sacred story.
A saint is a theater where the qualities of God can be seen.
Don’t try to keep me out. Puff on this candle,
and your face will get burned! Rather try blowing out
the sun, or fitting a muzzle on the sea!
Old bats like you dream that their cave-dark
is everywhere, but it’s not.
My determination to be in that presence is quick and constant.
You won’t stop or slow me.
A revealer of mystery and that which is revealed
are the same. Seed, sowing, growing, harvest, one presence.
The husk, old hag of a nagging world,
should bow to that.
Hallaj said, I am God, and lived it out.
What happens when the I disappears?
What’s left after not?
Whoever scoffs at these questions and the experiences
they point to, his arrogant spit comes back in his face.
There is no spitting on the way we’re on.
Rain itself turns to spit on those who mock
and casually show disrespect to saints.”
With that he left the doorway and walked about
asking in the town. Finally someone said, “The qutb
is in the forest collecting wood.” The young dervish
ran toward the forest but with a doubt,
“Why should such a sheikh have such a woman
for a wife, such an opposite, such a neanderthal!
God forgive my impugning. Who am I
to judge?” But the question remained.
How could a teacher lie with that woman!
Can a guide agree with a thief?
Suddenly Sheikh Kharraqani appears, riding a lion,
firewood stacked behind him. His whip,
a live serpent. Every sheikh rides a fierce lion,
whether you see it or not. Know this
with your other eyes: There are thousands of lions
under your teacher’s thighs and all of them
stacked with wood!
Kharraqani knew the problem and immediately began to answer,
“Well, it’s not out of desire that I put up with her!
Don’t think that. It’s not her perfume
or her bright-colored clothes. Enduring her
public disdain has made me strong and patient.
She is my practice. Nothing can be clear
without a polar opposite present. Two banners,
one black, one white, and between them
something gets settled. Between Pharaoh
and Moses, the Red Sea.
You consider issues, but not deeply enough.
Your spring is frozen. Faith is a flowing.
Don’t try to forge cold iron.
Study David, the ironsmith, and dancer, and musician.
Move into the sun. You’re wrapped in fantasy
and inner mumbling. When spirit enters,
a man begins to wander freely,
escaped and overrunning through the garden plants,
spontaneous and soaking in.”
Now a miracle story …
Listen to this, and hear the mystery inside:
A snake-catcher went into the mountains to find a snake.
He wanted a friendly pet, and one that would amaze
audiences, but he was looking for a reptile, something
that has no knowledge of friendship.
It was winter.
In the deep snow he saw a frighteningly huge dead snake.
He was afraid to touch it, but he did.
In fact, he dragged the thing into Baghdad,
hoping people would pay to see it.
This is how foolish
we’ve become! A human being is a mountain range!
Snakes are fascinated by us! Yet we sell ourselves
to look at a dead snake.
We are like beautiful satin
used to patch burlap. “Come see the dragon I killed,
and hear the adventures!” That’s what he announced,
and a large crowd came,
but the dragon was not dead,
just dormant! He set up his show at a crossroads.
The ring of gawking people got thicker, everybody
on tiptoe, men and women, noble and peasant, all
packed together unconscious of their differences.
It was like the Resurrection!
He began to unwind the thick ropes and remove
the cloth coverings he’d wrapped it so well in.
Some little movement.
The hot Iraqi sun had woken
the terrible life. The people nearest started screaming.
Panic! The dragon tore easily and hungrily
loose, killing many instantly.
The snake-catcher stood there,
frozen. “What have I brought out of the mountains?” The snake
braced against a post and crushed the man and consumed him.
The snake is your animal-soul. When you bring it
into the hot air of your wanting-energy, warmed
by that and by the prospect of power and wealth,
it does massive damage.
Leave it in the snow mountains.
Don’t expect to oppose it with quietness
and sweetness and wishing.
The nafs don’t respond to those,
and they can’t be killed. It takes a Moses to deal
with such a beast, to lead it back, and make it lie down
in the snow. But there was no Moses then.
Hundreds of thousands died.
When Abu Bakr met Muhammad, he said,
“This is not a face that lies.”
Abu Bakr was one whose bowl
has fallen from the roof.
There’s no hiding the fragrance that comes
from an ecstatic. A polished mirror
cannot help reflecting.
Muhammad once was talking to a crowd
of chieftains, princes with great influence,
when a poor blind man interrupted him.
Muhammad frowned and said to the man,
“Let me attend to these visitors.
This is a rare chance,
whereas you are already my friend.
We’ll have ample time.”
Then someone nearby said, “That blind man
may be worth a hundred kings. Remember
the proverb, Human beings are mines.”
World-power means nothing. Only the unsayable,
jeweled inner life matters.
Muhammad replied, “Do not think that I’m concerned
with being acknowledged by these authorities.
If a beetle moves toward rosewater, it proves
that the solution is diluted. Beetles
love dung, not rose essence.
If a coin is eager to be tested
by the touchstone, that coin
itself may be a touchstone.
A thief loves the night.
I am day. I reveal essences.
A calf thinks God is a cow.
A donkey’s theology changes
when someone new pets it
and gives what it wants.
I am not a cow, or thistles for camels
to browse on. People who insult me
are only polishing the mirror.”
Learn from Ali how to fight
without your ego participating.
God’s Lion did nothing
that didn’t originate
from his deep center.
Once in battle he got the best of a certain knight
and quickly drew his sword. The man,
helpless on the ground, spat
in Ali’s face. Ali dropped his sword,
relaxed, and helped the man to his feet.
“Why have you spared me?
How has lightning contracted back
into its cloud? Speak, my prince,
so that my soul can begin to stir
in me like an embryo.”
Ali was quiet and then finally answered,
“I am God’s Lion, not the lion of passion.
The sun is my lord. I have no longing
except for the One.
When a wind of personal reaction comes,
I do not go along with it.
There are many winds full of anger,
and lust and greed. They move the rubbish
around, but the solid mountain of our true nature
stays where it’s always been.
There’s nothing now
except the divine qualities.
Come through the opening into me.
Your impudence was better than any reverence,
because in this moment I am you and you are me.
I give you this opened heart as God gives gifts:
the poison of your spit has become
the honey of friendship.”