Like other artworks born of a spiritual impulse, Rumi’s Mathnawi demolishes its form and overreaches its boundaries. Yet two extended stories, near the beginning of Book I and near the end of Book VI, give a kind of rounded effect to the whole. They are love stories. In both, the narrow romantic love changes to ecstatic love of the beloved, and in both there is a disturbing act of violence (the poisoning of the goldsmith and the killing of the second brother) that is crucial to the Khidresque mystery. The Mathnawi itself is a love story that obliterates lovers. “Don’t look for me in a human shape.” These are two stories of that difficult truth: How wanting the Chinese princess leads into the mystery of Die before you die. How a picture, an appearance, starts us, the king’s three sons, out on a path to the formless marriage. It’s overstating the point to say that the stories “frame” the Mathnawi. Where the refrain “This never ends” keeps revolving by, no model of linear structure is appropriate.
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 his kingdoms,
the visible as well as the spiritual.
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.
The king was like the man who had a donkey,
but no saddle for the pack. Then he bought a saddle,
and wolves killed the donkey.
He had a waterjar,
but no water. Then he found water, but the pitcher
fell and broke.
He brought his 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!”
“We’ll do what we can. Each of us
is the healing-savior of our regions. Surely
we can find a cure.”
They neglected, in the pride
of their accomplishments, to say If God wills.
I don’t mean that just the saying of the phrase
would have helped.
There was a coldness and a closed
quality beneath the omission. There are many
who don’t say Inshallah, and yet their whole soul
resonates with it all the time!
So the doctors began,
and no matter what they tried, the girl got more pale
and thin. The effects of their medicines were
the opposite of what they expected.
Oxymel
produced bile. Almond oil caused dryness. Myrobalen,
instead of loosening the bowels, constricted them.
Water seemed to feed the fever.
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 into an annihilated state,
and as he came out of that, he spoke this prayer:
“You know what’s hidden here. I don’t know what to do.
You have said, ‘Even though I know all secrets,
still declare it outwardly with an action.’”
He cried out loud for help, and the ocean of grace
surged over him. He slept in the midst
of his weeping on the prayer rug.
In his dream an old man appeared.
“Good king,
I have news. Tomorrow a stranger will come.
I have sent him. He is a physician you can trust.
Listen to him.”
As dawn came, 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! But actions
spring from actions in this reality.
What should I do?”
We should always ask for discipline.
One who has no self-control cannot receive grace.
And it’s not just himself he hurts. Undisciplined
people set fire to the landscape!
A table of food
was once coming down from the sky to feed Moses
and his people, when suddenly voices from the crowd
called out, “Where’s the garlic?”
and “We want lentils!”
At once the bread and the dishes
of grace-food disappeared. Everyone had to keep digging
with mattocks and cutting with long scythes.
Then Jesus interceded and sent more trays of food.
But again some insolent people showed no respect.
They grabbed like it wouldn’t be enough,
even though Jesus
kept telling them, “This food will last.
It will always be here.”
To be suspicious and greedy
when majesty arrives is the worst arrogance.
The gates closed.
Withhold your giving, and no
rainclouds will form. When sex goes on between
everybody all the time, epidemics spread
in every direction.
When you feel gloomed over,
it’s your failure to praise. Irreverence
and no discipline rob your soul of light.
The king opened
his arms and held the saintly doctor to him. He kissed
his hand and his forehead and asked how his journey
had been. Many dear concerns for this one
who had been announced in his dream.
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.
You translate what is inside us.
If you were to vanish, this vast meeting room
would shrink to a closet. Protect us.”
They talked and ate a spirit meal. Then the king
took the doctor’s hand and led him to where
the girl lay, telling him the story
of her illness.
The doctor felt her pulse
and observed her coloring and her urine. “Your healers
have not helped. They’ve made her worse.
They don’t know the inner states.”
The secret
of her pain opened to him, but he didn’t tell the king
what it was. It was love, of course.
The ailments of love are different from any other.
Love is the astrolabe that sights into the mysteries
of God.
Earth-love, spirit-love, any love
looks into that yonder, and whatever I try to say
explaining love is embarrassing!
Some commentary
clarifies, but with love silence is clearer.
A pen went scribbling along, but when it tried
to write love, it broke.
If you want to expound on love,
take your intellect out and let it lie down
in the mud. It’s no help.
You want proof that the sun exists, so you stay up
all night talking about it. Finally you sleep
as the sun comes up.
Look at it! Nothing
is so strange in this entire world as the sun.
The sun of the soul is even more so. It has no yesterday!
The physical sun is unique, but it’s possible
to imagine something like it.
The spiritual sun
has nothing comparable, inner or outer.
Imagination cannot contain it. Word of that
sun, Shams, came,
and everything hid. Now 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. Aren’t you
a sufi? Don’t say tomorrow or later!”
And 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!”
“O Husam. If the Friend
came to you completely naked, your chest could not stand it.
You wouldn’t be here in your body any longer. Ask
for what you want, but within some limits.
A little stick can’t hold up a mountain.
If that inner sun by which existence exists
came even a little closer, everything
would be scorched. Don’t ask for that.
Say no more for now about Shamsi Tabriz.”
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.”
It was done, and quietly he began.
“Where are you from?
Who are your relatives there? Who else are you close
to in that region?”
On and on he gently asked
about her life. When someone steps barefooted on a thorn,
he immediately puts his foot on his knee and searches
with a needle, and when he can’t locate the tip,
he moistens around the place with moisture
from his lips. A splinter is often
difficult to get out.
How much more difficult a thorn
in the heart! If everyone could find that thorn
in themselves, things would be
much more peaceful here!
Someone puts a clump of burrs
under a donkey’s tail. The donkey doesn’t know
what’s wrong. He just starts jumping
and bucking around.
An intelligent, thorn-removing
doctor must come and investigate.
So the divine physician
asked about her friends and held her hand
to feel the pulse.
She told many stories of her home,
mentioning many names, and he would say the names again
after her to test the pulse reaction.
Finally he asked,
“When you visit other towns, where are you most likely to go?”
She said one town, then another, where she bought bread
and where salt, describing the houses,
until he happened
to say the word Samarcand!
The dear city sweet as candy.
She blushed. Her breath caught. O she loves
a goldsmith in Samarcand! She misses him so.
“Where exactly
does he live?”
“At the head of the bridge on Ghatafar Street.”
“Now I can heal you. Don’t be afraid. I will do to you
what rain does to a meadow. But don’t tell this
to anyone, certainly not the king.
When the love center
in your chest becomes the grave for such a secret,
then what you want will be quickly yours.”
Seeds must hide
in the ground to become whatever is in them.
The girl felt better. She trusted him.
The doctor
went to the king and told him part of the story.
“On some pretext
we must bring here from Samarcand a certain goldsmith.
Lure him with the prospect of wealth and honors.”
The king’s messengers went with robes and coins
and easily persuaded the man to leave
his family and his town.
He rode an Arabian horse
into the presence of the king and the doctor,
who 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 totally 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,
and his strength dwindled. Little by little he became
sunken-cheeked and jaundiced and ugly,
and the girl stopped
loving him. Any love based on physical beauty
is not love.
“This world is a mountain. What we do
is a shout. The echo comes back to us.”
The goldsmith said
that and died. Choose to love the one
who does not die.
Don’t say, “But how can we do that?”
The generous one is not hard to find.
But what about
the doctor’s poisoning the poor goldsmith! It was not done
for the king’s sake. The reason is a mystery
like Khidr’s cutting the boy’s throat.
Everything
the doctor did was out of God’s will. Khidr
sunk the boat, yet it was right to do.
When someone
is killed by a doctor like this one, it’s a blessing,
even though it might not seem so.
A child cries
at its first haircut, but not the mother. Such a doctor
is part of a larger generosity. He takes away one
and gives back a hundred.
Don’t judge his actions
by what you would do. You are not living
completely within truth as he is.
There was a king who had three
equally accomplished sons.
Each was generous and wise, and fiercely
decisive when the need arose.
They stood like three strongly burning candles
before their father, ready to set out on a journey
to distant parts of his kingdom to see
if they were being administered fairly and well.
Each kissed the king’s hand as a sign
of farewell and obedience.
“Go wherever you are drawn to go,” said the king,
“and dance on your way.
You are protected.
I only warn you not to enter one particular
castle, the one called The Fortress
That Takes Away Clarity.
That castle has a gallery of beautiful pictures
which causes great difficulty for the royal family.
It’s like the chamber Zuleikha decorated to trap Joseph,
where her picture was everywhere.
He could not avoid
looking at her. Stay away from that one place.”
Of course, as it happens, the three princes
were obsessed with seeing that castle, and in spite
of their father’s admonition they went
into it.
It had five gates facing the land and five
facing the ocean, as the five external senses
take in the color and perfume of phenomena
and the five inner senses open onto the mystery.
The thousands of pictures there made the princes
restless. They wandered the hallways drunkenly,
until they came,
all three at the same time,
to stand before a particular portrait,
a woman’s face.
They fell hopelessly in love. “This is what our father
warned us of. We thought we were strong enough
to resist anything, as one who has phthisis
thinks he’s well enough to go on,
but we’re not!
Who is this?”
A wise sheikh revealed to them, “She
is the Chinese princess, the hidden one.
The Chinese king has concealed her as the spirit
is wrapped in an embryo. No one may come
into her presence.
Birds are not even allowed
to fly over her roof. No one can figure a way in.
She can’t be won by contriving. Give up on that!”
The princes put their heads together anyway,
comrades in one sighing passion.
The oldest said, “We’ve always been bold
when we gave counsel to others, but look at us!
We used to say, Patience is the key, but the rules
we made for others are no help now. We advised, Laugh!
Why are we so quiet? Where is our strength?”
In despair
they set out for China, not with any hope for a union
with the princess, but just to be closer to her.
They left everything and went toward the hidden beloved.
They lived disguised in the capital, trying
to devise some way into the palace.
Finally the eldest, “I can’t wait like this.
I don’t want to live if I have to live separated
from the beloved. This is the one
I’ve been beating the drum for my entire life.
What does a duck care about a shipwreck?
Just the duck’s feet in ocean water is ship enough.
My soul and my body are married to this boasting.
I am dreaming but I’m not asleep.
I brag but I do not lie.
I’m a candle.
Pass the knife through my neck a hundred times,
I’ll burn just as brightly.
The haystack of my existence
has caught on both sides. Let it burn all night
down to nothing.
On the road the moon gives
all the light I need. I’m going to confront the king
with my desire.”
His brothers tried to persuade him
not to, but they couldn’t. He sprang up
and came staggering into the presence of the Chinese
king, who knew what was happening, though
he kept silent.
That king was inside the three
brothers, but he pretended to be unfamiliar
with them.
The fire under the kettle is the appearance.
The boiling water is the reality.
The beloved
is in your veins though he or she may seem
to have a form outside you.
The prince knelt
and kissed the king’s feet, and stayed there,
bowed down.
“This young man will have everything
he seeks, and twenty times that which he left
behind. He gambled and flung off his robe
in ecstasy. Such love is worth a thousand robes.
This one is an ambassador from that love,
and he is doing his work well.”
The prince heard this
and could not speak, but his soul spoke constantly
with that soul. The prince thought, “This is
reality, this waking, this melting away.”
He stayed bowed down with the king a long time,
cooking. “Execution is one thing,
but I am being executed
again and again every moment! Poor in wealth,
but rich in lives to sacrifice.
No one can play
the game of love with just one head!”
This joyful waiting
consumed the prince. The form of the beloved
left his mind and he found union.
“The clothes of the body were sweet silk,
but this nakedness is sweeter.”
This subject can go
no further. What comes next must stay hidden.
One rides
to the ocean on horseback, but after that
the wooden horse of mystical silence
must carry you.
When that boat sinks,
you are the fish, neither silent nor speaking,
a marvel with no name.
So the oldest brother died,
and the middle brother came to the funeral.
“What’s this?
A fish from the same sea!” mused the king. The chamberlain
called out, “A son of the same father, the brother
next in age to the deceased.”
The king, “Yes, a keepsake
from that one to me.”
So the sublime kindnesses
descended again, and the courtyard seemed split apart
like a pomegranate laughing, with all the forms
of the universe opening their tent flaps,
new creations every second.
He had read about such
revelations in books. Now it was his. He kept saying,
“Is there more? Is there more?” Fed from the king’s nature,
he felt a satisfaction he’d never felt before,
and then there came a pride.
“Am I not also a king,
the son of a king? Why is this one controlling me?
I should open my own shop, independent of him.”
The king thought, “I give you pure light,
and you throw dirt in my face!”
The middle brother
suddenly realized what he had inwardly done,
but it was too late.
His magnificence
was stripped away. No longer a garden peacock,
he flew like a lonely owl in the wilderness,
like Adam plowing an ox far from Eden.
He came to himself
and asked forgiveness, and with his repentance
he combined something else, the deep pain
that comes from losing the union.
This story must be
shortened. After a year when the king came out
of his own self-effacement, he found one arrow missing
from his quiver and the middle brother dead,
shot through the throat.
The king wept, both slayer
and chief mourner. Yet all was well. The middle brother too
had gone to the beloved through the killing eye
that blasted his conceit.
It was the third brother,
who had been ill up until now,
who received the hand of the princess.
He lived the marriage of form and spirit,
and did absolutely nothing
to deserve it.