this short life is long and beautiful

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Beauty is the cause of harmony, of sympathy, of community.
Beauty unites all things and is the source of all things.

It is the great creating cause which bestirs the world and holds all things in existence by the longing inside them to have beauty.

And there it is ahead of all as the Beloved, toward which all things move, since it is the longing for beauty which brings them into being.


—Pseudo-Dionysius, late 5th to early 6th century mystical theologist, Neoplatonic philosopher, from The Divine Names

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Open the letter of the body’s life inside the words. 

This body, your life, is a letter to the king of the universe.

Go to a private place and open it and read to see if the words are right. If they are not start another!

And do not think it easy to open the body and read the secret message. This is the most courageous work, not something for children playing with knucklebones in the dirt.

Open to the title page. Is what it says there the same as what you have said it says? If you are carrying a heavy sack, empty out the stones! 

Bring only what should be given.

—Rumi

The Soul of Rumi

Coleman Barks version

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Life is an island. People come out of the sea, 

cross the island, and return to the sea. 

But this short life is long and beautiful. 
 

—Martiros Saryan

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there is not a fragment in all of nature —John Muir, 1867

    

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We are connected by the fundamental oneness of our consciousness; we are all individuated lumps within, as well as parts of, the same sheet. 

We are connected by the ability of one individual to vitally affect, and be affected by, another through the purposeful control of thought energy or the energy of consciousness. 

We are connected by the theoretical ability of one being to exchange energy or information with any other being simply by focusing intent. 


—Thomas Campbell, nuclear physicist
My Big Toe

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This moment this love comes to rest in me,
many beings in one being.
In one wheat grain a thousand sheaf stacks.
Inside the needle's eye, a turning night of stars.

Listen, if you can stand to.
Union with the friend
means not being who you have been,
being instead silence, a place,
a view where language is inside seeing.

From the wet source
someone cuts a reed to make a flute
The reed sips breath like wine,
sips more, practicing. Now drunk,
it starts the high clear notes.

There is a path from me to you
that I am constantly looking for,
so I try to keep clear and still
as water does with the moon.

We do not have to follow the pressure-flow of wanting.
We can be led by the guide.
Wishes may or may not come true
in this house of disappointment.
Let's push the door open together and leave.

My essence is like the essence of a red wine.
My body is a cup that grieves because it is inside time.
Glass after glass of wine go into my head.
Finally, my head goes into the wine.


—Rumi
Coleman Barks version
The Big Red Book

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dance, in your blood

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Inside water, a waterwheel turns.
A star circulates the moon.

We live in the night ocean wondering,
What are these lights?

You have said who you are
I am what I am.
Your actions is my head,
my head here in my hands
with something circling inside.
I have no name

for what circles

so perfectly.

A secret turning in us
makes the universe turn.
Head unaware of feet,
and feet head. Neither cares.
They keep turning.

This moment this love comes to rest in me,
many beings in one being.
In one wheat grain a thousand sheaf stacks.
Inside the needle’s eye a turning night of stars.

Keep walking, though there’s no place to get to.
Don’t try to see through the distances.
That’s not for human beings. Move within,
but don’t move the way fear makes you move.

Walk to the well.
Turn as the earth turns and the moon turn,
circling what they love.
Whatever circles comes from the center.

I circle your nest tonight,
around and around until morning
when a breath of air says, Now,
and the Friend holds up like a goblet
some anonymous skull.

No better love than love with no object,
no more satisfying work than work with no purpose.
If I could give up tricks and cleverness,
that would be the cleverest trick!

Some nights, stay up until dawn,
as the moon sometimes does for the sun.
Be a full bucket pulled up the dark way
of a well, then lifted out into light.

I am so small I can barely be seen.
How can this great love be inside me?
Look at your eyes. They are small,
but they see enormous things.

When you feel your lips becoming infinite
and sweet, like the moon in a sky,
when you feel that spaciousness inside,
Shams of Tabriz will be there too.

The sun is love. The lover,
a speck circling the sun.
A Spring wind moves to dance
any branch that isn’t dead.

Something opens our wings.
Something makes boredom and hurt disappear.
Someone fills the cup in front of us.
We taste only sacredness.

Held like this, to draw in milk,
no will, tasting clouds of milk,
never so content.

I stand up. and this one of me
turns into a hundred of me.
They say I circle around you.
Nonsense. I circle around me.

I have lived on the lip
of insanity, wanting to know reasons,
knocking on a door. It opens.
I’ve been knocking from the inside!

Real value comes with madness,
matzub below, scientist above.

Whoever finds love
beneath hurt and grief
disappears into emptiness
with a thousand new disguises.

Dance, when you’re broken open.
Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance, when you’re perfectly set free.

—Rumi: Selected Poems

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boil me

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A chickpea leaps almost over the rim of the pot
where it’s being boiled.
‘Why are you doing this to me?’

The cook knocks him down with the ladle.
‘Don’t you try to jump out.
You think I’m torturing you.

I’m giving you flavour,
so you can mix with spices and rice
and be the lovely vitality of a human being.
Remember when you drank rain in the garden.
That was for this.’

Grace first. Pleasure,
then a boiling new life begins,
and the Friend has something good to eat.

Eventually the chickpea
will say to the cook,
‘Boil me some more.
Hit me with the skimming spoon.
I can’t do this by myself.

I’m like an elephant that dreams of gardens
back in Hindustan and doesn’t pay attention
to his driver. You’re my cook, my driver,
my way to existence. I love your cooking.’

The cook says,
‘I was once like you,
fresh from the ground. Then I boiled in time,
and boiled in the body, two fierce boilings.
My animal soul grew powerful.
I controlled it with practices,
and boiled some more, and boiled
once beyond that,
and became your teacher.’


—Rumi
The Essential Rumi
Coleman Barks and John Moyne version

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what speaks in the blood

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Once every year, the Deer catch human beings. They do various things which irresistibly draw men near them; each one selects a certain man.

The Deer shoots the man, who is then compelled to skin it and carry its meat home and eat it.

Then the deer is inside the man. He waits and hides in there, but the man doesn't know it.

When enough Deer have occupied enough men, they will strike all at once.

The men who don't have Deer in them will also be taken by surprise, and everything will change some.

This is called "takeover from inside".


—Gary Snyder

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Walking, I can almost hear the redwoods beating. And the oceans are above me here, rolling clouds, heavy and dark. It is winter and there is smoke from the fires.

It is a world of elemental attention, of all things working together, listening to what speaks in the blood. Whichever road I follow, I walk in the land of many gods, and they love and eat one another.

Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say.
Watch and listen.

You are the result of the love of thousands.


—Linda Hogan

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be light.

as minerals in the ground rise inside trees
and become tree,

as plant faces an animal
and enters the animal,

so a human
can put down the heavy
body baggage and
be light.


—Rumi
Coleman Barks version

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the air shares its spirit

thank you, Jill 

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Rumi has a whole theory of language based on the reed flute (ney). Beneath everything we say, and within each note of the reed flute, lies a nostalgia for the reed bed.

Language and music are possible only because we’re empty, hollow, and separated from the source. All language is a longing for home.

Why is there not a second tonality, he muses, a note in praise of the craftsman’s skill, which fashioned the bare cylinder into a ney, the intricate human form with its nine holes?


—Coleman Barks
On Silence

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All things share the same breath - the beast, the tree, the man. 

The air shares its spirit with all the life it supports.

—Chief Seattle

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questions

 

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All day I think about it, then at night I say it.
Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?
I have no idea.

My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that,
and I intend to end up there.

This drunkenness began in some other tavern.
When I get back around to that place,
I’ll be completely sober. Meanwhile,
I’m like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.

The day is coming when I fly off,
but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?
Who says words with my mouth?
Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?
I cannot stop asking.

If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn’t come here of my own accord, and I can’t leave that way.
Whoever brought me here, will have to take me home.

This poetry. I never know what I’m going to say.
I don’t plan it.
When I’m outside the saying of it,
I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.


—Rumi
Coleman Barks version

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like this

  

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If anyone asks you

how the perfect satisfaction

of all our longing

will look, lift your face

and say,

Like this.

When someone mentions the gracefulness

of the night sky, climb up on the roof

and dance and say,

Like this?

If anyone wants to know what "spirit" is,

or what "God's fragrance" means,

lean your head toward him or her.

Keep your face there close,

Like this.

When someone quotes the old adage

about clouds gradually uncovering the moon,

slowly loosen knot by knot the strings

of your robe,

Like this?

If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the dead,

don't try to explain the miracle.

Kiss me on the lips,

Like this. Like this.

When someone asks what it means

to "die for love," point

here.

If someone asks how tall I am, frown

and measure with your fingers the space

between the creases on your forehead.

This tall.

The soul sometimes leaves the body, then returns.

When someone doesn't believe that,

walk back into my house.

Like this.

I am a sky where spirits live.

Stare into this deepening blue,

While the breeze says a secret.

Like this.

When someone asks what there is to do,

light the candle in his hand.

Like this.

—Rumi
Coleman Barks version, excerpt

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