Celebrating Rumi

Rev. Abhi Janamanchi

September 23, 2007

OPENING WORDS:

Come! But don't join us without your music.

We have a celebration here.

Rise and beat the drums.

We are Mansur who said, "I am God!"

We are in ecstasy – drunk, but not from wine made of grapes.

Whatever your thoughts are about us, we are far, far from them.

There is light now, there is light, there is light.

This is true love which means farewell to the mind.

There is farewell today, farewell.

Today each flaming heart is a friend of music.

Longing for your lips, my heart pours out of my mouth.

HUSH!

You are made of feeling and thought and passion;

The rest is nothing but flesh and bone.

We are the soul of the world, not heavy or sagging like the body.

We are the spirit's treasure, not bound to this earth, to time or space.

Love is our mother.

We were born of love. Live in love's ecstasy for love is all that xists.

CHALICE LIGHTING: from Rumi

We kindle the chalice this morning

In honor of the Sufi poet and mystic, Rumi, who said:

Plant the love of the holy ones within your spirit;

Don't give your heart to anything

But the love of those whose hearts are glad.

Don't go to the neighborhood of despair;

There is hope.

Don't do in the direction of darkness;

Suns exist.

Become the Light.

INTRODUCTION:

September 30 marks the 800th birth anniversary of Jelaluddi Rumi, the Persian Sufi poet and mystic. Rumi was born in Afghanistan but at an early age moved to Konya, Turkey with his family. His father was a theologian, jurist, and mystic of uncertain lineage. After his father's death, Rumi became the sheikh of the dervish community in Konya.

In 1244, Rumi came into contact with Shams Tabriz, a wandering mystic, and thus began his inner transformation. Rumi and Shams became inseparable. Their friendship is a source of mystery and speculation. Then, Shams disappeared. This led to Rumi's transformation as a mystical artist. Shams returned after a few months and stayed with Rumi until December 1248 after which he was never to be seen again.

The mystery of his friend's disappearance consumed Rumi until he realized that he and Shams were one. He wrote, "Why should I seek? I am the same as he. His essence speaks through me. I have been looking for myself!"

Rumi felt that Shams was writing the poems through him. He called the huge collections of his odes and poems, The Works of Shams Tabriz.

Rumi had a couple more companions - Saladin and Husam - to whom he addressed and dictated his later poems. Rumi died on December 17, 1273.

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In Rumi, I found a mystic, a saint, a lover of God, a poet of astonishing gifts, who made space at the table for the likes of me, a poetically challenged, intellectually verbose, and spiritually restless person. Rumi, through his poetry, welcomes skeptics and believers, mystics and rationalists, and followers of all religions and no religion. He writes for the atheist and the believer, the secularist and the sensualist, the spiritually grounded and the deluded. He speaks to those lost in pride and arrogance, mired in despair and hopelessness. He acknowledges the emotional realities of the fearful, the despairing, the hopeless, and the lost. He was a brilliant philosopher, a profound observer of human nature, a keen analyst of the mind.

Rumi spoke in a language familiar to the religiously orthodox. But his methods and style were shockingly unorthodox. In his poems and stories, he uses humor and sarcasm, at times including sexually explicit stories to grab the attention of the reader. He seems to understand and love people as much as he loves God.

Of his craft, Rumi writes, speaking maybe to the God who is All, aka, the Beloved, or a Friend: "In your light I learn how to love, in your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest, where no one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art." For those who consider his work, he invites us to deepen the craft of receiving: "Listen to presences inside poems; let them take you where they will. Follow those private hints, and never leave the premises."

Rumi comes with the bad news that we don't live in a "shining city on the hill" as we thought we did. We are not as wonderful or perfect as we think we are. In reality, we are deaf, blind, and naked. We have lost the ability to acknowledge life's most important gifts: we don't know what our death has to teach us; we don't neither recognize nor understand our own failings and flaws; we don't acknowledge the gifts we have been given or what we possess. We display no gratitude and do not delight in our own being.

Rumi has nothing but pity and disdain for those who look at the world around and within themselves and do not understand that what they are seeing is an illusion. The world is a dream, a prison, a trap, foam thrown up by the ocean. But it is not what it appears to be.

The prophets come to awaken the unawakened, the unaware. And while Rumi describes the human condition in unsentimental ways, he also embraces the human condition as the perfect ground for spiritual development.

Rumi uses the wine tavern as a metaphor for the inner transformation that needs to occur for the soul to find its way home. The tavern has many wines and being human means entering this place where entrancing varieties of desire are served. But after sometime in the tavern, a point comes, a memory of elsewhere, of home, and the drunks must set off and begin the return. The tavern is a kind of sweet hell that humans enjoy and suffer and then push off in search of truth.

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 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.

There's a strange frenzy in my head,

of birds flying,

each particle circulating on its own.

Is the one I love everywhere?

Drunks fear the police

but the police are drunk too.

People in this town love them both

like different chess pieces.

On Silence:

Many of Rumi's poems conclude with silence, khamosh. Rumi keeps asking Husam, "Who's making this music?" He sometimes gives the wording over to the invisible flute player.

"Silence is an ocean," Rumi says

"Speech is a river.

When the ocean is searching for you,

don't walk to the language river. Listen to the ocean,

and bring your talky business to an end.

Traditional words are just babbling

in that presence, and babbling is a substitute for sight."

Emptying Our Heart:

Why does the melody of the reed flute move us? Because holes have been cut in its heart, permitting it to cry. Similarly, only when a human heart has been emptied of false apprehensions and made hollow like the reed, can one play one's own melody.

Language and music, Rumi says, are possible only because we're empty, hollow, and separated from the source.

The Reed Flute's Song:

Listen to the story told by the reed,

of being separated.

Since I was cut from the reedbed,

I have made this crying sound.

Anyone apart from someone he loves

understands what I say.

Anyone pulled from a source

longs to go back.

At any gathering I am there,

mingling in the laughing and grieving,

a friend to each, but few

will hear the secrets hidden within the notes. No ears for that.

Body flowing out of spirit,

spirit up from body; no concealing

that mixing. But it’s not given us to see the soul.

The reed flute

is fire, not wind. Be that empty.

Rumi says

"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."

The prophet said that truth has declared

"I am not hidden in what is high or low

Nor in the earth nor in the skies nor throne.

This is certainty, o beloved:

I am hidden in the heart of the faithful.

If you seek me, seek in these hearts."

Only Breath:

Rumi says:

"Not Christian or Jew or Muslim,

not Hindu, Buddhist, sufi, or zen.

Not any religion or cultural system.

I am not from the East or the West,

not out of the ocean or up from the ground,

not natural or ethereal,

not composed of elements at all.

I do not exist,

am not an entity in this world or the next,

did not descend from Adam or Eve

or any origin story.

My place is placeless,

a trace of the traceless.

Neither body or soul.

I belong to the beloved,

have seen the two worlds as one

and that one call to and know,

first, last, outer, inner, only that

breath breathing human being.

There is a way between voice

and presence where information flows.

In disciplined silence it opens.

With wandering talk, it closes."

Rumi has an amazing capacity to describe the spiritual conditions of the human heart using ordinary, concrete, and vivid imagery. He captures beautifully the frustration we feel when we want something important but lack the focus to get it. While Rumi believes that our task in this life is to love God with our heart and soul, he also sees how badly we do that; how weak and unfocused we are in our spiritual efforts. But that's not a problem for Rumi. He says that understanding our helplessness is an important part of our development. We don't have to depend on ourselves. We can depend on something more powerful than we are.

Rumi says:

"No lover wants union with the Beloved

without the Beloved also wanting the lover.

Lightning from here strikes there

When you begin to love God,

God is loving you.

A clapping sound does not come from one hand.

A thirsty man calls out, 'Delicious water, where are you?'

While the water moans,

'Where is the water-drinker?'

The thirst in our souls is the attraction

put out by the Water itself.

We belong to It.

And It to us.

God's wisdom made us lovers of one another

In fact all the particles of the world

are in love and looking for lovers." (CB - 127 - Soul of Rumi)

Rumi says:

"Gamble everything for love,

if you’re a true human being.

If not, leave this gathering.

Half-heartedness doesn't reach into majesty.

You set out to find God,

but then you keep stopping for long periods

at mean-spirited roadhouses."

The courage that is needed to go on this journey is formidable. But Rumi has a profoundly hopeful way of acknowledging the full range of human feeling that accompanies a spiritual journey: including despair, grief, and painful weakness.

Rumi says:

"Don’t grieve.

Anything you lose

comes round in another form.

The child weaned from mother's milk

now drinks wine and honey mixed.

God's joy moves from unmarked box to

unmarked box, from cell to cell.

As rainwater, down into flowerbed.

As roses up from ground."

On Love: Abhi

Love or ishq is certainly the central theme of Rumi's works. In Rumi's view, Love totally dominates and determines the Sufi's inward and psychological states. But Love must be experienced to be understood. It cannot be explained in words, any more than the true nature of one's attachment to a beloved of this world can be set down on paper. Love is fundamentally an experience situated beyond the confines of articulated thought - but an experience more real than the universe and all it contains.

Rumi says:

"O Love, O pure deep Love, be here, be now,

Be all – worlds dissolve into your stainless endless radiance,

Frail living leaves burn with your brighter than cold stares –

Make me your servant, your breath, your core.

What is the meaning of love?"

Rumi says:

"Both light and shadow

are the dance of Love.

Love has no cause;

it is the astrolabe of God's secrets.

Lover and Loving are inseparable

and timeless.

Although I may try to describe Love

when I experience it I am speechless.

Although I may try to write about Love

I am rendered helpless;

my pen breaks and the paper slips away

at the ineffable place

where Lover, Loving and Loved are one.

Every moment is made glorious

by the light of Love.

The path of romantic love is seldom smooth. Neither

does the spiritual path to experiencing God's love."

Rumi says:

"Are you fleeing from Love because of a single humiliation?

What do you know of Love except the name?

Love has a hundred forms of pride and disdain,

and is gained by a hundred means of persuasion.

Since Love is loyal, it purchases one who is loyal:

it has no interest in a disloyal companion.

The human being resembles a tree;

Its root is a covenant with God:

that root must be cherished with all one's might.

A weak covenant is a rotten root, without grace or fruit.

Though the boughs and leaves of the date palm are green,

greenness brings no benefit if the root is corrupt.

If a branch is without green leaves, yet has a good root, a hundred

leaves will put forth their hands in the end."

Love is desire and need. Although God is beyond all need, yet at the level of God's attributes, God said, "I loved to be known, so I created the world." As a result, Love courses throughout the world's arteries. All movement and activity result from that original Love; the world's forms are but the reflections of its unique reality.

Rumi says:

"The temple of love is not love itself;

True love is the treasure,

Not the walls about it.

Do not admire the decoration,

But involve yourself in the essence.

The perfume that invades and touches you-

The beginning and the end.

Discovered, this replaces all else,

The apparent and the unknowable.

Time and space are slaves to this presence."

We can't understand the presence from beyond us, but stories can give us glimpses. We only have legends about those who can experience the fire. Fullness doesn't need bread, but we don't usually stop eating long enough to discover this. A conversation can make you full, without anything in your belly. We can perceive beauty when we're ready. But we wait for outside sights to trigger our reaction. The secret but brilliant numinous experience is always lurking in each of us. Sometimes we glimpse it, and then we forget. Our goal should not be to experience this presence all the time, since it is normal to forget.

Story Water is an exquisitely deep and clear poem, with great inspiration for finding the numinous, the beautiful, and the spiritual essence in our daily life and also being reminded through poems and stories like the one that will follow this poem.

Story Water - Abhi

A story is like water that you heat for your bath.

It takes messages between the fire and your skin. It lets them meet, and it cleans you!

Very few can sit down in the middle of the fire itself like a salamander or Abraham.

We need intermediaries.

A feeling of fullness comes, but usually it takes some bread to bring it.

Beauty surrounds us, but usually we need to be walking in a garden to know it.

The body itself is a screen to shield and partially reveal the light that's blazing inside your presence.

Water, stories, the body, all the things we do, are mediums that hide and show what's hidden.

Study them, and enjoy this being washed with a secret we sometimes know, and then not.

Moses & the Shepherd

Moses heard a shepherd on the road praying, "God, where are you? I want to help you, to fix your shoes and comb your hair. I want to wash your clothes and pick the lice off. I want to bring you milk, to kiss your little hands and feet when it's time for you to go to bed. I want to sweep your room and keep it neat. God, my sheep and goats are yours. All I can say, remembering you, is ayyyy and ahhhhhhhhh."

Moses could stand it no longer. "Who are you talking to?"

"The one who made us, and made the earth and made the sky."

"Don’t talk about shoes and socks with God! And what's this with your little hands and feet? Such blasphemous familiarity sounds like you’re chatting with your uncles. Only something that grows needs milk. Only someone with feet needs shoes. Not God! Even if you meant God's human representatives, as when God said, "I was sick, and you did not visit me; even then this tone would be foolish and irreverent. Use appropriate terms. 'Body-and-birth' language are right for us on this side of the river, but not for addressing the origin, not for Allah."

The shepherd repented and tore his clothes and sighed and wandered out into the desert.

A sudden revelation came then to Moses.

God’s voice: "You have separated me from one of my own. Did you come as a Prophet to unite, or to sever? I have given each being a separate and unique way of seeing and knowing and saying that knowledge. Ways of worshiping are not to be ranked as better or worse than one another.

Hindus do Hindu things. The Dravidian Muslims in India do what they do. It's all praise, and it's all right. It's not me that's glorified in acts of worship. It's the worshipers! I don't hear the words they say. I look inside at the humility -- not the language. Forget phraseology. Burn up your thinking and your forms of expression!

Moses, those who pay attention to ways of behaving and speaking are one sort. Lovers who burn are another.

Don’t scold the Lover. The "wrong" way he talks is better than a hundred "right" ways of others. It doesn't matter which direction you point your prayer rug! The ocean diver doesn't need snowshoes! The love-religion has no code or doctrine. Only God. So the ruby has nothing engraved on it! It doesn't need any markings."

God began speaking deeper mysteries to Moses. Vision and words, which cannot be recorded here, poured into and through him. He left himself and came back. He went to eternity and came back here. Many times this happened.

Moses ran after the shepherd. He followed the bewildered footprints, in one place moving straight like a castle across a chessboard. In another, sideways like a bishop. Moses finally caught up with him.

"I was wrong. God has revealed to me that there are no rules for worship. Say whatever and however your loving tells you to. Your sweet blasphemy is the truest devotion. Through you a whole world is freed.

Loosen your tongue and don't worry what comes out. It's all the light of the spirit."

The shepherd replied,

"Moses, Moses, I've gone beyond even that. You applied the whip and my horse shied and jumped out of itself. The divine nature and my human nature came together.

Bless your scolding hand and your arm. I can't say what has happened. What I’m saying now is not my real condition. It can't be said."

The shepherd grew quiet.

When you look in a mirror, you see yourself, not the state of the mirror.

The flute player puts breath into a flute, and who makes the music? Not the flute. The flute player!

Whenever you speak praise or thanksgiving to God,

It's always like this dear shepherd's simplicity.

When you eventually see through the veils to how things really are,

You will keep saying again and again,

"This is certainly not like we thought it was!"

Self & Annihilation of Self

To find our true self, we must pass beyond our illusory self. Rumi describes this journey using several metaphors, each of which deserves our attention. Our existence, or ego, or selfhood must be annihilated (fanaa), so that we can reclaim our true self, which is existence within God. All of our individual traits and habits, everything that pertains to our existence, needs to be completely obliterated. Then we realize that everything we derive is from God and that we are nothing but a ray of God's attributes manifesting the hidden treasures.

IF YOU CAN DISENTANGLE yourself from your selfish self

all heavenly spirits will stand ready to serve you

If you can finally hunt down your own beastly self

you have the right to claim Solomon's kingdom

You are that blessed soul who belongs to the garden of paradise

Is it fair to let yourself fall apart in a shattered house

You are the bird of happiness in the magic of existence

What a pity when you let yourself be chained and caged

But if you can break free from this dark prison named body

soon you will see you are the sage and the fountain of life.

The Story of My Life

I was ready to tell the story of my life but the ripple of tears and the agony of my heart wouldn't let me.

I began to stutter saying a word here and there

and all along I felt as tender as a crystal ready to be shattered.

In this stormy sea we call life all the big ships come apart board by board.

How can I survive riding a lonely little boat with no oars and no arms.

My boat did finally break by the waves and I broke free as I tied myself to a single board.

Though the panic is gone I am now offended why should I be so helpless rising with one wave and falling with the next.

I don't know if I am nonexistence while I exist

but I know for sure when I am I am not

but when I am not then I am

Now how can I be a skeptic about the resurrection and coming to life again.

Since in this world I have many times like my own imagination died and been born again.

That is why after a long agonizing life as a hunter

I finally let go and got hunted down and became free - Ghazal 1419 Translated by Nader Khalili

BENEDICTION - Time to go Home

Late and starting to rain, it's time to go home.

We've wandered long enough in empty buildings.

I know it's tempting to stay and meet those new people.

I know it's even more sensible to spend the night here with them,

but I want to go home.

We've seen enough beautiful places with signs on them saying This is God's House.

We've seen enough beautiful places with signs on them saying This is God's House.

That's seeing the grain like the ants do, without the work of harvesting.

Let's leave grazing to cows and go where we know what everyone really intends,

where we can walk around without clothes on.

RESOURCES:

The Essential Rumi by Coleman Barks

Rumi: The Path of Love by Camille & Kabir Helminski

The Sufi Path of Love: The Essential Teachings of Rumi by William Chittick