Rumi: "That which frees you from your tiny self"

The Persians love poetry so much that one 10th century poet, Rabia Balkhi, wrote his last poem in his own blood. The Persian Sufi poetic tradition spans 1,000 years and is part of a living tradition within the larger tradition of Persian mysterical poetry. Jalal al-Din Rumi, born in 1207, was one of the first major Persian poets to receive attention in the West. About 80 years ago his poems were translated into accurate, word-for-word Victorian prose (English is closer to Persian than either Arabic or Turkish); later reworkings by poets such as Robert Bly took more creative license.

You are like the sun–
Come!
Without your face, the garden is yellow and pale–
Come!
Without you, the world is like dust–
Come!
Without you, the circle of love turns cold.
Come! ( The Missing Sun)

Rumi was born in Afghanistan, and fled along the Silk Road to Turkey when the Mongols invaded in the 13th century. He wrote in Persian, his native language, and his works include 30,000 verses of impassioned lyric poetry and an additional 20,000 verses contained in his master work, the Mathnawi. This is a tapestry of Aesopian fables, everyday life scenes of his time, revelations from the Koran, and metaphysics in the Sufi tradition. His work is a synthesis of all Islamic culture drawing on Arab traditions through Hellenistic, Christian, Jewish, and Persian cultures.

Rumi was regarded as a “completed” human being who embodies divine attributes.

Reason said, “We live in a world
of six directions – and that’s it!”

Love replied, “There is a path beyond,
and I have traveled it many times.”

Reason saw a market and set up shop,
but love trades in another currency altogether.
(Trading in Love's Currency)

Some Muslims considered Rumi a second Mohammad, Christians as a second Christ, and Jews as a second Moses. Sufis, the most spiritual of Islamic traditions, are drawn to the mystical and expound a religion based on Love. In Persia, particularly, the metaphor of Love, the Lover, and the Beloved was developed so vividly that metaphoric significance sometimes was mistaken for sensuality.

At breakfast tea a beloved asked her lover,
“Who do you love more, yourself or me?”

“From my head to my foot I have become you.
Nothing remains of me but my name.
You have your wish. Only you exist.
I’ve disappeared like a drop of vinegar
in an ocean of honey.” (The Ruby)

For the Sufi, love is the cause of existence, “the hand behind the puppets.” Recognition of the Beloved (or Friend) in human form is a recognition of spiritual gifts Allah bestows on His creatures. Friendship and love are essential values, the celebration of “hereness.”

In love’s circle there’s another kind of serenity;
in love’s wine, another kind of hangover,
What you learned in school is one thing–
love is something entirely different. (Something Different)

In poetry, very little is what it appears to be. Sufi poets, especially, inhabits many worlds simultaneously, “worlds within worlds.” Their favorite themes are spiritual separation and solitude; the experience of connectness and unity; and passion and immediacy--in other words, “that which frees you from your tiny self.”

Don’t go away, come near.
Don’t be faithless, be faithful.
Find the antidote in the venom.
Come to the root of the root of yourself.
(The Root of the Root of Your Self)

Sufi works were sung or recited with music at Sufi gatherings as an outward expression of a spiritual meditation. Poems are often written in quatrains (4-line poems) with extensive symbolism. Wine = divine love; drunkenness = ecstasy of direct knowledge of God; a tavern = a Sufi gathering place; a tavern-goer = lower class, poverty, humility; rogues or profligates = Sufi dervishes. The language of love = the longing for divine nearness. When you lose yourself, you will reach the Beloved (God).

Heart came on solid footing with breath refined
to warn the best of communities.
Heart placed your head
like a pen on the page of love.

We are joyous pennants in your just wind.
Master, to where do you dance? (Love Is a Stranger)


Sources: The Essential Rumi (tr. by Coleman Barks); Love Is a Stranger (tr. by Kabir Helminski); Love’s Alchemy, Poems from the Sufi Tradition (tr. by David and Sabrineh Fideler)

Tales of Love and War

“The worldview of a people, though normally left unspoken in the daily business of buying and selling ... is to be found in a culture’s stories, myths, and rituals.” (Thomas Cahill, The Gifts of the Jews).

The epic of pre-Islamic Persia (Iran) is the Shahnameh, or Epic of Kings, a collection of heroic tales written by Abolqasem Ferdowsi at the end of the 10th century C.E. This monumental effort took 30 years to complete and, sadly, the poet died in poverty and embittered by royal neglect in 1020 C.E. Significantly, the work is written in Persian, even though Arabic was the primary language of government and education at the time.

The Shahnameh deals with heroes and kings, but it is much more than a warrior-hero story or a collection of romantic tales of love and war. The epic is a window revealing the people and the rich culture of pre-Islamic [pre-7th century] Persia. On one level, it is a patriotic chronicle of the central role of monarchy in Persian history. On another level, it is a revelation of human strengths and foibles and a subtle discussion of authority and a not-so-subtle critique of the institution of monarchy.

The story of the hero, Rostam, for example, allows the reader a glimpse of an all-too-human hero’s decided ambivalence about the demands of heroism. Faced with the rescue of his horse, Rakhsh, Rostam wonders: “How can I stand against the Turks, and how can I traverse the desert alone?” Sir Lancelot would never utter such a thought!

Rostam’s personal ethics are at times at odds with the court. He insists that he is his own man, and constantly shows an independent streak that puts him outside of authority. He lives “on the edge,” like Dirty Harry, but he is sought after as a subduer of demons, like Superman. Rostam is also a cunning hero who plays tricks to win victories: “A wise man should not seek to be underhanded or unjust ... but keep your spear points dipped in poison, for wherever there is a kingdom, there is warfare, however great the realm may be.”

This advice Rostam gives to his king! The epic also contains revealing put-downs of Arab culture. At the time of its writing there was a good amount of antipathy between the Persians and the Arabized Turks and other Arab states: “You can buy the world with treasure and trouble, but you can’t cut Chinese silk with an axe." (Persian proverb)

To me it’s interesting that, after the 1979 Revolution in Iran, when the Shah stepped down and Khoumeni established a government based on an extremely fundamentalist form of Islam, the Shahnameh was banned from schools as un-Islamic. Fanatic Muslims even desecrated Ferdowsi’s tomb.

Still, the epic has survived to be considered one of the great works of literature, not only in Iran but by educated people world-wide.

Reference: Rostam, Tales of Love and War from Persia’s Book of Kings, Abolqasem Ferdowsi, translated by Dick Davis.

What did the simple folk do?

I’m a history nut, I admit it. Lately I’ve been reading ancient history (Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Persian Empire, etc.). For thousands of years in the Middle East, ever since the Sumerians settled between the Tigris and Euphrates river and ancient Egypt recognized a need to protect trade routes and control the Fertile Crescent, armies have been invading the flat, invitingly fertile lands of what is now Egypt, Iran, Syria, Palestine, and Israel.

Such conquering forces were seeking a better life and they attained it by force. The Semitic Assyrians overran the peaceful non-Semitic Sumerian civilization, which fell to the Babylonians, which succumbed to the Assyrians... and on and on until by the 14th century B.C. three empires controlled the area now termed the Middle East: Egypt, the Hittites (Syria), and the Assyrians. Ever since then, the maps of the Middle East have been constantly redrawn as various kings jockeyed for power.

Every nation wanted to survive, and war was the path. That meant constant relocation of peoples – or worse, subjection by force or annihilation as their leaders struggled to protect themselves economically and militarily.

But the other day I was admiring a miniature gold sculpture (Persian, 4th C. B.C.) of a chariot and four horses when I suddenly wondered: in the midst of the destruction of armies and cities, what did the “little guys” do when they were caught in the middle of rampaging armies?

Mostly they were slaughtered or enslaved.

One great conqueror, the Persian Cyrus the Great, thought about this as well. When he conquered the Babylonian Empire (and almost everything else from Afghanistan to Libya), he developed the world’s first charter of civil rights. This was a series of decrees incised on a round clay cylinder, now known as the Cyrus Cylinder. (The original resides in the British Museum; a copy is displayed at the United Nations.)

The Cyrus Cylinder (note the date--539 B.C.!) has three main premises: (1) establishment of racial, linguistic, and religious equality among the peoples of the Empire; (2) directing that slaves and all deported peoples (particularly the Jews) be allowed to return to their homeland rather than be massacred or treated as slaves or second-class citizens; and (3) restoration of all destroyed temples of the various religions.

The following day a news article on the killing of civilians in Gaza sparked my interest; this article included a quotation from what is now termed Modern International Law, which reads in part: “International humanitarian law places no prohibition of fighting in urban, but requires parties to take care to spare the civilian populace.”

It has been 2,500 years since the Cyrus charter of human rights was written.