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On Sun, 28 Jun 2009 15:51:56 -0700 (PDT), Doug <...@littleknownpubs.com
From my upcoming book to be published later this year: It Is What It
Is - The Discourses of Rumi.
Discourse 4.
Someone said: "There is something I have forgotten."
Rumi replied: There is one thing in this world that must never be
forgotten. If you were to forget all else, but did not forget that,
then you would have no reason to worry. But if you performed and
remembered everything else, yet forgot that one thing, then you would
have done nothing whatsoever.
It is just as if a king sent you to the country to carry out a
specific task. If you go and accomplish a hundred other tasks, but do
not perform that particular task, then it is as though you performed
nothing at all. So, everyone comes into this world for a particular
task, and that is their purpose. If they do not perform it, then they
will have done nothing.
All things are assigned a task. The heavens send rain and light for
the herbs of the field to germinate and spring into life. The earth
receives the seeds and bears fruit, it accepts and reveals a hundred
thousand marvels too numerous to tell. The mountains give forth mines
of gold and silver. All these things the heavens, the earth and the
mountains do, yet they do not perform that one thing; that particular
task is performed by us.
"We offered the Trust to the heavens, the earth and the mountains,
They refused to carry it and were afraid of it,
But humans carried it.
Surely they are foolish and sinful."
So, people are given a task, and when they perform it all their
sinfulness and foolishness are dissolved.
You say, “Even if I do not perform that task, look at all the work I
accomplish." You weren’t created for those other tasks! It is just as
if you were given a sword of priceless Indian steel, such as can only
be found in the treasuries of kings, and you were to treat it as a
butcher’s knife for cutting up putrid meat, saying, "I am not letting
this sword stand idle, I am using it in so many useful ways." Or it is
like taking a solid gold bowl to cook turnips in, when a single grain
of that gold could buy a hundred pots. Or it is as if you took a
Damascene dagger of the finest temper to hang a broken gourd from,
saying, "I am making good use of it. I am hanging a gourd on it. I am
not letting this dagger go to waste." How foolish that would be! The
gourd can hang perfectly well from a wooden or iron nail whose value
is a mere pittance, so why use a dagger worth its weight in gold?
A poet once said:
You are more precious than heaven and earth.
What more can I say?
You do not know your own worth.
God says, "I will buy you...your moments, your breaths, your
possessions, your lives. Spend them on Me. Turn them over to Me, and
their price is divine freedom, grace and wisdom. This is your worth in
My eyes." But if we keep our life for ourselves, then we lose what
treasures we have been granted. Like the person who hammered the
dagger worth its weight in gold to the wall in order to hang a gourd:
Their great fortune was reduced to a nail.
Still you offer another excuse, saying, "But I apply myself to lofty
tasks. I study law, philosophy, logic, astronomy, medicine and the
rest." Well, for whose sake but your own do you study these? If it is
law, it is so nobody can steal a loaf from you, strip you of your
clothes, or kill you – in short, it is for your own security. If it is
astronomy, the phases of the spheres and their influence upon the
earth, whether they are light or heavy, portending tranquility or
danger, all these things are concerned with your own situation,
serving your own ends. If it is medicine, it is related to your own
health and also serves you. When you consider this matter well, the
root of all your studies is yourself. All these lofty tasks are but
branches of you.
If these subjects are filled with so many marvels and worlds of
knowledge without end, consider what worlds you pass through who are
the root! If your branches have their laws, their medicines, their
histories, think of what transpires within you who are the source;
what spiritual laws and medicines affect your inward future and fate,
what histories portray your struggles of the heart!
For Soul there is other food besides this food of sleeping and eating,
but you have forgotten that other food. Night and day you nourish only
your body. Now, this body is like a horse, and this lower world is its
stable. The food the horse eats is not the food of the rider. You are
the rider and have your own sleeping and eating, your own enjoyment.
But since the animal has the upper hand, you lag behind in the horse’s
stable. You cannot be found among the ranks of kings and princes in
the eternal world. Your heart is there, but since your body has the
upper hand, you are subject to its rule and remain its prisoner.
When Majnun, as the story goes, was making for his beloved Laila’s
home, as long as he was fully conscious he drove his camel in that
direction. But when for a moment he became absorbed in the thought of
Laila and forgot his camel, the camel turned in its tracks toward the
village where its foal was kept. On coming to his senses, Majnun found
that he had gone back a distance of two day’s journey. For three
months he continued this way, coming no closer to his goal. Finally he
jumped off the camel, saying, "This camel is the ruin of me!" and
continued on foot, singing:
My camel’s desire is now behind,
My own desire is before.
Our purposes were crossed,
We can agree no more.
Burhan al-Din was once greeted by someone, who said, "I have heard
praises of you sung by friends." Burhan al-Din answered, "Wait until I
meet your friends to see whether they know me well enough to praise
me. If they know me only by word of mouth, then they do not truly know
me. For words do not endure. Syllables and sounds do not endure. This
body, these lips and this mouth will not endure. All these things are
mere accidents of the moment. But if they know me by my works and they
know my essential self, then I know they are able to praise me, and
that praise will go where it belongs."
This is like the story they tell of a certain king. This king
entrusted his son to a team of learned scholars. In due course, they
taught him the sciences of astrology, geomancy, and the interpretation
of signs, until he became a complete master, despite his utter
stupidity and dullness of wit.
One day the king took a ring in his fist and put his son to the test.
"Come, tell me what I am holding in my fist."
"What you are holding is round, yellow, inscribed and hollow," the
prince answered.
"You have given all the signs correctly," the king said. "Now say what
it is."
"It must be a sieve." the prince replied.
"What?" cried the king. "You know all the minute details, which would
baffle the minds of anyone. How is it that out of all your powerful
learning and knowledge, the small point has escaped you that a sieve
will not fit in a fist?"
In this same way, the great scholars of the age split hairs on details
of all matters. They know perfectly and completely those sciences that
do not concern Soul. But as for what is truly of importance and
touches us more closely than anything else, namely our own Self, this
your great scholars do not know. They make statements about
everything, saying, "This is true and that is not true. This is right
and that is wrong." Yet, they do not know their own Self, whether it
is true or false, pure or impure.
Now being hollow and yellow, inscribed and circular, these features
are accidental; cast the ring into the fire and none of them will
remain. It becomes its essential self, purified of all appearances. So
it is with the knowledge of scholars; what they know has no connection
with the essential reality that alone exists when all these "signs"
are gone. They speak wisely, expound at great length, and finally
pronounce that what the king has in his hand is a sieve. They have no
knowledge about the root of the matter: life’s purpose.
I am a bird. I am a nightingale. If they say to me, "Make some other
kind of sound," I cannot. My tongue is what it is. I cannot speak
otherwise. However, those who learn the song of birds are not birds
themselves – on the contrary, they are the enemies of birds and their
captors. They sing and whistle to be mistaken for birds. Ask them to
produce a different sound and they can do so, because that sound is
merely assumed by them. It is not truly their own. Like the scholars,
they are able to sing other songs because they have learned to rob
those songs, and to show off a different tune stolen from every
breast.
Commentary:
Once again, an apparently casual comment becomes the focus of Rumi’s
lesson. Indeed, it leads us into the heart of his teaching.
We have forgotten.
We have forgotten one thing so important that it makes all else
insignificant.
But what is that one thing? Rumi does not say.
He does not declare what it is, but he tells us that it is so
important that it cannot be carried by the earth or the mountains.
Only human beings can bear it, and when we recognize and accept this
task then all our sins and foolishness are turned aright. Everything
in life makes sense in relationship once we remember this purpose.
Rumi gives us another clue:
God says,
“I will buy you...your moments, your breaths, your possessions, your
lives.
“Spend them on Me.
“Turn them over to Me, and their price is divine freedom, grace and
wisdom.
“This is your worth in My eyes.”
When we think about ourselves, worry over our needs, or work for our
own gains, we lose the divine freedom, grace and wisdom that God has
granted us. We become just a creature like any other animal on this
planet. We forget our birthright and the meaning of our lives. We do
not recognize our true value. Our life becomes like a valuable
Damascene dagger used to hold a worthless gourd.
Clearly this One Thing is at the core of who we are and why we are
here, but Rumi will not say what it is. In fact, he criticizes those
who act as if they know:
They make statements about everything, saying,
“This is true and that is not true. This is right and that is wrong.’
Yet, they do not know their own Self, whether it is true or false,
pure or impure.
Think about how often we hear people trying to tell us The Answer.
They speak as if possessing great knowledge and authority, and tell
everyone the great Answer, but their words do not fit.
They speak wisely, expound at great length,
and finally pronounce that what the king has in his hand is a sieve.
They have no knowledge about the root of the matter: life’s purpose.
Rumi is a different kind of spiritual teacher. He cannot preach dogma.
He cannot give out doctrines. He has heard the criticisms against him,
but he cannot change who he is.
If they say to me, “Make some other kind of sound,” I cannot.
My tongue is what it is. I cannot speak otherwise.
He cannot tell people the Answer, because he knows those kinds of
answers are not what they seem. They are songs stolen from real birds,
meaning true spiritual lovers. They are songs that have been robbed
and then are used to mimic and pretend and lure people away from
asking the silent questions.
Why are we here? Who are we?
These are the questions we must never forget, because the answers are
something we must awaken to.
This awakening is nothing less than God’s embrace, and it is here
where we find our own song.
It is a song that only we can sing.
Doug.
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