The Essential Rumi

by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi

sama being the deep listening to poetry and its surround of music and movement.

Every object, every being, is a jar full of delight. Be a connoisseur, and taste with caution.

But listen to me: for one moment, quit being sad. Hear blessings dropping their blossoms around you. God.

To an Egyptian, the Nile looks bloody. To an Israelite, clear. What is a highway to one is disaster to the other.

Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

There’s hidden sweetness in the stomach’s emptiness. We are lutes, no more, no less. If the soundbox is stuffed full of anything, no music. If the brain and the belly are burning clean with fasting, every moment a new song comes out of the fire. The fog clears, and new energy makes you run up the steps in front of you. Be emptier and cry like reed instruments cry. Emptier, write secrets with the reed pen. When you’re full of food and drink, an ugly metal statue sits where your spirit should. When you fast, good habits gather like friends who want to help. Fasting is Solomon’s ring. Don’t give it to some illusion and lose your power, but even if you have, if you’ve lost all will and control, they come back when you fast, like soldiers appearing out of the ground, pennants flying above them. A table descends to your tents, Jesus’ table. Expect to see it, when you fast, this table spread with other food, better than the broth of cabbages.

When the Prophet’s ray of intelligence struck the dim-witted man he was with, the man got very happy, and talkative. Soon, he began unmannerly raving. This is the problem with a selflessness that comes quickly, as with wine. If the wine drinker has a deep gentleness in him, he will show that, when drunk. But if he has hidden anger and arrogance, those appear, and since most people do, wine is forbidden to everyone.

If a light goes out in one house, that doesn’t affect the next house. This is the story of the animal soul, not the divine soul. The sun shines on every house. When it goes down, all houses get dark.

You are not God’s mouthpiece. Try to be an ear, and if you do speak, ask for explanations.

The source of your arrogance and anger is your lust and the rootedness of that is in your habits.

Always check your inner state with the lord of your heart. Copper doesn’t know it’s copper, until it’s changed to gold.

Learn from Ali how to fight without your ego participating.

There are many winds full of anger, and lust and greed. They move the rubbish around, but the solid mountain of our true nature stays where it’s always been.

I give you this opened heart as God gives gifts: the poison of your spit has become the honey of friendship.”

In December of 1273 when Rumi died, representatives of every major religion came to his funeral. In the midst of the crusades and violent sectarian conflict he said, “I go into the Muslim mosque and the Jewish synagogue and the Christian church and I see one altar.” And he made it clear in other places that someone who considers religion or nation an important human category is in danger of severing the heart from its ability to act compassionately. This is a radical idea now, but Rumi held the conviction in the thirteenth century with such deep gentleness that its truth was recognized.

If you are rich and full-fed, don’t laugh at the impulsiveness of the poor. They were not acting from their souls, but they were acting out of some necessity.

Remember there’s only one reason to do anything: a meeting with the Friend is the only real payment.

Some Hindus have an elephant to show. No one here has ever seen an elephant. They bring it at night to a dark room. One by one, we go in the dark and come out saying how we experience the animal. One of us happens to touch the trunk. “A water-pipe kind of creature.” Another, the ear. “A very strong, always moving back and forth, fan-animal.” Another, the leg. “I find it still, like a column on a temple.” Another touches the curved back. “A leathery throne.” Another, the cleverest, feels the tusk. “A rounded sword made of porcelain.” He’s proud of his description. Each of us touches one place and understands the whole in that way. The palm and the fingers feeling in the dark are how the senses explore the reality of the elephant. If each of us held a candle there, and if we went in together, we could see it.

Muhammad could mediate for every kind of disgrace, because he looked so unswervingly at God. His eye medicine came from his ever-expanding into God.