My Rumi 8 (the harp and the pearl)

Did you destroy my harp, your eminence? There are ten thousand harps still around here.

Since we have fallen into the hands of love, does it really matter if we lose a harp or flute here and there?

If every lyre or harp in the world is confiscated, who cares? There’s many a hidden harp, my friend.

Their pluck and vibration is reaching to the sky, even if it's falling on deaf ears.

Don't cry if every lamp or candle burns out. There’s still the spark of flint and steel.

Songs are the waves on the face of the sea. But no pearl goes floating on the surface of the ocean.

Know that the grace of every wave is a manifestation of the pearl. The reflection of the reflection is glowing within us.

Yes, songs are the branch that yearns for union. But the branch and the root are not equivalent.

Close your mouth and open that aperture of the heart. This is the way to be played by the absolute spirit.

~transcreated from an Arberry translation (A-13) of a Rumi ghazal (F-110)

My Rumi 7

Your heart has turned to granite, and what good will granite do you?

A wineglass can’t be filled with rock. It breaks into pieces.

So you laugh at the dawn to have Venus fill your desire.

Lust has bared its breast and all discernment flees the scene.

Seeing this, restraint lets loose the reins of wild, wild horses.

With equanimity and insight gone, only passion remains, howling and inflamed.

When cut off from the fine wine, some will look for rotgut in the gutter.

Although their livers turn lethargic, they are fast and reckless on this path.

And because of all this monkey business, we’ve lost our minds to our emotions.

Love is true intent; poetry is the rhythm of its expression.

Beware, for the prince goes galloping every morning on a raid.

Leave this loneliness and separation. Its terror brings about pointless theories and doctrines.

The leader has fled. Crier, be silent. Descend from your minaret.

~transcreated from an Arberry translation (A-301) of a Rumi ghazal (F-2357)

Timeless Truth

Truth is never belief. Identifying with a set of thoughts is not the truth. Truth is only and always experiential, but experiential in this certain nonconceptual indefinable way.

Truth is not experiential in an ordinary way. This is a common misunderstanding and a great occlusion to the truth.

This experience is sudden, previously unknown, and non-abiding in the common way of memory, but abiding in the way of truth. Some call this kensho, or satori, and enlightenment.

As a conceptual experience, the moments before and after will define it. As a nonconceptual experience, it still is and always was, but was forgotten in the process of identifying with the memory.

Awakening is like losing one's virginity to the unborn. Awakening is like experiencing the non-experiential. Insert next paradox here.

One practice emphasizes no thought. Another practice emphasizes being. Other practices emphasize the shock and awe of ego in the world. Any good practice is time well-spent waiting for the timeless.

"Have you ever been experienced?

Well, I have.

Ah, let me prove it to you.

~Jimi"

the first law of self-awareness. awareness is not what you think it is.

let me say this in another way. i was looking at my face reflecting in the bathroom mirror when i suddenly was realizing i didn't have a head.

footnote douglas harding

footnote zen

meditation after satori. deconstruction before kensho.

footnote the divine imagination of koan and sutra

paradoxify, paradoxify, paradoxify

My Rumi 6 (A-218)

There is a fire in my voice for you but my mouth is sealed ten thousand times.

These flames rising from my heart would make one portal for both worlds.

And when this world shall pass away, there’s still this one of ten thousand others.

There are sweet caravans now in motion from that Egypt of the absolute.

Being drunk with love, I know not what profit or what loss is in this exchange.

An eye is radiating pearls of love. The eye of the eye is radiating pearls of being.

I am not imprisoned in this world. Like Jesus, my home is in the turning of the sun.

Thank God That makes this spirit manifest. As this spirit is unmanifest, I am the spirit of the spirit.

Seek that which Shams Tabriz the sage presented me. For that is what we are.

~transcreated from an Arberry translation (A-218) of a Rumi ghazal (F-1754)

My Rumi 5 (A-102)

One by one the drunks are coming. One by one wine-tasters arrive.

Lovers are flirting along the way. The innocent emerge from the garden.

One by one from the field of being and the absolute, potentiality is leaving and becoming is arriving.

Those with robes of gold unearthed from an infinite mine spring forth for the sake of the needy.

The starving and sick, after passing through pastures of love, are showing up nourished and healthy.

The spirit of the true like sunshine from on high is spilling down upon the false.

Hallowed be that place where ripe fruit falls for our blessed mothers even in the middle of the winter.

Our source is grace and our return is grace. From pure awareness to self-awareness, we are transpiring.

~transcreated from an Arberry translation (A-102) of a Rumi ghazal (F-819)

My Rumi 4 (A-7)

The sovereign is here and the sovereign is now. Grace the palace hall. Mark your hands in wonder at the angel from Canaan.

As the heart of the heart of the heart is here, there's no need to name the heart. For in its own presence, what value is the heart except surrender.

Without love I am one who's lost the way. But suddenly the way of love has entered me. I was the mountain and now I'm the hay for the horse of the sovereign.

Whether Turk or Tajik, this captive is as near to either as the heart is to the mind. But the mind never knows the heart.

My friends, good fortune is here. The time has come for letting go our burden. Wisdom is sitting at the helm, ready to unseat all demons.

Get out of your rut. Procrastinate no more. Why are you being helpless? If you don't know the way, ask the hoopoe bird how to get to Solomon's palace.

And when you’ve arrived, make your petitions, tell your secrets, confess your desires. The story goes that Solomon knows the speech of every bird.

Words are the fervent winds dividing the heart. But wisdom is the sun that gathers together the scattered ones.

Enlightenment Road

There are seven stages in the process of enlightenment: absolute awareness, being, myth, scientific materialism, deconstruction, love, sudden self-awareness.

Being is the raw material. Self-awareness is the finished good. Scientific materialism is the basest point, like a myth not knowing it's a dream. Wake up, it's the twenty-first century!

Between materialism and deconstruction is nihilism like the wasteland of the mind. Love is to being as self-awareness is to absolute awareness. Enlightenment is not a dirty word.

To the mind, enlightenment is a process. To the heart, enlightenment is the heart. I shall be telling this ad infinitum: mind is a quality hand tool but love is the hand of the heart of the noumenon.

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My Rumi 3 (A-5)

O lovers, lovers, the presence of oneness and enlightenment is here. That manifesto from eternity is always here: “Original-faced beauty, welcome here.”

Blissful hearts, blissful hearts, joy is joining in our whirling dervish. We have caught its train and it has caught our shroud.

The burning spirit is being served. Hell cowers in the corner and mortal terror gives up the ghost. Our steady wine steward reappears!

The seven stages of heaven are drunk with intensity for you. We are counted as mere points in your work. And my being is your universal being whenever resting at ease.

The sweet voice of the singer, the bells that keep the beat, joy is riding on wild horses. Its whirlwind is swirling our vital essence!

O sound of the sweet-responding flute, your note is like the taste of honey. Your music brings to me the fragrance of devotion night and day.

Begin the beginning again. Play the music of the manifest once more. O sun of lovely being, glory over this beautiful creation.

Now be silent. Do not tear the veil. Drain the vessel of contemplation. Be unknown, be unknown. And acclimate yourself to the absolute compassion of an undivided God.

~transcreated from an Arberry translation (A-5) of a Rumi ghazal (F-34)

Tripping the Noumenal Fantastic

Simmer summer august wind gust, monster maple, ogre oak, trees are scary after living with the mushroom desert folk.

The mind hallucinates while being watches; disidentifying with the mind is called job one.

It’s not the dream that’s waking up but it’s the dreamer returning from its trip of self-awareness.

Like an ouroboric fractal universe, the mind is made to endlessly divide if left to its own device.

Mind may be a tool but love is the hand that holds the tool. And love is the hand of the heart of the noumenon.

footnotes

1. leaving santa fe, we were somewhere on the edge of the catskills when the trees began to stranglehold

2. the mind divides, therefore the mind is dreaming. i am, therefore the mind is deconstructing.

3. self-awareness is the evolutionary thread. the needle is enlightening intent.

4. consciousness gets lost in the mind. getting lost in the mind hurts. no one wants to hurt.

5. in other words, mind is a tool, love is non-doing, being is ouroboros, self-awareness is the sacrifice.

My Rumi 2 (A-3)

Now I know the true beloved, this beauty adorning all experience. It rises into heaven like the spirit of the prophet.

The sun is blotted out by its presence; the universe is chaos in its heart. And by its brightest power, the sea and earth catch fire.

So I ask where is the ladder that I may join with you in heaven. And it answers that the mind is the ladder; place it underneath oneself and rise.

As the mind is placed beneath you, you will step into the stars. And when you know you are the air that climbs the air, already you are there.

Ten thousand ways to realization open suddenly to you. One is waking into heaven every morning like a prayer.

Arberry 3

Today I beheld the beloved, that ornament of every affair; he went off departing to heaven like the spirit of Mustafā. 

The sun is put to shame by his countenance, heaven's sphere is as confused as the heart; through his glow, water and clay are more resplendent than fire.

I said, "Show me the ladder, that I may mount up to heaven." He said, "Your head is the ladder, bring your hcad down under your feet."

When you place your feet on your head, you will place your feet on the head of the stars; when you cleave through the air, set your foot on the air, so, and come!

A hundred ways to heaven's air become manifest to you; you go flying up to heaven every dawning like a prayer.