After Transcreating My Ninth Rumi

After nine Rumi transcreations, one of the things I’ve newly noticed: each stanza (couplet, verse, whatever) is locked into another. I’ve read there is a question as to the unity of a Rumi ghazal, and this is one of the reasons why Coleman Barks edits the ghazal in his versions. 

I’ve found the opposite to be true. In fact, I find that a subsequent verse will send me back to a previous one to revise, after seeing the poem was going somewhere I hadn’t imagined. Like building a bridge one slat at a time, and returning to a previous one to correct the slack. 

In my Rumi 9 transcreation, the first 8 verses contain paradox after paradox about fish and the sea but slowly builds into something like a portrait of an enlightened fish. But verse 9, to me, is the key of the entire poem. 

Barks speaks of Walt Whitman when talking of changing Rumi into free verse, and verse 9 reminds me of Whitman’s sudden stop in Song of Myself, when after a litany of Whitmanic desription, he says: ”Enough! Enough! Enough! / Somehow I have been stunn’d. Stand back!” 

After all the paradox, Rumi says something like this: “How long shall you speak in riddles? Paradox bewilders the mind. Now speak clearly so the heart may hear.” In other words, he has successfully confounded the mind, put it out of the way, and now is free to speak to the heart. 

And the next verse is the clear heartfelt expression of his love for his ‘guru’ Shams Tabriz: “The venerable Shams is both my Lord and Master. By his grace, the land of Tabriz is perfume and ambergris.” And this is basically the climax of this love poem. 

In his version, Barks does refer to this in a way: “How / Long will I keep talking in riddles? Shams is the master who turns the earth.” But it’s too much of a gloss for my taste. It doesn’t present the power of this heretical statement. The next 2 verses are, of course important, and not completely anti-climactic. 

The last verse describes the effect Shams has had on Rumi, if there were still the soul of Rumi to describe. It goes something like this: “May I never have my soul again. For after tasting his wine and being drunk on his beauty, I am one in self-awareness.” What a poem! 

My Rumi 9 (fish and sea)

The sea will always offer up more fish, for fish are lesser than the sea.

You shall see the sea is the soul of a fish, for the sea is the fish of God’s own ocean.

The sea is like a nursemaid. And fish are like its feeding children. The woeful child is always looking for its milk.

The sea appears to be indifferent but its compassion for all fish is an infinite grace.

A fish that knows the sea is always caring no longer moves with pride but is ascending through the air.

For that singular fish, the sea is now its counsellor and no task is done without its consultation.

One could say this favored fish is like an emperor and the sea its prime minister.

If anyone were to call this fish a fish, every drop in the wrathful sea would be an arrow.

How long shall you speak in riddles? Paradox bewilders the mind. Now speak clearly so the heart may hear.

The venerable Shams is both my Lord and Master. By his grace, the land of Tabriz is perfume and ambergris.

If this world of thorns were to know his grace, all people would be soft and delicate like silk.

May I never have my soul again. For after tasting his wine and being drunk on his beauty, I am one in self-awareness.

~transcreated from an Arberry translation (A-108) of a Rumi ghazal (F-853)

Survival Manual

Taking sides is medieval. It's not about the sides of one's conditioning but surviving separation. Don't go living in the forest for some new age fantasy. It will eat you alive.

The more you know another person, the more you see through any differences. Knowing isn't an exchange of thought. Knowing is being—together. This is why social media is really antisocial.

This is why direct transmission. Friends or loving family members will do as a start. One is nothing but being the unknown. Pass it on. On the other hand, taking sides is thinking 

anything is ever known. Taking sides is why there's no more garden, people. The definition of a person is one taking sides. Taking sides is the magic behind the illusion.

In the natural state of universal consciousness, there is no death. There is no separate birth. Survival is the stuff of fiction and nonfiction. It's what breakfast is all about.

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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