by
Rev. Joy Atkinson
Presented to the Unitarian
Society of Santa Barbara
September 30, 2007
©2007 by Rev. Joy Atkinson
Santa Barbara, California
Sermon
Part 1 This Being Human—On Rumi’s
life.
Jelaluddin Rumi was a poet, philosopher, theologian and Islamic law scholar from very long ago and very far away, writing in a foreign tongue—and yet, amazingly, here in the United States, Rumi’s poetry in English translation outsells that of all other poets! His poetry speaks to people of all backgrounds and all religious traditions, although it is rooted in Islam, and specifically in the mystical branch of Islam known as the Sufi. Perhaps Rumi is so widely loved because he expresses a spiritual longing for something broader and deeper than our ordinary, everyday lives, and yet he uses recognizable events and experiences derived from daily life as a place from which to begin his ecstatic poetic journey.
Rumi’s
given name was Jelaluddin. He was and is called Rumi because he eventually
settled in Rum, the Anatolian region of Turkey, in the town of Konya. He was
born in Balkh, which is in current-day Afghanistan, 800 years ago today—on
September 30th 1207. His father was a well-known jurist and
religious scholar. At the time, the Seljuk Empire into which Rumi was born was
being threatened by Christian armies from the West and the Mongol armies of
Genghis Khan from the East. His father, a target of religious persecution,
expected the Mongols to take over the region, which they eventually did, so the
family fled their homeland when Rumi was 12. They wandered for some ten years
over the lands of Arabia and Asia Minor. In central Iran, the family met the
well-known Persian mystic Attar, who said of the young Rumi: “This boy will
open a gate in the heart of love and throw a flame into the heart of all mystic
lovers.” In Damascus, they met Ibn Arabi, a renowned Sufi philosopher, who,
according to legend, saw Rumi walking behind his father and exclaimed: “Here comes
a sea, followed by an ocean.”
At
age 18, Rumi married Hodja Charifod, daughter of a local regent of Samarkand,
and they had two sons. This wife later died, and Rumi remarried. When the
family arrived in Konya, Rumi’s father became the head of a dervish learning
community. Then, when Rumi was just 24, his father died, and Rumi took over his
father’s position, where he directed the teaching of theology, poetry, music,
and even such practical subjects as animal husbandry and cooking. For nine
years Rumi had a spiritual teacher, Burhan Mahaqiqq, who took him on rigorous
retreats and 40-day fasts.
The central event in Rumi’s life, in terms of its effect on his religious life and his ecstatic poetry, occurred in October of the year 1244, when he met a wild-eyed mystic called Shams of Tabriz. Rumi said of him, “What I had thought of before as God I met today in a human being.” Shams and Rumi formed a deep spiritual friendship, but Rumi’s disciples became jealous of their special bond. One day Shams mysteriously disappeared, possibly having been murdered by one of Rumi’s own sons. Rumi was distraught with Shams’ disappearance, and it is said that in his deep grief he began circling a pole, while reciting poetry of love and longing for his companion. This circling is said by some to be the origin of the moving meditation known as whirling. Rumi also wandered far and wide in search of his friend, but one day, on one of these journeys, he had a profound revelation: he felt that his friend was inside him all along. They were one, and he therefore didn’t need to search any longer. Shams remained a subject in much of Rumi’s ecstatic poetry.
Although
Rumi was considered a spiritually enlightened Master, his poetry has an
everyday human voice: the voice of grief as well as ecstasy, longing and well
as fulfillment, depression as well as joy—in short, it is a human voice. All of
the human emotions can be teachers and guides, Rumi said. As he out it in one
of his poems:
This being human is a guest
house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a
meanness,
Some momentary awareness
comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them
all!
Even if they’re a crowd of
sorrows,
who violently sweep your
house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest
honorably.
She may be clearing you out
For some new delight.
The dark thought…the malice,
meet them at the door
laughing
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
Longing
is the core of mystery.
Longing
itself brings the cure.
The
only rule is, Suffer the pain.
Your
desire must be disciplined,
and
what you want to happen
in
time, sacrificed.
I
open and fill with love and
other
objects evaporate. All
the
learning in books stays put
on
the shelf. Poetry, the dear
words
and images of song, comes
down over me like mountain
water.
Any
cup I hold fills with wine
that
lovers drink. Every word
I
say opens into mystery. Any
way I turn I see brilliance
…Every
war
and
every conflict between human beings has happened
because
of
some disagreement about
names.
It’s such an unnecessary foolishness, because just
beyond
the arguing there’s a long
table
of companionship, set and waiting for us to sit down.
…Going
in search of
the
heart, I found a huge rose
under
my feet, and roses under
all
our feet! How to say this
to
someone who denies it? The
robe
we wear is the sky’s cloth.
Everything is soul and
flowering.
You’re
from a county beyond this universe,
yet
your best guess is
you’re
made of earth and ashes.
You
engrave this physical image everywhere
as
a sign that you’ve forgotten
where you’re from!
we
don’t really own anything.
What
is this competition we feel then
before we go, one at a time,
through the same gate?
You
are the truth
from
foot to brow. Now,
what else would you like to
know?
Sermon Part 2 Rumi and the Mystical Vision
Rumi was a prolific writer, producing many volumes in the course of his 67 years, including the one he “wrote” over the last 12 years of his life, the Masnavi. I say “wrote” in quotes because it is said that he merely spoke these lines, spontaneously, while a scribe followed him around the streets, vineyards and public baths that Rumi visited, and wrote down what the Master said. The Masnavi is comprised of 64,000 lines of poetry, divided into six books. It is a long mystical poem—a patchwork quilt of folk tales, visionary experiences, ecstatic exclamations, laments, conversations with specific people, commentaries on the Koran, jokes and ruminations on human experience and the nature of the universe.
The best way to appreciate Rumi’s work is to read it or hear it for yourself, so I have devoted this part of today’s sermon to Rumi’s evocative words, punctuated by today’s beautiful music. It is especially appropriate to have music offered by part of the Middle East Ensemble, including the reed flute, which Rumi evokes in a number of his poems—the reed being among other things a symbol of longing for spiritual union with the divine. These words open Rumi’s magnum opus: the Masnavi:
Listen to the reed and the tale it tells,
How it sings of separation:
Ever since they cut me from the reed bed,
my wail has caused men and women to weep.
I want a heart torn open with longing
To share the pain of this love.
Whoever has been parted from his source
Longs to return to the state of union.
Reader: Jean John
At every gathering I play my lament.
I'm a friend to both happy and sad.
Each befriended me for his own reasons,
Yet none searched out the secrets I contain.
My secret is not different [from] my lament,
Yet this is not for the senses to perceive.
The body is not hidden from the soul,
nor is the soul hidden from the body,
And yet the soul is not for everyone to see.
This flute is played with fire, not with wind,
and without this fire you would not exist.
It is the fire of love that inspires the flute.
Music –the Middle East Ensemble
Reed
Flute: Scott Marcus
Percussion:
Ziyad Marcus
Violin:
Lillie Gordon
“It is the fire of love that inspires the flute.” Love for Rumi is
the spiritual bottom line. Rumi’s spirituality was deeply relational, friend to
friend, lover to lover, soul to soul, human to Divine. Love is union, and
ultimately, all love leads to Divine love, to mystical transcendence. Some of
Rumi’s love poetry is physical, even erotic. And it works beautifully, even
simply on the level of secular love poetry. But in each love poem, the lover
experiences a union so complete that the personal ego dissolves, and we are
back in Rumi’s ecstatic, spiritual realm:
Reader: Jean
There is some kiss we want with
our whole lives, the touch of
spirit on the body. Seawater
begs the pearl to break its shell.
And the lily, how passionately
It needs some wild darling! At
night, I open the window and ask
the moon to come and press its
face against mine. Breathe into
me. Close the language-door and
open the love window. The moon
won’t use the door, only the window.
Reader: Peter
When it’s cold and raining
You are more beautiful.
And the snow brings me
Even closer to your lips.
The inner secret, that which was never
born,
you are that freshness, and I am with you
now.
I can’t explain the goings
or the comings. You enter suddenly,
and I am nowhere again.
Inside the majesty.
Reader: Joy
There is a smile and a gentleness
inside. When I heard the name
and address of that, I went to where
you sell perfume. I begged you not
to trouble me so with longing. Come
out and play! Flirt more naturally.
Teach me how to kiss. On the ground
A spread blanket, flame that’s caught
and burning well, cumin seeds browning.
I am inside all of this with my soul.
Reader: Peter
With the Beloved’s water of life, no
illness remains
In the Beloved’s rose garden of union, no
thorn remains.
They say there is a window from one heart
to another
How can there be a window where no wall
remains?
Music
The Middle East Ensemble
Rumi was a follower of the
religion of Islam, and he is viewed by many Muslims as one of their own—a Sufi
mystic who offered illuminating commentary on the Koran and lived his life by
its precepts. But there is also in his work a universal voice that speaks to
the heart of the religious quest, beyond the confines of any one tradition, and
this helps to account for his wide appeal in both the East and the West. Our
own Unitarian “saint,” Ralph Walso Emerson, appreciated Rumi’s universalistic
vision. Rumi’s words celebrate the many expressions of, and different paths
to, the one ultimate reality at the core
of Being:
Reader: Peter
What is praised is one, so the praise is
one too
many jugs being poured
into one basin. All religions, all this
singing,
one song.
The differences are just illusion and
vanity. Sunlight
looks slightly different
on this wall than it does on that wall and
a lot different
on this other one, but
it is still one light. We have borrowed
these clothes, these
time-and-space personalities,
from a light, and when we praise, we pour
them back in.
Reader: Jean
The lamps are different,
But the Light is the same.
So many garish lamps in the dying brain’s
lamp shop,
Forget about them.
Concentrate on essence, concentrate on
Light.
In lucid bliss, calmly smoking off its own
holy fire,
The Light streams toward you from all
things,
All people, all possible permutations of
good, evil, thought,
passion.
The lamps are different,
But the Light is the same.
One matter, one energy, one Light, one
Light mind,
Endlessly emanating all things.
One turning and burning diamond,
One, one, one.
Ground yourself, strip yourslf down,
To blind loving silence.
Stay there until you see
You are gazing at the Light
With its own ageless eyes.
For Rumi, death, like love,
is a path to union; it is a reuniting with God, with the All, and it is
therefore not an end, but another doorway:
Reader: Peter
On the day I die, when I’m being carried
Toward the grave, don’t weep. Don’t say,
He’s
gone! He’s gone! Death
has nothing
to do with going away. The sun sets and
the moon sets, but they’re not gone.
Death is a coming together. The tomb
looks like a prison, but it’s really
release into union. The human seed goes
down in the ground like a bucket into
the well where Joseph is. It grows and
comes up full of some unimagined beauty.
Your mouth closes here and immedately
opens with a shout of joy there.
Reader: Jean
I died as a mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was [human].
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
Yet once more I shall die as [human], to soar With angels
blest; but even from angelhood I must pass on: all except God doth perish. When
I have sacrificed my angel-soul, I shall become what no mind e'er conceived.
Oh, let me not exist! for Non-existence Proclaims in organ tones, 'To Him we
shall return'
Music—the Middle East Ensemble
Jelaluddin Rumi died on December 17, 1273. There followed a 40-day funeral, attended by grieving Muslims, Christians. Jews and Zoroastrians, from all over the Middle East. The Sufi sect that traces its origins back to Rumi, the Mavlavi dervishes, to this day keep the date of his death as a holy festival. Rumi wrote:
In every instant there’s
dying and coming back around.
Muhammed said, This world
is a moment, a
pouring that refreshes and renews itself
so
rapidly it seems continuous,
as a burning stick taken from
the fire looks like a golden
wire when you swirl
it in the air, so we feel duration as a string of sparks.
Rumi, through his magnificent words, left us a long string of very bright, enduring sparks—sparks to light us on our way.
Benediction
What sprouts up every spring
will wither by autumn
but the rose garden of Love
is always green.
Most of the above Translations of Rumi’s poetry are from The Soul of Rumi (2001) by Coleman Barks, and Kabir Helminski, editor, The Rumi Collection (2000)