Rumi

Some of my favourite Rumi quotations are as follows:

“Dance, when you’re broken open. Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you’re perfectly free.

“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”

“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.”

“Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”

“Those who don’t feel this Love pulling them like a river, those who don’t drink dawn like a cup of spring water or take in sunset like supper, those who don’t want to change, let them sleep.”

“This Love is beyond the study of theology, that old trickery and hypocrisy. If you want to improve your mind that way, sleep on. I’ve given up on my brain. I’ve torn the cloth to shreds and thrown it away.”

“If you’re not completely naked, wrap your beautiful robe of words around you, and sleep.”

“If your guidance is your ego, don’t rely on luck for help. You sleep during the day and the nights are short. By the time you wake up your life may be over.”

Travelers, it is late. Life’s sun is going to set. During these brief days that you have strength, be quick and spare no effort of your wings.

“You suppose you are the trouble but you are the cure. You suppose that you are the lock on the door but you are the key that opens it. It’s too bad that you want to be someone else. You don’t see your own face, your own beauty, yet no face is more beautiful than yours.”

I was dead, then alive. Weeping, then laughing. The power of love came into me, and I became fierce like a lion, then tender like the evening star. He said, “You’re not mad enough. You don’t belong in this house.”

About Rumi (from Wikipedia)

Born June 03, 1207in بلخ / Balkh, Afghanistan
Died August 20, 1273
From Wikipedia:

Mawlānā Jalāl-ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (Persian: مولانا جلال الدین محمد رومی), also known as Mawlānā Jalāl-ad-Dīn Muhammad Balḫī (Persian: محمد بلخى) or Maulana Jalal al-Din Rumi, but known to the English-speaking world simply as Rumi, was a 13th century Persian (Tādjīk) poet, Islamic jurist, and theologian. Rumi is a descriptive name meaning “the Roman” since he lived most parts of his life in Anatolia which had been part of the Roman Empire until the Seljuq conquest two centuries earlier.

While historical sources claim that he was born in Balkh (Persian: بلخ – Balḫ), the hometown of his father’s family, modern scholars now believe that Rumi was probably born in 1207 CE in Wakhsh (Waḫš), a small town located at the river Wakhsh in what is now Tajikistan. Wakhsh belonged to the larger province of Balkh, and in the year Rumi was born, his father was an appointed scholar there. Both these cities were at the time included in the Greater Persian cultural sphere of Khorāṣān, the easternmost province of historical Persia, and were part of the Khwarezmian Empire.

His birthplace and native language both indicate a Persian heritage. Due to quarrels between different dynasties in Khorāṣān, opposition to the Khwarizmid Shahs who were considered devious by Bahā ud-Dīn Wālad (Rumi’s father) or fear of the impending Mongol cataclysm, his father decided to migrate westwards. Rumi’s family traveled west, first performing the Hajj and eventually settling in the Anatolian city Konya (capital of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum, now located in Turkey), where he lived most of his life, composed one of the crowning glories of Persian literature and profoundly affected the culture of the area.

He lived most of his life under the Sultanate of Rum, where he produced his works and died in 1273 CE. He was buried in Konya and his shrine became a place of pilgrimage. Following his death, his followers and his son Sultan Walad founded the Mawlawīyah Sufi Order, also known as the order of the Whirling Dervishes, famous for its Sufi dance known as the samāʿ ceremony.

Rumi’s work are written in the new Persian Language. New Persian (also called Dari-Persian or Dari), a widely understood vernacular of Middle Persian, has its linguistic origin in the Fars Province of modern Iran. A Dari-Persian literary renaissance (In the 8th/9th century) started in regions of Sistan, Khorasan and Transoxiana and by the 10th/11th century, it overtook Arabic as the literary and cultural language in the Persian Islamic world. Although Rumi’s works were written in Persian, Rumi’s importance is considered to transcend national and ethnic borders. His original works are widely read in the original language across the Persian-speaking world. Translations of his works are very popular in South Asian, Turkic, Arab and Western countries. His poetry has influenced Persian literature as well as Urdu, Bengali and Turkish literatures. His poems have been widely translated into many of the world’s languages in various formats, and BBC News has described him as the “most popular poet in America”. (Wikipedia)

My own poem, inspired by Rumi

Once long ago
when I was still a child
I tried to change the world—
head butted kicked and squeezed
along with friends in hell-bent woe
pushed from every slant
like at a sculptor’s spinning wheel
in search of good and calm.

And the world didn’t change
in space it trailed its plane
and moved on its old axis
and replayed that same old tune
in conflict joy and pain.

But the world changed me
cured me of dis-ease
turned me outside from within
and curved from head to toe
like art’s unfinished ploy

Anne Skyvington

Have you got a favourite Rumi quotation or poem?