Two of my favorite Rumi poems

These two poems have kept me good company for many years. I think of them often. They are pretty much on the same theme: the bliss within suffering, the path within falling apart, and seeking. And they share this analogy of wings and lifting.

The brilliance of Rumi is that he talks of the spiritual path in to most down-to-earth way. It's all about suffering and joy, longing and communion, restraint and wildness, roughness and ecstasy. You feel like he is your friend on the way. Like he is a jester making fun of your seriousness and a friend holding your hand in your darkest hour. It is amazing that he wrote these poems almost 800 years ago, things have not changed that much really, we still have mostly the same problems we always did. At least in the inner world.

Birdwings

Your grief for what you've lost lifts a mirror
up to where you're bravely working.

Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,
here's the joyful face you've been wanting to see.

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you would be paralyzed.

Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding
the two as beautifully balanced coordinated
as birdwings.

Unfold Your Own Myth

Who gets up early to discover the moment light begins?
Who finds us here circling, bewildered, like atoms?
Who comes to a spring thirsty
and sees the moon reflected in it?
Who, like Jacob blind with grief and age,
smells the shirt of his lost son
and can see again?
Who lets a bucket down and brings up
a flowering prophet? Or like Moses goes for fire
and finds what burns inside the sunrise?

Jesus slips into a house to escape enemies,
and opens a door to another world.
Solomon cuts open a fish, and there's a gold ring.
Omar storms in to kill the prophet
and leaves with blessings.
Chase a deer and end up everywhere!
An oyster opens his mouth to swallow one drop.
Now there's a pearl.

A vagrant wanders empty ruins.
Suddenly he's wealthy.

But don't be satisfied with stories, how things
have gone for others. Unfold
your own myth, without complicated explanation,
so everyone will understand the passage,
We have opened you.

Start walking towards Shams. Your legs will get heavy
and tired. Then comes a moment
of feeling the wings you've grown
lifting.

(as translated by Coleman Marks, and often available at your local Costco)

Should I say something about these? I think the first is best left to the reader's own meditation. The second has a very nice explanation of all the metaphors here.

One thing that is very interesting is this idea that if you chase enlightenment (or whatever you want to call it), things will go wrong. You will probably fuck up, a lot. We all get blinded by those persistent delusions. But the point here is through that longing, that struggle, there is some sort of redemption, some grace, that we at least feel sometimes. And really the struggle is the key to finding the grace, to moving along in the path.

I was talking to a dharma friend today about following your inner guru, your inner wisdom and asking can we trust it? The Tibetan lamas (especially Lama Yeshe) will/would say all the time after giving a teaching, "Don't take my word for it, check up, see if you agree." Be a lamp unto yourself, Shakyamuni Buddha said. But how do you know it's your wisdom and not your delusions guiding you? This is a hard one, and I'm not sure I know the answer.

I think what Rumi is saying here is that it is the path that matters, and there is redemption from the act of seeking, even if you don't do it "correctly". Seeking is the way to everything, and it is a very personal journey.