Rumi · Love & Union
Poem · Sufism · 1278
The King and the Handmaiden
Love Is the Astrolabe
— Masnavi I.108–119 · tr. R. A. Nicholson, 1926From her sore grief he perceived that she was heart-sore; well in body, but stricken in heart.Being in love is made manifest by soreness of heart: there is no sickness like heart-sickness.
A physician promised in a dream finds that a sick girl's illness is love, and the poem turns to what love is.
What it meansThe poem reads itself. Rūmī calls the tale "the very marrow of our inward state" (I.35); the king tells the physician, "Thou wert my Beloved (in reality), not she" (I.76); and the passage holds that love, "from this (earthly) side or from that (heavenly) side, in the end it leads us yonder" (I.111).
Poem · Sufism · 1278
Who Is at the Door?
No Room for Two I's
— Masnavi I.3056–3065 · tr. R. A. Nicholson, 1926A certain man came and knocked at a friend’s door: his friend asked him, “Who art thou, O trusty one?”He answered, “I.” The friend said, “Begone, ’tis not the time (for thee to come in): at a table like this there is no place for the raw.”
A man knocks, answers “I”, and is sent away; after a year burning in absence he answers “thou”, and is let in.
What it meansRūmī sets the reading in the line before the tale: whoever utters “I” and “we” at the door “(of the Divine Court)” is turned back. Only “the fire of absence and separation” cooks the raw self, and the door opens on “’Tis thou art at the door”, for “there is not room in the house for two I's”.
Poem · Sufism · 1278
Moses and the Shepherd
I Want Burning
— Masnavi II.1750–1764 · tr. R. A. Nicholson, 1926A revelation came to Moses from God—“Thou hast parted My servant from Me.Didst thou come (as a prophet) to unite, or didst thou come to sever?So far as thou canst, do not set foot in separation: of (all) things the most hateful to Me is divorce.
A shepherd prays to God as to a man; Moses rebukes him, and God rebukes Moses: “I want burning, burning.”
What it meansGod's own words give the reading: “I look not at the tongue and the speech; I look at the inward (spirit) and the state (of feeling)”, for “the heart is the substance, speech (only) the accident”. Rūmī then turns it on every reader: whatever praise you speak, “know that it is even as the unseemly (words) of that shepherd”.