For several years, a few decades ago, I became obsessed with the great Sufi poet, Rumi. I devoured every English translation of his writings I could find, also buying books that weren't literal translations, but were written in the spirit of Rumi.
Eventually I donated most of my Rumi books when my obsession abated. But I kept a few, including William C. Chittick's translation of Rumi, The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi.
One reason I held on to that book was that it contained my favorite Rumi quotation, from his Masnavi.
Fear the existence in which you are now!
Your imagination is nothing, and you are nothing,
A nothing has fallen in love with a nothing,
a nothing-at-all has waylaid a nothing-at-all.
When these images have departed,
your misunderstanding will be clear to you.
I've memorized this passage. I ponder it fairly frequently.
It's become sort of a koan for me -- an intriguing bit of spiritual poetry that defies easy explanation, though it also has a seemingly clear meaning that is compatible with Zen and Buddhism in general.
I readily admit that different people will view this quotation in markedly different ways. All I can say is how it speaks to me.
Yes, there is reason to fear the existence in which I am now. However, this is the same existence that virtually everybody on this planet inhabits: an existence filled with imaginings of things that don't actually exist, of a past that is no more, of a future that is yet to be.
My imagination, though a wellspring of creativity and mental fascination, can lead me into dead ends, dark alleys, wasted cognition, detachment from the non-imaginary here and now.
Worse, I tend to believe that the being doing the imagining, me, possesses more inherent existence than is warranted. The self that I thought for much of my life was eternal, a soul drop of a divine ocean, actually is, as Rumi says, nothing.
Nothing, at least, that is independent, freestanding, immutable. Whoever or whatever I am, my strong suspicion is that I'm as insubstantial as the imaginings I so frequently engage in.
Yet as Rumi's poem observes, my imagination and me are in love with each other, though neither of us possesses any enduring substance. We are two nothings engaged in dancing together in a wispy ballroom of frothy existence.
Still, Rumi holds out hope for me. And for everybody in a similar situation. Who, again, is almost all of the eight billion people who cling to the dual delusions of barely-existent imagination and selfhood.
For if I were to be able to exist without imagining what isn't there, which includes the solid self that also is a nothing rather than a something, Rumi says that my current misunderstanding of what life is all about would be cleared up.
Is this a fantasy? Perhaps. Rumi's words just seem to me like they have a ring of truth, though I have no reason to assert that they are true. I simply am attracted to this bit of tantalizing Rumi poetry.
This quote to me means life is meaningless and you are here only to suffer to some degree - those with the closest links to kaal suffer least, and those that are revealing truth suffer most. Its opposite to what you are told by the fake ass babas of beas.
In that suffering and pain you run to gurus, and fake ass baba, (who know the game as they work for kaal, the prince of this planet), and they take advantage of these suffering souls. Gurinder singh dhillon and RSSB is nothing but a junk yard for collecting lost souls looking for answers. He gives them his own answers and a satanic mantra that leads to even more confusion, suffering and pain - what a wicked trick kaal has created. Wake up sangat , as the one that you think is your salvage , is the very cause of your pain and suffering.
Posted by: Kranvir | May 29, 2023 at 01:45 PM
Interesting that you should quote Rumi. It was with the Sufis that I first started actively enquiring. The people I was with were Chisti Sufis (musicians). In the UK it had adapted to the western psyche and incorporated the insights of modern psychology.
It was the books of the contemporary Sufi teacher Idries Shah that I used to study. One of his books was entitled ‘The Commanding Self’, commanding self being synonymous with the Zen concept of self – or rather no-self.
The Sufis were tied in with Islamic law and worship; how they operate today I don’t know, I guess they must be careful not to go against the current culture. Even so, 1000 years ago they would still come out with things that were probably against the current thinking. I am thinking of El-Ghazali who said something along the lines of “Do nor think that what you believe is true, it may simply be your conditioning.
Posted by: Ron E. | May 30, 2023 at 01:58 AM
Is God a coward who always hides who does not come in front of anyone?
Is God a flatterer who always makes people worship and worship ?
Posted by: AA | May 30, 2023 at 07:07 AM
The god of this world is hiding. What is he scared of?
Just like gurinder singh dhillon was hiding until covid. He only started doing q and a online when he knew sangat attention was beginning to drop over lockdowns. Now the circus clown tours with his road show everywhere, what a turnaround from a camera shy baba to a attention seeking narsasist.
Posted by: Kranvir | June 03, 2023 at 02:27 PM
"All intellects and sciences are stars, but Thou
art the sun of the world who rendest their veils.
The world is snow and ice, and Thou art the
burning summer—no trace of it remain, oh King, when Thy
traces appear.
Who am I—tell me—miserable I, that I should
subsist next to Thee? Thy glance annihilates me and a
hundred like me."
(The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi, by William C. Chittick, pg 179-80)
Rumi on the importance of the 'Living Guru', as his was Shams-e Tabrizi -imho
Posted by: Karim W. Rahmaan | June 10, 2023 at 07:23 PM