You Missed All This

The local finches and doves and swallows
sang and warbeled and chirped for you,
dragonflies buzzed and a June breeze
whispered your inner name – but
you missed all this riding your bike past it all,
your headphones neatly hugging your ears,
playing nature music ...
The whole Earth is covered with your shoe leather
because you won't meet Her, and
you're missing all this!

Your MP-3 played bhajan or dhikr or hymns or reggae
through those earplugs of yours,
while the Beloved announced Herself
in the subtlest of tone unobserved –
and being hooked on technology, I'm afraid
you missed all this.

You've attended concerts and kirtans,
but having not taken home with you
the Sound going on all the time within you
and making it your own – Friend:
you missed all this.

Friend! be like Hassan that old one of Nablus,
who heard Ya Hu in the rustling grasses,
reading a dervish in every reed;
or, be like that young Chisti fella for whom
a Boulder foothill actually leapt once in praise
and the Flatirons there faced sunrise, showing
the call to prayer - or for whom, sitting
on that most commercially-zero island Kéa,
each lapping Greek wavelet before him
rose shouting out yes, yes yes, yes, yes, yes …

Try not to miss all this!

Sometimes I Drink Water

Sometimes I drink water from a brook, a stream,
sometimes I drink from a river, a fresh pond or a lake,
sometimes I may drink from the sweetwaters of an ocean -
after all, it's just a notion.

So it is with religion(s), as water is for all its variation, one:
religion is one, and truth is one.
Where you draw your water from is your own concern, not mine -
if it makes of you a lover, then alone is it divine.

Best expressed through Sufism, accepting all, all waters -
this is no sales pitch, dear Friend, merely a fact -
Sufism is not the "mystical side of Islam" as you've read,
Islam has none, Sufism has covered for that, let it be said:

Of others, they do indeed, for Jews the Kabbala and Zohar,
Christians a long tradition of it, Hindus and Buddhists needn't
bother, theirs are overflowing with the inner Teaching!
Without the waters of Sufism, Islam is so much dead preaching.

INDEPENDENCE

I Am my own worst enemy.
I Am my own dearest friend.
I Am whoever wishes me well, or ill.
I Am whoever praises or blames me.
I Am whoever is also indifferent to me.
I Am whoever would want to kill me, or provoke me.
I Am whoever remembers me, or doesn't.
I Am whoever comes or goes.
I Am whoever shares joy with me.
I Am whoever debates or argues with me, confronts me or takes me to task.
I Am whomever I Am addressing, now.
I Am my only pupil.
I Am never alone, I honor mySelf in each – never alone,
I Am all one.

Rumi for a Tomcat

O Friend, I'd thought I had loved.

But you have shown me I had not been there.

You placed your old massive white paw on my chest at dawn,

and entered gently anew my heart.

I had not known what a cat means

until you came into my life.

Now my hand carresses your head and back,

you purr full of trust, gentle Jimmy, Jimal-uddin.

Come let us depart for the Garden of the Kitchen,

there to be fed your morning portion.

Let us arise and go there, o my Friend,

that I may afterward again feel you

settling your satisfied weight on my legs

where I lie, thinking of verses

for my cherished old boy.

The Ball's In Your Court

Oh Friend, sit on the ground!

reach forward and place your hand firmly

on the bare earth . . .

And now:  reverse the question you've wasted

countless lifetimes asking.

You are not here to challenge or to prove

whether God exists or is real.

God by whatever worshipped name or form -

God exists, and alone is real.

So what is left?

You are here to challenge and to prove

whether you exist, whether you are real.

And the pain therein is really poignant.

When the ego becomes selfless,

through love, through grace:

the Self which remains will be the answer

which uproots the question.

You will know without effort

who exists and what is real.

In the meantime you meditate in action,

growing consciousness.

Have fun with it.

For Mevlana (I)

(March 1977, Boulder)

 

The lover knows why he is born:
When pierced for blood
   milk flows from the heart of the lover,
   nourishing even the one who adminsters the wound;
      that one is blessed by the lover,
      who now holds the dagger
         firmly rooted in his heart,
         withdrawing it and replanting it

            again and again,

        as a constant reminder.
The lover carries no fear
   for he carries his manhood in his heart.
       Therefore he is tender like a petal,
           while protected like the pomegranite.
He is veiled and allows himself to be unveiled
   when in the presence of the beloved.
       The lover may be shattered


           over and over again,


       but his pieces will always fall scattered
   to the soil to regenerate as an army of lovers!
Only the lover knows the meaning of constancy.

                 Love has made a fanatic of me;
                 and to the Source of all this
                 I gladly offer my head
                 again and again.
                 Pain rends the veil
                 which hid the cup of ecstasy.


                 Friend, cover yourself
                 with the mantle of secrecy
                 and go naked into the night.
                 There you will find a brilliance
                 which no eye can perceive.

Without the cup of sobriety,
how shall I contain this ecstasy?


It runs over the edge anyway,
and spills on the one whose lips
parted to taste.

                 Beloved Mother, teach me
                 the secret of the spring rain,
                 how it nourishes the earth
                 and makes all life fertile with its weeping.

My heart is with the Brotherhood,
the lovers whose eyes are brilliant with desire
   to serve the One who made them feel this.


   Their feet never leave the ground
   until the Turn is complete.
Their pride is in the One who causes this Turning,
their dignity is testimony of their surrender. 

For Mevlana (III)

(or, Love, Harmony and Beauty)

Words, like bears, must hibernate under a wintry blanket

     so they can emerge ready and strong 

                      in the springtime of their revelation

                               and strike squarely on the first blow.

Beauty, the most described thing of all,

    can no more be described than can truth -

           for like truth it is no thing,

                            but living.

In every face I greet my Self,

          for beauty is realized in the strangest ways . . .

                          if I love women

               it is only because they are women;

          if I love men it is only because I am one.

And if pondering my own face I find only beauty,

                 then I am in love with the Friend.

                     It cannot be otherwise.

Inside beauty there is love and harmony,

inside each are found its two companions.

             Without intimate knowledge

             the names we've given them are stale -

                    and within that intimacy

                     names are not needed.

Convention kills, behind every word

        is self-conscious thought.

          Then scrape the words off the page

              and see beauty face to face,

                     describing itself . . .

         Beauty, like silence, meditates on you,

                       restoring joy;

                  you break it in song

                        irresistable

              because you are human.

        And I love this human being.

S. Inayat-Chisti, Berlin, Oct. 1994