Coleman Barks - Rumi: The Book of Love

He studied it with his fathers former student, Burhanuddin Mahaqqiq. They also read Sanai and Attar together, and Burhan led the young Rumi on several consecutive chilla s, forty-day fasting retreats. Burhan was himself an eccentric hermit majestically unconcerned with beliefs and lineages. He seems to have prepared Jelaluddin well for the galvanizing event of the young mystics life, his meeting with Shamsi Tabriz. In late October of 1244 Rumi was thirty-seven. Shams was twenty, maybe thirty, years older.

Their meeting and subsequent sohbet (mystical conversation) generated fresh stories and ecstatic icons for the world of mystical awareness and love. Their Friendship is one of the great mysteries. Rumis poetry is heard as continuing resonance from That. Their separation on the physical plane occurred four years later on December 5, 1248. There is disagreement now as to how Shams disappeared. Franklin Lewis claims that the rumor Shams was murdered by jealous disciples of Rumi arrives late, circulates in oral context, and is almost certainly groundless.4 What we know for sure is what we have, the poems so filled with grief and ecstatic sentience.

All the biographical scenarios, whichever one chooses, are without sufficient evidence to be authoritative. No matter. We can let that detective story rest awhile. We have the Shams, the Masnavi, the letters, Discourses, sermons, the Rubaiyat, a generous plenty! After Shamss death or disappearance, Rumi lived twenty-six years tending soul growth in the dervish community around him and leaving us a prodigious legacy. He spoke the poetry spontaneously. It was taken down by scribes, and he revised it later in manuscript.

Rumi was married twice; his first wife, Gowhar Khatun, died young. She bore two children, Sultan Velad and Allaedin. Rumi had two children also with his second wife, Kira Khatun: Mozaffer, a son, and Maleke, a daughter. The central enigma of Rumis life, of course, is Shams Tabriz, the electrifying, eccentric wanderer with the charisma of a desert wind, who knelt and prayed for a companion on his own level of attainment. A voice came, What will you give? My head. Jelaluddin of Konya is your Friend.

He said later that he came to Rumi when Rumi was ready to receive his secret. But it was observed of Rumi and Shams that one could not tell who was the teacher and who the disciple. Thoreau went to the woods to simplify and find what was most deeply his. I did not want to live what was not life. Living is so dear. Some sentences sear the soul free of communal and personal habits, the situation were born within.

When Shams pushes Rumis books into the fountain at their first meeting, including his father Bahauddins soul notes, he says, Now you must live what youve been reading and talking about. Rumi relinquishes his books, and he and Shams go into retreat. Rumi asks for burning. Shams says, I am fire. It is that which refines the poems to their daring intensity and courage, to their setting out into unknown regions, these heart-quadrants that are so subtle and multivalent. Why should I seek more? I am the same as he.

His essence speaks through me. I have been looking for myself. After this soul-merging with Shams, Rumi found another living friend with whom to do the heart-opening work, Saladin Zarkub the goldsmith. Saladin was an old man (the poems become more quiet and tender), and after Saladins death, Husam Chelebi, Rumis scribe, became the friend of his heart. They produced the six books of the Masnavi. Rumi died as the sky turned deep red at sunset on December 17, 1273.

There were minor tremors, like stomach grumblings. Patience, old earth! Rumi called out. Youll have your sweet morsel soon!