Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi - Loves Ripening

Loves Ripening speaks to the soul the way mystical poetry was meant toas a messenger between the realms of heaven and earth. Rumis passion for the Divine lives on in the pages of this exquisite book that will no doubt engage each reader in the blissful experience of mystical reflection with the Sacred. Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit and Entering the Castle Indeed love ripens the soul, and the ripening of the soul leads to the realization of love. This central message of Rumi, that comparable troubadour of love, is reflected with great care, devotion, authenticity, and yes, love in this book. There are now many translations of Rumis poems in English, of various qualities. And yet, deposit all works in print on this subject, and it is certain that this book will stand out among them, marked as it is with existential participation in the spiritual universe of the supreme master of Persian Sufi poetry.

Seyyed Hossein Nasr, University Professor of Islamic Studies, George Washington University, author of Man and Nature and The Garden of Truth ABOUT THE BOOK Love is the meaning of our existence, the raw material of transformation, the glorious way of access to Divine intimacy. This teaching infuses the lyric verse of Rumi (12071273), the greatest of the Sufi poets. The poems in this collection, taken from among the masters many volumes of work, focus on one of his greatest themes: how love grows and matures for those on the spiritual path. Kabir Helminski and Ahmad Rezwani have crafted a translation that remains faithful to the original Persian while giving eloquent expression to the joy of Rumis astonishing encounter with the Divine. KABIR HELMINSKI is the author of Living Presence: A Sufi Way to Mindfulness and the Essential Self, as well as the translator of numerous books of Sufi literature and especially Rumi. He is the codirector, with his wife, Camille Helminski, of the Threshold Society, a nonprofit organization dedicated to sharing the knowledge and practice of Sufism.

As the publisher of Threshold Books for some twenty years, he was largely responsible for making Rumi the most widely read poet of our time. As a producer and writer of Sufi music, he has gained recognition for numerous recordings, including his own Garden within the Flames. He is a representative of the Mevlevi tradition founded by Jalaluddin Rumi. AHMAD REZWANI is an Iranian Sufi and scholar. Sign up to learn more about our books and receive special offers from Shambhala Publications. Or visit us online to sign up at shambhala.com/eshambhala. Loves Ripening RUMI ON THE HEARTS JOURNEY Translated by KABIR HELMINSKI & AHMAD REZWANI SHAMBHALA Boston & London 2010 Shambhala Publications, Inc.

Horticultural Hall 300 Massachusetts Avenue Boston, Massachusetts 02115 www.shambhala.com 2008 by Kabir Helminski and Ahmad Rezwani All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUES THE PREVIOUS EDITION OF THIS BOOK AS FOLLOWS: Jalal al-Din, Maulana, 12071273. [Poems. English. p. cm. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index. eISBN 978-0-8348-2477-5 ISBN 978-1-59030-532-4 ISBN 978-1-59030-759-5 1. Jalal al-Din Rumi, Maulana, 12071273Translations into English. I. Rezwani, Ahmad. II.

Helminski, Kabir Edmund, 1947 III. Title. PK6480.E5R49 2008 891.5511dc22 2007033971 I T MAY NOT BE SO EASY TO IMAGINE, but a time will come in the sincere seekers ripening process when he or she realizes that whatever is befalling humankind in the bitter turmoil of our time is not coming a day too soon or a day too late. These moments of foreboding are driving humankind into a corner to face the evils we have collectively acquired through our age-old oblivion and long-standing exile from the Land of Eternal Peace and Love. Despite all the misplaced values with which we are faced, it is an article of our faith that Cosmic Love Consciousness, writ large in Gods abounding beauty and expressed through His oceanic compassion, is gracefully and elegantly highlighting the sacred trail toward that Eternal Abode in whatever angelic ways It deems fit. Mysticism, and more effectively mystical poetry, is one way toward that far-reaching and desperately sought Love Consciousness, and Mawlana Jalaluddin Balkhi Rumi is categorically the most prominent among the delineators of the road map through that Sacred Homeland.

The poems of Loves Ripening come from two sources of his treasured corpus. One, the Divan-e Shams, is a sacred ecstatic love terrain barely traversed as it deserves to be, perhaps mostly because its lyrical and musical nature in the original Persian is almost impossible to render into any other language. In the Divans twenty-six hundred love ghazals, (lyric poems or odes) we have the ravishing intoxication of Divine Love, and in the second source, the six books of Rumis Mathnawi, (a form of metered, rhymed couplets) we have the sober aftermath, the fully matured wisdom of love. In the faith that these selections may serve as goblets of pure wine, bringing more and more seeking souls to Rumis Tavern of Love, and in the hope that his rising sun of love and friendship in his eight hundredth birth anniversary will ever shine on with lasting peace over all beings, I offer my humble contribution to Loves Ripening. I dedicate this work to all of those inspiring guides on the Path who are graced by our Beloved One to lead us out of this dark night to that ever-green Land of Eternal Peace and Pure Light. AHMAD REZWANI, Cotranslator The Way of the Lover Those sweet words we shared between us,the vault of heaven has concealed in its heart.One day, they will pour down like rain.Our secrets will germinate in the soil of this universe. R UMI BELONGS to the honored category of wisdom teachers that would include Plato, the author of Ecclesiastes, Lao-tzu, the author of the Gospel of Thomas, Meister Eckhart, Shakespeare, Goethe, and, in America, Whitman and Emerson.

He can stand with any of them in terms of his intellectual contribution, and possibly beyond any of them in spiritual depth. Once, when the great German scholar Annemarie Schimmel was asked to compare Goethe and Rumi, she responded: The great Goethe is like an immense, majestic mountain; but Rumi, ah... Rumi is like the sky itself. I came into relationship with Rumi and his tradition in the late seventies. From the late 1960s I had been a student of spiritual traditions, East and West, and had practiced with Zen Buddhists, Raja Yogis, and some of G. I.

Gurdjieffs students. Sufism was the last of the great traditions I encountered. Having studied Latin and Sanskrit previously, I began to explore Persian through the poetry of Rumi under the guidance of a remarkable woman, Marzieh Gail, living in a small town in New Hampshire. One thing led to another, and I eventually found myself traveling to Konya, Turkey, to be with my first Sufi mentor, Suleyman Dede. I quickly recognized that while I had been acquainted firsthand with various spiritual mastersmasters of will, knowledge, and consciousnessin Dede I was meeting a genuine master of Love, and in Rumis tradition I was entering a culture of Love. It was from a man in his eighties that I experienced what it was to be loved, unsentimentally and unconditionally.

Whatever I experienced in those five years of regular visits to Konya, I can only say it felt like a process of being tuned. Dede took no credit for this great love; he always pointed to Hazrati Mevlana, which is how Rumi is referred to in the tradition. As I began to deepen in the teachings of Rumi, I found that Rumi took no credit and, instead, referred to his beloved mentor, Shams of Tabriz. Eventually, after I tracked down the hastily transcribed conversations of Shams, since he wrote nothing himself, I found the seeds of what became a beautiful garden in Rumi. I also found that Shams took no credit himself and reserved his greatest admiration for the Prophet Muhammad. Finally, looking into the life of Muhammad, I was led into the universe of the Quran.