Topic: Saints and Mystics

[Nichi]

"A Green-Winged Longing"

This world of two gardens, and both so beautiful.
This world, a street where a funeral is passing.
Let us rise together and leave "this world,"

as water goes bowing down itself to the ocean.
From gardens to the gardener, from grieving
to wedding feast. We tremble like leaves

about to let go. There's no avoiding pain,
or feeling exiled, or the taste of dust.

But also we have a green-winged longing
for the sweetness of the Friend.

These forms are evidence of what
cannot be shown. Here's how it is

to go into that: rain that's been leaking
into the house decides to use the downspout.

The bent bowstring straining at our throats
releases and becomes the arrow!

Mice quivering in fear of the housecat suddenly
change to half-grown lion cubs, afraid of nothing.

So let's begin the journey home,
with love and compassion for guides,
and grace protecting. Let your soul turn

into an empty mirror that passionately wants
to reflect Joseph. Hand him your present.

Now let silence speak, and as that
gift begins, we'll start out.


Version by Coleman Barks
(from a translation by John Moyne)
"Say I Am You"
Maypop, 1994

[Nichi]

"The Image of Your Body"

You’ve made it out of the city,
that image of your body,
trembling with traffic and fear slips behind.
Your face arrives in the redbud trees,
and the tulips.

You’re still restless.
Climb up the ladder to the roof.
You’re by yourself a lot,
become the one that when you walk in,
luck shifts to the one who needs it.
If you’ve not been fed, be bread.


Version by Coleman Barks
"Open Secret"

[Nichi]

To arrange words in some order
Is not the same thing
As the inner poise
That's poetry.

The truth of poetry is the truth of being.
It's an experience of truth
No ornaments survive a crucible
Fire reveals only molten gold.

We are here to reveal
We do not waste words.

― Tukaram

[Nichi]

The Lover

Farid ud-Din Attar
(1120? - 1220?)


'A lover', said the hoopoe, now their guide,
'Is one in whom all thoughts of self have died;
Those who renounce the self deserve that name;
Righteous or sinful, they are all the same!
Your heart is thwarted by the self's control;
Destroy its hold on you and reach your goal.
Give up this hindrance, give up mortal sight,
For only then can you approach the light.
If you are told: "Renounce our Faith," obey!
The self and Faith must both be tossed away;
Blasphemers call such action blasphemy --
Tell them that love exceeds mere piety.
Love has no time for blasphemy or faith,
Nor lovers for the self, that feeble wraith.
 
   
The Conference of the Birds

[Nichi]

"The Waterwheel"

In this river the soul is a waterwheel
that no matter how it's facing, water pours
through turning, re-turning to the river.

Even if you put your side
or your back to the river,
water still comes through.

A shadow can't ignore the sun
that all day creates and moves it!

The soul lives like a drop of mercury
in the palm of a palsied man.

Or say the soul is the moon,
that every thirty nights has two
so empty, in union, that it disappears.

The other twenty-eight nights it endures
different stages of separation,
wretched, but laughing.

Laughter is the way of lovers.
They live and die tickled,

and always fresh-faced, knowing
the return that's coming.

Don't question this! The answers
and your questions in response

will cause your eyes to see wrongly.
Live the laughing silence.


Rumi - Version by Coleman Barks
"Say I am You"
Maypop, 1994

[Nichi]

I circle your nest tonight,
around and around until morning
when a breath of air says, Now,
and the Friend holds up like a goblet
some anonymous skull.

-- Version by Coleman Barks
Unseen Rain

[Nichi]

To disregard what appears to be the self

This is love: to fly toward a secret sky,
to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment.

First, to let go of life.
In the end, to take a step without feet;
to regard this world as invisible,
and to disregard what appears to be the self.

Heart, I said, what a gift it has been
to enter this circle of lovers,
to see beyond seeing itself,
to reach and feel within the breast.


- Rumi,
The Divani Shamsi Tabriz, XIII

[Nichi]

If my words are not saying what You would say,
slap my face. Discipline me as a loving mother does
a babbling child caught up in nonsense.

A thirsty man runs into the sea,
and the sea holds a sword to his throat.

A lily looks at a bank of roses
and wilts and says nothing.

I am a tambourine. Don't put me aside
till the fast dancing starts.
Play me some all along.
Help me with these little sounds.

Joseph is most beautiful when he's completely naked,
but his shirt gives you an idea,
as the body lets you glimpse the glitter
on the water of the soul.

Even if the corpse washer binds my jaw shut,
you'll still hear this song
coming out of my dead-silence.


-- Version by Coleman Barks
"Like This"
Maypop, 1990

[Nichi]

On the other shore

On the other shore
Of the ocean
Of one's own self,
Quivers a drop of fluid--
As the origin of all.
But who can cross the seas
To reach it?

The root of all
Is based in you.
Explore the base
To reach the essence....

 
   
Haude Gosain
(1795 - ?)
India
English version by Deben Bhattacharya
The Mirror of the Sky: Songs of the Bauls of Bengal,
Translated by Deben Bhattacharya

[Nichi]

The universe
is a kaleidoscope:
now hopelessness, now hope
now spring, now fall.
Forget its ups and downs:
do not vex yourself:
The remedy for pain
is the pain.

Sarmad
17th Century Persia/India

[Nichi]

He bartered my heart
looted my flesh,
claimed as tribute
my pleasure,
took over
all of me.

I'm the woman of love
for my lord, white as jasmine.

Akka Mahadevi

[Nichi]

Jani has had enough of samsara,
but how will I repay my debt?

You leave your greatness behind you
to grind and pound with me.

O Lord you become a woman
washing me and my soiled clothes,

proudly you carry the water
and gather dung with your own two hands.

O Lord, I want
a place at your feet,
says Jani, Namdev's dasi.


Janabai

[Nichi]

Cry Out in Your Weakness

A dragon was pulling a bear into its horrible mouth

A courageous man went and rescued the bear.
There are such helpers in the world, who rush to save
anyone who cries out. Like Mercy itself,
they run toward the screaming.

And they can't be bought off.
If you were to ask one of those, "Why did you come
so quickly?" he or she would say, "Because I heard
your helplessness. "
Where lowland is,
that's where water goes. All medicine wants
is pain to cure.
And don't just ask for one mercy.
Let them flood in. Let the sky open under your feet.
Take the cotton out of your ears, the cotton
of consolations, so you can hear the sphere-music.

Push the hair out of your eyes.
Blow the phlegm from your nose,
and from your brain.

Let the wind breeze through.
Leave no residue in yourself from that bilious fever.
Take the cure for impotence,
that your manhood may shoot forth,
and a hundred new beings come of your coming.

Tear the bindings from around the foot
of your soul, and let it race around the track
in front of the crowd. Loosen the knot of greed
so tight on your neck. Accept your new good luck.

Give your weakness
to one who helps.

Crying out loud and weeping are great resources.
A nursing mother, all she does
is wait to hear her child.

Just a little beginning whimper
and she's there.

God created the child, that is, your wanting,
so that it might cry out, so that milk might come.

Cry out! Don't be stolid and silent
with your pain. Lament! And let the milk
of loving flow into you.

The hard rain and wind
are ways the cloud has
to take care of us.

Be patient.
Respond to every call
that excites your spirit.

Ignore those that make you fearful
and sad, that degrade you
back toward disease and death.


-- Mathnawi II: 1932-60
Version by Coleman Barks
"The Essential Rumi"
HarperSanFrancisco, 1995

[Nichi]

No wonder the soul doesn't remember its ancient home,
its original dwelling and place of birth,
since the sleep of this world covers it as clouds hide the stars.
It has walked through so many cities,
and the dust hasn't yet been wiped from its perception.
It hasn't yet worked to purify its heart and behold the past,
that its heart might peek from the aperture of mystery
and see its beginning with open eyes.


-- Mathnawi IV: 3632-3636
Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski
"Rumi: Jewels of Remembrance"

[Nichi]

The Circle Around the Zero

A lover doesn't figure the odds.

He figures he came clean from God
as a gift without a reason,
so he gives without cause
or calculation or limit.

A conventionally religious person
behaves a certain way
to achieve salvation.

A lover gambles everything, the self,
the circle around the zero! He or she
cuts and throws it all away.

This is beyond
any religion.

Lovers do not require from God any proof,
or any text, nor do they knock on a door
to make sure this is the right street.

They run,
and they run.


-- Version by Coleman Barks
"Feeling the Shoulder of the Lion"
Threshold Books, 1991