Jalaluddin Al-Rumi

'Somewhere out beyond ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there'
(Someone has make a short video to go with this wonderful saying; click here to see it)

And poignantly

'Don't break the thread of love, Raheem has said
What's cut won't join; if joined it knots the thread'

A visitor to this journal has added these lovely lines, equally appropriate

'The tides will take my poetry and song,
And carry off the clothes I did not own.
Good and bad, devotion, empty piety --
Moonlight brings and moonlight takes away'.


This reminds me so much of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and the Tale of the Heike while the following poem reminds me of the Astravakra Gita

What can I do? I do not know myself.
I am neither Christian nor Jew, neither Zoroastrian nor Muslim,
I am not from east or west, not from land or sea,
not from the shafts of nature nor from the spheres of the firmament,
not of the earth, not of water, not of air, not of fire.
I am not from the highest heaven, not from this world,
not from existence, not from being.
I am not from India, not from China, not from Bulgar, not from Saqsin,
not from the realm of the two Iraqs, not from the land of Khurasan
I am not from the world, not from beyond,
not from heaven and not from hell.
I am not from Adam, not from Eve, not from paradise and not from Ridwan.
My place is placeless, my trace is traceless,
no body, no soul, I am from the soul of souls.
I have chased out duality, lived the two worlds as one.
One I seek, one I know, one I see, one I call.
He is the first, he is the last, he is the outer, he is the inner.
Beyond "He" and "He is" I know no other.
I am drunk from the cup of love, the two worlds have escaped me.
I have no concern but carouse and rapture.
If one day in my life I spend a moment without you
from that hour and that time I would repent my life.
If one day I am given a moment in solitude with you
I will trample the two worlds underfoot and dance forever.

Jalaluddin A-Rumi

Click here for a brief biography of Rumi and some of his most famous writings