Gaia: A Room for Rumi (and other mystical poets)

Re: More Rumi...

http://shantimeera.gaia.com — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 14:50:49 GMT

Who is this we, that saw no sign and hide?
Water in metal, fire in rock. Rumi sings to my soul

Re: Peonies

http://iloveyou.gaia.com — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 12:39:50 GMT

Wow! I have not read this one before! This is such a beautiful poem! It moves my heart deeply and makes me wanna cry in a good way! :)

Announcement

http://iloveyou.gaia.com — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 12:37:00 GMT

Hi Everyone!

So I have just created a new group called
"Heart-Centered Creative Writing Group"

Please go here to check it out and join if you like!

http://groups.gaia.com/heartlove

Thanks!

Much Love,

Kundan

PS. So there isn't a water cooler board or a bulletin board room where one can make announcements or just chat, and so I decided to post the announcement here. Sorry if that was not the right thing to do.

More Rumi...

http://spigadoro.gaia.com — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 20:41:45 GMT

Maybe posting something in here every while will keep me on track a bit more...and maybe it will be nice for someone else out there too : )

********************************
For a while we lived with people,
but we saw no sign in them of the failthfulness we wanted.
It's better to hide completely within
as water hides in metal, as fire hides in a rock.
*********************************

Re: Two people have shown me pieces of Rumi over the past two day

http://iloveyou.gaia.com — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 06:13:44 GMT

Wow! That's just like the emotionl instrument panel metaphor talked about by Abraham Hicks in Ask and It is Given - if we were flying an airplane and our instrument panel showed us that we are going down - we would not judge it for telling us that - rather, we would appreciate it, and then tip the nose upward, little by little. Our emotions are like that - they simply tell us where we are and how far away we are from Source - sometimes they simply tell us we are going down, down, down and we end up judging rather than appreciating.

A New World

http://Netherlands.gaia.com — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 18:59:36 GMT

A New World
By Hafiz
(1320 - 1389)
English version by Haleh Pourafzal and Roger Montgomery

Let's offer flowers, pour a cup of libation,
split open the skies and start anew on creation.
If the forces of grief invade our lovers' veins,
cupbearer and I will wash away this temptation.
With rose water we'll mellow crimson wine's bitter cup;
we'll sugar the fire to sweeten smoke's emanation.
Take this fine lyre, musician, strike up a love song;
let's dance, sing all night, go wild in celebration.
As dust, O West Wind, let us rise to the Heavens,
floating free in Creator's glow of elation.
If mind desires to return while heart cries to stay,
here's a quarrel for love's deliberation.
Alas, these words and songs go for naught in this land;
come, Hafez, let's create a new generation.

from The Spiritual Wisdom of Hafez: Teachings of the Philosopher of Love, by Haleh Pourafzal / Roger Montgomery

This is todays poem and comment from www.Poetry-Chaikhana.com
a site I very much enjoy and recommend.

"It's been far too long since we last had a selection by Hafiz, so today... A New World.
split open the skies and start anew on creation.
The lines of this poem read like lovely poetic embellishments, but there is more going on here than ecstatic wordplay. Beneath the poetry, Hafiz is using precise esoteric language. The "rose" of the rose water. A "fire" that is also sweet. Becoming as egoless as dust before the West Wind... Meanings to contemplate and explore within.
If mind desires to return while heart cries to stay,
here's a quarrel for love's deliberation.
I particularly like these lines. The "mind" Hafiz is talking about is the conceptualizing, projecting mind. It is this mind that must be absent (or stilled) before we can see reality directly. When we do this, our sense of self shifts. We no longer imagine ourselves to be the little ego, we find ourselves centered deeply at home within the heart. For the first time we fully recognize the heart as being present.
But -- if the mind desires to return once we have discovered the presence of the heart, well, that's a dilemma... "a quarrel of love's deliberation."
come, Hafez, let's create a new generation."

Re: Wonderful TV show on Rumi

http://fastdarter.gaia.com — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 02:27:13 GMT

Thank you neighbor :-)

Re: Wonderful TV show on Rumi

http://tsuya.gaia.com — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 02:36:38 GMT

And for all Rumi lovers out there, I highly recommend the cd A Gift Of Love: Music Inspired By The Love Poems of Rumi. With poems from Deepak Chopra's The Love Poems of Rumi (translations by Fereydoun Kia), this lovely, dreamy, steamy, trance-y, dance-y music/poetry blend is just marvelous.

Poems I hadn't really cared for on the written page leap to life, read by Madonna, Demi Moore, Debra Winger (narrator of the above mentioned video Poet of the Heart), Martin Sheen, Robert John Burke (LOVED him in No Such Thing), Jared Harris (had never heard of him, but LOVE his reading), etc. etc. Rosa Parks - wow. Coleman Barks reading some of his own translations - charming - "the moon won't use the door, only the winder." And the many that Deepak Chopra reads in his earnest singsong are wonderful ("let us be neighbaahs" - oh, yes!)

Love it, love it, LOVE it!!

Re: Wonderful TV show on Rumi

http://tsuya.gaia.com — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 02:18:50 GMT

Lovely... this just found me. Yes! Rumi is sneaky that way...

In addition to the above (Rumi : Poet of the Heart by Haydn Reiss), there are some newer videos out there on Rumi...

Rumi Returning: The Triumph of Divine Passion *
Rumi: Turning Ecstatic (Tina Petrova and Stephen Roloff)
Rumi : the wings of love (Shems Friedlander)

I haven't seen these yet... I had seen a piece called Rave: who hears words with my ears a few years back - despite featuring some of my very favorite poets, it was awful... but this has inspired me to try again!

Re: Wonderful TV show on Rumi

http://fastdarter.gaia.com — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 00:26:32 GMT

I just found, I mean this just found me.
Rumi, Poet of the Heart | Link TV

Re: When the Vacation Is Over for Good

http://mettakaruna.gaia.com — Mon, 25 May 2009 17:38:09 GMT

Thank you for posting this - it is wonderful - sorry for the belated reply

Another, from one of my favorite wine-makers.

http://siona.gaia.com — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 04:04:36 GMT

Michel, my favorite vinter (can you see why?), sent me this, recently, and it seems unfair to keep it to myself.

Mulana's Last Letter to Shams

Sometimes I wonder, sweetest love, if you
Were a mere dream in a long winter night,
A dream of spring-days, and of golden light
Which sheds its rays upon a frozen heart;
A dream of wine that fills the drunken eye.

And so I wonder, sweetest love, if I
Should drink this ruby wine, or rather weep;
Each tear a bezel with your face engraved,
A rosary to memorize your name...

There are so many ways to call you back-
Yes, even if you only were a dream.

Hare & Lion: On the shallow interpretation of the fly

http://spigadoro.gaia.com — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 12:39:53 GMT

Rumi-Jawid Mojaddedi translation...

I wanted to share this with you all as I recently got it, and realize just how close the persian is to the couplets of shakespear...we are all so close with barks versions, it's a nice way to shake things up ; )

A fly in donkey's urine, perched on straw,
     Just like a boatman gazing at the shore,
Said, 'Straw and urine are my boat and sea,
     I've contemplated this fact recently:
I'm in the sea, the captain of my boat,
     Following maps and methods leanred by rote'
In urine it would steer it's straw-made raft
    As if in boundless seas, for it was daft:
It thought a single drop could stretch so far
     Unable to observe things as they are,
Its world stretched out as far as it could view,
     Small eyes count as a sea a drop or two!
Narrow interpreters are like this fly,
     With straw and urine they all falsify,
If you stop reading from your own small view,
    The phoenix will grant kingdoms then to you!
Still, those who've worked this out aren't really flies,
    Spirits don't correspond to body-size:

Re: When the Vacation Is Over for Good

http://spigadoro.gaia.com — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 12:33:08 GMT

nice post! I am so glad to see things in this group again!

When the Vacation Is Over for Good

http://siona.gaia.com — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 01:29:06 GMT

It will be strange
Knowing at last it couldn’t go on forever,
The certain voice telling us over and over
That nothing would change,

And remembering too,
Because by then it will all be done with, the way
Things were, and how we had wasted time as though
There was nothing to do,

When, in a flash
The weather turned, and the lofty air became
Unbearably heavy, the wind strikingly dumb
And our cities like ash,

And knowing also,
What we never suspected, that is was something like summer
At its more august except that the nights were warmer
And the clouds seemed to glow,

And even then,
Because we will not have changed much, wondering what
Will become of things, and who will be left to do it
All over again,

And somehow trying,
But still unable, to know just what it was
That went so completely wrong, or why it is
We are dying.

- Mark Strand.

Re: translators and translations

http://siona.gaia.com — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 19:41:22 GMT

I'd love to see what different translations look like! I remember reading this post / poem and being so struck by it, and maze's question below pertains perfectly.

Any thoughts? Are there examples that you know of of the same poem with different translators?

Two people have shown me pieces of Rumi over the past two days...

http://siona.gaia.com — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 19:30:30 GMT

So I may as well share them both here. The first, I believe, is an excerpt:

You have said what you are.
I am what I am.
Your actions in my head,
my head here in my hands
with something circling inside.
I have no name
for what circles
so perfectly.

- Rumi

And then, a whole poem:

This being human is a guesthouse.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness
comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be cleaning you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from the beyond.

- Rumi

From Damian's profile...

Can I just say again that I adore Rumi? 800 years old and still his presence is as powerful and immediate as ever.

Re: Daring Enough to Finish -- Poem by Rumi

http://mettakaruna.gaia.com — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 16:50:50 GMT

wow, the poem and the photo are beautiful! Yes, this looks like the Entrance.

Daring Enough to Finish -- Poem by Rumi

http://AmiAhlstedt.gaia.com — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:19:24 GMT

Daring Enough to Finish

Face that lights my face, you spin

intelligence into these particles

I am. Your wind shivers my tree.

My mouth tastes sweet with your name

in it. You make my dance daring enough

to finish. No more timidity! Let

fruit fall and wind turn my roots up

in the air, done with patient waiting.

Rumi

I shot this picture in Mexico last year. Such a magical little place, quietly tucked in behind a store front! The kind of place that, when you glimpse it, you want to run to it, and once there, you don't want to leave.

I keep it around me as a visual representation of the Entrance... to the place that unleashes; unfetters; unbinds,

Best translation of Hafiz?

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:16:31 GMT

Whose translation is considered, shall I say, the most instructive? Thanks. Hugh.