The Drowned Book

Coleman Barks, John Moyne

• Publisher: HarperOne
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780061882487
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern Poetry
• Index: Literature

The Lost Words of the Sufi Master and Father of Rumi

Bahauddin, Rumi's father, was not only a major force in the development of Islamic spirituality, but also a deeply influential force in his son's life. In this, the first ever substantial English version of a wonderful but virtually unknown book, Bahauddin proves to be a daring, spiritual genius. His voice comes through the delightful, passionate craft of Coleman Barks, who transforms the Persian translations of John Moyne into fresh spiritual literature.

BOOK ONE

Maarif 1:1²²
BLUE ROBE²³

Show the true way. (Qur’an 1:6)²⁴

I have been given a taste for what is beautiful. Like milk running through my body, the gates open. I wear a blue robe woven of six directions with watercolor images flowing over the cloth, a thousand kinds of flowers, yellow jasmine, wild iris. Orchard corridors, handsome faces on the street, I am composed of this beauty, the attar of pressed plants, rose oil, resinous balsam: live essence, I am the intelligent juice of flowers.

1:2–3
ONE OF THE WAYS GOD TASTES

In the middle of praying I was thinking about the nymphs of paradise again, said to be half-camphor, half-saffron, with their hair of pure musk.

Then I remembered the old saying about such and such whose head is soaked in shame, with his foot bound tight in truthfulness.

Then I recalled the qualities of God: compassion, generosity, elegant intricacy, luminous wisdom, mercy, beauty. I became grateful that I know the taste of some of these qualities, according to my limited capacity, and even beyond it.

I see a long table spread with a tablecloth. On it are the powers and qualities and creations, the seven stars from which flow our pleasure here. Even in my unconsciousness, God enters my desire and my soul with the taste of those qualities.

I feel myself becoming one of the ways God tastes.

1:4
THIS CUP OF SEEING, MY WINE

I sit in front of God, moaning and grieving and praising, finding new ways to show my love, like songs being sung to a re-beck, then tambourine and ney, then the music of all three.

Every moment this cup of seeing fills with vision. This is my wine. I drink the given moment, and through my limbs and trunk and head the blooms are opening. This is health. Any other feeling, disease and deadness.

1:8
SLEEP-TREE

I was sitting, wondering what I should do, when I received this revelation: Open your heart. Feel the closeness with God. Look inside yourself. Tend the awareness there.

Which led me to think, There are two entities here, God and myself. God, the dazzling mystery; me, the confused mixture of dead and bitter that I must suffer through to reach God.

Tangled in these thoughts, I get drowsy. In sleep I become a night-silent tree, rooted in nonbeing. As I wake, the tree puts forth branches and leaves. Eyesight returns; limbs move in the air. My heart feels like flowers opening along a branch. Prayer expands to become fruit, and nonbeing is the taste of language in my mouth.

1:10
FRAGRANCE OF AN INVISIBLE FLOWER

I see the essence of being alive as water flowing from the invisible to here, then back there. My senses know they came from nowhere and will go back to nowhere.

I recognize the one step from existence to non and from nonexistence to here. When I deeply know my senses, I feel in them the way to God and the purpose of living.

Look at this surprising flower

which cannot be seen, and yet

its fragrance cannot be hidden.

God is the invisible flower. Love is the flower’s fragrance, everywhere apparent.

1:14–15
MORNING SALAAMS

Early each morning I sit in the mosque. As people come in, they give salaams, The peace of God, God’s peace. Then they do a full prostration in front of me. I know what God is doing: composing my soul so that it appears with such beauty to these people that they want to honor the workmanship.

Even if they see my hypocrisy, the conflicting emotions, my love of flattery, still, mostly they recognize the divine attention that has been given to me. I am grateful for the way my soul is sometimes drawn to move with other souls and then separated from them. I observe here a law of soulmaking with exciting possibilities for understanding.

Scenes of how it operates appear: People in arctic cold, others in the tropics. Oceans, high desert canyons, wooded valleys, all in harmony with “the One who has no partner.” There is a group that sings and moves in pure joy; another is quiet in the midst of tremendous grief and carnage. A tree bristling with thorns: jealousy, meanspirited revenge. Then the white jasmine flowers bud, open, and drop the gift of themselves.

Why are we shown this? So we can appreciate the whole as given. When I am grieved and without hope, I accept that as grace, as well as the removal of pain. A deep knowing comes as we are shown, receive, and grow to love both.

1:27–29
BOILING POT

Lord, you give dominion (12:101). I said to God, Power on the material plane is trivial compared to what occurs in the unseen.

You taught me to interpret traditions (12:101). And you are teaching me how to understand the stories that appear, and that I hear, in sleep. I stay vividly alive, whether dreaming or awake.

Creator of heaven and earth (12:101). You separate the mundane from the sublime, and you open a curtain so I can sit and enjoy the two worlds.

I take refuge in both (12:101). Both belong to you, but I have fallen in love with the other, the next, what is unseen now. Take this apparent one away. I am tired of waiting for the life to come.

So at this point what should I do? Where does my heart lead me? Maybe I should consider the range of pleasures available, the comforts of resting in the body and the other intensities of nonbeing. Both are given. Everything I say is a remembering of God.

When I think of a human soul, I see a boiling pot, restless confusion. Pleasure comes from you. Nonexistence following existence with existence then coming in again, being nursed and sustained by you (11:6).

I ask for guidance with tremendous awe, and in close companionship too. The gifts arrive with familiar good humor. I ask to be satisfied in my sexual wanting. You give that, as well as the source of sex. When hungry, I ask you for food. Who else would I go to? Where else can I look for work?

I go to your door to pass the time. We walk out together. In five-times prayer I ask you to accept this homage, and please, to keep my body vibrant with new varieties of favors and the familiar pleasures too.

I don’t always see wonders around me. Sometimes, in trouble, weary and sick of this life, I go to your door. No matter my mood, I go to you.

1:29
A SWEETNESS IN DISTANCE

Living moments come from you: eyesight, form, understanding, intellect, soul, everything. So why can’t I speak more directly? Why can I not stand in your presence and press my lips to yours? I want my body to feel you pouring through! Why not?

Revelation in response: What you say is observation not conversation. Let the asking be more of an experience.

But I am treated like a mineral, a bit of sand blowing about with no sense of you and no knowledge of myself. I sit in quietness to feel the glory and the love.

Another revelation: I show myself in minute doses. Take small sips.

There is such sweetness in this distance. How would it be to be closer?

1:34–35
STILL GROWING

Inside and outside my body I see clear cold streams beside the flowers, and after I die, the corpse will find its way back to those and the soft air around them. Our soul-seeds come from the invisible, and here we are, still growing. We fade and go to seed. We die. New seeds slip into the ground of the unseen, each to grow its own unique lineage beside the water. God provides this continuing.

Qur’an 64:14 reminds us that there may be enemies among those close to us. Be careful, and remember that when you forgive and overlook insults, you are letting grace dissolve resentment.

1:42
FORGIVENESS AND IMPULSE

To know whether a particular sin has been forgiven, look within to see if you still feel the urge to do it. If you do, it hasn’t. Keep praying for the impulse to be removed.

1:49–50
LOAVES AT TABLE

Someone with no compassion for anyone else will have no mercy on himself. If you commit a cruel injustice against a stranger, you will do the same or worse to yourself. Every forgetful, mean act comes back. You will find yourself loaded with what you literally cannot bear. You’re not strong enough. The curse of wandering without joy or purpose will walk with you for years until you come upon that which was your first shelter, the cradle of the manger.

A horse strays into a cave full of lions. You move deeper into your desire for sex, for art and wealth. There will come a time when your life is a blank (76:1), but has there ever really been a time when human beings were not cared for? For thousands of years we had no identity, yet we managed to arrive in this amazing moment, this brightly conscious lifespan. Who gave us such restlessness to know and be?

In the oven of the womb you were a wet lump getting baked for the world’s long banquet table. You have no sense of that process, the skills that brought you to this fragrant, generous moment. Loaves of bread do not know as much as their bakers or even as much as those seated at table.

You have been given the perception you have and your willingness to surrender—not to be in control, but rather to worship with and praise. These are important limits to acknowledge, as definite and as clear as the fact that inorganic objects like stones and pieces of metal cannot see. That’s how you are with spirit and the beings who live in the spirit. You cannot see them or know their circumstances and purposes.

We know so little, and we are given gifts we have done nothing to deserve. We rise from dust, live our brief difficulty and triumph, then sink back to dust. It is sheer stupidity, and dustdevil arrogance, to question God’s justice, or common sense or abiding compassion. Praise whatever you feel as indignity or humiliation, or even idiotic disaster. Praise that the divine presence is a knowing beyond our misunderstanding, and that that knowing nourishes all.

1:52–53
THE NIGHT VIGIL

Darkness has been given as a nightshirt to sleep in (25:47). Remember how human beings were composed from water and dust for blood and flesh with oily resins heated in fire to make a skeleton. Then the soul, the divine light, was breathed into human shapes. The work now is to help our bodies become pure light. It may look like this is not happening. But in a cocoon every bit of worm-dissolving slime becomes silk. As we take in light, each part of us turns to silk.

We made the night a darkness, but we bring shining dawnlight out of that. In the same way the mound of your grave will bloom with resurrection. Sufis and those on the path of the heart use darkness to go within. During the night vigil the universe is theirs (40:16). With all the kings and sultans and their learned counselors asleep, everyone is unemployed, except those wakeful few and the divine presence.

1:62–63
UNDER THE GARDEN

Someone asked why it is that such affliction and disaster come to those who are friends of God, the prophets. I answered that suffering opens the heart, and that’s a good thing. Pain and difficulties are spring thunderstorms, dark above, flowers and laughter below. This visible world is calamity’s home where the body hurts, while the soul grows more alive.

The death-community mourns, then looks for ways to please the body. They live the sadness of their inverted vision. Notice how a dervish stays hidden underground in the heart, tremendously happy beneath ...