A Basket of Fresh Bread

The Prophet Muhammad said, 
                          "There is no better companion
on this Way than what you do.  Your actions will be 
your best friend, or if you're cruel and selfish,
your actions will be a poisonous snake 
that lives in your grave."

                          But tell me, 
can you do the good work without a teacher?  
Can you even know what it is without the presence 
of a Master?  Notice how the lowest livelihood 
requires some instruction.

                          First comes knowledge, 
then the doing of the job.  And much later, 
perhaps after you're dead, something grows 
from what you've done.

                          Look for help and guidance 
in whatever craft you're learning.  Look for a generous 
teacher, one who has absorbed the tradition he's in.

Look for pearls in oyster shells.
Learn technical skill from a craftsman.

Whenever you meet genuine spiritual teachers, 
be gentle and polite and fair with them.
Ask them questions, and be eager
for answers.  Never condescend.

If a master tanner wears an old, threadbare smock,
that doesn't diminish his mastery.

If a fine blacksmith works at the bellows
in a patched apron, it doesn't affect
how he bends the iron.

                          Strip away your pride, 
and put on humble clothes.

                          If you want to learn theory, 
talk with theoreticians.  That way is oral.

When you learn a craft, practice it.
That learning comes through the hands.

If you want dervishood, spiritual poverty,
and emptiness, you must be friends with a sheikh.

The mystery of spiritual emptiness 
may be living in a pilgrim's heart, and yet 
the knowing of it may not be his.

Wait for the illuminating openness, 
as though your chest were filling with Light,
as when God said, 
                           Did we not expand you?
                                                     (Qur'an, XCIV,1)

Don't look for it outside yourself.
You are the source of milk.  Don't milk others!

There is a milk-fountain inside you.
Don't walk around with an empty bucket.

You have a channel into the Ocean, and yet
you ask for water from a little pool.

Beg for that love-expansion.  Meditate only
on THAT.  The Qur'an says, 
                            And he is with you
                                                 (VII,4)

There is a basket of fresh bread on your head, 
and yet you go door to door asking for crusts.

Knock on your inner door.  No other.
Sloshing kneedeep in fresh riverwater, yet
you keep wanting a drink from other people's waterbags.

Water is everywhere around you, but you only see
barriers that keep you from water.

The horse is beneath the rider's thighs, and still
he asks, Where is my horse?
                                         "Right there, under you!"
Yes, this is a horse, but where's the horse?
                                                              "Can't you see!"
Yes, I can see, but whoever saw such a horse?

Mad with thirst, he can't drink from the stream
running so close by his face.  He's like a pearl
on the deep bottom, wondering, inside his shell, 
"Where's the Ocean?"
                             His mental questionings
form the barrier.  His physical eyesight
bandages his knowing.  Self-consciousness
plugs his ears.
                             Stay bewildered in God,
and only that.

                            Those of you who are scattered,
simplify your worrying lives.  There is one
righteousness: Water the fruit trees,
and don't water the thorns.  Be generous 
to what nurtures the Spirit and God's luminous
reason-light.  Don’t honor what causes
dysentery and knotted-up tumors.

Don't feed both sides of yourself equally.
The spirit and the body carry different loads
and require different attentions.
                                   Too often
we put saddlebags on Jesus and let the donkey
run loose in the pasture.
                           Don't make the body do
what the spirit does best, and don't put a big load 
on the spirit that the body could carry easily.

(Mathnawi, V, 1051-1094)

The Pickaxe

Some commentary on I was a hidden treasure, 
and I desired to be known:  tear down

this house.  A hundred thousand new houses 
can be built from the transparent yellow carnelian

buried beneath it, and the only way to get to that
is to do the work of demolishing and then

digging under the foundations.  With that value
in hand all the new construction will be done

without effort.  And anyway, sooner or later this house
will fall on its own.  The jewel treasure will be

uncovered, but it won’t be yours then.  The buried
wealth is your pay for doing the demolition,

the pick and shovel work.  If you wait and just 
let it happen, you’ll bite your hand and say,

“I didn’t do as I knew I should have.”  This
is a rented house.  You don’t own the deed.

You have a lease, and you’ve set up a little shop,
where you barely make a living sewing patches

on torn clothing.  Yet only a few feet underneath
are two veins, pure red and bright gold carnelian.

Quick!  Take the pickaxe and pry the foundation.
You’ve got to quit this seamstress work.

What does the patch-sewing mean, you ask.  Eating
and drinking.  The heavy cloak of the body

is always getting torn.  You patch it with food, 
and other restless ego-satisfactions.  Rip up

one board from the shop floor and look into
the basement.  You’ll see two glints in the dirt.

At breakfast tea a beloved asked her lover, 
"Who do you love more, yourself or me?"
From my head to my foot, I have become you.
Nothing remains of myself but my name.
You have your wish.  Only you exist.
I've disappeared like a drop of vinegar in an ocean of honey.
A stone, which has become a ruby
is filled with the qualities of the sun.
No stoniness remains in it.
If it loves itself, it is loving the sun.
and if it loves the sun, it is loving itself.
There's no difference between these two loves.
Before the stone becomes the ruby it is its own enemy.
Not one but two exist. The stone is dark and blind to daylight.
If it loves itself it is unfaithful. It intensely resists the sun.
If it says "I" it is all darkness.
A Pharaoh claims divinity and is brought down.
Hallaj says the same and is saved.
One I is cursed, another is blessed.
One I is a stone, another a crystal.
One an enemy of the light, the other a reflector of it.
In its inmost consciousness, not through any doctrine, 
it is one with the light.
Work on your stony qualities and become resplendent like the ruby.
Practice self-denial and accept difficulty.
Always see infinite life in letting the self die.
Your stoniness will decrease, your ruby nature will grow.
The signs of self-existence will leave your body
and ecstasy will take you over.
Become an all-hearing ear and gain a ruby earring.
Dig a well in the earth of this body, 
or even before the well is dug
let God draw the water up.
Be always at work scraping the dirt from the well.
To everyone who suffers, endeavor always brings its fortune.
The prophet has said each prostration of prayer
is a knock at heaven's door.
When anyone continues to knock
felicity shows its smiling face.

my dear friend
never lose hope
when the beloved
sends you away

if you're abandoned
if you're left hopeless
tomorrow for sure
you'll be called again

if the door is shut
right in your face
keep waiting with patience
don't leave right away

seeing your patience
your love will soon 
summon you with grace
raise you like a champion

and if all the roads
end up in dead ends
you'll be shown the secret paths
no one will comprehend

the beloved i know
will give with no qualms
to a puny ant
the kingdom of Solomon

my heart has journeyed
many times around the world
but has never found
and will never find
such a beloved again

ah i better keep silence
i know this endless love
will surely arrive    for you and you and you

Everything you see has its roots in the unseen world. 
The forms may change, yet the essence remains the same. 
Every wonderful sight will vanish, every sweet word will fade, 
But do not be disheartened, 
The source they come from is eternal, growing, 
Branching out, giving new life and new joy. 

Why do you weep? 
The source is within you, 
And this whole world is springing up from it. 
The source is full, 
And its waters are ever-flowing. 
Do not grieve, drink your fill. 
From the moment you came into this world, 
A ladder was placed in front of you, 
That you might transcend it. 
From earth, you became plant, 
From plant you became animal, 
Afterwards you became a human being, 
Endowed with knowledge, intellect and faith. 
Behold the body, born of dust, how perfect it has become. 
Why should you fear its end? 
When were you ever made less by dying? 
When you pass beyond this human form, 
No doubt you will become an angel and soar through the heavens, 
But don't stop there, even heavenly bodies grow old. 
Pass again from the heavenly realm and 
Plunge, plunge into the vast ocean of consciousness, 
Let the drop of water that is you become a hundred mighty seas. 
But do not think that the drop alone becomes the ocean. The ocean, too, becomes the drop. 

From 'This Longing'

You Are Not a Single You

You're a common rhyme-word now, 
dependant on some other for your emotional force, 
but real life will come.

As when a baby stops nursing and grows interested
in solid food.  As when seeds break open in the ground
and act differently.

                    There is a hidden love-center
in human beings that you will discover and savor
and nourish yourself with.  That will be your food.

There's a way of going that's like the stars. 
                                              No, 
even freer than they are, completely unconditioned, 
unlocated, unpathed.  A journey without a sky!

You came from Non-existence into being.
How did that happen?  Tell me about it!
You were a little drunk when you arrived, 
so you can't remember exactly?
                               I'll give you
some secret hints.  Let your mind go, and be mindful.
Close your ears, and listen.
                             But maybe I shouldn't tell, 
if you're not ripe.  You're still in early Spring.
July hasn't happened yet in you.
                                      This world is a tree,
and we are green, half-ripe fruit on it.
We hold tight to the limbs, because we know
we're not ready to be taken into the palace.

When we mature and sweeten, 
                                we'll feel ashamed
at having clung so clingingly.
                                To hold fast
is a sure sign of unripeness.  
                               To drink and enjoy
blood is fine for an embryo,

More needs to be said on this, but the Holy Spirit
will tell it to you when I'm not here.
                                       You'll tell it
to yourself.  Not I, or some other "I," You
who are Me!

                As when you fall asleep and go
from the presence of your self to the Presence
of your Self.  You hear That One and you think,
"Someone must have communicated telepathically 
in my sleep."

             You are not a single You, 
good Friend, you are a Sky and an Ocean, 
a tremendous YHUUUUUU, a nine hundred times huge
drowning place for all your hundreds of you's.

What are these terms wakefulness and sleep?
Don't answer.  Let God answer.
Don't speak, so the Speakers can.
Not a word, so Sun-light can cay
what has never been in a book, or said.
Don't try to put it into words, 
an the Spirit will do that through you,
in spite of you,
                 beside you, 
                             among you.
Stop swimming so hard,
                       and climb into the boat
with Noah.

(Mathnawi, III, 1283-1307)

From 'Like This '

1823

I don't get tired of You.  Don't grow weary
of being compassionate toward me!

All this thirst-equipment
must surely be tired of me, 
the waterjar, the water-carrier.

I have a fish in me
that can never find enough 
of what it's thirsty for!

Show me the way to the Ocean!
Break all these half-measures, 
these small containers.

All this fantasy
and grief.

Let my house be drowned in the wave
that rose last night out of the courtyard
hidden in the center of my chest.

Joseph fell like the moon into my well.
The harvest I expected was washed away.
But no matter.

A fire has risen above my tombstone hat.
I don't want learning, or dignity, 
or respectability.

I want this music and this dawn
and the warmth of your cheek against mine.

The grief-armies assemble,
but I'm not going with them.

This is how it always is
when I finish a poem.

A Great Silence overcomes me,
an I wonder why I ever thought
to use language.  - 3090
Forget the world, and so 
command the world.

Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder.
Help someone's soul heal.
Walk out of your house like a shepherd.

Stay in the spiritual fire.
Let it cook you.

Be a well-baked loaf
and lord of the table.

Come and be served
to your brothers.

You have been a source of pain.
Now you'll be the delight.

You have been an unsafe house.
Now you'll be the One
who sees into the Invisible.

I said this, and a Voice came to my ear,
"If you become this, you will be That!"

Then Silence,
and now more Silence.

A mouth is not for talking.
A mouth is for tasting this Sweetness.
From 543

I saw Your Blade and burned my shield!
I flew on six hundred pairs of wings like Gabriel.
But now that I'm here, what do I need wings for?

Day and night I guarded the pearl of my soul.
Now in this Ocean of pearling currents, 
I've lost track of which was mine.

There is no way to describe You.
Say the end of this so strongly
that I will ride up over
my own commotion.

		'Love says, 'The cost of kissing me is your life'
		 What a bargain!  I'll take it!'  

		'Here, one coin buys a gold mine
		 One rose buys a whole garden...'