Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi: The Absolute works with nothing

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The Absolute works with nothing

Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi, Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi poetry, Muslim / Sufi, Muslim / Sufi poetry, poetry, [TRADITION SUB2] poetry, poetry

by Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi
(1207 - 1273) Timeline

English version by
Coleman Barks

Original Language
Persian/Farsi

The Absolute works with nothing.
The workshop, the materials
are what does not exist.

Try and be a sheet of paper with nothing on it.
Be a spot of ground where nothing is growing,
where something might be planted,
a seed, possibly, from the Absolute.

-- from The Essential Rumi, Translated by Coleman Barks

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/ Photo by Bidrohi Hirok /

Themes

Garden

Recommended Books

	Delicious Laughter: Rambunctious Teaching Stories from the Mathnawi of Jelaluddin Rumi, Translated by Coleman Barks
	East Window: Poems from Asia, Translated by W. S. Merwin
	The Essential Rumi, Translated by Coleman Barks
	A Garden Beyond Paradise: Love Poems of Rumi, by Jonathan Star / Shahram Shiva
	The Hand of Poetry: Five Mystic Poets of Persia, with Lectures by Inayat Khan, Translated by Coleman Barks

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This one got me thinking...

We are always making plans, building ourselves up, projecting ourselves into the world. Amidst this constant fulness, Rumi reminds us, we must also have emptiness. If our hands are not empty, they cannot receive. For the ground to be ready to receive a seed, it must first be cleared.

That takes real courage: patient, empty receptivity. To be at ease with blank, still spaces in the soul. To feel our own fecundity hidden beneath all our activity; instead of filling it, waiting, trusting that some new spark will land and glow and grow.

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