The Opposite of Estrangement
Meditating on a poem by the Persian poet Rumi.
Montaigne wrote a famous essay “On Friendship” in which he meditated on his best friend Étienne de La Boétie, who died at the age of thirty-two of an infectious disease (probably dysentery) with Montaigne at his bedside. Boétie was a fellow magistrate and political philosopher, and the two men often conversed for hours about every theme under the sun. Montaigne was so devastated by his death that it left him feeling like the rest of his life was"nothing but smoke, an obscure and tedious night.”
Watching in horror this senseless war unfold—and the philistine demons cheering it on and reveling in images of destruction—I spent the day pondering why we humans hate each other so much. Even when we are among our own people, we we are often inclined to feel boredom, tedium, irritation, and resentment.
What is it precisely that can bind two people together in deep affection? Montaigne believed it was conversation—the sharing of thoughts and ideas—that was the greatest bond.
Montaigne’s sentiments remind me of the great Persian poet, Rumi. His full name was Jalal al-Din Rumi and he was a 13th century poet and theologian who articulated the Islamic philosophy of Sufism, which focuses on personal purification, meditating on the nature of God, and divine love.
Like Montaigne, he had an exceptionally close friendship—in his case, with a poet named Shams Tabrīzī, who is said to have taught Rumi in Konya (modern Turkey) for forty days, before moving away to Damascus. My favorite of Tabrizi’s teachings is the following:
Don’t search for heaven and hell in the future. Both are now present. Whenever we manage to love without expectations, calculations, negotiations, we are indeed in heaven. Whenever we fight, hate, we are in hell.
Judging by Tabrīzī’s method of assessing our spiritual condition, much of mankind is currently in hell.
Tabrīzī’s departure grieved Rumi, and was apparently the inspiration of the following poem.
What was in that candle’s light
that opened and consumed me so quickly?
Come back, my friend! The form of our love
is not a created form.
Nothing can help me but that beauty.
There was a dawn I remember
when my soul heard something
from your soul. I drank water
from your spring and felt
the current take me.
Estrangement is Ephemeral When Your Soul is Eternal:
Once there was a boy who gave a girl twelve roses. Eleven of them were real, one was plastic. Then he told her he will love her until the last one dies.
It was a promise he never took back.
But then one horrible day she died instead, and as her absence filled his world, he begged:
If tears could build a stairway,
and memories a lane,
I'd march right up to heaven
and bring you home again.
But no matter the depth of his grief, no such stairway ever appeared. As the years trickled by ever so painfully, on occasion he would wake up feeling fine.
Then he’d remember.
As the breaking wheel of time turned and his youth and hope fled him he went to her garden:
An old man kneeling all alone
Plants a plastic rose in a garden of stone
For seventy years now she's been gone
But his broken devotion is still going strong
She looked down and her heart was lost.
She whispered:
Do not stand at my grave and weep;
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am diamond glints on snow.
I am sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awake and greet the dawn
I am the day as it is born
I am birds in circling flight
I am the soft starlight at night
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there.
I did not die.
He looked up with a lighter heart and sighed, “thank you”. After seventy years his loneliness finally fled him. He was no longer kneeling all alone. Her presence filled his world.
He retrieved her rose and renewed his promise.
Absolutely beautiful! Thank you for sharing!