the rose garden

Garden of miracles,
what kind of garden are you?

It’s been awhile since I posted any of my daily Rumi. That dude sure loved garden metaphors. His work makes me want to plant more roses. Or maybe gardenias (which I think don’t survive Virginian winters). Roses aren’t my fragrant flower of choice.

One of my favorite things at home is sitting in or looking out over the back yard, which is a bit of a garden and a bit of scraggly urban landscape. It’s easier to follow a meditation discipline with the support of the green things and the city. All that oxygen to breathe in! And that nourishing carbon dioxide to share with plants! Of course it’s easy to feel interconnected with things when you so clearly are – sharing air and nutrients and everything.

Rumi’s gardens are more spiritual metaphors than physical places. More than the metaphor, though, I love the idea of the physical place containing miracles. It does.

Just this morning,
contemplation
led me into
the rose garden that is
neither
outside this world
nor within it.
- Jalal-ud-Din Rumi
(both of these passages were translated by Andrew Harvey in A Year of Rumi)

give yourself to the rose garden

The Rumi-a-day thing was apparently a great idea. Maybe I should re-title this blog “all Rumi all the time” or something.

So. Here’s your Rumi. It’s a selection of related snippets I’ve enjoyed this month.

Each moment from all sides rushes to us the call to love.
We are running to contemplate its vast green field.
Do you want to come with us?
This is not the time to stay at home,
but to go out and give yourself to the rose garden.
The dawn of joy has arisen,
and this is the moment of vision.
—
Run forward, the way will spring open to you
Be destroyed, you’ll be flooded with life
Humble yourself, you’ll grow greater than the world
Yourself will be revealed to you, without you.
—
Heart, you are lost; but there’s a path
From the lover to the soul, secret
But visible. Worlds blaze round you –
Don’t shrink: the path’s secret, but yours.
- Jalal-ud-Din Rumi
(Translated by Andrew Harvey from A Year of Rumi)

My friend D sent me this poem she published awhile back that I keep on my fridge. One of the lines is I know which mushrooms; it’s also about sorta forcefully stepping out on a secret path. Or rushing, running, not shrinking. The point is action. And knowing. And trusting.

I spent some time recently staring into my navel and asking it how I ought to be: dearest mister navel, what future do I want? I had my doubts – really, I thought I was being unbelievably self-absorbed and wanky, no matter how needed the navel-gazing might be. It was surprisingly productive! I went in knowing that I like coaching teams and wish I felt more comfortable being the flaming nerd I am, and that what I do right now – at work – is slowly exhausting my reserves without giving me (or I suspect others) much back. And I came out with the clear-yet-daunting purpose of, you know, changing everyone’s perspective on work. No big deal. Just an itty bitty revolution. I’ll have it to you by next Thursday. No one’s going to eat your eyes (this is my new favorite example of corporate speak).

Point being. All this Rumi was dribbling in each day as I contemplated. The thinking itself took effort – and scheduling; I finally had to declare a couple hours each day to be thinking time. Like motivating to exercise, it may be delightful (and indeed it was, a few nights I started my hours, then never quite slept) once started, but the starting’s the hard part.

And in the background, Rumi’s all get up! get up! This is not the time to stay at home /
but to go out and give yourself to the rose garden. I love the “give yourself” in this translation. It sounds trite and fatalistic, but I think a purpose (future, vision, whatever word you choose) often feels like something you give yourself to. You do the work because you have to.

I’ve read a ton of other people’s writing about how they just found that clear, sweet nectar of purpose and TADA there was life, hope on board, next stop purpose realization. Seriously? I thought they were… thinking wishfully.

Then I get maybe 2/3 of the way through this conversation with my navel, to the point where I’m all great, ok. HOW??? and it responds how would I know? I’m your bellybutton. Thanks. Super helpful. Aaaand… then I got a call [Technically, I got the world's most absurd Google Voice transcription of a voicemail, ever, and yet somehow knew what it was.] with a very nice suggestion of a how. TADA, hop on board, next stop purpose realization, albeit on a small scale.

Can it really be that easy? Run forward, the way will spring open to you? Just like that?

This seems implausible. Tiny reading population: has this happened to you?

love

How can you ever hope to know the Beloved
Without becoming in every cell the Lover?
And when you are the Lover at last, you don’t care.
Whatever you know, or don’t – only Love is real.
- Jalal-ud-Din Rumi
(Translated by Andrew Harvey from A Year of Rumi)

I’ve subscribed to this year-long Rumi-a-day email course. It’s not a ‘course’ in the sense of a class or curriculum – just, a little Rumi every day.

This one I like because I don’t intellectually get it, but it feels true anyhow. This is pretty true of Rumi, period, come to think: lots of talk about God and Love and various other capitalized words used in ways that aren’t the ways people tend to use them today. And the God word. That word makes this atheist uncomfortable. I like it when Rumi says it, though. It sounds simply sacred.

Love. Yes. That’s powerful, inasmuch as I grok what he – and his translators – meant by it. Divine oneness, maybe. It seems like a more ecstatic version of buddhist love (or lovingkindness, maitri, or open-heartedness, bodhichitta). Buddhism has a lot of ways to talk about love. Some I understand and some I’m barely beginning to.

So I’ve been thinking about the role love plays in… call it spirituality, purpose, a life of virtue, rightness of path. My experience doesn’t contain enough ways to talk about love. There’s the way I love the office copiers multi-function devices, which is a lot like the way I love a new person or discovery of any sort: this is SO AWESOME, you are SO AWESOME. Or the way I love someone – or something – I really know, with all their complexities and frustrations and a subtler, deeper, recognition of their awesome. Or the air of an early fall evening, a sensuous sort of love. These are all the same word, a word that translates into buddhism as attachment. Sorta.

Yes, those things all include some sort of attachment. But. With the exception of the copier, my feeling in each of those cases includes a love that’s more like breathing. I imagine this is a hint of bodhichitta, love that rests you on its open palm rather than hold you in its fist. It’s not all grasping and awesome and mine mine mine; affection can also connect and open you to the world and everything in it, which is also you. Then we get all circular, and everything makes more sense if you just turn your rational mind off.

Affection contains a little of this maitri idea, too. Maybe affection could be all about that: close people could be the ones you most readily want goodness for. Beginners’ meditations about lovingkindness tend to start with the self, move to an object of affection and project desire for that person’s happiness, and spread from there. Until everyone’s happy. Or at least, everyone’s happiness is important to you. Clearly this isn’t a new or unique idea – the thing we label love is a well-trod path to love that’s good for everyone.

I’m trying to follow this gradually appearing path. When I pay attention, it’s as if I have infinite space and patience for everyone and everything I love. This is where we come back to Rumi, where only Love is real.