Contemplative Inquiry

I have long been an admirer of Rumi’s poetry and have recently been dipping into my copy of Coleman Barks’ accessible English translations in his The Essential Rumi (1). This is a substantial volume of poetry and teaching – with the two aspects not really distinguishable.

It is not a new book. My edition is from 2004, and still in print. Coleman Barks provides good information about Rumi in the context of his life and spiritual path as a Sufi Dervish (2), which I have condensed into a note at the end of this post. I think that Barks’ translation works well for people on a spiritual journey, not necessarily Sufis themselves. This seems fitting because Rumi reached out well beyond the world of religious scholars and jurists. He was remarkably ecumenically minded, in a culture where people of many faiths lived side by side.

The poem I offer here is Solomon’s Crooked Crown. Here the archetypal wise ruler, who is also anyone and everyone, learns from his own errors. Solomon doesn’t represent wisdom through being right all the time. He isn’t. He needs to be called out on occasions by his ‘crown’, or higher power. He is wise because he recognises inconvenient truth and answers the call.

“Solomon was busy judging others,

when it was his personal thoughts

that were disrupting the community.

His crown slid crooked on his head,

He put it on straight, but the crown went

awry again. Eight times this happened.

Finally he talked to his headpiece.

‘Why do you keep tilting over my eyes?’

‘I have to. When your power loses compassion,

I have to show what such a condition looks like.’

Immediately Solomon recognised the truth.

He knelt and asked forgiveness.

The crown centered itself on his crown.

When something goes wrong,

Accuse yourself first.

Even the wisdom of Plato or Solomon

can wobble and go blind.

Listen when your crown reminds you

of what makes you cold towards others,

as you pamper the greedy energy inside.”

NOTE (taken largely from Coleman Barks’ introduction, On Rumi)

Rumi was born on September 30, 1207, in Balkh, Afghanistan. Iranians and Afghans call him Jelaluddin Balkhi. At that time, Balkh was part of the increasingly hard-pressed Abbasid Caliphate. Fleeing from invading Mongol armies, his family emigrated to Konya, in modern Turkey, sometime between 1215 and 1220.

The name Rumi means ‘from Roman Anatolia’, now in modern Turkey and already by Rumi’s day long lost to the Romans and their Byzantine successors. Rumi’s father was a theologian, jurist and mystic. On his death Rumi took over the position of sheikh in his dervish (2) learning community in Konya. Rumi’s life seems to have been a fairly normal one for a religious scholar – teaching, meditating, helping the poor – until 1244 when he met the wandering dervish Shams of Tabriz. Shams had spent years travelling throughout the Middle East searching and praying for one who could ‘endure my company’.

Their encounter, and the mystical friendship that ensued, influenced Rumi into becoming the artist we remember. “He turned into a poet. began listening to music, and sang, whirling around, hour after hour” (1). Shams disappeared in 1248. He was most likely murdered with the connivance of one of Rumi’s sons and other disciples. They thought of Shams as a bad influence on Rumi as well as themselves feeling excluded by Rumi and Shams’ relationship.

After the heartbreak of Shams’ death, Rumi went on to compose the Mathnawi, “that great work that shifts so fantastically from theory to folklore to jokes to ecstatic poetry (1)”.

(1) The Essential Rumi Translated by Coleman Barks, with Reynold Nicholson, A. J. Arberry, John Moyne. New York, NY: HarperOne, 2004 expended edition

(2) Dervish – member of a Muslim, specifically Sufi, religious order who has taken vows of poverty and austerity. Dervish orders first appeared in the 12th century CE. The Mevlevi Order of Whirling Dervishes was founded by followers of Rumi.