Rumi

Jalal ad-Din Muḥammad Balkhi, also known as Jalal ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī and popularly known as Mowlĝnĝ but known to the English-speaking world simply as Rumi of the Arabic alphabet into English varies. One common transliteration is Mowlana Jalaluddin Rumi; the usual brief reference to him is simply Rumi or Balkhi. His given name, Jalĝl ad-Dīn Muhammad, literally means "Majesty of Religion" , was a 13th-century Perhaps the most famous Sufi who is known to many Muslims even today by his title alone is the seventh/13th century Persian mystic Rumi. Rumi died on 17 December 1273 in Konya; his body was interred beside that of his father, and a splendid shrine, the Yesil Turbe (Green Tomb today the Mevlana Museum), was erected over his place of burial. His epitaph reads: "When we are dead, seek not our tomb in the earth, but find it in the hearts of men".

Teachings

The general theme of Rumi's thought, like that of other mystic and Sufi poets of Persian literature, is essentially that of the concept of tawhid;– union with his beloved (the primal root) from which/whom he has been cut off and become aloof – and his longing and desire to restore it The Masnavi weaves fables, scenes from everyday life, Qur’anic revelations and exegesis, and metaphysics into a vast and intricate tapestry.

Major works and Samples

Rumi's poetry is often divided into various categories: the quatrains (rubayĝt) and odes (ghazal) of the Divan, the six books of the Masnavi. The prose works are divided into The Discourses, The Letters, and the Seven Sermons.
Excerpt from "The Masnavi" translation by E.H Whinfield, M.A
Description of Love
A true lover is proved such by his pain of heart;
No sickness is there like sickness of heart.
The lover's ailment is different from all ailments;
Love is the astrolabe of God's mysteries.
A lover may hanker after this love or that love,
But at the last he is drawn to the KING of love
However much we describe and explain love,
When we fall in love we are ashamed of our words,
Explanation of words makes most things clear,
But love unexplained is clearer.

Philosophical outlook

Rumi was an evolutionary thinker in the sense that he believed that the spirit after devolution from the divine Ego undergoes an evolutionary process by which it comes nearer and nearer to the same divine Ego. All matter in the universe obeys this law and this movement is due to an inbuilt urge (which Rumi calls "love") to evolve and seek enjoinment with the divinity from which it has emerged. Evolution into a human being from an animal is only one stage in this process. The doctrine of the Fall of Adam is reinterpreted as the devolution of the Ego from the universal ground of divinity and is a universal, cosmic phenomenon. The French philosopher Henri Bergson's idea of life being creative and evolutionary is similar, though unlike Bergson, Rumi believes that there is a specific goal to the process: the attainment of God. For Rumi, God is the ground as well as the goal of all existence. However Rumi need not be considered a biological Theistic evolution. In view of the fact that Rumi lived hundreds of years before Darwin, and was least interested in scientific theories, it is probable to conclude that he does not deal with biological evolution at all. Rather he is concerned with the spiritual evolution of a human being: Man not conscious of God is akin to an animal and true consciousness makes him divine.

Universality

It is often said that the teachings of Rumi are ecumenical in nature. For Rumi, religion was mostly a personal experience and not limited to logical arguments or perceptions of the senses. Creative love, or the urge to rejoin the spirit to divinity, was the goal towards which every thing moves.

Islam

However, despite the aforementioned ecumenical attitude, and contrary to his contemporary portrayal in the West as a proponent of non-denominational spirituality, a number of Rumi poems suggest the importance of outward religious observance, the primacy of the Qur'an. there with the spirits of the prophets merge. The Book conveys the prophets' circumstances those fish of the pure sea of Majesty. Rumi's approach to Islam is further clarified in this quatrain: "I am the servant of the Qur'an as long as I have life. I am the dust on the path of Muhammad, the Chosen One. If anyone quotes anything except this from my sayings, I am quit of him and outraged by these words." His Masnavi contains anecdotes and stories derived largely from the Quran and the hadith, as well as everyday tales.