A Guide to “Getting” Rumi | Hacker News Reader

A Guide to “Getting” Rumi

theparisreview.org

55 pointslermontov17 comments

Rumi was a mystic.

While mystical experiences are very personal, and are highly personalized, there are some broad categories experiences in which they are shared across people who have had them. They are oddly repeatable* even if they are not falsifiable. There are signatures that are in common, and you can recognize them. "Getting" Rumi for me was like this: After my own experiences, I stumbled back across Rumi and it suddenly made sense. I can see what informed his poetry, even across linguistic, religious, and historical lines.

This was the same with Tao Te Ching. What was impenetrably cryptic was suddenly intuitive. Or Zen Koans for that matter.

*They are oddly repeatable even across religious lines, even in cultures that may not have formal religions. It's not religion that makes the mystic.

Thanks for your sharing your story. I learned of Rumi through my exposure to non-violent communication (M. Rosenberg) and have already experienced many times a mystic, transcendent moment of empathic connection to others and myself. I find it is something that can be practiced, something you can have at any moment of your life. Rumi's poems come very close to this beauty I have experienced.

"The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you; don't go back to sleep" :-D

What an honor to receive this present. I am really touched. Thank you from my heart.

> Rumi was a mystic.

That sums up the matter well enough. You simply can't directly address the mystic from the material.

An interesting article on the removal of Islam from the popularized accounts of Rumi:

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-erasure-of-is...

This reminds me very much of the desacralization of meditation, yoga, and even Buddhism as they are often taught in the West.

The former two in particular are often thought of as nothing more than means for improving one's health or destressing, with little if any appreciation of their religious roots.

'sacred' has had many meanings even in eastern buddhist sects; 'desacralization' had begun long before westernization.

However, there's huge kernel of truth here—Buddhist sects in particular (I can't speak for other uses for meditation; it's a huge area of knowledge) are entire frameworks (or philosophies, if you'd prefer) for how to think about life, and picking and choosing subsets of it will only bring subsets of the rewards.

Not a fan of Rumi (or poetry in general really), but that Machado poem was incredibly lovely.

I didn't like poetry until I took a poetry class at uni, and a talented teacher opened my eyes.

Maybe it's my temperament, but I've always "gotten" Rumi. I rather had trouble instead on Sylvia Plath's poetry.

I find poetry to be the most personal of the arts. It can take a lot of hunting to find the poet that's just right. My tastes has changed greatly as I've gotten older, too. I can't relate to many of the poets I loved in my youth, and I'm sure the younger me would have found the poets I like now to be ridiculous. Finding poets with whom you resonate can be a life-long treasure hunt.

I'll just step in here to advertise a bit. I write poetry, using technical metaphors to convey a lot of the things i think about. Here's an example:

===

In Case of Emergency, Shatter Ego

i am not a process, but the pattern.

i am not a system, but the shape.

i am not a rapid, but the river.

i am not the ocean, but a wake.

i am not the etching, but an image.

i am not the constant, but a rate.

i am not the message, but a relay.

i am not a signal, but the wait.

i am not a digit, but an index.

i am not a value, but a space.

i am not a body, but a person.

i am not a vertex, but a face.

===

If you liked that, here's a whole book full of it:

https://www.amazon.com/Mechanics-Emotion-Structure-Possibili...

I really enjoyed that, thanks!

These two lines were my favorite:

    i am not a digit, but an index.
    i am not a value, but a space.

And felt like these lines went against the message of the rest:

    i am not the constant, but a rate.
    i am not the message, but a relay

    i am not a vertex, but a face.

This article had me until it got to David Bowie. Sorry, but Bowie is no Rumi.

I love both Rumi and Bowie but you're right, that was weird. The Machado was a much better fit.

I did not see the last "i" before clicking the link.

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