God As a Friend

By Mehrnoosh Torbatnejad - NYU Livewire - NY, USA
Saturday, January 5, 2008

Rumi for Twentysomethings: a new generation finds meaning in the writings of a 13th century mystic poet

Eight centuries after he lived, the Persian mystic poet Jalal al-Din Rumi still fascinates readers, as the world’s bestselling spiritual poet.

His nonsectarian love for God and his passion for creation attract people of all ages, including Madonna and Deepak Chopra. But recently, younger people have been tuning in to his work, especially as UNESCO commemorated the poet’s 800th birthday in 2007.

“It’s just so relaxing and so calming to read his work,” said Bijan Roboubi, 20, a student at California State University at Pomona.

“We go through life in such a fast pace, especially here in America, and when you stop and read Rumi, you realize you have to live life, and not just go through it” he said.

“With his poems, he makes you realize that every moment is precious and it makes you love yourself, others around you and life in general” he added.

The 800th birthday’s celebration brought a string of events to universities, giving many college students their first taste of Rumi.

“Generally it’s the performance that seems to bring out the most students,” said Alan Godlas, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of Georgia. They’ve heard of whirling dervishes, which “rings a far-off bell in their consciousness,” he said.

“Rumi is generally regarded as the hottest selling poet in the English translation,” Godlas said. “He’s made a mark in their minds and in their hearts.”

Although enduringly popular in the East, Rumi was little known in the West until the 1920s, when Cambridge University professor Reynold A. Nicholson* began translating his work into English.

In the 1970s, Rumi’s popularity leapt again, after American poet Coleman Barks produced a more accessible, free-verse translation.

Shahram Shiva, a performance poet, scholar and translator of Rumi books, has presided over crowded Rumi evenings at Yale, Columbia University, Iona College and New York University.

“Rumi is very timeless,” Shiva said. “Rumi deals with issues of humanity. They would be relevant 5,000 years ago and 5,000 years from now.”

“I never ever look at God as a power who wants us to just worship him and be afraid of him,” said Iman, 26, a student at the University of Windsor, in Ontario, Canada.

“I look at God as a friend, lover and someone who is always there to help you. I see the same meanings in Rumi’s poems, too” he said.

Groups like the Rumi Forum, founded in 1997 in Washington D.C., often sponsor interfaith gatherings at universities, which may include whirling dervish performances.

“It doesn’t surprise me that [Rumi] is appealing to [students], because his message of love and open-mindedness touches hearts and minds,” said Jena Luedtke, the Forum’s director of interfaith and cultural dialogue.

University of Utah professor Rasoul Sorkhabi recently started a Rumi Poetry Club at a Salt Lake City public library, where sessions increasingly draw a younger crowd.

“Rumi’s poetry is not directed toward any particular age,” he said. “But college students who have an interest in literature…they want to read Rumi.”

Rumi: Bridge to the Soul: Journeys into the Music and Silence of the Heart (as translated by Coleman Barks) was in late 2007 number one in the religious and spiritual poetry category on barnesandnoble.com.

But Godlas thinks Rumi will only turn into a mass phenomenon if American culture changes.

“In order for Rumi's popularity to increase, there will need to be a paradigm shift -he said- such as a greater emphasis on educating Americans to enhance their emotional intelligence. People will then be more receptive.”

[Photo by Leila Geramian]

[*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynold_A._Nicholson ].

Love as Food

By Dr. Rasoul Sorkhabi - Payvand News - Iran
Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Many literary, cultural and spiritual organizations have organized events to celebrate the 800th anniversary of Rumi's birth in 2007.

UNESCO organized an international seminar, performance and exhibition from 6-14 September in Paris, and issued a Commemorative Medal in honor of Moulânâ Rumi.

On 26 June, the United Nations Organization hosted a gathering in New York (with the participation of representatives from Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkey), and the UN Secretary-General Mr. Ban Ki-moon commented:

"Rumi's poetry is timeless. But its celebration at the United Nations is extremely timely. Events of recent years have created a growing gulf between communities and nations. They have led to a worrying rise in intolerance and cross-cultural tensions … As Moulana teaches, we must be mindful of the people around us, and love them as human beings and God's creatures."

Rumi's poetry reaches our heart and mind seven centuries after his death and in various lands and among different peoples because Rumi sees the Divine love shining everywhere and in all ages.

His path and poetry is based on love. In the very beginning of his great work Masnawi Ma'nawi Rumi says that his poetry of love is the "root of the root of the root of all religions."

He thinks of love as food ("Mâ eshgh khoreem: we eat love"); he sees love as a creative force in the fabric of the universe; he considers God as a friend (doost or yâr) and beloved (mahboob or ma'shoogh) on earth and in our heart.

(...)

Rumi's poems (98% in Persian and about two percents in Arabic) are collected in two great works:

(1) Diwân Shams ("The Poetry Book of Shams") or Diwân Kabir ("The Great Book of Poetry") which contains some 3500 lyric odes (Ghazal) and nearly 2000 quatrains (Rubâi'yât) and is dedicated to Shams Tabrizi.

This book is full of ecstatic love poems and in many of the poems Rumi addresses himself with the pen-name of Khamoosh ("Silent") in many poems.

(2) Masnawi Ma'nawi ("Rhymed Couplets on Spiritual Matters") is a six-volume book of didactic poetry (stories and parables) which Rumi recited to Husâm Chelebi during the last decade of his life. Many of the Rumi translations in English available on the market today (and with varying quality) are all selections from these two works.

Rumi died on 17 December 1273, aged 67. People from diverse religions and ethnicities – Muslims, Christians, Jews, Persians, Turks, Arabs and Greek, the rich, the poor, the elite and the illiterate, women and men – all came to his funeral and mourned the loss of their great spiritual master.

Buried in Konya, Rumi's tomb (called "Ghobat al-Khidhra" the Green Dome, or "Yashil Turbe" in Turkish) has become a shrine for thousands of visitor and pilgrims each year.

17 December is celebrated as Sheb-i Arus ("Wedding Night" symbolizing reunion with the Divine) in Konya in the spirit of Rumi's will that those who come to his tomb should not cry and grieve but rejoice in prayer, poetry and contemplation.

It is interesting to note that Rumi was born on Sunday and this year 30 September (his birthday) also falls on Sunday. Rumi died at sunset on Sunday.

This symbolism of his birth and death on a day named after the Sun is beautifully consistent with the place of Moulânâ Rumi's personality and poetry among us.

For seven centuries, his art and vision has shined like a bright, warm sun upon our minds and hearts. Master Rumi is an enlightening poet for all ages and peoples.

About the Author: Dr. Rasoul Sorkhabi is director of the Rumi Poetry Club at Salt Lake City, Utah: he can be reached at rumipoetryclub@earthlink.net

For further readings the Author recommends:

Annemarie Schimmel (2001)
Rumi's World
Shambhala Dragon Editions

[read Editorial and Customer Reviews and/or buy the book at
The Sufi Store
http://astore.amazon.com/wilderwri-20/detail/0877736111/105-1791904-0645206].

In the Alchemy of Love, Problems are Dissolved

By Rasoul Sorkhabi - Kyoto Journal - Japan

# 66 - Current Issue

Master Rumi: the Path to Poetry, Love and Enlightenment

Eight hundred years ago, in a northeastern town of the Persian kingdom, a boy was born. When he was twelve years old, he chanced to meet the great Sufi master and Persian poet Attar, who told the boy’s father: "The fiery words of this boy will kindle the souls of lovers all over the world.”

That boy was later to be known as Rumi. And this year, 2007, many literary, cultural and spiritual organizations are celebrating his 800th birth anniversary. UNESCO has issued a medal in Rumi’s honor.

According to various sources, including The Christian Science Monitor, TIME Asia magazine, and the US Department of State’s Washington File, Rumi has become the most widely-read poet in North America, and translations of this Asian poet are increasingly popular in the other Western countries.
For three decades, I have been reading Rumi everywhere I have been — India, Japan, and the USA. It is thus a personal delight to see the growing popularity of Rumi’s poetry.

Who really was Rumi? How did a Muslim preacher become a poet of love? Who were Rumi’s masters? What was the visionary ground underlying his poetry? These are the questions I set out to explore here: Rumi’s path to poetry, the source of his poetry — spiritual enlightenment, and the content of his poetry — love. In this analysis, I draw from the original historical literature, and also offer some new translations of Rumi’s poems.

Good poems enrich our life, and Rumi’s poetry is a treasure.

In Search of Rumi
Today in the West, Rumi is famous for his poetry. Yet he was a prolific but not a professional poet, a learned religious leader, teacher, preacher and above all a Gnostic (Âref: one possessing esoteric knowledge of spiritual matters). For centuries, Rumi has been known as Moulânâ (“Our Master”) to the Persian-speaking peoples of Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and parts of India and Pakistan. The name Rumi, meaning “belonging to Rum or Rome,” refers to the Roman-Byzantine kingdom which once included Anatolia, a vast plateau in Asia Minor, the westernmost peninsula of Asia, lying between the Black and the Mediterranean seas — the vibrant setting in which Rumi lived most of his life.

Rumi’s major works of literature include (1) the Masnawi Ma’nawi (“Spiritual Couplets”), a six-volume book of stories and parables narrated in about 26,000 verses of didactic poetry; (2) the Diwân [Poetry Book] Shams Tabrizi consisting of about 50,000 verses of lyric odes (ghazal) and quatrains (rubaiyât); and (3) a collection of 71 discourses in prose called Fih Mâ Fih (“In It What is in It”).

Rumi himself summarized his life work as follows:

The outcome of my life is no more than these three lines:
I was a raw material;
I was cooked and became mature;
I was burned in love.

Rumi’s Life: Act I
Rumi’s given name was Jalâluddin (“Glory of Religion”) Muhammad. He was born on September 30, 1207, most likely in the city of Balkh in present-day Afghanistan. The Swiss scholar Fritz Meier, who has researched the life of Rumi’s father, Bahâ Valad, argues persuasively for the small town of Wakh’sh in present-day Tajikistan.

We do know that Rumi grew up in Balkh, in that era a political, commercial and intellectual center of the Persian kingdom, a city where his father was honored as the Sultân-e Ulemâ (“King of the Learned”). It is recorded that even the king, Mohammad Khârazm-Shah, used to attend Bahâ Valad’s lectures.

To understand Rumi it is useful to understand his father — fifty-six years his senior, and indeed, Rumi’s first teacher. Bahâ Valad was not merely a preacher but a Muslim Gnostic, a Sufi. In the Islamic tradition, the Sufis have often been contrasted with the Falâsafeh (the Philosophers). While the Sufis called for direct spiritual experience, meditation, and love, the Falâsafeh focused on rational thinking, intellectual knowledge, and logical arguments. These two fields are not necessarily contradictory but philosophy, the Sufis believe, can never replace practice and experience.

On the path of love, Rumi himself once said, “The legs of argumentative logicians are made of wood!” In other words, they can talk but cannot walk. The Sufis have also had their differences with the Fuqahâ, or Islamic law-experts, who deal with formalities and rituals.

In his public talks, Bahâ Valad would criticize the philosophers. His words and public influence obviously hurt the feelings of Imam Fakhruddin Râzi, an eminent Muslim theologian and the King’s teacher in Balkh. All of this came to make life difficult for Bahâ Valad. Moreover, there was a prevalent fear of the invasion of Persia by Genghis Khan’s brutal army (this invasion and its attendant bloodshed eventually happened).

Bahâ Valad decided to emigrate from Balkh and take his family westward. En route to Baghdad, Bahâ Valad’s caravan stopped at the city of Nishâbur. This is where Attar met the twelve-year-old Rumi and presented him with a copy of his book on mysticism, Asrâr Nâmeh (“The Book of Mysteries”).

Bahâ Valad and his family made a pilgrimage to Mecca, stayed for a while in Damascus, and finally went to Anatolia, which was then under the control of the Seljuq Dynasty, far from the Mongolian influence.

In the town of Laranda (today called Karaman), Rumi’s mother died in 1224. Her tomb can still be found there. A year later, Rumi, eighteen, married his childhood friend Gouhar, whose family had accompanied the Valad family from Balkh. Rumi’s son Sultân Valad was born in Laranda.

Sometime later, at the request of the Seljuq king Ala’eddin Kayqobâd, Bahâ Valad and his family moved to the town of Konya, where a seminary was built for him. Two years later, in 1231, Bahâ Valad, aged 80, passed away. And Rumi, then 24, took over his father’s position.

Burhânuddin Tirmadhi — Bahâ Valad’s disciple and Rumi’s tutor back in Balkh — soon joined Rumi in Konya. There he undertook a systematic training of the young man, and suggested that Rumi study Bahâ Valad’s Ma’âref. Rumi also spent a few years learning from great Sufi masters and Muslim scholars in Aleppo and Damascus (both in present-day Syria).

What was the content of Rumi’s education? A Muslim scholar would have studied Arabic, the Quran, the sayings and acts of Prophet Muhammad, Islamic rituals, law, philosophy and history. Rumi’s books indeed show us that he possessed a vast knowledge of literature, both Arabic and Persian, and both prose and poetry. He was fond of at least one classic Arabic poet, Mutanabbi, and two Persian poets, Attar and Sanâ’i.

Rumi returned to Konya in 1232, and Burhânuddin told him that although he had become a master of “the sciences of appearances” he had yet to master “the hidden sciences.”

Rumi is said to have taken three successive chelleh (a 40-day period of retreat, fasting, and meditation) to the satisfaction of Burhânuddin. Rumi then began to serve as a reputed religious scholar in Konya. (Burhânuddin would die in 1241.)

When Two Oceans Meet
Now we are in a better position to understand the climax of Rumi’s life — his meeting with a wandering dervish, Shams Tabrizi. This was a rebirth, and Act II in Rumi’s life. There are several versions of how this meeting took place. A fifteenth-century Persian poet, Jâmi, writes that one day in the late autumn of 1244, Rumi was sitting by a pool along with his disciples and books. Shams (unknown to Rumi) came along, greeted him and sat down. Interrupting Rumi’s lecture, he pointed to the books and asked, “What are these?” Rumi replied, “This is some knowledge you wouldn’t understand.” Shams then threw all the books into the water and said, “And this is some knowledge you wouldn’t understand.”

I narrate this story not because I myself believe it, but because this story best illustrates how people have dramatized Shams’ influence in Rumi’s life: A dry, bookish theologian suddenly turns to mysticism after meeting an old mystic who disliked bookish knowledge.

The fact is that the meeting of Shams and Rumi was like the convergence of two oceans.

Rumi’s upbringing and education had nurtured him for a mystic’s life. (A good analogy is this: Millions of people have observed apples falling down, but only Newton could discover the laws of universal gravitation from such an observation.) On the other hand, Shams was not an illiterate person. Born in Tabriz, a city in northwest Iran, some six decades before coming to Konya, Shams had studied with many masters and the extant book of his discourses, the Maqâlât Shams Tabrizi, indeed shows him to be a very knowledgeable person. Nevertheless, it is true that Shams galvanized Rumi’s mystical and artistic senses.

After that, Rumi turned to music, dance and poetry, and was detached from books.

Shams did not let Rumi read even his father’s book. How can one explain Rumi’s relationship with Shams? In the Diwân Shams Tabrizi, Rumi has many expressions of love, respect, admiration and longing for Shams. Impressed by these poems, some have recently argued that Rumi and Shams enjoyed a homosexual relationship. This view is a gross misunderstanding both culturally and spiritually. Certain customs in one culture sometimes can be greatly misinterpreted by other peoples. In India, for example, one can see boys holding hands and walking in the street. Or among the Arabs, it is customary for men to kiss each other on the face as part of their greetings. These customs do not mean that Indian or Arab men are gay.

In some Western countries, a man may kiss his friend’s wife on the face as they greet or say farewell. Such a practice is unacceptable for the Eastern people – and prone to misunderstanding. (At the other “extreme,” the Japanese traditionally do not kiss — even their own children — in public.)

We cannot judge Rumi’s acts and words according to twenty-first century Western social norms. We need to evaluate each practice in its own cultural context.

To misinterpret Rumi’s and Shams’ relationship is also to misread the whole spiritual environment in which these two men lived. In Sufism, there is a tradition of soh’bat (“dialogue” in retreat) which takes places between two seekers as they share their knowledge, stories and experiences. The soh’bat is believed to strengthen the mind and soul of the seekers. Rumi himself has a poem about this tradition:

Oh my heart, sit with a person
who understands the heart.
Sit under a tree
which has fresh flowers.
In the market of perfume sellers
don’t wander like you’re jobless.

Sit with a shopkeeper
who has sugar in the store.

Not every eye has eyesight.
Not every sea contains a jewel.

My interpretation of the Rumi-Shams relationship is a parable which both Shams and Rumi use in their discourses — the parable of the “mirror” (Âyeeneh).

A mirror reflects what is cast on it without judging, and thus we see ourselves in the mirror as we are, in a good or bad state of mind. A spiritual friend is like the mirror; it reflects and strengthens our goodness and inner beauty; it also shows our weaknesses and dark sides in a non-arrogant manner so that we can see them for ourselves and resolve them.

In 1248, Shams disappeared from Konya and, for that matter, from history. Some scholars believe that he was murdered by jealous disciples of Rumi who had lost their master to this strange old man; other scholars believe that Shams left Konya on his own (as he had done once before for a brief period) because Rumi’s disciples had made life too difficult for him.

We do not know for sure what happened. In any case, Shams’ disappearance was an emotional blow to Rumi. He traveled twice to Damascus in search of him. As time passed, Rumi found two other spiritual friends, the goldsmith Salâhuddin Zarkub and Husâmuddin Chelebi (a close disciple). If Shams is the hero of Rumi’s Diwân, Husâmuddin is the person to whom Rumi recited the Masnawi during the last seven years of his life.

Love in Rumi’s PoetryLove (Ishq) is a common thread that runs through all of Rumi’s poems, directly or by implication. The intensity of the language and the passionate imagery that Rumi uses to express love is rarely seen in other poets.

Nonetheless, as Coleman Barks, who has successfully popularized Rumi’s poems through rendering them to the modern style of free verse, aptly remarks, Rumi’s love is not of the kind, “she left me, he left me; she came back; she left me.”

Love in Rumi’s poems stems from his realization of the Divine Love and its extension to the world and human life. Rumi says:

In the realm of the Unseen
there exists a sandal wood, burning.
This love
is the smoke of that incense.

Rumi views the true human love as a reflection of this cosmic love matrix.

I use this term in a modern, scientific sense. The best explanation physicists have for the gravitational force is not that of a simple attraction between two isolated bodies but a force embedded in the very fabric of the universe. Here again Rumi has a say:

If the Sky were not in love,
its breast would not be pleasant.
If the Sun were not in love,
its face would not be bright.
If the Earth and mountains were not in love,
no plant could sprout from their heart.
If the Sea was not aware of love
it would have remained motionless somewhere.

How does this divine cosmic love function? How is it manifested? Where does it take us? To answer these, I can think of two love-based processes in Rumi’s poetry: (1) transformation, and (2) transcendence.

Rumi assigns a transforming power to love like nothing else. Through love, he says, everything changes in a positive way, and far more rewardingly than through other means.

In the Masnawi, Rumi tells us the story of Luqmân, a famous sage in the ancient Middle East, who one day was eating watermelon when his master joined him, but found the watermelon very bitter.

The master scolded Luqmân over why he had not informed him that the watermelon was bitter. Luqmân replied that it was not bitter for him, as he was eating the watermelon with love in the home of his master:

Through love
Bitter things become sweet.
Through love
Bits of copper turn into gold.
Through love
Dregs taste like pure wine.
Through lovePains are healed.

Sometimes we are stuck in a problem or in a conflict, and our ever-calculating intellect is unable to find a rational solution. In the alchemy of love, problems are not solved; they are dissolved.

Reason says:
These six directions are the limit.
There is no way out!
Love says:
There is a way.
I have gone it many times.

Reason saw a market and began to trade.
Love has seen other markets beyond this bazaar.

Similar to the Buddhist concept of nirvana, Sufis say that fanâ is annihilation of the ego and dissolution in the divine love. In that state of love, you are one with everything and you see everything as one. In other words, the seeker goes beyond dualities (a quality of the mind that Buddhism also fosters) and becomes one with the Beloved.

Let’s listen to Rumi himself on what this transcendence means:

What is to be done, O Muslims, for I can’t identify myself:
I’m neither Christian, nor Jewish,
neither Zoroastrian, nor Muslim.
I’m neither Eastern, nor Western,
neither of the land, nor of the sea.

I’m not from Nature’s mine,
or from the circling Heavens.

I’m not from this world, or from the next
neither from Paradise nor from Hell.
I’m neither from Adam nor from Eve

My place is placeless, my trace is without signs.
This is neither body nor soul
for I belong to the soul of the Beloved.
An Out-of-the-World Citizen

Why is Rumi such a popular poet seven centuries after his life, and in different lands? Rarely a day passes that I do not come across a few verses from Rumi. To answer this question, perhaps I can offer one of Rumi’s own poems:

I don’t seek this world or that world
Don’t seek me in this or that world.
They both have vanished in the world where I am.

Rumi was an “out of the world” citizen. Although his life was rooted in the Islamic and Persian culture, his constituency was the human heart. That is why his poems lift us from mundane situations and offer us the purity, clarity and beauty of a poetic vision — and when our feet touch the earth again, we feel, not relaxed, but relieved.

Rumi does not view the divine love as an abstract subject for poets or philosophers; it is a foundation on which we should build our living. Rumi’s poetry is also his ethics without systematization and based on (not law but) love. He views God not as a remote father in heaven but a friend (doost) on the Earth.

Rumi spoke his poems spontaneously — oftentimes during the whirling dances or while listening to music. And he appears to have practiced what he preached in his poetry.

Rumi’s biographers have recorded many stories of his humbleness and kindness towards people, whoever they were. For instance, Aflâki recounts that a Christian monk, who had heard of Rumi’s scholarly and spiritual reputation, went to meet him in Konya. Out of respect, the monk prostrated himself before Rumi, and when he raised his head, he saw that Rumi had been prostrating himself as well, before the monk.

When Rumi died on December 17, 1273, on a Sunday at sunset in Konya, people of the town — Muslims, Jews and Christians, the poor, the rich, the learned, the illiterate — all came to his funeral and mourned.

Aflâki writes that some fanatics objected because non-Muslims were attending the services. But the Jews and the Christians told them just as their Muslim friends had understood Prophet Muhammad through Rumi, they had also understood Moses and Jesus through him.

Perhaps, then, Rumi’s poetry can serve as an enlightening vision and uniting voice for our divided world and violent century.

I am the Moon everywhere and nowhere.
Do not seek me outside;
I abide in your very life.

Everybody calls you towards himself;
I invite you nowhere except to yourself.

Poetry is like the boat and its meaning is like the sea:
Come onboard at once!
Let me sail this boat!
–Rumi

About the Author:Rasoul Sorkhabi was born in the city of Tabriz, in northwest Iran, where (incidentally) Shams of Tabriz, Rumi’s master, was also born and raised. And (incidentally) like Shams, he has spent most of his life abroad – in India, Japan, and the USA – everywhere accompanied by Rumi’s poetry books. He is a research professor in geology at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where he lives with his wife, Setsuko Yoshida (a Japanese painter) and their daughter. He is working on an original translation of “The Rubaiyât of Rumi” and coordinates the Rumi Poetry Club. Contact: rumipoetryclub[at]earthlink.net

[from the same Author: http://sufinews.blogspot.com/search?q=Sorkhabi ; then scroll down beyond this article]

[picture: Painting of Rumi by Setsuko Yoshida]

Reporting on how the world is and will celebrate Rumi

By Dr. Rasoul Sorkhabi - Persian Heritage Monthly - U.S.A.
April 2007

Celebrations of the 800th Birth Anniversary of Moulana Rumi
This year (2007) marks the 800th birth anniversary of Moulana Jalaluddin Muhammad Balkhi Rumi, the great Persian Sufi poet of the 13th century. People in the Eastern countries have traditionally called Rumi Moulânâ, an Arabic word meaning “our master,” or Moulavi (“my master”); (the Turkish pronunciation is Mevlana).

In the West, he is known as Rumi because he lived most of his life in Anatolia, eastern Rome or Byzantine kingdom called Rum in Persian. Rumi is currently one of the most-read poets in North America. He was born on September 30, 1207 (6 Rabi al-Awwal 604 according to the Hijra Lunar Calendar) in the city of Balkh in present-day Afghanistan and died on December 17, 1273 (5 Jamâdi al-Âkhar 672) in the city of Konya (“Guniyah” in Persian) in present-day Turkey.

Last year some mass media (for example, Today’s Zaman, March 8, 2006, published in Istanbul, and Iran Daily, April 8, 2006, published in Tehran) reported that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) had declared 2007 as the International Year of Rumi. Later it was reported (Mehr News Agency, July 21, 2006) that UNESCO does not declare a year after any personality, but that it supports the celebration of the anniversaries of prominent cultural figures. In its report on “Anniversaries 2006-2007” (“with which UNESCO will be associated for the period 2006-2007”), UNESCO has indeed included Rumi among 63 world figures to be celebrated. The initiative for this came from the representative of Afghanistan, Egypt and Turkey, which were members of the Executive Board of UNESCO in Paris in 2005 when the decisions for the anniversaries were made. In its 175th session (October 3, 2006), UNESCO approved to issue a Commemorative Medal in honor of Rumi in 2007, and described Rumi as “one of the great humanists, philosophers and poets who belong to humanity in its entirety.”

Recently, I surveyed the Internet to find out how the world is and will be celebrating Rumi’s birth anniversary and here is a brief report.
There are two websites devoted to the 800th anniversary and they both have been launched in Turkey: One is www.rumi2007.net and the other is www.mevlana800.info. Both these websites provide information on Rumi as well as on Rumi events in 2007 held especially in Turkey and European countries. The website www.mevlana.com is another online service run by Rumi’s fan in Turkey and is in the Turkish language only.

Molana News Agency (www.RumiNews.com and www.MaolanaNews.com) has been launched in Iran in both Persian and English languages, and gives information about the Rumi events around the world.

The Turkish government has issued a coin, a currency note, and a stamp to commemorate the 800th anniversary of Rumi’s birth. I am unaware of similar valuable actions from the Iranian government this year.

The Chelebi (written Celebi in Turkish) family, Rumi’s descendants in Turkey, have a website (www.mevlana.net) that offers information about their lineage as well as on Rumi’s life and the Moulaviyeh (Mevlana) Order. “The current Celebi, Faruk Hemdem is the 20th great-grandson of Mevlana (22nd generation descendant) and he is the 33rd Celebi to occupy the post.”
The Mevlevi Order of America (www.hayatidede.org), based in Honolulu, continues the tradition of the Konya Sufi master Suleiman Hayati Dede (death 1986) through his son Postneshin Jelaleddin Loras. The group offers samâ (music and whirling dance), zikr (chanting and Divine remembrance) and soh’bat (discourses).

Kabir (formerly Edmund) Helminsky (born 1947) and his wife Camille have organized the Threshold Society (www.sufism.org), based initially in Vermont and recently in California. Their activities include publishing books and records, and offering lectures and retreats. (Kabir Helminisky was permitted to be a Sufi Shaykh by the late Dr. Jelaleddin Chelebi of Istanbul.)

Dr. Nevit Ergin (born 1928), a native of Turkey and a retired surgeon living in California, has translated Rumi’s Diwan Kabir (from a Turkish translation by the late Abdulbaki Gopinarli) in 23 volumes. He runs the Society for Understanding of Mevlana (http://sfumevlanamorg), founded in 1992.

Coleman Barks (born 1937), who has successfully popularized Rumi’s poetry in North America through rendering the literal translations into the modern English style of the free verse, has his own website and activities (www.colemanbarks.com). A retired English literature professor, Barks lives in Georgia.

Nader Khalili, an Iranian architect and a Rumi translator, founded the Californian Institute of Earth Art and Architecture (Cal-Earth) in 1986, inspired by Rumi’s poetic imagery. His website is www.calearth.org.

Shahram Shiva, another Iranian translator of Rumi, also conducts Rumi poetry reading and whirling dancing sessions; his website is www.rumi.net (launched in 1998) and he lives in New York.

Shahriar Shariari (born 1963), an Iranian mechanical engineer, writer, and translator of classical Persian poetry, runs a website (www.rumionfire.com) as a tribute to Rumi from his base in Los Angeles.

Dr. Majid Naini, a native of Iran and a former electronic engineer and computer scientist, has devoted his life (since 2002) to Rumi’s vision of universal love through lectures, translations, and producing CDs and DVDs. Naini lives in Florida and his website is www.naini.net.

Ibrahim Gamrad (born 1947), a self-taught Persian and Rumi scholar and an American converted to Islam, runs the website Dar al-Masnawi (www.dar-al-masnavi.org) which contains a vast collection of Rumi’s poetry in English translation.

Rumi Forum for Interfaith Dialogue (www.rumiforum.org) founded in 1999 and located in Virginia aims to “foster interfaith and intercultural dialogue” in the spirit of Rumi’s thought and poetry. Its president is the Turkish Islamic scholar Fetullah Gulen. Part of the group’s activities is to give Rumi Peace and Dialogue Awards, starting 2007, to individuals and organization.

This year’s Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi Award goes to Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr of George Washington University.
Several Rumi Clubs have been established in recent years in various US universities. These include the Rumi Club (www.therumiclub.org) at the University of Maryland; the Rumi Club at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (www.umass.edu/gso.rumi/rumiclub); the Rumi Students Association at University of Houston (www www.uh.edu/rumi); and the Rumi Club for Interfaith Dialogue at Princeton University (www.princeton.edu/~rum).

A group of Rumi’s fans in the UK maintains the websites www.khamush.com and www.rumi.org.uk and hold poetry and music (samâ) sessions. Nihat Tsolak (born in Greece in 1965) manages these activities in the UK.

Overall, cultural and religious groups as well as Rumi translators and scholars are all engaged in some activities this year including conference and poetry reading sessions to celebrate Rumi’s birth anniversary.

These events and meetings are too numerous to be listed in this brief report, but the websites mentioned above contain and regularly update this information.

Visit them, pick your favorite event and celebrate Rumi – a spiritual poet badly needed in our world and century.

The Iranian/Persian community around the world need demonstrate more appreciation of this anniversary and to support and participate in various cultural events on Rumi this year.


About Author: Dr. Rasoul Sorkhabi, a native of Iran and a Research Professor at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, coordinates the Rumi Poetry Club in Utah. He is working on an original translation and anthology of Rumi’s poetry. Contact: rumipoetryclub@earthlink.net.

[From the same Author, read also: http://sufinews.blogspot.com/search?q=ma+eshg+khoreem]

"Ma eshg khoreem": We eat love

By Rasoul Sorkhabi - Payvand's Iran News - Iran
Friday, March 2, 2007

For the past thirty years I have been fascinated with the poetry of Moulana Jalaluddin Rumi. The poems and parables of this great Persian Sufi poet have given me consolation, insight and joy in various places I have lived.

In recent years, Rumi has become one of the most-widely read poets in North America. And I am delighted to see this phenomenon not because he was a Persian poet and thus a part of my cultural roots, but because his poetry is about love (both Divine and human), and as Rumi himself says ("Ma eshg khoreem": We eat love), love is like food to be eaten.

When you enjoy a particular dish you like to offer it to others so that they also enjoy the fragrance, taste, texture, saltiness, sweetness, and warmth of your favorite dish. When people from various walks of life read Rumi's poems, they eat the food of love. Good poetry enriches our lives, and Rumi's poetry is a treasure. It gives us peace of mind, compassion, timeless wisdom, healing words, inspiration, and friendship. And all this at no cost other than willingness to listen and calmness to enjoy. It is for all these reasons that I believe Rumi (and sages of that caliber) is the answer to all our problems our personal, interpersonal, social, and international problems.

Before you judge me as a naive person, let me tell you a story. Sohrab Sepehri was a modern Persian poet. In his most famous poem, The Sound of Water's Footstep (Seda-ye Pa-ye Ab), Sepehri paints a beautiful rural landscape and says that let's not pollute the stream flowing through the village because pigeons drink water from the stream. When this poem was published in the mid 1960s, some literary critics blamed Sepehri that how he could be concerned about pigeons' drinking water while the world was facing bloodshed and the threat of more war and violence (those were the days of the Cold War, Vietnam War, etc.). Sepehri, who rarely answered to his critics or admirers, is recorded to have replied that his poem actually points to the root of our conflicts: If people and politicians care about a pigeon's drinking water, they will value human life even more and will not create bloody and destructive wars.

The more we read and enjoy Rumi's poems, the more compassionate and the less selfish and less greedy we become. The more Rumi's poetry spreads around the world and enlightens people's mind, there will be more peace and happiness in the world. If our political leaders read and understand Rumi's poetry and live up to that understanding, the less violent and the more friendly nations will be. If you think that religious fanatics are destroying human life and freedom, Rumi is the answer because he calls for understanding, tolerance and friendship, and views love and compassion as rays of the Divine light shining upon our inner being.

This year marks the eight hundredth anniversary of Rumi's birth. UNESCO has issued a Commemorative Medal in honor of Rumi. This year is an auspicious occasion to read Rumi more to ourselves and to others. The Persian-speaking peoples around the world, in particular, should better introduce Rumi to the world. Take time to organize or participate in events that celebrate Rumi's birth anniversary. Give Rumi's books as gifts to friends and family.

The fact that Rumi's sweet poems are on our lips seven centuries after his death (and in countries far from his cultural lands) testify to the truth of Rumi's vision and the beauty of his poetry. Rumi is badly needed in our increasingly interdependent world because Rumi's constituency is not a particular creed or community but the human heart. With the popularity of Rumi's poetry in the West, this spiritual poet can be a valuable bridge between the Islamic world and the West because he is a poet who awakens all of us to our common heart and to the spirit of joy, peace, and beauty within us all. Early this year I was talking with a well-known English translator of Rumi's poems, and he said: If you think deeply, the alternative to Rumi's message is suffering, violence and destruction.

Those who read Rumi's poetry and watch the world news would appreciate this statement.

[About the author: Dr. Rasoul Sorkhabi directs the Rumi Poetry Club in Utah. Email: rumipoetryclub@earthlink.net.]