Two Kinds of Intelligence

There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired,

as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts

from books and from what the teacher says,

collecting information from the traditional sciences

as well as from the new sciences.

With such intelligence you rise in the world.

You get ranked ahead or behind others

in regard to your competence in retaining

information. You stroll with this intelligence

in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always

more marks on your preserving tablets.

There is another kind of tablet, one

already completed and preserved inside you.

A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness

in the center of the chest. This other intelligence

does not turn yellow or stagnate. It's fluid,

and it does not move from outside to inside

through the conduits of plumbing-learning.

This second knowing is a fountainhead

from within you, moving out.

A Dumb Experiment

Break open your personal self

to taste the story of the nutmeat soul.

These voices come from that rattling

against the outer shell.

The nut and the oil inside

have voices that can only be heard

with another kind of listening.

If it weren't for the sweetness of the nut,

the inner talking, who would ever shake a walnut?

We listen to words

so we can silently

reach into the other.

Let the ear and mouth get quiet,

so this taste can come to the lip.

Too long we have been saying poetry,

talking discourses, explaining the mystery outloud.

Let us try a dumb experiment.

Uthman's Silence

The story is told of Uthman, who when he became caliph

mounted quickly the steps of Muhammad's pulpit,

where Abu Bakr, out of respect for the prophet,

seated himself on the second step.

There were three steps. Omar sat on the third step.

Uthman climbed to the top. When asked why, he replied,

If I sat on the third step, people would say

I was like Omar. If on the second step,

He's like Abu Bakr.

But up here where the chosen one sat, no one will think

to compare me with that king of the spirit.

And sometimes when he had climbed

to the preaching place, that sweet one Uthman,

would not say anything. He stayed silent

until midafternoon. No one asked him

for a sermon, and no one left the mosque.

In the silence many began to see with Uthman's light.

This is how a living master opens the inner eye.

The Many Wines

Glowing Night, by Oscar Bluemner

God has given us a dark wine so potent

that, we leave the two worlds.

God made Majnun love Layla so much

that just her dog would cause confusion in him.

There are thousands of wines

that can take over our minds.

Don't think all ecstasies are the same.

Jesus was lost in his love for God.

His donkey was drunk with barley.

Every object, every being,

is a jar full of delight.

Be a connoisseur, and taste with caution.

Any wine will get you high.

Judge like a king, and choose the purest,

not the ones adulterated with fear,

or some urgency about "what's needed."

Drink the wine that moves you

as a camel moves when it's been untied,

and is just ambling about.

The Visions of Daquqi (4)

Old Cities, Msyir Mohammed


One of the seven answers, Names, sometimes

the names slip away,

but it is not forgetfulness.

It is our being so absorbed.

Then they all say to me,

Would you lead us in prayer?

Yes. But wait awhile.

I am still in some temporal confusion

that will be solved by companionship with you.

Through companionship with the ground

a grapevine grows. It opens

into the earth's darkness and flies.

It becomes selfless in the presence

of its origin and learns what it really is.

They nod, as though to say, Whenever you are ready.

That nodding was a flame in my heart.

I was freed from hourly time,

from sequence and relation.

The Visions of Daquqi (3)

Lanes, Ahmed Nussaif


The caravans had no food, yet food was dropping

all about them. If someone had said,

Look, over here, they would have thought him insane.

How can this happen. Am I dreaming?

I walk up to the trees. I eat the fruit.

I may as well believe.

Then the seven trees become one and then seven again.

At every second they are both one and seven.

Then they are seven men seated in meditation

for the sake of the one reality.

I come close and wave. They call,

O Daquqi, the glory and the crown.

How do they know my name?

They have never seen me until now.

Immediately they know my thought

and smile at each other.

Honored one, is this still hidden from you?

How can anything be hidden from one so dissolved in God?

I think inwardly, If this is the spirit-reality,

how is it we are speaking words and saying names?

The Visions of Daquqi (2)

Kliem of the South, Ahmed Nussaif


What are those candles that no one seems to see?

In the presence of such lights

people were looking for lamps to buy.

Then the seven became one,

in the middle of the sky's rim.

Then that fanned out to seven again.

There were connections between candles

that cannot be said. I saw, but I cannot say.

They became seven men and then seven trees,

so dense with leaves and fruit no limbs were visible.

Flashes of light

spurted from each fruit like juice.

And most marvelous of all was that hundreds

of thousands of people were passing beside the trees,

risking their lives, sacrificing everything,

to find some scrap of shade. No one saw

the trees with their tremendous shade.

The Visions of Daquqi (1)

Husam, tell about the visions of Daquqi,

who said, I have traveled east and west

not knowing which way I was going,

following the moon, lost inside God.

Someone asked, Why do you go barefooted

over the stones and thorns.

What, he answered. What.

A bewildered lover does not walk on feet.

He or she walks on love. There are no "long"

or "short" trips for those. No time.

The body learned from spirit how to travel.

A saint's body moves in the unconditioned way,

though it seems to be in conditionedness.

Daquqi said, One day I was going along

looking to see in people the shining of the Friend.

I came to the shore at twilight and saw

seven candles. I hurried along the beach

toward them. I was amazed. My amazement was amazed.

Waves of bewilderment broke over my head.

Farther and Farther from Zero

Winged Figure, Abbott Handerson Thayer

Suddenly, I fall from the pavillion

into a place where I see the ugliness,

hypocrisy, rouge on a sunken face,

a thorn lodged in a kidney, the blind crone

holding a laurel wreath for the winner,

her black ribbons in shreds,

her eyes dark with purple,

a gold anklet on her shriveled leg.

The puppet show looks charming,

but go behind the screen and see who runs it.

Wash your hands and face of this charade.

Anyone who wants these prizes

flares up quickly like a wood chip.

There is one who can help,

who turns the wheel from nonexistence

to a sweet-breathing emptiness.

Words are ways we add up the breath,

counting stress and syllable

with our exacting musical knack

that takes us farther and farther from zero.

The Price of Kissing

The Kiss, Gustav Klimt

I would love to kiss you.

The price of kissing is your life.

Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,

What a bargain, let's buy it.

A Night Full of Talking

Landscape, by Fred Williams Lysterfield

A night full of talking that hurts,

my worst held-back secrets. Everything

has to do with loving and not loving.

This night will pass.

Then we have work to do.

The Sunrise Ruby

In the early morning hour,

just before dawn, lover and beloved awake

and take a drink of water.

She asks, Do you love me or yourself more?

Really, tell me the absolute truth.

He says, There is nothing left of me.

I am like a ruby held up to the sunrise.

Is it still a stone, or a world

made of redness? It has no resistance

to sunlight. The ruby and the sunrise are one.

Be courageous and discipline yourself.

Work. Keep digging your well.

Don't think about getting off from work.

Submit to a daily practice.

Your loyalty to that is a ring on the door.

Keep knocking, and the joy inside

will eventually open a window

and look out to see who's there.

Hallaj

Into the Woods, Summer, by Howard Hodgkin

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Hallaj said what he said and went to the origin

through the hole in the scaffold.

I cut a cap's worth of cloth from his robe,

and it swamped over me from head to foot.

Years ago, I broke a bunch of roses

from the top of his wall. A thorn from that

is still in my palm, working deeper.

A person comes to him naked. It's cold.

There's a fur coat floating in the river.

Jump in and get it, he says.

You dive in. You reach for the coat.

It reaches for you.

It's a live bear that has fallen in upstream,

drifting with the current.

How long does it take? Hallaj yells from the bank.

Don't wait, you answer. This coat

has decided to wear me home.

A little part of a story, a hint.

Do you need long sermons on Hallaj?

The Old Woman and the Falcon

Textile sample, designer unknown, Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

When you give a noble falcon

to a fussy old woman who knows nothing of falconry,

she will clip its wings short, for its own good.

Young man, where has your mother been

that your toenails have gotten this long?

Those talons are how the falcon hunts its food.

The old woman fixes him tutmaj, dumpling stew.

He won't touch it. Too good to eat my tutmaj, huh?

She ladles some broth and holds it to his beak.

Her anger builds, and suddenly she pours

the ladle of hot soup over his head.

Tears come from those beautiful falcon eyes.

He remembers his former life, the king's love-whistle,

the great circling over the ocean,

the distances that condense so quickly to a point.

Falcon tears are food for a true human being,

perfume for Gabriel.

Your soul is the king's falcon,

who says, This old woman's rage

does not touch my glory or my discipline.

Love Moves Away

Pale sunlight,

pale the wall.

Love moves away.

The light changes.

I need more grace

than I thought.

Let the Beauty We Love

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty

and frightened. Don't open the door to the study

and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Bu'l-Hasan and the Snow

After Bestami died, it happened as he said

that Bu'l-Hasan became the sheikh for his community.

Every day Bu'l-Hasan would go to Bestami's tomb

to receive instruction. He had been told to do this

in a dream by Bestami himself.

Every dawn he goes and stands

facing the tomb until midmorning.

Either the spirit of Bestami comes and talks to him

or in silence the questions he has are answered.

One day a deep snow has fallen overnight.

The graves are indistinguishable.

Bu'l-Hasan feels lost.

Then he hears his sheikh's voice.

The world is made of snow.

It falls and melts and falls again.

Do not be concerned with the snow.

Come toward the sound of my voice.

Move always in this direction.

From that day Bu'l-Hasan began to experience

the enlightened state

he had only heard and read about before.

The Mill

 Mill Dam in Traunstein, William Stanley Haseltine

The heart is a wheatgrain. We are the mill

where this body is a millstone

and thought, the moving river.

The body asks the river why it runs on so.

The river says, Ask the miller who made

the millrace that directs my falling

that turns your stone.

The miller says, You that love bread,

if this turning were not happening,

what would you dip in your broth?

So a lot of questioning goes on

around the milling of wheat,

but what really is this breadmaking work?

Now let silence ask about wheat and the river,

about the miller and the stone

and the taste of bread dipped in soup,

and this listening we do at the mill.

*The mill is one of Rumi's images for the process whereby individual grains get crushed to make something less separate, more communally useful (bread). Thought (the riverwater) and the body (the millstone) are part of this work, as are the miller (creative intelligence) and the customer (desire), who wants a piece of bread for his soup. (Note by Coleman Barks)

The Gift of Water

Someone who does not know the Tigris River exists

brings the caliph who lives near the river

a jar of fresh water. The caliph accepts, thanks him,

and gives in return a jar filled with gold coins.

Since this man has come through the desert,

he should return by water. Taken out by another door,

the man steps into a waiting boat and sees

the wide freshwater of the Tigris. He bows his head,

What wonderful kindness that he took my gift.

Every object and being in the universe is a jar

overfilled with wisdom and beauty, a drop of the Tigris

that cannot be contained in any skin. Every jarful

spills and makes the earth more shining,

as though covered in satin.

If the man had seen even a tributary of the great river,

he would not have brought the innocence of his gift.

Those that stay and live by the Tigris grow so ecstatic

that they throw rocks at the jugs, and the jugs

become perfect. They shatter. The pieces dance,

and water . . . . Do you see?

Neither jar nor water nor stone, nothing.

You knock at the door of reality, shake

your thought-wings, loosen your shoulders, and open.

The Night Ocean

Study of the Head & Shoulders, etc., by Jan Lievens

We are the night ocean filled

with glints of light. We are the space

between the fish and the moon,

while we sit here together.

Backpain

Muhammad went to visit a sick friend.

Such kindness brings more kindness,

and there is no knowing the proliferation from there.

The man was about to die.

Muhammad put his face close and kissed him.

His friend began to revive.

Muhammad's visit re-created him.

He began to feel grateful for an illness

that brought such light.

And also for the backpain

that wakes him in the night.

No need to snore away like a buffalo

when this wonder is walking the world.

There are values in pain that are difficult

to see without the presence of a guest.

Don't complain about autumn.

Walk with grief like a good friend.

Listen to what he says.

Sometimes the cold and dark of a cave

give the opening we most want.

A Piece of Wood

I reach for a piece of wood. It turns into a lute.

I do some meanness. It turns out helpful.

I say one must not travel during the holy month.

then I start out, and wonderful things happen.

Gnats Inside the Wind

Equivalent, by Alfred Stieglitz

Some gnats come from the grass to speak with Solomon.

O Solomon, you are the champion of the oppressed.

You give justice to the little guys, and they don't get

any littler than us. We are tiny metaphors

for frailty. Can you defend us?

Who has mistreated you?

Our complaint is against the wind.

Well, says Solomon, you have pretty voices,

you gnats, but remember, a judge cannot listen

to just one side. I must hear both litigants.

Of course, agree the gnats.

Summon the East Wind, calls out Solomon,

and the wind arrives almost immediately.

What happened to the gnat plaintiffs? gone.

Such is the way of every seeker who comes to complain

at the High Court. When the presence of God arrives,

where are the seekers? First there's dying,

then union, like gnats inside the wind.

There is Something in Us

Imagine a man selling his donkey

to be with Jesus.

Now imagine him selling Jesus

to get a ride on a donkey.

This does happen.

Jesus can transform a drunk into gold.

If the drunk is already golden,

he can be changed into pure diamond.

If already that, he can become the circling

planets, Jupiter, Venus, the moon.

Never think that you are worthless.

God has paid an enormous amount for you,

and the gifts keep arriving.

There is something in us

that has nothing to do with night and day,

grapes that never saw a vineyard.

WE ARE ALL RETURNING

says the Qur'an. Enjoy Shams,

or if you cannot do that, at least

consider what honest people tell you.

Don't Let Your Throat Tighten

Ocean Swells, by Arthur B. Davies

Don't let your throat tighten

with fear. Take sips of breath

all day and night, before death

closes your mouth.

Sometimes I Do

In your light I learn how to love.

In your beauty, how to make poems.

You dance inside my chest,

where no one sees you,

but sometimes I do,

and that light becomes this art.

Birdwings

Your grief for what you've lost lifts a mirror

up to where you're bravely working.

Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,

here's the joyful face you've been wanting to see.

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.

If it were always a fist or always stretched open,

you would be paralyzed.

Your deepest presence

is in every small contracting and expanding,

the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated

as birdwings.

The Elegance of the Ermine

Midnight, and a messenger comes from a prayer niche,

someone as quiet as moonlight,

yet with a torch that burns our sleeping.

A king knocks on the doorkeeper's door

and laughing, leads everyone out to a table.

Our lips tremble at the cup, with the same trembling

as a drop of mercury.

The gentleness of the host is the same

as that that made the elegance of the ermine.

The dry and wet of a love affair,

those tears are identical to the taking in

and giving away of a waterwheel's turning.

The keys that open all gates

are strapped to love's chest.

When a bird is completely broken and still,

it gets removed from the snare.

This list of rude likenesses

does not come near saying

what happens in our lives.

Children Running Through

Bacchante and Infant Faun, by Frederick William MacMonnies

I used to be shy.

You made me sing.

I used to refuse things at table.

Now I shout for more wine.

In somber dignity, I used to sit

on my mat and pray.

Now children run through

and make faces at me.

A Single Brushstroke Down

Light dawns, and any talk of proof

resembles a blind man's cane at sunrise.

Remember the passage,

We are with you wherever you are.

Come back to that.

When did we ever leave it?

No matter we're in a prison of forgetting

or enjoying the banquet of wisdom,

we are always inside presence.

Drunkenly asleep, tenderly awake,

clouded with grief, laughing like lightning,

angry at war, quiet with gratitude, we are nothing

in this many-mooded world of weather

but a single brushstroke down,

speaking of presence.

*The word Allah in Arabic begins with a strong downward mark.

A Just-Finishing Candle

Study Head of a Woman, by Jean Baptiste Greuze

A candle is made to become entirely flame.

In that annihilating moment

it has no shadow.

It is nothing but a tongue of light

describing a refuge.

Look at this

just-finishing candle stub

as someone who is finally safe

from virtue and vice,

the pride and the shame

we claim from those.