CAMELOT FANTASIES

This World Which Is Made of Our Love for Emptiness




Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence. Existence:
 This place made from our love for that emptiness!

 Yet somehow comes emptiness,
 this existence goes.

 Praise to that happening, over and over!
 For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness.

 Then one swoop, one swing of the arm,
 that work is over.

 Free of who I was, free of presence, free of dangerous fear, hope,
 free of mountainous wanting.

 The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece of straw
 blown off into emptiness.

 These words I'm saying so much begin to lose meaning:
 Existence, emptiness, mountain, straw:

 Words and what they try to say swept
 out the window, down the slant of the roof.

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"It is said that after Muhammad and the prophets revelation does not descend upon anyone else. Why not? In fact it does, but then it is not called 'revelation.' It is what the Prophet referred to when he said, 'The believer sees with the Light of God.' When the believer looks with 'The believer sees with the Light of God.' When the believer looks with God's Light, he sees all things: the first and the last, the present and the absent. For how can anything be hidden from God's Light? And if something is hidden, then it is not the Light of God. Therefore the meaning of revelation exists, even if it is not called revelation."
   
Fihi ma fihi [Discourses of Rumi] 
 quoted from William C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love:
 The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi
   

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The drum of the realization of the promise is beating,
 we are sweeping the road to the sky. Your joy is here today, what remains for tomorrow?
 The armies of the day have chased the army of the night,
 Heaven and earth are filled with purity and light.
 Oh! joy for he who has escaped from this world of perfumes and color!
 For beyond these colors and these perfumes, these are other colors in the heart and the soul.
 Oh! joy for this soul and this heart who have escaped
 the earth of water and clay,
 Although this water and this clay contain the hearth of the
 philosophical stone.
   
(Mystic Odes 473) 
 
 

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At every instant and from every side, resounds the call of Love:
 We are going to sky, who wants to come with us?
 We have gone to heaven, we have been the friends of the angels,
 And now we will go back there, for there is our country.
 We are higher than heaven, more noble than the angels:
 Why not go beyond them? Our goal is the Supreme Majesty.
 What has the fine pearl to do with the world of dust?
 Why have you come down here? Take your baggage back. What is this place?
 Luck is with us, to us is the sacrifice!...
 Like the birds of the sea, men come from the ocean--the ocean of the soul.
 Like the birds of the sea, men come from the ocean--the ocean of the soul.
 How could this bird, born from that sea, make his dwelling here?
 No, we are the pearls from the bosom of the sea, it is there that we dwell:
 Otherwise how could the wave succeed to the wave that comes from the soul?
 The wave named 'Am I not your Lord' has come, it has broken the vessel of the body;
 And when the vessel is broken, the vision comes back, and the union with Him.

   
 

Eva de Vitray-Meyerovitch, 'Rumi and Sufism' trans. Simone Fattal
 Sausalito, CA: Post-Apollo Press, 1977, 1987.
   

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Our death is our wedding with eternity.
What is the secret? "God is One."
 The sunlight splits when entering the windows of the house.
 This multiplicity exists in the cluster of grapes;
 It is not in the juice made from the grapes.
 For he who is living in the Light of God,
 The death of the carnal soul is a blessing.
 Regarding him, say neither bad nor good,
 For he is gone beyond the good and the bad.
 Fix your eyes on God and do not talk about what is invisible,
 So that he may place another look in your eyes.
 It is in the vision of the physical eyes
 That no invisible or secret thing exists.
 But when the eye is turned toward the Light of God
 What thing could remain hidden under such a Light?
 Although all lights emanate from the Divine Light
 Don't call all these lights "the Light of God";
 It is the eternal light which is the Light of God,
 The ephemeral light is an attribute of the body and the flesh.
 ...Oh God who gives the grace of vision!
 The bird of vision is flying towards You with the wings of desire.
(Mystic Odes 833) 
 

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I've said before that every craftsman
 searches for what's not there
 to practice his craft.
A builder looks for the rotten hole
 where the roof caved in. A water-carrier
 picks the empty pot. A carpenter
 stops at the house with no door.

Workers rush toward some hint
 of emptiness, which they then
 start to fill. Their hope, though,
 is for emptiness, so don't think
 you must avoid it. It contains
 what you need!
 Dear soul, if you were not friends
 with the vast nothing inside,
 why would you always be casting you net
 into it, and waiting so patiently?

This invisible ocean has given you such abundance,
 but still you call it "death",
 that which provides you sustenance and work.

God has allowed some magical reversal to occur,
 so that you see the scorpion pit
 as an object of desire,
 and all the beautiful expanse around it,
 as dangerous and swarming with snakes.

This is how strange your fear of death
 and emptiness is, and how perverse
 the attachment to what you want.

Now that you've heard me
 on your misapprehensions, dear friend,
 listen to Attar's story on the same subject.

He strung the pearls of this
 about King Mahmud, how among the spoils
 of his Indian campaign there was a Hindu boy,
 whom he adopted as a son. He educated
 and provided royally for the boy
 and later made him vice-regent, seated
 on a gold throne beside himself.

One day he found the young man weeping..
 "Why are you crying? You're the companion
 of an emperor! The entire nation is ranged out
 before you like stars that you can command!"

The young man replied, "I am remembering
 my mother and father, and how they
 scared me as a child with threats of you!
 'Uh-oh, he's headed for King Mahmud's court!
 Nothing could be more hellish!' Where are they now
 when they should see me sitting here?"

This incident is about your fear of changing.
 You are the Hindu boy. Mahmud, which means
 Praise to the End, is the spirit's
 poverty or emptiness.

The mother and father are your attachment
 to beliefs and blood ties
 and desires and comforting habits.
 Don't listen to them!
 They seem to protect
 but they imprison.

They are your worst enemies.
 They make you afraid
 of living in emptiness.

Some day you'll weep tears of delight in that court,
 remembering your mistaken parents!

Know that your body nurtures the spirit,
 helps it grow, and gives it wrong advise.

The body becomes, eventually, like a vest
 of chain mail in peaceful years,
 too hot in summer and too cold in winter.

But the body's desires, in another way, are like
 an unpredictable associate, whom you must be
 patient with. And that companion is helpful,
 because patience expands your capacity
 to love and feel peace.
 The patience of a rose close to a thorn
 keeps it fragrant. It's patience that gives milk
 to the male camel still nursing in its third year,
 and patience is what the prophets show to us.

The beauty of careful sewing on a shirt
 is the patience it contains.

Friendship and loyalty have patience
 as the strength of their connection.

Feeling lonely and ignoble indicates
 that you haven't been patient.

Be with those who mix with God
 as honey blends with milk, and say,

"Anything that comes and goes,
 rises and sets, is not
 what I love." else you'll be like a caravan fire left
 to flare itself out alone beside the road.
   
   
Rumi VI (1369-1420) from 'Rumi : One-Handed Basket Weaving
   

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