Only Breath by Rumi
Not Christian or Jew
or Muslim, not Hindu
Buddhist, Sufi, or Zen. Not any religion
or cultural system.
I am not from the
East or the West,
not out of the ocean
or up from the ground,
not natural or
ethereal, not composed of elements at all.
I do not exist,
am not an entity in
this world or in the next,
did not descend from
Adam and Eve or any origin story.
My place is
placeless,
a trace of the
traceless.
Neither body or
soul.
I belong to the
beloved, have seen the two
Worlds as one and
that one call to and know,
first, last, outer,
inner, only that breath breathing human being.
Rumi was a 13th century mystic poet and to read his words now,
especially in the chaos the world is in now, shows the length and depth of the
struggle to be human. This was written
over 750 years ago and I believe he was truly one of the most passionate and
profound poets in history.
He was born in what is now present-day Afghanistan in 1207 and died in
1273. He produced his masterwork ,
Masnavi, or Masnavi-I Ma'navi, also written Mesnevi, Mathnawi, or Mathnavi, and
it is an extensive poem written in Persian by him, whose full name was Jalal
al-Din Muhammad Balkhi, celebrated Persian Sufi poet. The translation to English consists of over
60,000 poems and the translation above is credited to Coleman Barks, although I
did take some liberties with the rhythmic flow of the prose. If you have time, please research him. I would venture to say Rumi was a
philosophical genius.
The statement of this poem is one of the most profound and simplistic
views of being human I have ever read.
We all breath. We all dream. We aspire to be loved, accepted, and embraced
at some point in our lives. Hate and intolerance
is not something you are born with.
Sadly, there are those who are taught hatred through ignorance or
violence or by both. There are those who
lost their way and have become the instruments of this hatred and
intolerance. It is up to us to not lose
sight of this faith in humanity and how very much we are all truly alike. We, meaning ALL of us as humans, share 99.9%
of the same DNA.
So, I say to you centuries after the wisdom of Rumi’s words, never give
up the fight and keep it simple. Just breathe
and remember that the other 7.2 billion humans are also breathing. It is only breath.
Namaste,
Tom
