The Real Garden

"That seeker felt within his heart a sublime emotion...
Courtyard and wall and mountain woven of stone seemed to split open before him like a laughing and bursting pomegranate.
One by one, the atoms of the universe were momentarily opening their doors to him, like tents, in a hundred diverse ways.
The door would become now a window, now the sunbeams; the earth would become now the wheat, now the bushel.
In human eyes, the heavens are very old, and threadbare; in his eye, there was a new creation every moment.
The flowers that bloom from the earth become faded; the flowers that bloom from the heart-oh, what a joy!
Know that all the delightful sciences known to us are only two or three bunches of flowers from that garden.
We are devoted to these two or three bunches of flowers, because we have shut the Garden door on ourselves."

Rumi (Vol.6 4639-4652)

Commentary: Rumi admits that our small bunches of flowers are beautiful. But he invites us to experience a whole garden full of magnificent flowers, where that beauty never fades. We "shut the garden gate" when we refuse to even consider the possibility that such a wondrous garden exists.