"The King wept in mourning for the one that was slain, for the King is all; The King is both the slayer and the next of kin.
The King is both the slayer of humanity, and a mourner for them.
Meanwhile, the pale faced martyr was thanking God that the arrow had killed his body, and had not killed that which is real.
The visible body is doomed to go at last, but that which is real, the pure spirit, shall live rejoicing for ever.
If that punishment were inflicted, yet it fell only on the skin: the lover went unscathed to the Beloved.
Although he laid hold of the mercy of the King's saddle strap, yet in the end he was only admitted to union with his Beloved by the eye of perfection, the eye whose glances kill the mind's self-conceit."
Rumi (Vol.6, 4870-4875)
Commentary: Rumi asks us to imagine that there is something more real than our bodies. Rumi asks us to imagine that there is a "Beloved" who cares for us more than anyone on earth cares for us. Rumi even wants us to believe that the Goodness, (that gave us life), will also take that life from us; and that God not only celebrates our birth, but also mourns our death. (The last quote from the Mathnawi will appear tomorrow, God willing.)
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The Mathnawi, Jalalu'ddin Rumi's master work, is a 1200 page poem. Having studied it in an intensive tutorial with a Persian scholar, Dev Prakash in 1979, I am now rereading it 30 years later,using the Reynold Nicholson translation. My hope is that you will find these short selections speaking to your soul, as they do to mine.
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