Quick Thoughts & Persian Poetry | The Mistranslation of Molana & Religion As False Division

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there. 

When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. 

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn’t make any sense.” 

—

The above is the first poem I heard attributed to Molana. While the first poem is beautiful, here is a more direct translation—

—

“Out beyond wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a desert. 

The desert beckons us as if it were an oasis.

We long to hold one another in it's lush grass,

and drink from the clear spring. 

The moon whispers in my ear: 

I have one foot in that desert, 

but don't ask me to meet you there.

For in that desert of disillusionment— 

just as with right and wrong— 

you and I, and even oneness—

cease to exist.”

—

Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī was a wondrous 13th-century Persian poet and mystic. He was born in what is now modern day Afganistan, to a family that practiced Sufi tradition. 

Sufism did not arise in opposition to Islamic tradition, instead it was a deepening to it's very heart— going back to the source of meaning behind the Muslim Orthodoxy. 

The Sufi devotee wanted to know GOD's presence within, not to misunderstand that force as an illusory character at great distance. 

Sufisim has been defined as "the inward tradition of Islam."

In the East, he is affectionately called the honorific "Mawlānā" or "Our Master" in English. 

To the West he is generally known simply as "Rumi" which refers to the place he spent most of his life, known in the 13th century as the Sultanate of Rum. 

I call him Molana, which reflects the Persian pronunciation, and is easiest on my own tounge. 

Unfaithful translations has altered his poems circulated for the Western audience, not just to maintain a poetric structure, but also to remove the cultural and religious context born from the mind of a Muslim philosopher. 

“Na koi hindu na koi mussalman.”

“There is no Hindu, no Muslim.”

 - Guru Nanuk

Guru Nanuk expanded on this simplistic statement to say that these are just man-made divisions people use while forgetting the actual practice in their faith—

teaching that ritual without mental devotion was meaningless. 

Out of every major world religion I've learned of—Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or Hinduism— one can find and know the highest source of the universe. 

For religions are the tradition of mankind.

“He [Nanuk] was to remind them that all the messengers and the prophets in history came only to lead people to the right path. These messengers never considered themselves belonging to one group. They were for all. It were the people who created a new group. Guru Nanak really did the right thing when he declared that he was neither a Hindu nor a Mussalman. Certainly that was not a denial of Islam or Hinduism. That was only a declaration that even those who called themselves Muslims were not really Muslims judged by the standards of their own religion. Nor was there a Hindu found in the world as he ought to be.” 

- Mushirul Haq

Not every member of these religions has given both their heart and head to that highest power. 

Though I know for a fact people can find their path back to spirit from any of these cultural starting points mentioned here.

I believe Molana's poetry transcends barriers like language when faithfully portrayed.

“The lover is a veil; all is beloved. 

The beloved lives; the lover is a corpse.”

Molana was a lover, in that warmth he loved the people in his life so greatly every person close to him believed themselves to be personally beloved to him.

—

“Explanation by the tongue makes most things clear, But Love unexplained is better.”

—

“Eternal Life is gained by utter abandonment of one’s own life. 
When God appears to His ardent lover the lover is absorbed in Him, 

and not so much as a hair of the lover remains. 
True lovers are as shadows, and when the sun shines in glory the shadows vanish away. 

He is a true lover to God to whom God says, 

‘I am thine, and thou art Mine!’”

—

“My soul and yours have been essentially one.

 As well as my appearence and yours and my hiddenness and yours. 

Only for the sake of [others] understanding did I say "mine and yours." 

Since in reality there is no 'me' and 'yours' in my interior and yours.”

Afterthought:

My apologies for any typos, I got caught up in this after I was stuck on a thought train that I guess led back to this philosopher before dawn or breakfast.