On US Armistice Day 2012, let's remember Rumi's timeless teaching

Let us seek the peace with which this poet/teacher gifted the world...

"Rumi was born to native Persian speaking parents,[17][18][19] likely in the village of Wakhsh,[2] a small town located at the river Wakhsh in Persia (in what is now Tajikistan). Wakhsh belonged to the larger province of Balkh (parts of now modern Afghanistan and Tajikistan), and in the year Rumi was born, his father was an appointed scholar there."

Perhaps it's not of naught that Rumi once lived in Afghanistan and we find ourselves today looking at the ways of men at war vs those of peace in the backdrop of such a poet as this...

"In the Mevlevi tradition, samāʿ represents a mystical journey of spiritual ascent through mind and love to the Perfect One. In this journey, the seeker symbolically turns towards the truth, grows through love, abandons the ego, finds the truth and arrives at the Perfect.

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
― Rumi

'The seeker then returns from this spiritual journey, with greater maturity, to love and to be of service to the whole of creation without discrimination with regard to beliefs, races, classes and nations.In other verses in the Masnavi, Rumi describes in detail the universal message of love:The lover’s cause is separate from all other causes Love is the astrolabe of God's mysteries."

Many resources are available on similar texts about/from Rumi yet today I am using this for the excerpts above due to the pertinent references to Afghanistan here and quotes here

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
― Rumi

Here is another recent expression of Rumi's message "...love...without clamour and rancour and without malice and bitterness. It was sweet and pure as if gushing forth from a mountain spring; and it was love of a man mellowed with spiritual contemplation; and of a man who had experienced vagaries of life and tasted the bitterness of exile. So, it was not exclusive, disdainful and full of spite for others.

'Recurring interminably in Rumi’s poetry, Muhammad’s path has been held as an emblem of spiritual journey. Maulana has described it as a path that could illuminate the ultimate reality of Allah.

'Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) had to weed away nettles of murderous vendettas, inequity, pride and avarice to set the contours of a new way leading to Allah. Breaking apart the linear and biologically determined ties between parents and children, he created community bonds on the basis of compassion, justice, tolerance and eschewal of worldly desires. Prophet’s (pbuh) whole life was a shining emblem of this righteous path.

'Persecuted by rich, powerful Quraish cheftains, Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) found refuge in Medina and established a confederate of different communities on the principles of mutual respect and tolerance. At the time of the Prophet’s (pbuh) victorious march into Mecca, not a single drop of blood was shed, no house was set ablaze and no one was forced to convert to Islam.

'A year later, during Hajj pilgrimage, the Holy Prophet (pbuh) had the realisation that his earthly existence was nearing an end, which would mark a new beginning and terminate one part of history. He also had the realisation that history had the tendency to repeat itself in cycles and cruelty of past could recur. So, in his last sermon, he enjoined;

“Hurt no one so that no one may hurt you,” and “Do not stray from the path of righteousness after I am gone.”

'Rumi understood the necessity of a righteous path to live a purposeful and dignified life. Maulana and his family had experienced displacement and exile and journeyed through unfamiliar lands to reach their final destination in Konya.

'He also understood that despite the impermanence, uncertainty and mortality inherent in human life, it had to be lived according to a divine plan...

'The verses of Maulana Rumi...is a way of inner reality and the other of outer form; one is a way of clemency and the other of mercilessness; and one is a way of inclusion and the other of exclusion. Finally, the rhythm of Maulana’s verses subdued ...inner clamour...

"Come, come whoever you are.

Come even though you have,

Broken your vows a thousand times,

Come, and come yet again,

Ours is not a caravan of despair." '

Find the above here

Find related references here -- be sure to see the top footnote "Can Rumi Save us Now?" from "The San Francisco Chronicle" here ;

Along the same lines, plz refer to Aramaic Bible in Plain English (©2010): "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear is by suspicion, but he who fears is not grown up in love." 1 John