Religious Ecstasy and Self-Acceptance: Jelaluddin Rumi versus Saint Augustine
Religious Ecstasy and Self-Acceptance: Jelaluddin Rumi versus Saint Augustine
Saint Augustine, a 4th century Christian philosopher and writer, and Jelaluddin Rumi, a 13th century Persian mystic and poet, both spent the majority of their lives in contemplation of the mysteries of God, and both men addressed similar issues and concerns. The lifestyles and conclusions they described, however, were vastly different.
Both Rumi and Augustine praise God extensively. In praising God, Augustine seems to use his belief in the indescribable glory of the Lord as an excuse to emotionally flog himself. Rumi, though, is filled with a sort of religious joy, which make his poems hopeful, wise, and calm. He does not hate himself for finding joy in moments, or for appreciating worldly senses. Both men, though, agree that human desires must be kept under control. Augustine spends most of Book X going through the senses, and confessing his temptations. When speaking of hunger, Augustine says on page 237,
In the midst of these temptations I struggle daily against greed for food and drink. This is not an evil which I can decide once and for all to repudiate and never to embrace again, as I was able to do in the case of fornication. I must therefore hold back my appetite with neither too firm nor too slack a rein. But is there anyone, O Lord, who is never enticed a little beyond the strict limit of need?...I am not such a man: I am a poor sinner.
In the poem, "Fasting", Rumi writes, "There's hidden sweetness in the stomach's emptiness./ We are lutes, no more, no less. If the soundbox/ is stuffed full of anything, no music./ If the brain and the belly are burning clean/ with fasting, every moment a new song comes out of the fire." (p 69, The Essential Rumi, tr. Coleman Barks, Castle Books, 1995.) He also writes in "Zikr", "Don't try to control a wild horse by grabbing its leg./ Take hold the neck. Use a bridle. Be sensible./ Then ride! There is a need for self-denial." (p 115).
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In the poem, "Fasting", Rumi writes, "There's hidden sweetness in the stomach's emptiness./ We are lutes, no more, no less. If the soundbox/ is stuffed full of anything, no music./ If the brain and the belly are burning clean/ with fasting, every moment a new song comes out of the fire." (p 69, The Essential Rumi, tr. Coleman Barks, Castle Books, 1995.) He also writes in "Zikr", "Don't try to control a wild horse by grabbing its leg./ Take hold the neck. Use a bridle. Be sensible./ Then ride! There is a need for self-denial." (p 115).
Constantly throughout his Confessions, Augustine is posing questions to God, in a sort of frantic search for answers. Book I begins with "Can any praise be worthy of the Lord's majesty?" and goes on, "Grant me, Lord, to know and understand whether a man is first to pray to you for help or to praise you, and whether he must know you before he can call you to his aid. If he does not know you, how can he pray to you?" (p 1) This sort of confusion over minutia continues throughout the entire book. At the very end, Augustine asks, "What man can teach another to understand truth? What angel can teach it to an angel? What angel can teach it to a man?" and then answers, "We must ask it of you, seek it in you; we must knock at your door...only then will the door be opened to us." (p 347). This is not some sort of final revelation-- he has been praising God as the only "answer" throughout the entire book.
In the poem, "Not A Day On Any Calendar", (p 41) Rumi says,
This is not a day for asking questions,
not a day on any calendar.
This day is conscious of itself.
This day is a lover, bread, and gentleness,
more manifest than saying can say.
Thoughts take form with words,
but this daylight is beyond and before
thinking and imagining.
Along with having a more joyful spirit, Rumi is less preoccupied with getting specific answers to specific questions. Rumi says,
The mystery does not get clearer by repeating the question,
nor is it bought by going to amazing places.
Until you've kept your eyes
and your wanting still for fifty years,
you don't begin to cross over from confusion.
Both Augustine and Rumi are sensual men, but since Augustine is celibate and totally repressed, his descriptions of sensuality are richly grotesque. On page 43, he says, "Bodily desire, like a morass, and adolescent sex welling up within me exuded mists which clouded over and obscured by heart, so that I could not distinguish the clear light of true love from the murk of lust. ...I was tossed and spilled, floundering in the broiling sea of my fornication..." Rumi uses the show-not-tell method to describe the mystery of human existence. He uses the metaphors of wine-drunkenness and sexual excitement to describe his own relationship with God. He does not hide from sensuality. From his poem, "Like This":
...When someone mentions the gracefulness
of the night sky, climb up on the roof
and dance and say,
Like this?
If anyone wants to know what "spirit" is,
or what "God's fragrance" means,
lean your head toward him or her.
Keep your face there close.
Like this.
When someone quotes the old poetic image
about clouds gradually uncovering the moon,
slowly loosen knot by knot the strings
of your robe.
Like this?
If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the dead,
don't try to explain the miracle.
Kiss me on the lips.
Like this. Like this.
...
Augustine says, "To love this world is to break troth with you," (p 34) and "...My sin was
this, that I looked for pleasure, beauty, and truth not in [God] but in myself and his other creatures, and the search led me instead to pain, confusion, and error." (p 41). Because of the promise of an eternal life after this one, Augustine seems to place much less value on making himself happy in the present. Rumi writes from the Muslim perspective, and is less concerned with the afterlife, even though Muslims also have a heaven and hell.
Don't we all wish that Rumi could have read this poem to Augustine...
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
