Sant Satguru Sadhu Ram in a talk/satsang given this evening, New Delhi, India time, quoted his Guru, Sant Satguru Ajaib Singh ji: This (spiritual) path is sharper than the edge of sword.
Then Sadhu Ram ji said: It’s easier to climb on (get on) the cross than to carry on with love (It’s more difficult to maintain living this life with love.) (Yet) Love is very close by, within.
Satguru’s Court is more beautiful than everything else. There is no other door like this one. Satguru’s Court is more beautiful than everything else.
He puts the forgetful ones on the straight path. He makes the lost souls meet the Creator. Come, those who want to make their life successful.
He has made the likes of the dirt of the alleys successful. I, the lowly one, am embraced by the Higher Ones. One will not find such a Master.
Ajaib Ji has cast His gracious sight. He has filled the empty jholi of Sadhu Ram. I will never lose the gifts You have given me.
So please, why not throw something into my begging bowl?
Why is Rumi begging from His پیر? Because this physical reality is too harsh, even for Saints like Rumi as they compose poems. We don’t know what’s behind all this “Maya” or illusion unless the Guru پیر and the “Word” or “Naam” put us in the state of consciousness where we simply absorb true knowledge and feel the love that has created and sustains all.
We’re dyed in the color of this world but the ones who are initiated by a perfect master, Guru مرشد کامل، پیر learn how dyed their mind in the color of Naam. It comes in Gurubani that it is only by getting dyed in the color of Naam we can reach salvation. So we pray that we may be intoxicated with Naam so we can be one with uOu.
Poem above is by Rumi and آرش تبرستانی has given his interpretation of the poem in Persian. Basically they are saying that most people don’t see this world as reality and don’t look behind the invisible curtain. And the ones who do look and see are either considered mad, crazy or mentally disoriented. But Rumi is saying wait a second اوست دیوانه که دیوانه نشد ‘the one who hasn’t gone mad is the mad one’.
Your body is the temple of God, O man, Satguru is sitting inside. You will not find anything outside, everything is inside you, O man.
You clean and sweep the temples made of stones and bricks, you ring bells and conch every day, you burn incense to add fragrance. What benefit does outer bathing do, inside you the ocean is flowing, O man.
You read Vedas, Puranas and Granths, but you have never practiced. His will is understood by those who have won over the mind and the world. Even after winning the entire world, Sikandar (Alexander the Conqueror) left empty handed, O man.
I meditated on Satguru Ajaib’s Naam and I saw God. Sadhu Ram woke up in the ambrosial hour and took a dip within. The body and the mind became pure, I became intoxicated and carefree, O man.
Mind, the very essence of Kal, has wrecked the garden through force, violence and hierarchy in religion.
When will this mind surrender and when will this ego leave me be?
Satguru ji, ای مرشد کامل, please take these coverings off my soul by showering your grace.
You’re the light of all lights Master, ای پیر من, my salvation in your hands.
Let’s cover up my faults behind this wine stained initiation rope for, uOu, my Guru پیر، is coming. And I might get a chance to be forgiven, I’m sure I will, by the shower of uOs grace I’ll be cleansed once again even for just a moment.
If you know some Persian Google the poem in Persian and enjoy reading the whole poem.
I don’t care if you call me an infidel. I’ll be an infidel of Love if I don’t worship Shamms.
He’s openly referring to his deep devotion to his پیر Master. But حافظ Hafez is more loved in Iran, his book of poetry in almost every house, because the codes he used such “pray” in the verse above can be interpreted in many ways; give me a good job, a good spouse, etc, to give me a taste of your Divine Love for that is all I need.
حافظ Hafez means the one who has memorised all of Quran/Koran. حافظ comes from حفظ memory, something we all have as well as the potential to memorize a whole book line by line. So when in a last verse we hear the word حافظ Hafez, especially in Persian, we don’t just think about the poet, the mystic, the Master who wrote the poem, we hear that potential within us to be حافظ Hafez. The last line of the stanza where حافظ Hafez often uses his name as if reminding himself is in fact a message to us, at the level of our individual capacity to be with the Divine.
Hey gardener what’s going on?
Why are you giving me so much trouble?
If I’ve taken some of your grapes you’re taking away my stomach.
The Ocean of Love or The Anurag Sagar of Kabir is epic poem which “centers around the impact of Time on Eternity and Eternity’s response. It is Eternity which is the anurag sagar, or “ocean of love,” and it’s Time’s perversion of that part of Eternity which it touches which produces the bhav sagar, “ocean of the world” – the only reality most of us know, the mock world we are trapped in.
The creator of the bhava sagar, “ the butcher Kal” (Kal means, literally, Time) is mad: one of the sons of Eternity (San Purush, Ture or Original Person), Kal or Time was unable to handle the separation from his father that the creation process demanded, and went mad. Ignoring the wishes of Eternity, he misused the tools of creation entrusted to him and, through his impatience and megalomania, created a sewer where a garden was intended. Convinced that he is God, demanding to be worshiped as God, and setting up a Law so stringent that no one can keep it,he presides to his day over a closed-circuit universe that would be utterly without hope if it were not for the fact that, as the poet Blake puts it, “Eternity is ever in love with the product of Time.” Because Eternity does love those of us caught in the trap of Time, It has set up a series of invasions in which the true Reality enters into the mock universe and illumines it, awakening those who are ready to gasp the truth and showing the the way out.
How much my body has suffered, only True Satguru knows. If you meet a Perfect Master only then the soul reaches the true destination.
May my body and mind become a mirror so I could have the Darshan of my Master.
Not even after dying, could I forget the favors of my Master.
I could never feel satisfied looking at Him, His Darshan to me is like millions of pilgrimages. I bow down to pay respect to my Satguru.
For Whom this life is suffering, only He knows what is in my heart. No one has the medicine for this ailment; my affliction is for my Master.
The sleep does not come into my eyes, Your remembrance torments me. Even today these two eyes are only waiting for the Master.
In the end, Ajaib will save Sadhu Ram and take him across. The court of the Master never disappears from my eyes.
Repeat the Unrepeated and with the grace of the Perfect Master, test it.
Keeping the wing of mind at rest, see the Shabda; and climbing the mind, finish you Karma.
Merging into the Essential Shabda, go to the world of immortality.
To die while still alive, to reach the state of Samati, has been the goal and the message of the Masters. Rumi is talking about the kind of death which erases his sense of ego and the desire to die in that sense, he says, has kept him alive and now old.
Then he uses the metaphor of a wheat grain which has the potential to be sowed and turned into a plant and more wheat produced from it which shows the ego of the seed, no matter how small to us human beings, nevertheless an identity and ego of a seed. But once it enters the mills and gets crushed into flour it loses its identity as a seed. It has the potential to become part of a loaf of bread but it’s individual seed ego is no longer recognizable. It can become one with the bread. And once a Master enters the state of Samati and loses the ego, uOu becomes one with the Beloved, the Creator, the all Compassionate and Merciful. Finally the Master comes back from the state of Samati and fully occupies the body with all it’s worldly senses (touch, smell, taste, sight, etc.) and gets the minimal ego needed to identity with the body. The Master may not enjoy this “normal state” as much as the state of samati but the disciples are elated to be in presence of the One who has been drenched with love and compassion in the field beyond the ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing and has come to shower them with that grace.
The Persian word شیر means milk as well as lion. One who reads this verse in Persian could on a subliminal level think of the hair as the metaphor for part the person, the strength of a person. Hence Rumi might also be saying; If I become as daring and strong as a lion then I could enter the state of Samati.
The more practical part of our brain will say that Rumi is talking about getting old so of course he’s talking about the color of milk and hair turning white as we age. However just the fact that this idea crossed my mind that he might also be referring to lion, shows me the power of Rumi’s poetry if read in a delightful Persian language and especially if we get lucky to have a day or even an especial hour to contemplate on one or two of His verses.
From a talk, Satsang, given by Sant Sadhu Ram on January 01, 2004 in New Delhi, India.
Saints and Masters have in one way or another tried to say the same thing but in different languages and ways according to their circumstances and the way they were assigned to give that message. From the word of mouth and the translations this is what Jesus said, “I’m the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved” – while He was alive, in the body. Jesus wasn’t afraid to die and neither was Hafez. The Middle Eastern folks has shown that they’re into martyrdom and it’s a blessing if “God” is willing. Hafez was to write poetry in a delicate way instead of having his head chopped off by the clergy – and to write in such a beautiful way in such a beautiful language to reveal the secret behind the curtain in a way that the clergy couldn’t accuse Him of blasphemy even though some tried. And Jesse had another mission before He was put on the cross and returned to His Father’s Home at such young age.