Jalal Al-Din Rumi Divān-e Shams-e Tabrizi (selections)

Language: English Pages: 398 About the Book Everyone and everything perishes, but celebration in your state of oneness is forever, forever, forever." Today, more than seven hundred years after he composed his works, Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi - known affectionately simply as Rumi is the worlds most recognized and revered poet. Athirteenth-century Sufi mystic, Rumi has become a twenty-first- century bestselling author. Although misquoted nearly as often as he is quoted, Rumi is universally considered a poet of love, his words giving shape to the ache of longing, the pain of separation, and the ecstasy of union with the beloved. For Rumi, the path to the divine transcended creed and was accessible to any lover, regardless of culture or social order. "My religion," he wrote, "is love."* This message has resounded like a heartbeat through the centuries, appealing to todays seekers of love from all walks of life, much as it did in Rumi's own time. Rumi, a highly educated and respected religious scholar, Islamic jurist, and Muslim preacher, was in his late thirties before he ever composed a line of poetry. It was then that he met Shams-e Tabrizi and verse began to pour from him. The selections in this book are taken from that fount, the Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi, where more than 44,000 lines of poetry, dictated or sung by Rumi, capture the love between Rumi, the student, and his teacher Shams-e Tabrizi, the anguish of estrangement, and the journey to union with the beloved. Nearly three thousand of those lines were chosen for their elegance, their imagery, and their focus on the spiritual path, as well as the inner practice of meditatio