All things are assigned a task. The heavens send rain and light for the herbs of the field to germinate and spring into life. The earth receives the seeds and bears fruit, it accepts and reveals a hundred thousand marvels too numerous to tell. The mountains give forth mines of gold and silver. All these things the heavens, the earth and the mountains do, yet they do not perform that one thing; that particular task is performed by us.
“We offered the Trust to the heavens,
The earth and the mountains,
They refused to carry it and were afraid of it,
But humans carried it.
Surely they are foolish and sinful.”
The earth and the mountains,
They refused to carry it and were afraid of it,
But humans carried it.
Surely they are foolish and sinful.”
This was the reply of Rumi to someone's question, "There's something i have forgotten..."
ReplyDeleteRumi replied: There is one thing in this world that must never be forgotten. If you were to forget all else, but did not forget that, then you would have no reason to worry.
It is just as if a king sent you to the country to carry out a specific task. If you go and accomplish
a hundred other tasks, but do not perform that
particular task, then it is as though you performed
nothing at all.
I am a bird. I am a nightingale. If they say to me, “Make some other kind of sound,” I cannot. My tongue is what it is. I cannot speak otherwise. However, those who learn the song of birds are not birds themselves—on the contrary, they are the enemies of birds and their captors. They sing and whistle so others will take them for birds. Ask them to produce a different sound and they can do so, because that sound is merely assumed by them. It is not truly their own. Like the scholars, they are able to sing other songs because they have learned to rob those songs, and to show off a different tune stolen from every breast.
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