How Can Rumi Heal Your Heart - Haleh Liza Gafori

Rumi, a 13th century Persian mystic, emphasized the importance of how we see the world and how it impacts our feelings. His poetry encourages seeing through the eyes of love rather than judgment. Rumi's philosophy of ensouling sight is healing and teaches us how to love. His poetry combines music and words to create a profound effect. Rumi's friendship with Shams of Tabriz greatly influenced him and led him to turn away from his previous life to seek deep conversation and self-reflection. I was in Guatemala, I remember hearing that, I can't remember the name of the language, Chacical. Chacical, I believe it was a Mayan language. This man, Walter, said to me that when we say, how are you doing today in Chacical, the translation is how are you seeing today? Because it was the awareness that how we see impacts how we feel. So how are you doing today, or how are you feeling today? How are you seeing today? Are you seeing through eyes of love, as Rumi would often say? He says, see through the beloved's eyes, not the eyes of a vulture. Your eyes are not a vulture's beak. See one when your mind says two. So this invitation to see in a less polarizing way, this idea of ensouling sight, is something that is very important in his philosophy. Is it something that we talk about much in America? I'm not so sure, I don't think so. Hello everyone, welcome to Artidote Podcast, where I, Vasya Karmenikas, ask questions to best-selling authors about their books and ideas. One of my favorite poets of all time is the 13th century Persian mystic, Rumi. It is incredibly difficult and challenging to define and describe the poetry of Rumi. So instead, I would like to read a couple of verses by Rumi that inspired me recently. Pay no attention to what gossips say. They call the wide-eyed flower jasmine. They call the wide-eyed flower a thorn. The wide-eyed flower doesn't care what they call it. I adore that freedom. I bow to it. Some say you worship fire. Some say you follow scripture. What do they know? Labels blind and tear us apart. Your eyes are not a vulture's beak. See through the beloved's eyes. See one when your mind says two. The angels adore your love-drunk eyes. Open them and dismiss the vicious judge from the post you've given. This verse comes from the recent translation of Rumi's poetry by Haleleza Ghafori, who is the guest of this episode. Hale told me about her journey of discovering Rumi, his life, his poetry, and how it can heal our hearts and teach us how to love. I hope you will enjoy listening to this episode with Haleleza Ghafori. Dear Hale, thank you so much for coming to my podcast. I'm so excited to finally find someone to talk about Rumi's poetry. I love his poetry so much, and I come back to him for this healing effect that he can have on our souls. I wanted to ask you about this healing effect, I think, like in some part of our interview. There is one sentence that I've read of Rumi, I think a couple of years ago, and it kind of follows me. It says that, he said that a candle doesn't lose any of its light if it lights up another candle. This is, I guess, what you are doing, you know, by coming to my podcast, you are lighting up candles of my listeners, you know, who might not know about Rumi, who can discover him and maybe the healing effect will be passed to them as well. I hope so, I hope so. Before we'll begin, could you please tell a little bit about yourself, like in a couple of words? Well, I live in Brooklyn. I've been translating Rumi, or Molana, as we say, for the past six or seven years. The book came out, Gold, the book Gold, Rumi, came out in March of this year. So I've been immersed in that before this project. I was often singing his lyrics and sometimes touring and singing them in Persian. They lend themselves to music, so it's almost like they're asking for melodies to be written. They were often composed to the beat of a drum, so there's a rhythm embedded in that lyric. So I was also singing him and I write my own poetry from time to time and I go to universities and talk about Rumi and talk about mystical poetry and lead retreats on the poetry. And I do find it, the philosophy and the poetry, very, very healing, as you mentioned. So I really enjoy passing on what I can and hopefully transmitting some of that nourishing. How did you discover Rumi? What was your first encounter with Rumi? My first encounter was when I was a child and my father was reciting his poems aloud in Persian. He loved to recite this one. So this one was one that he loved to recite and in it, the word mastan, means the drunk And in the context of Sufi mysticism, it means the drunk, the drunkards drunk on love, drunk on the divine love, drunk on God's wine, drunk on the 360 degree embrace of creation, you know. Why did your father like Rumi? Why was he reciting his poetry? What did attract your father to Rumi's verse? There's a beautiful rhythm in the poems that I think all Iranians are attracted to. There's rhythm, there's rhyme, there's interesting wordplay. And then, of course, the meanings, you know, are beautiful, nourishing, interesting, sometimes elusive. Some of the lines are very clear and a literal translation will do. And sometimes the lines are quite elusive and people will bring their own life to the poem. And I think that's when poetry really comes alive is when we can really interact with the poem. So there's room to interpret, there's room to. And of course, you know, the interpretations you want always to do with context in mind and the body of Rumi's work in mind so that you can have an informed interpretation. But it's very alive. It's not it's very alive. And it's also there's a lot of voices. Rumi is a sage, a guide, a kind elder, but he's also he's also a ravaged lover. He's also very humble. He's also confessing his own trials and tribulations. He never hides the struggle of human existence. And he he is willing to tell us that it's a journey. And, you know, the Sufi path is very much about looking inward and seeing how we can optimize the self, how we can both be very compassionate to the many sides of self and also choose and steer, you know, in other words, like allow ourselves to become more generous, more compassionate, and allow ourselves to become more relaxed as we go through this not very easy life. Yeah, that he has like this potential of unlocking of, say, the spiritual part of ourselves when you read his lines. And I always found it phenomenal like this, that his ability to kind of never cross that boundary of like being, I don't know even how to describe this, but like being overly spiritual, you know, like almost like, I don't know, preaching. But it is more like it's very focused on your soul and he unlocks that potential feeling in you that perhaps in our world that is very rational, very materialistic. It is like it has an incredible effect on me personally. Yeah, yeah. I mean, if one wants to think about it as, you know, material, you know, then spiritual or, you know, the ego, which is defined, it's a Persian term and an Arabic term, but it means it means the stifling aspect of self versus the expansive soul, the soul that is connected to the divine, to the all, the really the aspect of us that is able to breathe and relax. He's connecting us to that, I feel, through the poetry. He says, love returns again and again to nourish and mend. Now, I'm not remembering the line. Hold on a second. Let me get the line. I'm going to cite some of the lines from your election as well. So love nourishes and mends, love opens the clenched body, lets the soul breathe, reason is baffled and spirit too dazzled to reason. You know, so you mentioned the rational, but taking us out in another poem, for instance, he says, don't think, mayandeesh, mayandeesh, which sometimes he is preaching. I mean, these are imperatives. Mayandeesh means don't think, you know, and he says, don't think, don't think, quit pouring thoughts like kerosene on everything fresh and green, burning to the root. Be a fool, drunk on love and soaked in awe till dry reeds are sweet as sugarcane. You know, so he invites us to embrace, to notice, to relax, to love more deeply, to cultivate this love. Everything that we can say about Rumi, he has he has said it in his own words in such a beautiful way that it is even like I don't feel comfortable describing what he says because he said it so beautifully. What could you please tell a little bit about Sufism, you know, for people who don't know a lot about it and what kind of influence, obviously like enormous influence it had on Rumi's poetry? Yeah, well, Sufi philosophy, of course, Sufi mystical is often defined as the mystical branch of Islam. And some people feel it's also been influenced by Zoroastrianism, which was preceded Islam in Iran. And it's a philosophy, I believe, I believe that the central prayer of Sufi mysticism is let me love more deeply, teach me to love more deeply, uncover the love within me, because the assumption is that we are made of this love, that this is the truth of our being. And that, you know, living in a material world, being spirits in a material world, we can get caught up in all kinds of, you know, self-centered concerns, which is OK, which is human, which is understandable. But, of course, if it gets too extreme, and we get obsessed with things like power and control, as we see a lot of the leaders of this world are very, you know, sick with ego, you know, their level of self-centeredness is pathological. And those people particularly love to take the reins. So oftentimes we are led by the most egotistical ones when the rest of us are, you know, how can I be more loving? How can I be more compassionate in this world? It's not really a reflection of all of us. But anyway, you know, this aspect of the Sufi mystical path is very important, this movement of naps. So in naps or this progression of naps. So naps is a word that embodies both ego and soul. It's the being, but it's a spectrum. And so they have phases, they have stages. And they believe that we can move from naps to amr or naps to even shaytani. Naps to shaytani means the devilish naps. So the really, really like, you know, into this, what they say, the purified naps and the content naps and the connected naps, you know. So this belief that we, in neuroplasticity, really, you know, what we would call now neuroplasticity, the belief that we are malleable, that we are evolving beings during this lifetime, and that's one of the greatest aspects of our existence is that we can evolve, we can expand to deeper levels of compassion. This is central to Sufi mystical philosophy. So it's a very brave philosophy in that way. I mean, they're not afraid of looking in the mirror. They invite you to look in the mirror. And then, of course, throughout Persian poetry, there's that idea of polishing the mirror, right, polishing the mirror. Or, you know, in one poem, Rumi says, we are light upon light and the glass it passes through. Why muddy ourselves with a grudge? You know, and he says, grudges and spite weigh on the heart. Let seven streams of water wash them away. So it's this constant sense of let's tend to the being as we tend to our house. We clean the counters. We arrange the fridge. You know, we are also creatures in need of maintenance. Oh, that's central to Sufi mystical philosophy. So, you know, as we do that, we are able to show up with a little more laughter, show up with a little more relaxation, not take ourselves so seriously. It is so needed, like in our day with all this kind of rigidity that we have in our lives. I think I guess one of the answers about healing effect of Rumi is this. It's, you know, like unlocking, like crushing our rigidity, our egos. And it's, you know, it is absolutely phenomenal. And as far as I know that Rumi grew up in, Rumi's father was a religious person, preacher as well. And Rumi lived through a lot of cataclysms in his own life. He, I think, migrated thousands of miles from east to west. How do you think that shaped him, you know, like to see his region being conquered by brutal forces? Yes, yes. Well, first to say first, just yes, I just want to say, yes, his father was an Islamic theologian, his grandfather was. So that philosophy of Islam was a big part of his life. He was fasting as a child. He was praying as a child alongside his father. And then, you know, the Sufi mystical philosophy was considered a more expansive version of this philosophy that he started to learn about, you know, through the poet Atar and then eventually through Shadams of Tabriz. And this that you brought up, this idea that he was or this fact that he was traveling across the Middle East with his family that he essentially left around the age of nine or 11 from what is present day Afghanistan. And they moved across what we call Central Asia, eventually landing in Turkey. And this 10 year movement was partly something his father wanted to do because his father wanted to move out of where they were just voluntarily. But also they were, for part of the time, kind of refugees because the Mongols were marching across Central Asia and plundering towns and killing so much. So Molana Rumi, the young boy, Jalaluddin Muhammad ibn Hussain Balkhi, as also is his name, as a young child, he was he was very aware of the range of possibility of human existence because there he was in a caravan with maybe hundreds of people, at least for part of the migration, under the stars that imagine 800 years ago, how beautiful the sky must have been and how beautiful the gardens were, how beautiful the mountains were, how fresh the air was, how fragrant and the flowers and tasty the peaches were and how the chorus of birds that appears in his poems, you know, it was it was magnificent. And the songs that he would hear, the poetry he would hear. So there was that aspect of life. And then there was this awareness that this very egotistical Nafseh Ammarrah was marching across and making people's lives hell. That awareness of what humans can also do and also be having such an extreme range, I think, has informed his poetry. I think he knew fear and I think he found surrender, you know, in the course of his lifetime as the as a salvation. I hope you enjoy listening to my conversation with Haleh. Before we will continue, I would like to thank everyone who sent their questions for this episode. If you would like to find out about the future guests and send your questions, you can do it by subscribing to my monthly newsletter, which will be linked in the description of this episode. I also wanted to let you know that you can find all the links and references to Haleh's books and her projects on my website, which you can also find in the description. Thank you once again for listening to Artidote Podcast and let's continue with the rest of this episode. And as far as I know, like Islam was very kind of rich in ideas, in spiritual practices, new personalities like that of father of Rumi and other poets were kind of finding new spiritual ways. What was it? What was Islam like in terms of ideas back in that during the Rumi's time? Well, there was a range, you know, there were there were more conservative theologians. There were more liberal ones. There were ones to whom music, which became a very big part of Rumi's life around the age of 38 or 40 when he met Shams of Tabriz. But music, for some, was considered at best a distraction and at worst a sin. So for some of the Islamic theologians or some of the Muslim people at that time, music was not something that was invited into daily life. People might sing the Koran, but that was pretty much it. And then there were Sufis that were absolutely embracing music and believing that sammah, which means deep listening and also whirling. Let's first take the first definition of deep listening. They believed that deep listening, that sitting and listening deeply to music, to recited poetry and feeling the dissolution of self that occurs during this time because the chatter in the mind has to quiet down in order for us to really listen. So this was a spiritual practice. It was a meditative practice. And they believed that sammah was a portal to the divine. Like he says, it's the food for lovers. That's the ladder to the seventh heaven reaches high, sammah reaches higher, you know. So this is something he said. And so this was to some Muslims considered a sin, this sammah practice of deep listening to music and dance, you know. So there was a range of views. Rumi's own father was not very conservative, but fairly conservative. His father absolutely loved music. We know from his diaries, but he didn't make it a part of his life. He was a little bit conservative, didn't want to be judged by the more conservative theologians and so on, apparently. And so, you know, but Shams Tabriz was the rebel, you know, came into Rumi's life and swept him up and, you know, said, OK, come on, bring the musicians and let's dance. And Rumi completely embraced that. It's so interesting to hear that both in the world of poetry, the connection between music and words, you know, this rhythm that, you know, today we imagine that, you know, people sit down and read poetry, you know, and but like it was always connected with music. Both when you read about the Italian poets, Greek poets, it was always connected with it. You know, it wasn't just simple words, like just words with rhythm. It was this connection between the marriage between the two and the effect that both could have, you know, subconscious part of music and the deep side of words that can have effect on our mind. And I assume that's what you are doing yourself when you recite the poetry. Well, I do love I do love reciting and I do believe that, yes, music, poetry, music are very connected. And even if there aren't instruments playing, you know, the poet wants to make music from the words. Right. So that there's there's some kind of rhythm, some kind of melodic or musical thing happening with the words. I think that's one of the jobs of poets, whether they do it consciously or unconsciously. You know, the final poem has its own music. And of course, yes, when when poets mix, bring in the instruments or compose to the instruments or compose to the drum, as Rumi was often doing, Mahana was often doing, it's beautiful. Yeah. And I like to I like to I like to involve musicians, certainly. When I can, I bring the musicians on the stage with me. Before we'll jump to your translation, I'll ask a couple of questions that my readers have sent in. I want to, of course, I cannot skip Rumi's relationship with Shams of Tabriz. And personally to me, when I read the story of the how they met, I had a feeling as if Rumi was trying to say that there is always this one soul, one person that we can find who can really understand us deeply in this world. And Shams, his friend, was one of these one of these people. Could you please tell a little bit about their friendship, the influence that he had on Rumi? Yeah, I mean, of course, you know, we we don't know full details of obviously, but but we know that he was, yes, a profound influence, a mentor, a guide, someone who had so much power, meaning meaning power, or magnetism, so much knowledge and connection to the tradition, he walked the talk. And Rumi was really in love with this, you know, because Rumi was at the apex of his career, very famous. And when I met when I said the word power, I meant that Shams was, was so much sort of immersed in, as Rumi thought, embodying this philosophy, that that was enough to pull Rumi away from his whole life, you know, and he turned away from preaching, he turned away from his fans and followers, from his disciples and went into, you know, self-backed conversation, deep conversation into semi, semi-isolated retreat with Shams, they spent months together. And what was going on during those months, I mean, we know they were listening to music, they brought musicians, we know that Rumi was learning whirling, we know that they were talking a lot. And we know that Rumi was listening a lot. And Shams would go on to these streams of consciousness and talk very poetically. And in a way Rumi called his, you know, the book is called Divana Shams, not Divana Molana or Divana Rumi, because Rumi felt that he was just basically channeling everything that Shams said, and that everything Shams was saying was really coming from the etheric voice, coming from the booming voice of the heavens, the divine messages, the divine universal wisdom was being sort of transmitted through him. And then Rumi just brought it into poetry. Shams also said to him, put aside your books, you know, I want to hear your voice. So in a way, also Shams was kind of a coach, he was saying to him, I want to hear you, I want to hear you not, don't, don't repeat the story, stop reading the same books every night. I want to hear what you have to say from your being. So he was calling his creative self out, he was allowing him, permitting him to be a wild artist, really a writer and saying, you have a voice, let's hear it. And, you know, he was also inviting him to let go of any attachments to reputation. You know, inviting him to be free of hierarchical thinking. Yeah, it was many things now, and they loved each other. You know, they really loved each other. They were deep, deep, deep friends and sharing a lot, you know, I don't know how far it went, what the details were. But of course, it was a magical, magical union of two people, you know, and then it was very hard to because his disciples, Rumi's disciples were very jealous and drove Shams out of town the first time. And then Shams returned when Rumi was absolutely depressed and distraught. And his first poems were basically love letters calling him back, beseeching him to return. So the first poems were to Shams, you know, and his son took them to Damascus and then invited Shams to return. He returned and then he was back for a certain period of time. And then again, he disappeared. It seems he was he died. He was murdered, perhaps, that some say he was murdered by Rumi's own son. So it was a very tumultuous couple of years, but filled with with unlocking. You know, he had the key to the prison door, you know. It is interesting that the influence of this is that the father had on Rumi as a person of religion and like, you know, focused on ideas of Islam. And I assume like Shams was kind of the other side, as you said, unlocking the creative potential. You know, you need to learn everything, but at the same time, you need to let go. That's very well said. You need to learn. And at the same time, then you need to let go exactly. And Mawlana Rumi was a devout student, you know, and he really did. He memorized that. He knew so much. And so by the time Shams came into his life, he was so primed with so much knowledge, so much poetry in his blood, so much scripture in his blood. And Shams just had to push a button, you know, just kind of shake him up a little bit and help him let go. Exactly. You know, if he didn't have all of that within him, I don't think he would have become this magnificent poet that was just suddenly spouting poetry. I've heard this echoes of this idea of like, you know, that you need to learn, you need to deepen your knowledge. But at the same time, you kind of at the same time, you need to forget it. Yes, and find silence and let silence speak. Yeah, yeah. Now I've heard it from... Go ahead, I interrupted you as I was talking about silence. Sorry, no, sorry. I just heard it for the first time. I heard it from Mary Oliver, who admired Rumi. Like in one of her interviews, she said like how she reads Rumi every day. But she also said that, you know, as a poet, you need to learn what previous masters before you did, you know, all the techniques, what was before you, but then kind of let it go and unlock it. Absolutely. And, you know, I quoted to bring in another American poet, Marilyn Nelson. She said poetry emerges from silence and leaves us in silence. And so I think also during his experience with Shams, you know, they went into a lot of silence, a lot of meditative spaces where the mind went silent, you know, through deep listening, the mind learns to quiet itself. And then, you know, at the end of every poem, at every ghazal or many ghazals, not every ghazal, Molano Rumi would say, Khomush, which means silence. So he would call himself to silence. And so, yes, it's true. We have to let go of all of that and hear what wants to speak through us. How did they, what were the practices? How did they practice like, I don't know, deep silencing, deep silence? How did they do that? Well, I mean, I know that the main practice was Samma and Samma, as I said, is both deep listening and the whirling dance. And the whirling dance requires a lot of focus. It's very easy to get dizzy when you're whirling. So it requires a lot of focus and motor coordination. So on the one hand, you're completely in this multidimensional state of focus and you're listening to music. So you dissolve there. You become the music. You become the dance. You become the empty mind. You empty, you're emptied in a state of focus, right? Focus kind of allows that chatter to become silent, I believe is what the idea is, that in this kind of focus state, we dissolve, we vanish. As Jane Hirschfield said, you know, she said she spoke of the vanishing sometimes. When she's composing, you know, she's she has vanished already and the composition is coming out of that state of vanishing. So it was a practice of vanishing. He says, for instance, dissolution in the invisible is my religion. Non-being inside being is my ritual. So non-being inside being is my ritual. You ask what the practice is. That's the practice is how do I. Now, then in this non-being, you become your most idiosyncratic self. You become a poet. You hear the muse speak. You know, it's it's interesting. There's a paradox to it in the nothingness that he embraces in the emptiness. There's a fullness, you know, all of this stuff is there's a inherent paradox to it. But I think that it does really make sense. You know, I don't think that he was necessarily sitting down and doing meditation as we know it now, you know, with his with his fingers in a mudra or anything like this. Right. I don't think that he was doing necessarily Buddhist meditation. But he says, you know, listen to the nightingale, listen to the blah, blah, blah. Listen. So he's sitting down and quietly listening. That is a meditation. That is a profound practice. Very often, it is the ability to have a focus on something is practicing that silence, because today, when we have so many distractions that we cannot focus on something, you know, it's like all the noise. We just focus on noise. We think that we are focused on work or whatever. But just ability to focus as you talked about the whirling dances, and it was actually one of the questions of my readers was like, what influence did the whirling dances have on Rumi's poetry? Yes, well, you know, one of the things about the whirling dance is, you know, the right arm is up towards the sky, the left hand is down towards the earth. And it's this idea, you know, that you are a conduit, you know, of you are bringing down the divine energy, bringing up the divine energy of earth. It's passing through you. You're an empty, empty channel, you know, so as you're whirling, so this is kind of happening and you're turning towards the heart. So it's this kind of idea of this 360 embrace of creation. And then the drum is playing. And while he was whirling, he was often composing poetry. So the disciples would take it down and write it down, or friends would write it down. So the whirling was actually a part of his poetic process, you know. I'm listening to you and I'm just, I think, getting into the meditative mode. I think just talking about Rumi has such a healing effect on me because I've discovered him during the, like, slightly before the pandemic began. And with all the chaos that unfolded, you know, that nobody of us ever expecting to experience something like this in our lives. I often open book poetry of Rumi, just, you know, and always calm me down. And I often, I was near forest. So it was kind of a meditation of like going, sitting somewhere quiet and reading him. It's, yes, that phenomenal effect. I want to ask you about translating Rumi. What is it like? I actually read a lot of the poems with my mother aloud. And we discussed the poems. I mean, you know, there's over 3,200 poems in Divan Hashems. So one aspect of translating is just finding the poems that you want to translate, you know. So just moving through different poems. And we would read, then I would often read with my mother aloud. And also, you know, it just for me became the process of choosing the poem was just what poem was speaking to me, what poem was speaking to our times. That's what I was kind of interested in, what poem was giving me, was nourishing me. And, you know, I have to say, because we're talking about how relaxing and, you know, when I spoke at the beginning of how much of the Sufi mystical path is about this expanding and also seeing the parts of us, ourselves, that are stifled and allowing ourselves to open. And, you know, fana, the word that's often defined as ego death. Fana, ego, the dissolution of these parts of us, they only happen in compassion, in a sea of compassion. So it's a very, very soothing. It is a soothing philosophy, even though there's a work aspect to it. There is a movement, a desire to evolve and do the work on the self and to discern, discern between different parts of us. It's never judgment, right? There's a difference between discerning and judging. And so I wanted to also bring in poems that kind of bring some of this to the surface, you know, that discernment is when we recognize our feeling states. And this aspect, this is an expansive feeling state. This feels better. We allow feeling even to guide us sometimes through this process of growth. Judgment would be, oh, I hate this part of myself, you know, or this, oh, why am I always this way or that way? No, no, no. It's not that, right? That's not going to make it happen. We're trying to just be compassionate towards these aspects of self. So anyway, that was one of the, you asked me about the process of translation, but that was part of the process of choosing. I was interested in choosing poems that sort of brought some of this, some of these aspects to light, among other things, many other things, too. But then, you know, then I would sit and look at the poems. And as I mentioned, some of the lines you can translate literally and it's pretty, pretty straightforward. Some of the lines are written based on wordplay in that there's words that sound alike in Persian. So he's using them, you know, in this kind of fun, fun way, dad and dog, for instance. But in English, it doesn't necessarily translate, you know, because there isn't the wordplay. So you're just left with the meanings. And it's like, hmm. But then you have to, you have to work to find a way to bring that into English. You know, there are certain couplets that if you take 10 Iranians into a room, they might have disagreements about what it means, you know. So there then lies a little bit of interpretation or bringing what you feel is under the line, the sort of animal inside, the muscular animal inside the couplet, bringing that to the surface, allowing that to breathe in the new language. You know, there's a little bit of, yeah, of unpacking sometimes that happens, too. I mean, certain words don't have a one-to-one equivalent in English. So, for instance, you know, Gardoon means the heavens. It also means fate. And Khorush is a roaring, is a booming voice. So when he says, Panbeya Vas Vos, Birun Kun Zegusha, Begusha Ta Yad Az Galdun Khorush, I translate it as, take the cotton of the mind's doom-ridden chatter. OK, Vas Vos is a word that means the spinning, incessant, doom-ridden chatter in the mind, sometimes translated as a devilish whispering in the mind. So he says, Panbeya Vas Vos, the cotton of this Vas Vos, take the cotton of the mind's doom-ridden chatter out of your ears, hear the booming voice of the heavens, hear the roar of fate, hear the ruckus the muse makes. Right? So this was a line that required a little bit of unpacking, because we don't have a one-to-one equivalent for Vas Vos. And then also, this Khorush, this booming, roaring sound, is also in Rumi's life, the ruckus that the muse was making, that etheric voice that's in the, or the poetic voice in the ether, right, in the heavens, in the Gardoon, was speaking to him. And when he quieted the mind, he could hear this and bring it to us, offer it to us. So anyway, you know, there's unpacking that happens. Am I sort of answering your question? Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no. It is interesting to hear it, because I speak multiple languages, and I've noticed that, you know, each language is a way of thinking as well. And I wanted to ask you, during your translation, you noticed kind of intricacies of both Persian and English, you know, how different they are in the perception of the world. Was that, was there a translation also of kind of worldviews, in some sense, between the languages? Did you notice anything like that? Yeah, I mean, well, speaking of views, I'll just say something about perception and ways of seeing. That's a very important aspect of Rumi's philosophy. I was in Guatemala, and I remember hearing that one of the, I think, I'm trying to remember the name of the language. Chacical, Chacical, I believe it was, is a Mayan language spoken by now a small population in that area. But this man, Walter, said to me that when we say, how are you doing today? In Chacical, the translation is, how are you seeing today? Because it was the awareness that how we see impacts how we feel. So, how are you doing today? Or how are you feeling today? How are you seeing today? You know, are you seeing through eyes of love, as Rumi would often say? You know, he says, see through the beloved's eyes, you know, not the eyes of a vulture, right? Your eyes are not a vulture's beak. See one when your mind says two. So, this invitation to see in a less polarizing way. See one when your mind says two. The angels adore your love-drunk eyes. So, this idea of ensouling sight is something that is very important in his philosophy. Is it something that we talk about much in America? I'm not so sure. I don't think so. So, that kind of emphasis on that way of seeing, ways of seeing, ensouling sight, seeing one when your mind says two, very, very Rumi and very mystical, very mystical. So, and there are words, as I said, that exist in Persian that don't exist in English or that the connotations don't exist. Words that sort of come to life in the context of Sufi mysticism. For instance, I often talk about this word Latif, which means like silk, means delicate. It means thin and even can be translucent. It also means gentle and kind. So, a person can be Latif. You know, in that they have a softness. They have a, and so when the Sufi mystics say, Ya Latif, Ya Latif, they're inviting the process of thinning down the armor, thinning down the defenses. So, when Rumi says, they say there's a door between one heart and another. How can there be a door where no wall remains? This place where no wall remains is that Latif place. It's a place where there's no barriers in us, where then we are able to connect, able to have intimacy, we've lost our defense, we're not so defensive, you know, we're not rising in defense, which is always a blocks, blocks intimacy, and we allow love in and out, we allow experience, and it's vulnerable. But this word, for instance, is very important. So, for me, the word was very central, so I wanted to bring out the process of what it means to become Latif in the line, so there was some unpacking that happened there. So, these are kind of some of the things that go on with the translation. It is so interesting, you know, like, I think just the process of translation, you know, of perception of each word, you know, what it means, how it can be interpreted, and you start, I assume, to understand the language that you speak differently when you do that, you know, it's more conscious and focused effort. More conscious, yes, and sometimes, you know, I would have to go to dictionaries that have the obscure and ancient meanings or older meanings of words, because words also change meaning over time, right? So, what did this word really mean in Rumi's time, for instance? Sometimes that was an important question to ask and check in on. Sometimes he's using words that aren't used as much now. Not often, but sometimes. So, yeah, so there was the need to investigate in the translation process. But yes, you become very sensitive to language, sensitive to words, sensitive to multiple meanings. And the main language story is so inspiring, you know, because very often when, from my personal experience, when I feel angry or sad or a range of emotions, I can feel that it is because the way I started looking at the world, because of, I read news or simple things, from simple things to complex things, that my life is essentially defined by the way I choose to see the world around me. And it is kind of a thing that many poets, like who comes to mind is Milton, who said, like, you know, mind is its own place. It can make heaven out of hell and hell out of heaven. You know, it is so phenomenal. If you don't mind, I'll read just a couple of lines from your translation that I really like. Just one moment, I'll try to find that. And this one is, says that some say you worship fire, some say you follow scripture. What do they know? Labels blind and tear us apart. Your eyes are not a vulture's beak. And this is like a sentence that you just recited. It's just like we kind of, in the world when we try to define ourselves, kind of put labels on each thing. Those lines are so revealing, you know, so articulate of how that putting labels on things is sometimes confines us. Yes, absolutely, absolutely. That's funny because we just talked about this, I just mentioned this line, yeah. Yeah, it's an important line, I think. And the whole poem, you know, he says, starts with open your eyes, open your eyes to the four streams flowing through you. Water, milk, honey, wine. He's inviting us to see the possibility of nourishing, clarifying, intoxicating, sweetening forces that are running through us. Because the water clarifies, cleanses, like in another poem he says, you know, grudges and spite weigh on the heart, let the water wash them away. And the water of life, he often says, love is the water of life. So this essential fluid, right, this essential force is moving through us. He says water, milk, milk is the nourishing and that we have nourishment for each other, you know. And the honey, the sweetening, the sweetening of perception. And then wine, the intoxicating, and that these are all within us. Now, of course, there's other things flowing through us, too, right. And then he goes into never mind what the gossips say, right. Because he was aware in his time, too, that so many people were worried about what was being said about them, what was their reputation. You know, in another poem he says, let them smear your good name, you'll have less to guard, right. So forget what they say, let them say whatever they want to say, right. But he says pay no attention to what the gossips say. They call the wide-eyed flower Jasmine, they call the wide-eyed flower a thorn, the wide-eyed flower doesn't care what they call it. I adore that freedom, I bow to it. And then he goes into some say you follow scripture, some say you worship fire. So this worship fire was the Zoroastrian, because the Zoroastrians were called fire worshipers. So in other words, he's saying some say you're Muslim, some say you're a fire worshiper. And at that time, it wasn't necessarily the greatest thing to say that you're a fire worshiper, you know. But he says, who cares, right. What do they know? Labels blind and tear us apart. Your eyes are not a vulture's beak. See through the beloved's eyes. See one when your mind says two. The angels adore your love-drunk eyes. Open them and dismiss the vicious judge from the post you gave him. Bow to a human and greet the angel. And, you know, that last couplet really, there's two angels there. Bow to a human and greet the angel. You're greeting the angel within the other person, or you're noting the divine within the other person. And you're also meeting the angel within you, that force that knows how to bow, right, is divine. The part of us that is humble and bows is divine, too. And the part of us that can be bowed to, right, is the divine. So it's a very beautiful. And that is, you know, I talk about in the intro how some of the poems are very, very long, and it's a tradition among translators and editors and singers, even Persian editors, to pull out the couplets that they want to work with. It's not uncommon. Even like Kad Kani, who's a contemporary Persian poet, when he put his book in Persian of Molana's selections, he would pick the couplets that he wanted. So the translators, too. So this poem is a longer poem than what's there. And I picked out the couplets that I wanted to translate, that I felt would create a poem in English that would stand as an entity, as a living entity, and that sort of complete entity. And so that's part of the process with this one. Yeah. There are two sentences there also in one of the poems which say, like, I'm not that lion battling an enemy. Confronting myself keeps me busy enough. It just strikes the mind, the heart, the soul, like, instantly. I've read one of the sentences also, like, in another collection that said, Yesterday I was clever and I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I want to change myself. It is so, like, pertinent and so important, I think. I guess, like, at any century, you know, in the past as well. But today, just focusing on yourself, fixing what troubles you, just strikes so hard, so strongly. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Agreed. Yeah, I like that line very much. And there's a humor to it, too, you know. I'm not that lion battling an enemy. Confronting myself keeps me busy enough. You know, it's so humble and it's very wise. And, you know, and what we do when we do this, you know, work is that we do become more able to show up in the world and be of a natural service, you know, and that our wellness and that our happiness is a service to the world, you know. So while it might seem like, oh, I'm putting focus to work on myself or to face myself, to change myself, that is indeed a true service. Yeah. I always ask my guests who particularly focus their work on personalities, either, like, philosophers or poets, I wanted to ask you, what do you think, I guess, like, I'll start with this question. If I could have magical powers and I could replace myself with Rumi right now and Rumi would sit in front of you, is there anything that you would ask him? Is there a question? Oh, gosh, no, that's a good question. Let's see. I might have to think about it for a while and tell it to you later. What would I ask Rumi? Well, what would you ask Rumi? That's a good question. I got you and you got me. I guess I would like, since we live, this is kind of like a question of imagination. I would like to observe him more, you know, like perhaps, you know, questions are always limiting and defining. You have to ask a precise question and it is difficult to confine Rumi to one question. That's right. That's a sensation I had. Like, when I started to imagine it, I thought I would ask him, I would say, let's just go into silence and then I would say, I would probably say, just tell me whatever you hear. You know, I think that's what I would say. Let's sit in silence for a minute and you can say whatever you want after that. I would like to observe him, you know, to see what's he like just in his interactions, daily life, you know. Of course, if there was an opportunity to see what they were like with Shams, that would be, like, you know, a privilege. My other question would be, like, maybe, like, it is slightly more precise, but also a question of imagination. If he could speak English and read your poetry, what do you think he would say? Would he say, like, great job? You know, I think he would. You know, I think he would smile. I think he would say, hey, good job on this couplet. That was a tough one. I think he would say, yeah, yeah, he would say, you did, you got, you got the philosophy and you, this is a good one here. You know, I think he would feel that, I really do, because I did go into the depths of the words, you know. I went into the depths of the text and attempted to bring into poetry, into English, bring it into poetry, into English, and, you know, really carry his spirit. You know, I don't know if I always succeeded, but I think I generally did. I think he would be happy with it. I do. My last question is always, like, connected with recommendations, you know, because there is no one better than you who could recommend perhaps some contemporary poets, either Persian or from any kind of language, you know. Are there writers, poets that inspire you that you really like? Who would you recommend to our listeners? You know, it's funny, because recently I've been reading, rereading and reading and rereading Seamus Heaney. Seamus Heaney, the Irish poet, who, what brought me to him, I don't know. I had the book in my house, and I decided to go into it again, and I was just so, I've been so taken by, actually, the music of his poetry. He actually said once that his poetry, or a few of the poems, he was bringing up a few of the specific poems about certain places, and he said these are erotic mouth music. I thought that that was funny, and I think that there is a kind of beautiful music to his poems that I've been really enjoying recently. I've also been reading Jane Hirshfield, and she also has an anthology that she edited that is of women poets, speaking of the figure, and there's poets from all over. I don't think the book is here that I can refer to it. It's not here. Okay, but this book has international poems from centuries and centuries ago, women, and poets speaking of the sacred. I think it's called Women in Praise of the Sacred. That's the anthology, Women in Praise of the Sacred. It has some beautiful poems in there. I've also been reading, oh, my God, this book called After, which is, oh, here it is. Okay. It's right here, because I'm just thinking of things right now. Vivek Narayanan, there's a book called After, and this is a book of the Ramayana, this old text. He is basically responding to dialoguing within his poems, and there's just so many beautiful images and lines in the poems, so I've been enjoying that a lot. Yeah, that's what I can tell you at this moment. Are there any projects that you are working on right now, or you would like our listeners to follow or keep an eye on? I am currently working on volume two of Rumi. Everybody will get so excited. Coming soon. Yeah, so excited, because I've received so many emails and messages when I recommended your collection of Rumi's poetry, and I was so excited that there are so many people know, of course, and that they find Rumi, resonate with them, and I think they'll all be excited to hear that there is a second volume coming. Yes, yes, so that's coming, and I'm working to gather my own poems and see if I have a book of my own. It's kind of gathering, editing, revising, writing a bit these days to see what's there, and if I might also publish a book of my own poetry. So these are things I'm working on. Any dates on either of those? No dates yet. No dates. They're both in the beginning stages, I'd say. Is your own poetry influenced more by Rumi or someone else? Well, we'll have to see. We'll have to see, because it's been influenced by other poets. But now, what is it post-gold, post this Rumi book? How has my poetry changed? I don't know. We'll see. That's great. Is there anything that I should have asked that I kind of missed it, and you think like, oh, this bloody interviewer didn't ask. Well, I'm sure, I mean, if there's any other line you want to read for the book or any other. Yeah, let's, perhaps it would be great to finish on one more line. Let me find it. I just decided to take notes. Yeah. Right, let's, I'll read a kind of a small couplet. Sure. It says, this is on the page 34, if our listeners would like to find, or 33, actually, I think. And the line says, liberate yourself from the tyranny of self. Be humble as soil, and you will see every particle of soil is drunk on love by the Creator's design. Yes. Beautiful. Beautiful. Yeah. I don't know why, everything that is connected with this confinement of the self and liberation, you know, it's very inspiring, I find it. Absolutely. I mean, that couplet that you read, I think, sums up so much. Yes. Thank you so much, Halle, for coming to my podcast. I am so sure that everybody will be so excited to hear that the second volume is coming and that your own poetry is going to be published. Thank you so much. My pleasure. Thank you so much. If you are hearing this, congratulations, you are a true poetry lover. Once again, thank you all for listening and supporting Artidote Podcast. This project wouldn't have been possible without your book suggestions and messages of support. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, please consider leaving a review. It helps Artidote Podcast to reach more poetry lovers. You can also join my monthly newsletter where I share my favorite books, leave book reviews, and tell you more about the future guests of this podcast. Everything will be linked in the description of this episode. My name is Vasya Karmenikas, and this was Artidote Podcast. I will see you in the next one. Bye.