This World Which Is Made Of Our Love For Emptiness
by Jalāl ad-Dīn Mohammad Balkhī (Rumi)
Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence.
Existence: this place made from our love for that emptiness!
Yet somehow comes emptiness,
this existence goes.
Praise to that happening, over and over!
For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness.
Then one swoop, one swing of the arm,
that work is over.
Free of who I was, free of presence, free of dangerous fear, hope, free of mountainous wanting.
The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of straw
blown off into emptiness.
These words I am saying so much begin to lose meaning:
existence, emptiness, mountain, straw:
words and what they try to say swept
out the window, down the slant of the roof.
