Rumi's Love

 Why Was Paradise Lost? 

Here are some of my all-time-favorite Rumi poems-

Why was Paradise lost? 

Why was Paradise lost? 

Why does every beautiful face 
grow wrinkled in age? 
Why is the tall, straight man 
now bent and trembling? 
Why does the lion’s strength 
fade to nothing? 

What fault was committed? 

God answers: 

The crime was that they wore borrowed robes 
and claimed them as their own. 
So I take the garments back —  
to remind them that all appearance 
was but a loan. 
The harvest is Mine; 
humans are but gleaners. 
The rays are Mine; 
you are but the coloured glass 
through which My light seems real. 

But the glass must break. 

Your lamp was lit from another lamp; 
and all I ask is gratitude. 

“Lend,” says the Divine Will, 
“Make Me a loan from your existence, 
and see what treasures gather in return. 
Diminish a little —  
and watch abundance fill your basin. 
Then, when I say, ‘Death, 
give back what you took,’ 
you will turn away —  
for you’ll have no want left to lose.” 

The mendicants cast off 
their cravings and possessions. 
They rise from the briny sea 
of annihilation into pure clarity, 
standing unafraid before 
the world’s arrogance and hypocrisy. 
They are warriors of nonexistence. 

 — Rumi, Masnavi 

Rumi’s Call to Dissolution 

(Ghazal 1591) 

The time has come 
to break all promises, 
tear apart all chains, 
and throw away all advice. 

Dismantle the heavens, 
link by link; 
cut every bond of love 
with the sword of death. 

Stuff cotton in your ears —  
shut out all wisdom. 
Crash through the door; 
enter the chamber 
where all sweetness hides. 

How long will you beg 
for the things of this world 
while Love waits? 

How long before you rise 
beyond how you are 
and what you are? 

Reflection: The Warrior of Nonexistence. Rumi’s mystic teaching echoes the Vedāntic cry of neti, neti — “not this, not this.” 
Paradise is lost only when we mistake the loan for ownership. The “borrowed robes” are the body, mind, and ego;  the “gleaners” are the souls wandering through borrowed light. 

To lend oneself back to God is to dissolve individuality — to discover that giving up the part restores the whole. 
When the I fades, 
when the lamp recognises its source, 
Paradise was never lost —  
only mis claimed. 

Rumi calls this the “warrior of nonexistence”: 
the one who fights by surrendering, 
who triumphs by vanishing. 
Śiva smiles in such a one —  
the Lover and the Beloved, 
finally indistinguishable. 

Love according to Rumi 

“Reason becomes powerless and bows before love. 
Love said to me, ‘There is nothing that is not Me.’ Lose yourself, lose yourself —  
for in losing yourself in love, you find everything. 

There are lovers content with longing. 
I am not one of them. 
Be drunk! Be foolishly in love! 
Gamble everything for love, 
if you are truly human.” 

Chills down the spine! We often reduce love to the play of hormones at a certain age, dismissing it as a passing emotion. Yet, in doing so, we rob it of its sacred intensity. The real tragedy is not that love fades, but that we never truly lose ourselves in it. We love cautiously, conditionally, always guarding a part of the self. 

When love is unrequited, we call it heartbreak; when accepted, it often withers into habit — especially once family life begins. Then the passion quietly transfers from partner to child, for love, by its nature, can fixate only upon one beloved at a time. For a while, the parent indeed loses themselves in the child — living, sacrificing, revolving entirely around that small world. Yet as time passes, even that love changes form. Age brings frailty, neediness, and longing once more. True love, however, asks for no return — it dissolves the self completely. 

Are we truly free of expectations toward our spouses or children? - Food for thought. To love, in its purest sense, is to immerse wholly in another — to forget one’s own boundaries. Few achieve such totality, yet rare souls do exist: 
the parent of a disabled child, 
the martyr who gives life for an ideal, 
the hopeless romantic who loves without restraint, 
the philanthropist who gives everything and keeps nothing. 

These are Rumi’s lovers — those for whom love is reason enough to exist. 
It is the power before which intellect bows. 

In Love, I do not want 

Rumi, Ghazal 1509 

I used to drink —  
like a flower that drinks without lips or throat, 
from the wine that overflows 
with laughter and joy. 

Then suddenly, Love summoned me —  
to prepare for a journey 

to the temple of suffering. 

I wept in despair. 
I begged, pleaded, 
tore my cloak to shreds —  
not to be sent into this world, 
just as now I tremble 
to leave it for the next. 

I was frightened then 
to make my descent. 
But Love spoke softly: 
“Go without fear. 

You will never be alone. 
I will be with you —  
closer than your very veins.” 

Love cast its spell —  
its charm, its coyness, its allure. 
I was utterly captivated, 
and bought it all with joy. 
Who am I to resist 
Love’s endless tricks, 
while the whole world 
falls for its bait? 

Love showed me the path —  
and then lost me along the way. 
Had I been stronger, 
perhaps I would have found the end. 

I can tell you, my friend, 
how to reach that place — surely I can —  
but here and now, 
my pen has broken 
before it could tell you how.