Sunlight: [Sunlight] Love With No Object

Monday, January 26, 2009

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There is a way of loving not attached to what is loved.
Observe how water is with

the ground, always moving toward the ocean, though the ground
tries to hold water's foot

and not let it go. This is how we are with wine and beautiful
food, wealth and power,

or just a dry piece of bread: we want and we get drunk with
wanting, then the headache

and bitterness afterward. Those prove that the attachment took
hold and held you back. Now you

proudly refuse help. "My love is pure. I have an intuitive
union with God. I don't need

anyone to show me how to be free!" This is not the case.
A love with no object

is a true love. All else, shadow without substance. Have you
seen someone fall in

love with his own shadow? That's what we've done. Leave
partial loves and find one

that's whole. Where is someone who can do that? They're
so rare, those hearts that carry

the blessing and lavish it over eveything. Hold out your
beggar's robe and accept

their generosity. Anything not coming from that will damage
the cloth, like a sharp stone

tearing your sincerity. Keep that intact, and use clarity;
call it reason or discernment,

you have within you a deciding force that knows what to
receive, what to turn from.

-- Mathnawi III: 2248-80
Version by Coleman Barks
"The Soul of Rumi"
HarperCollins, 2001

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