and gets you very drunk
you’ve seen what happens when you eat and drink
let’s see what happens if you fast instead
fasting will make your neck thinner
but save you from death;
food and drink make your stomach full
but fasting makes you drunk;
quick, squeeze your waist
put on the belt of fasting;
try to obtain the eyes that see god
with the eyesight of fasting;
if you keep swimming for thirty days
back and forth in fasting’s sea in the end, my friend
you can’t help but find its pearl
o shams of tebriz
you’re drunkenness and sobriety both
you’re the festival with sweet candies
and at the same time
the dignity, power, and honor of fasting
one by one
messengers came from the kitchen
saying angels have cooked halva in the sky
when the body eats halva
it goes to the bathroom
but when the soul eats halva
it flies to the sky
fasting makes you dizzy
lose weight
and become pale
but this loss of weight and color
will give you the white hands of moses*2
yesterday you filled your stomach
with all kinds of bread and foods
you became so sluggish
so sleepy
what comes of such indulgence?
either recklessness
or the need to go to the toilet
sounds of moans and mourning
come from the soul while fasting
but the only sound that comes after a meal
is a low-pitched rumble from the rear end
so friend
if you want to hear what the soul has to say
then skip the meal;
if you want to hear from the other end
then bring the bowl closer to you
with the help of love’s bread and water
men and women turn their faces
away from the wall of grief
and lose their appetite
for the bread and water of the table
drink the wine of eternity
be full without food
at times we fill our belly
with the sun and the moon
at times we eat the clouds
without a belly
like the sun
the month of fasting is here
the table of soul has been set
we take our hands away from food
since fasting became our practice
soul’s come alive again
since soul comes as a guest
let’s keep offering our body
love is what I eat
it goes down well
and gives pleasure to my mouth
I eat a little bit of bread soaked in gravy
and used to eat a little trotter as well
but eating trotter
made me feel unwell
so from now on
I won’t have anything to do with trotter
nor with anyone who’s overly fond
of the meal and the table
eating
drinking
and a warm loaf of bread
are the lot of cold people
joy
ecstasy
and radiance
are the food of lovers
when you’re fasting with your friends
you can still drink love’s wine
the drunkenness from that wine
is completely different
from the drunkenness that causes you shame
and makes you sneak home like a scorpion
so keep on drinking the cupless, jarless wine
that doesn’t break your fast
just know that it doesn’t come
from grapes, wheat, or barley
if you constantly throw stones
with the catapult of fasting
the castle of darkness
comes tumbling down
keep throwing stones with the catapult of fasting
at the fortress of disbelief
the towers of darkness
most people live in the world
of donkeys and oxen
they crawl toward love
if you were truly a lover
you wouldn’t eat like that
immersed in darkness
because of eating and drinking
your shirt becomes stained
with the sweat of self
if you take fasting to heart
you’ll hear the sound
I am at your service
I am at your service
every time you call out
my god
my heart wants the halva
that brings peace and pleasure to the sufi
and what a delicious halva it is!
its smell rises up from the top
in every breath I take
you eat this halva
with your heart
without touching your hand to your mouth
just like a fig
whose mouth remains closed
this halva comes from the other world
so eat there
without your hands
without your mouth
time to celebrate!
the month of fasting is here
I wish a good journey
to everyone who keeps company
with those who are fasting
I climbed the roof
to see the moon,
the lord of fasting got me so drunk!
I lost my hat
while gazing at the moon
and then I lost my mind
there’s another secret moon besides this one,
it’s hiding out in the tent of fasting
so anyone who comes this month
to the harvest of fasting
finds the way to this moon
I’m a doctor,
and I want you to go on a diet
fear has made you sick
and caused you to lose hope
stay on this diet
and I’ll make a potion for you
when you drink it
you’ll never come back to yourself
the month of fasting has come
so let’s not talk about the bowl or jar
let’s enjoy the pitcher of eternity
and get drunk
off of that pitcher
when you’re fasting
you’re the guest of god
and are served the meal of heaven
when you shut the door of hell this month
thousands of heaven’s gates spring open
A certain youth in the service of a great king was dissatisfied with the amount of food he was being given, so he went to the cook and scolded him:
“By the stinginess of your portions, you dishonor our master!”
The youth wouldn’t listen to the cook’s excuses but wrote off an angry letter of complaint and sent it to the king. The letter was outwardly complimentary and respectful, but it betrayed an angry spirit.
On receiving this letter, the king saw that it contained only complaints about meat and drink and showed no aspirations for spiritual food. Therefore, he decided it needed no answer, as “the proper answer to a fool is silence.”
When the youth received no answer to his letter, he was much surprised and threw the blame on the cook and on the messenger, ignoring the fact that the folly of his own letter was the real reason for its having gone unanswered.
He wrote the king five letters, but the king persisted in his refusal to reply, saying that fools are enemies of God and man and that he who has any dealings with a fool just
ends up fouling his own nest. Fools only regard material meat and drink, whereas the food of the wise is the light of God. Fasting is the food of God, the means by which spiritual food is obtained.
One day some travelers from another land begged the Prophet for food and lodging. The Prophet was moved by their entreaties and instructed each of his disciples to take one of the strangers to his home and feed and lodge him there. So each disciple selected one of the strangers and invited him back to his home as a guest.
But there was one big and coarse man, a veritable giant, whom no one would receive, and so the Prophet took him back to his own home. In his compound, the Prophet had seven she-goats to supply his family with milk, and the hungry stranger devoured all the milk of the seven goats (to say nothing of all the bread and meats!) and left not a drop for the Prophet’s family. Understandably, the family was very annoyed—so annoyed in fact that, when the stranger retired to his chamber for the night, one of the maidservants locked him in.
During the night, the stranger began to feel unwell because of having eaten so much. He got up from his bed and tried to get out into the open air, but he was unable to do so because of the locked door. Finally, he became very sick and defiled his bedding.
In the morning, he was extremely ashamed, and the moment the door was opened, he ran away. The Prophet was aware of what had happened but let the man escape so as not to cause him further shame. After he had gone, the servants saw the mess he had made and informed the Prophet of it, but the Prophet made light of it and said he would clean it up himself.
While the Prophet was engaged in this work, the stranger came back to look for a talisman he’d left behind in his hurry to escape. As soon as he saw what the Prophet was doing, he burst into tears and apologized profusely for his filthy conduct. But the Prophet consoled him, saying that his weeping and penitence would purge the offense, and explained how the outward acts of prayer and fasting bear witness to the spiritual light within.
After being nurtured on this spiritual food, the stranger renounced his gluttony. He thanked the Prophet for bringing him to the knowledge of the true faith and bringing him back to life. The Prophet was satisfied with his sincerity and asked him to sup with him again.
At supper, the stranger drank only half a portion of milk yielded by one goat and steadfastly refused to take any more, saying he felt perfectly satisfied with the little he had already taken. The other guests marveled at how the stranger’s gluttony had been cured so soon and reflected on the virtues of the spiritual food that the Prophet had served.
BREATHING DEEPLY
The most important food our body needs is the oxygen in the air we breathe. We can live without solid food for months on end and go without water for days, but if oxygen is taken away from us for even a few minutes, our body dies, and we move on to whatever awaits us next.
As critical as oxygen is for our survival, however, most of us suppress our breath and breathe with only a fraction of the capacity actually available to our lungs, and we do this by holding our body still. Each of us has developed a signature holding pattern in the tissues of the body, a unique way in which we tense individual muscles and fascia in order to contain and hold back on the power of the breath. But, in holding back on the breath, we hold back on ourselves.
In order to accommodate the full power of the breath, the entire body needs to be very supple and relaxed. Have you ever watched how a sleeping baby breathes? The movements of breath can be seen passing through its entire body in a beautifully fluid, wavelike motion. The movements in the head look like tidal waters, which quickly ebb and flow; the little body expands . . . and contracts with movements of human grace and fluidity that you’re unlikely to see anywhere else. Over time, though, as we grow and age, we follow the example of our elders (who followed the example of theirs) and learn how to contain the breath by bringing tension into our body so that this once natural wave of resilient motion no longer occurs. It’s as though the waters in our body start to freeze and can no longer allow the motion of breath to pass effortlessly through.
But what are we holding back on? And what are we so afraid of surrendering to? The power of the breath is a very potent force, and it wants to breathe us. What might happen if we were to surrender to this most natural of forces instead of holding back on it?
Like so many other spiritual teachers before and since, Rumi was keenly aware of the integral connection between how we breathe and our condition of mind. While our diminished patterns of breath are still adequate to ensure the continued life of our physical body, they’re not adequate to nurture the ecstatic life of our soul. A cultural pattern of holding that inhibits the breath comes with a high price tag. When we don’t breathe freely, our vitality suffers, we gradually lose touch with the shimmering nature of bodily sensation, and we often end up trapped in the chatter of our minds. But if we’re able to relax, soften, and free up the restrictions to our breathing so we can start surrendering to each and every breath, allowing it to breathe us however it wants—our body becomes energized, tactile sensations come out of hiding, and the involuntary monologue of the mind stands a chance of becoming still. As the chatter of mind quiets down, the energies and sensations of soul start coming out to play.
Breath can bind you or free you; it all depends on how much conscious attention you bring to it. If you bring none, breath will still go on automatically, but it will almost certainly be contained. Because you can remedy this automatic tendency to suppress the breath by consciously attending to it, and because doing so possesses such a powerful capacity to affect consciousness, spiritual teachers of all ages have used techniques of breathing as tools for spiritual awakening. Common to all of the many diverse schools of Buddhism is the practitioner’s observation of, gradual surrender to, and eventual merging with the breath. Taoist masters employed breath techniques to alter consciousness and prolong physical longevity. The Indian science and art of pranayama, which focuses solely on different breathing exercises, has always been an essential part of a yogi’s practices. And then there are the powerful contemporary breath therapies such as Rebirthing and Holotropic Breathwork, which stem in part from the seminal work of Wilhelm Reich, the first Western psychotherapist to recognize the power of the breath in the therapeutic process.
Every one of these techniques is powerfully effective, and yet they’re all very different. In some you may be instructed to take long, slow breaths; in others you breathe in rapid staccato bursts. Some instruct you to breathe through your nose, while others tell you to breathe through the mouth—and even others tell you to do both. Some tell you to hold the breath for a certain number of counts during the pauses between inhalation and exhalation; others tell you to avoid the pauses altogether. What these techniques all share and hold deeply in common, however, is their understanding that paying conscious attention to the breath, learning how to explore and tap its power, is an extremely effective way to grow in soul.
In some of his poems, Rumi sounds like a yogi recommending the practice of deep-belly breathing and a prolonged kumbaka, the holding of the breath, and there are still Sufi schools today that practice the retention of breath as a spiritual discipline:
god’s free creatures
touched by his wine and wind
fill their bellies with their breath
hold it deep
and keep silent
In other poems, Rumi sounds more like a classical Buddhist, reminding us not to let our minds wander off:
with every breath you take
remember:
keep the mind in the middle of the head
And in others still, he draws on shared Jewish, Christian, and Muslim beliefs by linking our connection with God to every breath:
if you want to protect your heart
then remember god
in every breath you take
Of all the many references to the breath that occur in Rumi’s poetry, however, and of all the many pithy instructions on breath that Rumi
gives, none is mentioned more often than the breath of love. Sometimes Rumi will also speak of this quality of breath as the breath of Jesus, because he viewed the historical Jesus as a great teacher of love. For Rumi, love was at once both the source and the goal of all spiritual unfolding:
wherever you are
in whatever circumstances you find yourself
strive to be a lover
Love is the force of attraction that draws us to complete ourselves through union with another. Sometimes this other takes the form of another person, and we rightly speak of this friend as our personal beloved. But Rumi suggests that we also want to consummate our love with the larger energies of the soul—which we feel pressing out from inside us, wanting to burst forth and express themselves—and he referred to this internal courtship as the love affair with the universal Beloved. Rumi viewed these energies as a palpable force of such magnitude that, once you became aware of them, the only sane response would be to submit to them—and, if they tore you apart in the process, so be it. But conventional wisdom views things differently, and so we hold back on these energies and contain the breath, but then are left wondering why love seems so elusive.
To understand what a breath of love might be like, and how we might practice this breath, first imagine for a moment what its opposite, a breath of fear, would be like. Fear comes in many forms, but it always involves some degree of holding still and some degree of resistance. The classic mime’s expression of sudden fright is a sharp, startled inhalation and, at the very top of the inhalation, the sudden freezing of the whole body. In contrast, a breath of love would be relaxed and fluid with inhalations and exhalations melting smoothly from one into the next. And the body too would have to be relaxed and malleable, able to let the breath billow and blossom and then subside and pass through its entire length with minimal interference or resistance.