{"product_id":"the-illuminated-rumi-isbn-9780767900027","title":"The Illuminated Rumi","description":"Rise up nimbly and go on your strange journey to the ocean of meanings...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the mid-thirteenth century, in a dusty marketplace in Konya, Turkey, a city where Muslim, Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist travelers mingled, Jelaluddin Rumi, a popular philosopher and scholar, met Shams of Tabriz, a wandering dervish.  Their meeting forever altered the course of Rumi's life and influenced the mystical evolution of the planet.  The bond they formed was everlasting--a powerful transcendent friendship that would flow through Rumi as some of the world's best-loved ecstatic poetry.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRumi's passionate, playful poems find and celebrate sacred life in everyday existence.  They speak across all traditions, to all peoples, and today his relevance and popularity continue to grow.  In \u003ci\u003eThe Illuminated Rumi,\u003c\/i\u003e Coleman Barks, widely regarded as the world's premier translator of Rumi's writings, presents some of his most brilliant work, including many new translations.  To complement Rumi's universal vision, Michael Green has worked the ancient art of illumination into a new, visually stunning form that joins typography, original art, old masters, photographs, and prints with sacred images from around the world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Illuminated Rumi\u003c\/i\u003e is a truly groundbreaking collaboration that interweaves word and image: a magnificent meeting of ancient tradition and modern interpretation that uniquely captures the spiritual wealth of Rumi's teachings.  Coleman Barks's wise and witty commentary, together with Michael Green's art, makes this a classic guide to the life of the soul for a whole new generation of seekers.\"Rumi has, to the recent amazement of many people in the Western culture as well as the Islamic culture, been able to speak directly to contemporary readers.  One of the greatest pieces of good luck that has happened recently in American poetry is Coleman Barks's agreement to translate poem after poem of Rumi.  Rumi, like Kabir, is able to contain and continue intricate theological arguments and at the same time speak directly from the heart or to the heart.  Coleman's exquisite sensitivity to the flavor and turns of ordinary American speech has produced marvelous lines, full of flavor and Sufi humor, as well as the intimacy that is carried inside American speech at its best.\"\u003cbr\u003e --Robert BlyColeman Barks has published twelve books of Rumi's poetry, including the bestselling \u003ci\u003eThe Essential Rumi.\u003c\/i\u003e  Barks lives in Athens, Georgia, and is a professor at the University of Georgia.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMichael Green is a critically acclaimed artist and illustrator whose books include \u003ci\u003eZen and the Art of the Macintosh, Unicornis, The Book of the Dragontooth,\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe I-Ching Records.\u003c\/i\u003e  He lives in Pennsylvania's Brandywine Valley.The meeting of Jelaluddin Rumi and Shams of Tabriz was a grand event in the mystical evolution of the planet.  With their friendship, categories of teacher and student, lover and beloved, master and disciple, dissolved.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Jelaluddin Rumi was born in the remote town of Balkh, in what is now Afghanistan.  He lived most of his life in Konya, Turkey, which in the 13th century was a meeting point for many cultures at the Western edge of the Silk Road, a place where Muslim, Christian, Hindu, and even Buddhist travelers mingled.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Rumi, at the age of thirty-seven, had become an accomplished doctor of theology, the center of his own divinity school.  He was a venusian lover of the beautiful and the good, a scholar, and artist.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Shams was a wandering dervish monk, rough-hewn and sinewy.  A street bodhisattva who mingled with laborers and camel drivers, he had no school.  People spontaneously gathered around him, though he was given to slipping out side doors and leaving town when it happened.  He did not want followers or fame; he only wanted to find one person vast enough in spirit to be his companion.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He met Rumi in Konya.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As Rumi was riding a donkey through the marketplace, surrounded by a knot of disciples, a stranger with piercing eyes stepped from a doorway and seized his bridle.  The stranger challenged him:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Who is greater, Muhammad or Bestami?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Bestami was a legendary Sufi master given to ecstatic merging with God, then crying out with mystical candor that he and the Godhead were one!  Muhammad was the founder of their tradition, the anointed one, but his greatness resided in his stature as \u003ci\u003emessenger\u003c\/i\u003e of God.  So who was greater?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Rumi gave the approved answer, \"Muhammad.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"But Bestami said, 'I am the Glory!'  Muhammad said, 'I cannot praise you enough!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As Rumi was about to reply, he realized that this was no seminary debate about the mysteries.  In a dusty marketplace in south central Anatolia, he had come face to face with the Mystery.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Learn about your inner self from those who know such things, \u003cbr\u003e but don't repeat verbatim what they say.\u003cbr\u003e Zuleikha let everything be the name of Joseph, from celery seed\u003cbr\u003e to aloeswood.  She loved him so much she concealed his name\u003cbr\u003e in many different phrases, the inner meanings\u003cbr\u003e known only to her.  When she said, The wax is softening \u003cbr\u003e near the fire, she meant, My love is wanting me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Or if she said, Look, the moon is up, or The willow has new leaves,\u003cbr\u003e or The branches are trembling, or The coriander seeds\u003cbr\u003e have caught fire, or The roses are opening, \u003cbr\u003e or The king is in a good mood today, or Isn't that lucky?\u003cbr\u003e Or The furniture needs dusting, or\u003cbr\u003e The water-carrier is here, or It's almost daylight, or\u003cbr\u003e These vegetables are perfect, or The bread needs more salt,\u003cbr\u003e or The clouds seem to be moving against the wind,\u003cbr\u003e or My head hurts, or My headache's better, \u003cbr\u003e anything she praises, it's Joseph's touch she means,\u003cbr\u003e any complaint, it's his being away.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e When she's hungry, it's for him.  Thirsty, his name is a sherbet.\u003cbr\u003e Cold, he's a fur.  This is what the Friend can do\u003cbr\u003e when one is in such love.  Sensual people use the holy names\u003cbr\u003e  often, but they don't work for them.\u003cbr\u003e The miracle Jesus did by being the name of God,\u003cbr\u003e Zuleikha felt in the name of Joseph.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e When one is united to the core of another, to speak of that \u003cbr\u003e is to breathe the name \u003ci\u003ehu,\u003c\/i\u003e empty of self and filled\u003cbr\u003e with love.  As the saying goes, The pot drips what is in it.\u003cbr\u003e The saffron spice of connecting, laughter.\u003cbr\u003e The onion smell of separation, crying.\u003cbr\u003e Others have many things and people they love.\u003cbr\u003e This is not the way of Friend and friend.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I am \u003cbr\u003e dust particles in sunlight.\u003cbr\u003e I am the round sun.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e To the bits of dust I say, \u003ci\u003eStay.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e To the sun, \u003ci\u003eKeep moving.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I am morning mist,\u003cbr\u003e and the breathing of evening.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I am wind in the top of a grove,\u003cbr\u003e and surf on the cliff.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Mast, rudder, helmsman, and keel,\u003cbr\u003e I am also the coral reef they founder on.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I am a tree with a trained parrot in its branches.\u003cbr\u003e Silence, thought, and voice.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The musical air coming through a flute,\u003cbr\u003e a spark off a stone, a flickering in metal.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Both candle and moth\u003cbr\u003e crazy around it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Rose and the nightingale\u003cbr\u003e lost in the fragrance.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I am all orders of being, \u003cbr\u003e the circling galaxy,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e the evolutionary intelligence,\u003cbr\u003e the lift and the falling away.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e What is and what isn't.  You\u003cbr\u003e who know Jelaluddin, you\u003cbr\u003e the one in all, say who I am.","brand":"Harmony","offers":[{"title":"Default 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