Jalal al-Din Rumi · Theology

The Song of the Reed

Rumi’s vast masterpiece, the <em>Masnavi</em>, opens with a reed flute crying out - and in that cry he hears the deepest truth of the human condition: that we are all aching with a homesickness for a Source from which we have been cut.

What you'll be able to recall

You learned that Rumi reads the reed flute’s cry as the soul’s grief at separation from its divine Source. Reconstruct the metaphor and explain what Rumi thinks the cure for that longing is, in your own words.

Leads to Plotinus.

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