Theology
1207 to 1273, Persia and Anatolia
Divine love, the reed’s lament, and union with God.
Start learning Jalal →Rumi’s vast masterpiece, the Masnavi , 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 b…
For Rumi, the supreme reality is not law, doctrine, or intellect but love - a burning, transforming force that he places above every creed. To understand Rumi is to understand why he made love the whole of religion.
In one short parable - men in a dark room each touching a different part of an elephant and quarrelling over what it is - Rumi captured the limits of human knowledge, the roots of religious conflict, and the need for a…
At the summit of Rumi’s path lies its most radical demand: fana , the annihilation of the ego in God. To find the true Self, Rumi teaches, the false self must die - and the moth must fly into the flame.
Rumi made music, poetry, and the famous whirling dance into acts of worship - ways of stilling the calculating mind and letting the body itself become a prayer. To understand the dance is to understand how Rumi thought…
More in Theology
Ibn SinaThomas AquinasAl GhazaliMaimonidesNagarjunaAugustine of HippoThe BuddhaAdi Shankaraepoché — a humanities education that remembers you.