Rumi: Poet of the Heart

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[Debra Winger] In the town of

Konya, in central Turkey...

in the middle of the 13th century...

a prominent religious scholar named

Jalal ad-Din Rumi...

was suddenly separated from his teacher

and spiritual friend.

In his grief he took hold of a column

and began turning.

Verses of poetry began pouring out of him.

Remarkable poetry.

His students wrote the words down.

700 years later, Rumi's poetry is being

discovered in the west.

He is in fact the best selling poet

in America.

RUMI, POET OF THE HEAR "Come to the orchard in Spring."

"There is light and wine, and sweethearts

in the pomegranate flowers."

"If you do not come, these do not matter."

"If you do come, these do not matter."

- RUMI

Rumi was born September 30th, 1207 near

Balkh, Afghanistan...

which was then part of the Persian Empire.

When Rumi was still a child...

his family was forced to flee the oncoming

armies of Genghis Khan.

After years of travel, they settled

in Konya Turkey...

an important stop on the silk road and a

meeting point of many cultures.

Islamic, Judeo/Christian, Hindu

and Buddhist.

Rumi's father became the head of a

Sufi learning community.

The Sufis are an ancient

spiritual order.

And according to many Sufis...

the essential truths of Sufism exist

in all religions.

The Sufis are a remarkable band...

in the history of religion.

They are the mystics of Islam.

And as the mystics of Islam, the Sufis...

we can connect with because, they're

talking about these...

wonderful, sublime truths...

which have a way of piercing...

directly into the human heart,

wherever it is.

The Sufi's used to walk,

you know, down several roads...

visiting with the Christians, visiting

with Islam...

visiting in all of the great religions, really.

I mean that's part of the nature of

this kind of fluid imagination.

It crosses boundaries. It penetrates and

it even slips by.

It works by way of humor, it works by

way of stunning imagery.

It works in many different ways. As if to...

keep bringing people to some

deep, human well.

[Debra Winger] Upon his father's

death...

Rumi became the head of the

learning community.

His life seems to have been a fairly

normal one for a religious scholar...

Teaching, meditating, helping the

poor.

Until the late fall of 1244 when he

met the stranger.

A wandering dervish, Shams of Tabriz.

Rumi's genius was triggered...

by an actual human being.

An encounter with this mysterious

figure, Shams of Tabriz.

He was an intense fierce mountain meditator.

Those kind of people. Like Thoreau

magnified five times.

The connection between

Shams and Rumi is...

one of the great stories of... learning.

And what we nowadays call mentoring.

But it's almost of an order beyond

what people mean...

when they mean to learn from someone.

Because it means to almost, what seemed

to happen was a sudden, knowing...

One can see here in Shams

an older man...

who is outside the orthodox

spiritual community.

Who comes in and helps a younger man

who is...

deeply embedded in that orthodox

spiritual community.

And then there's a kind of explosion.

What Rumi says, is

that he was raw...

then he got cooked, and then he

was burned.

And that means when his heart...

melted through his love for Shams,

that...

his new experience enabled him...

to understand what he was talking

about before.

And he took Rumi's

book knowledge and says...

he said now you have to live what

you've been reading about.

Pushed all his books into the fountain.

That's one story of how they met.

And Rumi and he went off into this

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