Beyond Right and Wrong

Even if you’re not familiar with the curators of the literary world I am sure you must have, at some point, heard of, Rumi. Jalal ad-Din Mohammad Rumi is often regarded as ‘the greatest poet of all time’ and a popular one, too. His poems are often musings for love and life, written in ecstasy and longing. This contradictory theme gives his poems a certain poetic rhythm which is almost melancholic. One such of his works is A Great Wagon. A poem full of love and longing, it has stayed with me ever since I first read it. You can read the entire poem here.

The poem traverses through the feelings and impacts on one, of love and the lover. The quivers of earth and the spinning stones, the shifting of reality. The elements of life losing their meanings and reflections of the past in the lover’s eyes. He perfectly encapsulates the feeling of being in love.

You breathe; new shapes appear, and the music of a desire as widespread as Spring begins to move like a great wagon. Drive slowly. Some of us walking alongside are lame!

Further in his poem, the Sufi poet takes on a philosophical and almost spiritual take. This being one of my favourite lines by him-

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,

the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other

doesn’t make any sense.

How often do we see beyond what the reality has to offer? We are so intertwined in the duality of things, that we often miss the grey area. We tend to label the situations in our life as either good or bad, but there’s a whole spectrum of emotions that we often ignore. Rumi, in the above lines, urges us to see beyond light and dark, beyond true and false—a place where judgement ceases to exist. A void, the field is devoid of any meaning. And our souls rest on the green grass there. It’s a place where words don’t make any sense and the world is too ambiguous to ruminate about.

When we let go of our judgements and preconceived notions, we enter a realm of infinite possibilities. When you drop out of the dualistic way of meeting life, instead you feel the abundance of it all and the strange emptiness of self. True ecstasy lies here and the big gloom vanishes. So let us pull the thorn of existence out of our hearts, and meet at a field beyond right and wrong.

I would end this short article by quoting Rumi again. He ends his poem as,

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

Circa May 2021