Would You Bow? On Rumi, Ramana, Sunrise, and Recognizing the Friend
This morning began with a question.
Who am I?
My Tree of Serendipity led me to Rumi: The Big Red Book, Coleman Barks' expansive collection of Rumi's poetry. And within it, unexpectedly, I landed in a section devoted to Ramana Maharshi.
Ramana spent much of his life returning seekers to one deceptively simple inquiry:
Who am I?
Not Who have I become?
Not What have I accomplished?
Not What do other people think of me?
Who am I beneath all of that?
Ramana's path of self-inquiry turns attention toward the one who is aware of experience itself. His teachings repeatedly point toward the Self as something already present rather than something we eventually acquire. In one collection published by Sri Ramanasramam, the teaching is expressed beautifully: “One is always the Self.”
Perhaps awakening, then, is less about becoming and more about remembering.
And then Rumi entered the conversation.
Would You Bow?
The first poem that caught me begins with an extraordinary proposition:
“If the friend rose inside you, would you bow?”
It is Rumi's Would You Bow?, in Coleman Barks' rendering.
I stopped there.
Would you bow?
What if the Friend—the Beloved, God, Life, Love, whatever name we give the Mystery—isn't somewhere far away waiting to be found?
What if the Friend keeps appearing?
And what if bowing doesn't necessarily mean lowering our bodies?
Perhaps we bow whenever we become completely available to what is here.
We bow when we notice.
We bow when we listen.
We bow when another human being becomes more interesting than the destination toward which we were hurrying.
We bow when beauty interrupts us—and we allow ourselves to be interrupted.
And Then I Opened the Door
After reading, I walked outside.
And there it was.
The emerging sun was glowing between the trees, the sky washed in gold and apricot, the mountains in the distance almost disappearing into the light.
I stood there looking.
It struck me later how beautifully the morning had arranged itself.
I had just been reading mystical poetry about presence, identity and the Friend...
and then I opened my front door.
There was the light.
No philosophical argument.
No complicated spiritual instruction.
Just:
Look.
Perhaps that is one of the oldest spiritual practices there is.
And so I went to the mountain.
The Lovers at Sunrise
On the mountain I met a couple visiting from Nottingham, England.
They were preparing for their wedding.
Tomorrow morning, at sunrise, they will be married there.
Of all the mountains, all the mornings, all the places two people might choose to make such a promise to one another, they had come to this place that I love.
They seemed genuinely delighted to see me, and I found myself sharing my affection for the mountain with them.
For a few moments, our lives crossed.
A woman who loves a mountain.
Two people preparing to marry upon it as the sun rises.
Strangers, and somehow not strangers at all.
And I thought again:
Would you bow?
Maybe this was another appearance of the Friend.
Three Brothers
On my way down, another encounter.
A man walking with his dog.
I noticed a tattoo on his arm: three bands crossed by a red cross.
Rather than simply wondering about it, I asked.
The three bands, he told me, represented three brothers.
And the cross represented what bound them together:
faith.
There it was again.
Relationship.
Belonging.
Something visible pointing toward something invisible.
Three separate bands.
One bond.
And I might never have known any of this had I simply walked past.
That stays with me.
Because the difference between an ordinary morning and what we sometimes call a magical morning may be surprisingly small.
Sometimes it is only a question.
Sometimes it is curiosity.
Sometimes it is looking one degree beyond ourselves.
Attention turns strangers into stories.
And stories remind us that we belong to one another.
The Only Obligation
Then there was another Rumi poem on those pages: The Only Obligation.
Near its conclusion, Barks renders Rumi's invitation as simply walking slowly through a meadow and looking.
I love the radical simplicity of that.
Because so much of life tells us to hurry.
Accomplish.
Improve.
Become.
Reach.
Produce.
Figure it out.
And these mystics keep pointing somewhere astonishingly close.
Ramana:
Who is the one doing all this seeking?
Rumi:
Would you bow if the Friend appeared?
Life:
Look.
Perhaps those are not three different teachings.
Perhaps they are one.
The Friend Has Many Faces
When I returned home, there was one more teacher waiting for me.
Mooji Kitty.
Curled into a perfect circle on the sofa.
Completely surrendered to the moment.
No apparent five-year plan.
No spiritual identity crisis.
No concern whatsoever about whether he was using his life effectively.
Just warmth.
Softness.
Breath.
Being.
I laughed when I saw him because somehow he belonged in the teaching too.
The Friend as sunrise.
The Friend as mountain.
The Friend as two people from Nottingham preparing to promise their lives to one another at dawn.
The Friend as three brothers held together by faith.
The Friend as a man walking his dog.
The Friend as a sleeping cat.
The Friend as you.
The Friend as me.
The Friend as the awareness quietly beholding all of it.
Perhaps This Is the Bow
Coleman Barks describes The Big Red Book as gathering Rumi's mystical poetry around love, friendship and names for the Mystery; intriguingly, Barks includes Ramana Maharshi himself among those “names for Mystery.”
I find that beautiful.
Because perhaps a name for the Mystery is not only Ramana.
Or Rumi.
Or God.
Or Friend.
Perhaps sunrise is one of its names.
Mountain.
Marriage.
Brother.
Faith.
Dog.
Cat.
Stranger.
Breath.
This.
And perhaps the practice isn't to decide once and for all what any of it means.
Perhaps it is simply to become available enough to meet it.
To walk a little more slowly.
To notice the tattoo.
To speak to the stranger.
To look toward the horizon.
To feel the warmth of the rising sun.
To recognize something precious before the mind has turned it into something ordinary.
Maybe that is what it means to bow.
Not necessarily to understand the Mystery.
But to recognize that we are standing in it.
And to say—
Yes.
I see you.
References
Rumi. Rumi: The Big Red Book: The Great Masterpiece Celebrating Mystical Love & Friendship. Renderings by Coleman Barks. HarperOne, 2010. The collection includes the Ramana Maharshi section appearing in today's Tree of Serendipity selection.
Sri Ramana Maharshi. Five Verses on the Self, in the Sri Ramanasramam parayana collection. The text presents Ramana's central recognition that the Self is already present and frames “Who am I?” as an inquiry into that reality.
Rumi, Would You Bow?, Ghazal 2938, version by Coleman Barks with Nevit Ergin.
Rumi, The Only Obligation, Coleman Barks rendering. The poem also appears in Barks' Rumi: Bridge to the Soul.
