At,
For just a morsel more about Sohbet, I will quote from Coleman Bark's "The
Essential Rumi," Harper San Francisco, 1995, p. 76:
Begin quotation:
Sohbet has no English equivalent. It means something like "mystical
conversation on mystical subjects." The voices in Rumi's poetry come from
many points on the inner-outer spectrum. The outer conversations are
contained within quotation marks, and the inner ones are continuous and
permeate the entire fabric of his poetry. On the most ordinary level, we
all sometimes hear ourselves speaking from, say, some habitual pattern of
meanness or acceptable optimism; then at other times we surprise ourselves
by coming out with wisdom far beyond our usual. There's a modulation
between realities. This is similar to what happens with the fluid pronoun
in Rumi's poetry. The 'you' and 'I' are sometimes the lover talking to the
beloved, the personal self and a without-form presence within and beyond
the senses. Yet sometimes that presence, amazingly, speaks to Rumi
through the poetry; voices slide back and forth within the same short
poem! Often the poem serves as a slippery doorsill place between the two,
'partly in my self and partly outside,' the voices coming from a
between-place. This expanding and contracting of identity is one of the
exciting aspects of Rumi's art. Everything is conversation. Human beings
are discourse. That flowing moves through you whether you say anything or
not. Everything that happens is filled with pleasure and warmth because of
the delight of the discourse that's always gong on. (Discourse 53)
End quotation.
At, while there are thousands upon thousands of verses from Rumi, whose
poetry is the most sold in the United States, outselling Frost, for
instance, I'll reproduce one here about conversation in the best sense of
the Sohbet, which you and I have no doubt experienced many times:
Constant Conversation
Who is the luckiest in this whole orchestra? The reed.
Its mouth touches your lips to learn music.
All reeds, sugarcane especially, think only
of this chance. They sway in the canebrakes,
free in the many ways they dance.
Without you the instruments would die.
One sits close beside you. Another takes a long kiss.
The tambourine begs, Touch my skin so I can be myself.
Let me feel you enter each limb bone by bone,
that what dies last night can be whole today.
Why live some soberer way and feel you ebbing out?
I won't do it.
Either give me enough wine or leave me alone,
now that I know how it is
to be with you in constant conversation.
A certain person came to the Friend's door
and knocked.
"Who's there?"
"It's me."
The friend answered, "Go away/ There's no place
for raw meat at this table."
The individual went wandering for a year.
Nothing but the fire of separation
can change hypocrisy and ego. The person returned
completely cooked,
walked up an down in front of the Friend's house,
gently knocked.
"Who is it?"
"You."
"Please come in, my self,
there's no place in this house for two.
The doubled end of the thread is not what goes through
the eye of the needle..
It's a single-pointed, fined-down, thread end,
not a big ego-beast with baggage...".
I'm certain there are similar verse from South African tradition. Enjoy.
Barry
-- Barry Mallis, Manager - Training and Development MARKEM Corporation www.markem.com | email: bmallis@markem.com voice: 603 357-4255 ext. 2578 | FAX: 603 352-0525Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>