Rumi on Eloquence and True Speech

Not long ago, I was called upon to offer a few words on the theme, ‘The beauty of human beings is the beauty of their words’, a Bektashi proverb. It felt like quite a daunting topic to speak about!

The first thing I did was find an example of the beauty of Mevlana Rumi’s words, an example which also gives a clue as to how he came to have such eloquence. I was led to this beautiful quatrain:

I am a mountain echoing the voice of the Friend.
I am a picture painted by the Beloved.
I am a just a lock, but you hear His key turning.
Do you think any of these words are mine?

[Quatrains: 207, ‘What Is Really Going On Here’, The Rumi Daybook, trans. Kabir and Camille Helminski]

Such suggestive beauty… does it need any commentary? Then I wanted to find something from my mentors in the Mevlevi tradition, something that sheds a little more light on the nature of this eloquence. I was led to this passage in Kabir Helminski’s The Mysterion:

Whomever you see who has a beautiful temperament and a beautiful face, if their words are straightforward, if they are openhearted and pray for good things for everyone, a joy of heart comes from the speech of such a person. Such a person makes you forget the anxieties and tightness of this universe; your inside opens in such a way that even if they swear at you, you laugh. Maybe, when they speak of unity . . . you weep, but you feel a hundred thousand joys and laughter within yourself. Such a person is a being of paradise.

Kabir Dede could be describing Mevlana Rumi or perhaps his own beloved mentor, Suleyman Dede. The words that especially strike me are ‘even if they swear at you, you laugh.’ It reminds me of Rumi’s beloved mentor, Shams of Tabriz, who was renowned for being pretty fierce towards his students. So I dipped into Shams’ Maqalat, to find yet another clue about truly beautiful words:

Don’t be hurt if I speak honestly with my friends. I gave my word not to be hypocritical. Because you couldn’t wait for the word I wanted to say, it was lost. No other words come to mind. If you have something to say, wait until I have finished speaking. These dervish conversations are subtle. If something is lost now, it will be lost; the words that will come later will be different.

[‘Subtle Conversations’, Rumi’s Sun, The Teachings of Shams of Tabriz, trans. Refik Algan and Camille Helminski]

Truth and authenticity—we’ll return to that. But notice how Shams tells us truly inspired words tend to flow spontaneously from the Source. Fresh from the fountain of life, they are never repeated. We’d better be listening.

I then discovered seven qualities, or practices even, that we might cultivate to express ourselves more beautifully:

 1. Presence/remembrance/heartfulness

I place these three together: begin with presence, then add remembrance (zhik), then expansive heartfulness. Surely the most beautiful words are the Beautiful Names of God—being in authentic remembrance of those words will beautify our own. Mevlana illustrates this when he describes three prophets who had the gift of eloquence, Adam, Noah, and Jesus. He begins with Adam in the womb-like space of the Divine Names­, which is in fact in his own heart, and then speaks of Noah making the same journey into the heart:

When Adam became the theater of Divine inspiration and love,
his rational soul revealed to him the knowledge of the Names.
His tongue, reading from the page of his heart,
recited the name of everything that is.
Through his inward vision his tongue
divulged the qualities of each;
for each it bestowed an appropriate name.
Nine hundred years Noah walked in the straight way,
and everyday he preached a new sermon.
His ruby lip drew its eloquence from the precious jewel
that is within the hearts of prophets. . . .
He had not learned to preach from pouring over commentaries;
no, he learned from the fountain of revelations and the spirit—
from the wine that is so potent that when it is quaffed
the water of speech gushes from the mouth of the dumb,
and the new-born child becomes an eloquent divine
and, like the Messiah, recites words of ripened wisdom.

[Mathnawi VI: 2648–56, Jewels of Remembrance, trans. Kabir and Camille Helminski]

2. Sincerity/authenticity/honesty

We have already heard Shams stress the importance of truth. Keats, one of the most eloquent souls to have spoken in the English language and a great mystic himself, had the profound insight ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty.’ But here are some of Rumi’s observations on sincerity:

When you have no sincerity,
at least don’t presume to speak,
for words are mostly self-assertion—‘we’ and ‘I.’

[The Rumi Daybook, excerpt from ‘Let the Kernel Ripen’, Mathnawi V: 1174]

The vision of God looks into the heart
to see whether there is some modesty there,
no matter what your words sound like,
because the heart is what matters.

[Mathnawi II: 1760, excerpt from ‘Stoking the Fire of Love’, The Rumi Daybook, trans. Kabir and Camille Helminski]

Beautiful speech is not flowery or pretentious. Whilst it can be incredibly subtle and nuanced, it has a simple sincerity.

3. Self-control

This one might be surprising. The modern, secular mentality would probably never dream that an ability to control one’s desires leads to eloquence, but Rumi insists on it:

If you wish to speak words sweet as sugar,
control your body’s desires;
don’t run after this world.
Children beg for candy;
the intelligent desire self-control.

[Mathnawi I: 1600-01, excerpt from ‘The Breath That Heals’, The Rumi Daybook, trans. Kabir and Camille Helminski]

4. Clarity/precision

Beautiful language can be poetic and allusive, but it also has clarity and precision as needed. As a contemporary shaikh in the Mevlevi Order, Kabir Dede, for instance, has devoted himself to clarifying key spiritual terminology of the Sufi Path—especially in English. Kabir Dede’s The Book of Language is a key text on this theme. In it he writes:

The critical importance of terminology is that words become premises, and conclusions always follow premises, at least in logical thought. In classical logic, problems start when one either has false premises or false words to express them.

We cannot begin to learn of the beauties of this Path until we have an accurate language to express them. Kabir Dede quotes Wittgenstein: ‘The limit of my word is the limit of my world.’

5. Appropriateness

We might have something true or beautiful to say, but it may not always be appropriate to say it. Look up ‘appropriateness’ in The Book of Language and you’ll find this definition: ‘The quality of behaviour that is the result of love and humbleness.’ Next time we are wondering whether it is appropriate to share some truth, we might ask ourselves, ‘Is it coming from love and humbleness?’—i.e. Is it appropriate?

6. Brevity and silence

When we are called upon to share our reflections in Mevlevi gatherings, we remind ourselves that ‘the best words are generally few and from the heart.’ Rumi says:

When a word is spoken, the kernel is spent—
stop spending,
so that the ripening kernel might remain within you.
Someone who speaks little has strong thoughts…

[Mathnawi V: 1176–7, excerpt from ‘Let the Kernel Ripen’, The Rumi Daybook, trans. Kabir and Camille Helminski]

7. Ask God

Finally, a beautiful prayer from Camille Helminski, that models how we might petition our Sustainer for the gift of eloquence and true speech:

O God,
give me the gift of speech
in Your Name,
help me to read Your words
on the tablet of creation.
Help me to translate vision
into sound
and intimate true feelings
through the vehicle of voice.
Give me access
to right insight
that I may offer
Your bread
to those who are hungry.

[Excerpt from Words From the East]

These words certainly are bread for my own hungry soul. Keats is another who has been providing me with such nourishment over the last couple of years, and I’ve increasingly come to see how many of the above practices were intuited by him. For those who may wish to know and join me in an online course exploring his six famous odes, please see ‘The Mystic Keats: The Poetry of Keats in Light of Rumi and Sufism’.

Calligraphy by Azim Rehmatdin: Al-Musawwir, ‘The Bestower of Form’.