M6:1376 — پس گریز از چیست زین بحر مراد / که بشستت صد هزاران صید داد

Translation: So why this flight from this sea of desires / which has granted you hundreds of thousands of prey via your hook? Meaning: Rumi challenges humanity's innate aversion to inner non-being or existential emptiness, paradoxically highlighting that all worldly achievements and fulfillments are 'fished' from this very realm of absence and potential.

In this beyt and the preceding verses, Rumi challenges one of the deepest paradoxes of human existence: our inherent desire for 'non-being' (عدم) when pursuing our aspirations, juxtaposed with our flight from 'non-being' itself. He posits that every artisan, from the builder to the carpenter, the hunter to the student, initiates their craft by seeking that which 'is not.' A builder seeks undeveloped land, a water-carrier an empty vessel, a hunter unseen prey. This 'initial non-being' represents potentiality, the unmanifested ground for creation and attainment.

However, Rumi employs a 'subtle stratagem' (lata'if al-hilal) to bridge this positive non-being with 'non-being' in the Sufi sense of annihilation (fana) and existential poverty. He asks: "Their assault was upon non-being when hunting / But then all of them flee from non-being!" You who rush towards 'non-being' to secure your catch, why then do you recoil at the mention of 'non-being' (such as death or Sufi annihilation)? What is this flight from, this 'sea of desires' (bahr-e morad)?

Rumi subtly equates this 'sea of desires' with the 'sea of no' (bahr-e lā) or the 'sea of non-being' (bahr-e nīstī). He states unequivocally: "You have cast the hook of your heart into the sea of no." This implies that our intellectual pursuits and material acquisitions are, in truth, 'fished' from the realm of the unmanifested and unseen. Why, then, do we flee from its ultimate expression?

This phenomenon, according to Rumi, is a manifestation of the 'magic of the world' (jadoo-ye alam) and 'divine blindfolding' (chashmbandi-ye Khoda). This spiritual blindness causes us to perceive existence as non-existence and vice versa. The non-being that is the very source of all our desires, and indeed the 'fruit' (barg) and wellspring of our life, appears to us as 'death' (marg) and annihilation. This heedlessness leads us to misplace our aspirations, content to dwell at the bottom of a well, mistakenly believing it to be freedom. Rumi calls upon us to cast off this inverted perception and recognize the true source of our fulfillments, a source that ultimately points to our own non-being in the face of Absolute Being.

Key takeaways

• The world habituates us to an inverted perception: we see what is as not, and what is not as existing.
• Every creative act and achievement in life originates from 'non-being' (as potential and the unpossessed).
• Rumi, through subtle cunning, links the 'non-being' of potential to the Sufi 'annihilation' (fana), dispelling our fear of it.
• The 'sea of desires' (bahr-e morad) is, in essence, the 'sea of no' (bahr-e lā) or the sea of non-being, from which all our aspirations are 'fished'.
• Fleeing from existential non-being is, paradoxically, fleeing from the true source of all being and fulfillment.
• Gnostic insight reveals that true non-being is not nothingness, but the origin of all existence and an endless fount of grace.