M6:4291 — در تو جوعی می‌رسد تو ز اعتلال / که همی‌سوزد ازو تخمه و ملال

Translation: In you a fresh hunger arrives from suffering, Which from itself burns away surfeit and weariness. Meaning: This couplet explains that a fresh spiritual hunger, born of suffering and unease, continuously renews one's experience, burning away any false satiety or weariness and keeping genuine longing alive.

I am convinced that Rumi, in this couplet and those preceding and following it, unveils an ontological and experiential truth: that weariness and staleness are born of a lack of hunger, not of repetition. Accept from me that this point is one of the most crucial insights in the Masnavi. A person grows weary of something that becomes old for them. But if something is always new to a person, or if this world they live in is a new world every day, or if they themselves are a “new self” every day, encountering a “fresh self,” then this “ever-renewing” person in an “ever-renewing” world will never grow weary. True weariness-abatement stems from this constant renewal, not from superficial change or escape from a situation.

Rumi clarifies this truth with a simple example: “Many times you ate bread to dispel emaciation / It is the same bread, why are you not weary?” You repeatedly eat bread or food to ward off weakness and hunger; why do you not grow tired of eating? Why do you not say, “I ate once, I ate twice, how much more food can I eat?” The answer is that your hunger “renews.” Your hunger becomes fresh, and thus the food also becomes new to you. The next meal is not old, because it arrives on the heels of a fresh hunger. This is where he says: “In you a fresh hunger arrives from suffering.” Iʿtilāl here means the pain and restlessness of hunger. So you become hungry, freshly hungry, and thus the next food is also fresh for you and no longer appears old.

This fresh hunger that arises from suffering and need burns away previous “surfeit and weariness.” Tukhma means indigestion and satiety. That is, if someone has indigestion and is weary from having eaten too much, it is this fresh hunger that removes that false satiety and the weariness stemming from it. True pleasure comes not from the type of food, but from the state of hunger. “Pleasure is from hunger, not from fresh food / With hunger, barley bread is better than sugar.” When you are not hungry, even if you eat sugar, it does not taste as good as barley bread when you are hungry. This hunger is pain; but it is a life-giving pain.

Our weariness is not from the repetition of words or discourse, but from a “lack of hunger” and “surfeit.” We are not thirsty for truth and approach the words of truth or the Masnavi from a state of “satiety,” and thus it seems old and tiresome to us. But one who reads with hunger and thirst finds dozens of fresh insights and dozens of oceans in every page and couplet of the Masnavi, quenching the thirsty. They never grow weary. In the Quran, too, we are told that the inhabitants of Paradise do not grow weary of it; “lā yabghūna ʿanhā ḥawalā” (they do not desire removal therefrom), because the paradisiacal experience is perpetually new and burns away all weariness.

Key takeaways

• Weariness and staleness arise from a lack of spiritual hunger, not from the repetition of truth.
• Fresh hunger (jūʿ) eliminates surfeit (tukhma) and weariness (malāl), renewing the soul.
• True pleasure stems from the state of hunger and thirst, not merely from the type of content or food.
• Being a 'new self' in a 'new world' each day is the key to escaping weariness and depression.
• One who approaches divine words from 'satiety' finds them old and tiresome; conversely, the thirsty find a fresh ocean in every couplet.