More on the “Hardened Heart”

Some veils over vision are beautiful but freezing--

Last time, that strange notion of the “hardened heart” showed up, closing in from the shadows. This somewhat scary sight prompted a Google search, and in about a minute I found that the topic can be connected to over a hundred scriptures in the Bible and another hundred-plus in the Qur’an. As often happens, a semi-attended mysterious notion remains in a half-conscious way, rather impatiently awaiting and prompting further understanding. So it’s not surprising that while re-reading Book I of Rumi’s Mathnawi certain passages lit up.

“Without the touchstone, with the naked eye,/ you’ll never know false gold from precious gold!” (couplet 300, Alan Williams’ translation, Spiritual Verses)

        Isn’t Rumi saying that our normal vision (and cognition?) cannot find the hidden treasure? Everyday eyesight is not sufficient to discern the spiritual pathway. Instead, the touchstone, the clean heart, knows true from false (see Psalm 51:10); but this knowing is often lost due to veiling—the “hardening of the heart.” Rumi’s next couplet adds:

“If God should place a touchstone in your heart/ you’ll then tell doubt and certainty apart” (Jawid Mojaddedi, trans. Rumi, The Masnavi Book One)

Like Rumi, we’re in a world easily overwhelmed because

“False pretenders just distort what’s right” (Mojaddedi, couplet 322), and  “God’s way bewilders those who are traveling it” (Mojaddedi, couplet 313).

So certainty looks unlikely if not impossible—and yet “None but a man who’s tasted truth will do” (Mojaddedi, 277).  Mojaddedi’s note on this line says:

“Mystical knowledge is often described by Sufis as ‘tasting the truth,’ indicating that it is an immediate, experiential form of knowledge which gives greater certainty than theoretical knowledge.” (p. 246)

The talisman and the treasure are elaborated by Nicholson, especially in a note he adds to a related passage:

“The body resembles a talisman of clay guarding a hidden treasure of light, i.e the Divine spark and spiritual essence of Man. When the charm is broken, ‘his speech is light and his works are light and he moves in light’, and God alone dwells in his heart.” [p. 43, Commentary on Book I)

Nicholson’s note concerns couplet 434 in which Rumi begins quoting from Qur’an 2: 125. Nicholson translates Rumi’s lines: 

“Clean My house, ye twain, is an explanation of (such) purity: it (the purified heart) is a treasure of (Divine) light, though its talisman is of the earth.”

Rumi offers further clarification on the way the heart becomes “hardened” and veiled from discerning the treasure, from seeing with the light of God.

“Desire and anger make men go cross-eyed,/ for they distort the spirit from uprightness./ When craving comes, then virtue is concealed;/ a hundred veils divide the heart and sight.” (Williams, couplets 334-5)

Just in case we underestimate how difficult it is for us to escape the veils and to realize the hidden treasure, Rumi weaves together several very strong stories. In one of them the king’s advisor demands that the king cut off part of his own (the advisor’s) nose and ears. Rumi is trying to shock us into recognizing our endangered condition due to the high risk for losing our sense of the Divine and not even being aware of how much we have lost. From Nicholson’s translation (available at http://www.masnavi.net/1/50/eng/1/400/ ) beginning with couplet 439:

آن وزیرک از حسد بودش نژاد ** تا به باطل گوش و بینی باد داد

That petty vizier had his origin from envy, so that for vanity he gave to the wind (sacrificed) his ears and nose,

هر کسی کاو از حسد بینی کند ** خویشتن بی‌‌گوش و بی‌‌بینی کند

Any one who from envy mutilates his nose makes himself without ear and without nose (unable to apprehend spiritual things).

بینی آن باشد که او بویی برد ** بوی او را جانب کویی برد

The nose is that which catches a scent, and which the scent leads towards an abode (of spiritual truth).

       I’m pretty sure the world around us right now has plenty of bad things going on. Perhaps it always does. The historical mystery series by Sharan Newman that I’m now reading tells how dark the world was back in times of the crusades. So a big challenge inevitably comes for us in how to look at bad things. Unless we really purify the mirror of our hearts, we’re at serious risk for making things even worse and for further endangering our souls.

“How many an evil that you see in others/ is your own nature which you see in them!” (Williams, couplet 1328)

        We have models for how to cope with the dark world. The prophets denounced idol worship, cleansed the temple, resisted injustice; and yet I’m certain their hearts were filled with compassion, not with anger, lust, or hatred. Guidance and hope come from Rumi’s retelling of the hare’s success against the lion. The community surprised at being delivered from the oppression ask how the victory came about:

“‘Retell it so the story will  be healing,

     retell it as a dressing for our souls.

But tell! From that oppressor’s violence

     our souls have got a hundred thousand wounds.’

[and the hare responds] ‘it was God’s help…

He gave me power and gave my heart the light;

     my heart’s light gave my hands and feet their strength…

In time and in the course of things, God gives

    this help to doubtful ones and visionaries.’” 

(Williams, couplets 1372-1377)