Rumi

Do you think I know what I'm doing?
That for one breath or half-breath I belong to myself?
As much as a pen knows what it's writing
or the ball can guess where it's going next.
*
Be melting snow, wash yourself of yourself
Become Oceanic
*
The mother and father are your attachment
to beliefs and bloodties
and desires and comforting habits
Don't listen to them!
They seem to protect,
but they imprison.
They are your worst enemies.
They make you afraid of living in emptiness.
*
Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu
Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion
or cultural system. I am not from the East
or the West, not out of the ocean or up
from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not
composed of elements at all. I do not exist,
am not an entity in this world or the next,
did not descend from Adam and Eve or any
origin story. My place is placeless, a trace
of the traceless. Neither body or soul.
First, last, outer, inner, only that
breath breathing being.
*
Your name has been erased
*
Darkness is your candle