Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
Doesn’t make any sense.

-Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks in The Essential Rumi

Commentary

As always, my commentary more musing than analysis.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field. I’ll meet you there.

Rumi begins by speaking to the heart of our trouble: our dualistic mindset. As one of the world’s greatest mystics, he experienced directly the unity of all opposites. Light and dark, good and bad, night and day, life and death – all apparent opposites fall into a dance of supreme harmony. They are no longer separate, but two sides of the same luminous, divine coin. This is often referred to as non-dualism.

So, Rumi’s first invitation to us in this poem is to drop the thinking mind’s separation and experience reality directly.

He uses the metaphor of a field to describe this experience. A field is open, evoking the spaciousness of the mind uncluttered by dualistic thoughts. It is also a part of nature, and includes the daily rhythms of life and the natural movement of creation. Therefore, it is not apart from the world, but a part of the divine harmony of the world itself. This is a clue to the state Rumi is describing.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.

Have you ever laid down in a field of soft, sun-kissed grass? Have you felt the earth embrace you, your worries trickling into the soil? Felt, for a brief moment, at one with everything? What might it feel like for your soul to luxuriate in the grass of Rumi’s field?

In this state, the divine light shines from everything. The mystic Andrew Harvey describes seeing “God right in front of us, in the beggar, the starving child, the brokenhearted woman; in our friend; in the cat; in the flea.”

All authentic mystics describe seeing the divine in everything. The Hindu saint Ramakrishna once saw two dogs copulating in a muddy puddle and fell into a rapturous trance, having a vision of Shiva and Shakti creating the entire universe through their lovemaking. The world is full of divine presence – only we usually aren’t paying attention.

Consider this quote by Father Bede Griffiths, a mystic of both the Hindu and Christian traditions, as he describes the Hindu way of honoring the divine within everything:

“It is this vision of a cosmic unity, in which human beings and nature are sustained by an all-pervading spirit, which the West needs to learn from the East… The earth is sacred, and no plowing or sowing or reaping can take place without some religious rite. Eating is a sacred action, and every meal is conceived as a sacrifice to God. Water is sacred, and no religious Hindu will take a bath without invoking the sacred power of the water, which descends from heaven and, caught on the head of Shiva, is distributed in the fertilizing streams of the Ganges and other rivers. Air is sacred, the breath of life which comes from God and sustains all living creatures. Fire is sacred, especially in its source in the sun, which brings light and life to all creatures. So also with plants and trees, especially certain plants like the tulsi plant and certain trees like the banyan. Animals are sacred, especially the cow, which gives her milk as a mother, but also the elephant, the monkey, and the snake. Finally, the human person is sacred… a manifestation of God…”

from Bede Griffiths: Essential Writings

This sense of sacredness that pervades all of reality is, perhaps, part of what Rumi is describing in this line. The world is too full – it is laden with Divine Presence.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
Doesn’t make any sense.

That experience is beyond words. As Lao Tzu says in the first chapter of the Tao te Ching, “The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao.” Words and concepts dissolve and the pure experience of divine presence overtakes you.

And what can you do then but spend the rest of your life in wild, abandoned praise?

That is, after all, what Rumi did.