Rumi and Octavio Paz on Discovering a more Cosmic Perspective
Rumi
I am so small I can barely be seen.
How can this great love be inside me?
Look at your eyes. They are small,
but they see enormous things.
(The Essential Rumi by Coleman Barks)
~
Octavio Paz
Brotherhood
Homage to Claudius Ptolemy
I am a man: little do I last
and the night is enormous.
But I look up:
the stars write.
Unknowing I understand:
I too am written,
and at this very moment
someone spells me out.
(Collected Poems by Octavio Paz, translated with Eliot Weinberger)
~
Here is a haiku I wrote that shares a similar sentiment. It was published in 13 Ways to Write Haiku: A Poet’s Dozen for The Dryland Fish, and in Five Haiku for This Enduring Gift.
Forest Flowers
tiny white flowers
a constellation of stars
so low yet so high
© Ken Chawkin
~
An even more cosmic understanding our relationship to the universe comes from the Vedic Literature — “Yatha pinde tatha brahmande, yatha brahmande tatha pinde” — “As is the individual, so is the universe, as is the universe, so is the individual” or “As is the atom, so is the Universe” or “As is the human body, so is the Cosmic Body” or “As is the Microcosm, so is the Macrocosm”, or succinctly as “As Above, So Below.” See my poem As Above So Below.
Another expression is “Anor aniyan mahato mahiyan“ — “Smaller than the smallest is larger than the largest” i.e., our essential nature, our Self, is beyond measure, infinite, unbounded, transcendental.
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