When I Die – Rumi

I e…Netherlands, 10.11.2012

✍️ Author’s Note

I first posted these lines by Rumi many years ago. I return to them now from a different point on the road.

Time does not necessarily change the words we once admired, but it can change the way we hear them. What once seemed a beautiful meditation on death and transcendence now speaks more quietly of continuity, of departure, and of the mystery that remains beyond what we can know.

I do not share Rumi’s religious certainty. Yet poetry does not require us to share the poet’s faith before it can speak to us. The image of sunset becoming dawn, of the seed disappearing into the earth only to rise again, belongs not only to religion but also to the ancient human attempt to understand mortality.

Perhaps that is why these lines have stayed with me.

-WJJH

Sufism inspired writings of Persian poet and mystic Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ad-Rumi; these writings express the longing of the soul for union with the divine.

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī – also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī, Mevlânâ/Mawlānā (مولانا, “our master”), Mevlevî/Mawlawī (مولوی, “my master”) and more popularly simply as Rumi – was a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian and Sufi mystic who lived in Konya, a city of Ottoman Empire.

Rumi – When I die

when my coffin

is being taken out

you must never think

I am missing this world

don’t shed any tears

don’t lament or

feel sorry

I’ m not falling

into a monster’s abyss

when you see

my corpse is being carried

don’t cry for my leaving

I’m not leaving

I’m arriving at eternal love

when you leave me

in the grave

don’t say goodbye

remember a grave is

only a curtain

for the paradise behind

you’ll only see me

descending into a grave

now watch me rise

how can there be an end

when the sun sets or

the moon goes down

it looks like the end

it seems like a sunset

but in reality it is a dawn

when the grave locks you up

that is when your soul is freed

have you ever seen

a seed fallen to earth

not rise with a new life

why should you doubt the rise

of a seed named human

have you ever seen

a bucket lowered into a well

coming back empty

why lament for a soul

when it can come back

like Joseph from the well

when for the last time

you close your mouth

your words and soul

will belong to the world of

no place no time

📌 Blog Excerpt

Rumi’s poem “When I Die” conveys a profound message about death, inviting loved ones to view it not as an end but as a transition to eternal love and unity with the divine. He emphasizes that the grave is merely a veil to paradise, encouraging a perspective of renewal rather than loss.