Life in the Guest House with Buddha and Rumi

This Guest House Life © – Quarterly Newsletter

Volume 1 Number 1 Winter 2022

As it turns out, both the historical Buddha and the Sufi Master and poet, Jalāl ad-Dīn Rumi, invoked the image of a “guest house” in their teachings* Here is the view of the Buddha:

“Bhikkhus (monks), suppose there is a guest house…People come from the east, west, north, and south and lodge there…So too, bhikkhus, various feelings arise in this body: pleasant feeling arises, painful feeling arises, neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling arises; carnal pleasant feeling arises; carnal painful feeling arises; carnal neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling arises; spiritual pleasant feeling arises; spiritual painful feeling arises; spiritual neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling arise.”

Naming the lodgers is where the Buddha begins. Like him, we too are capable of identifying or naming the “lodgers” arriving at our doors and, by so doing, acknowledge their presence in our lives.” [1]

Returning to, “Bhikkhus (monks), suppose there is a guest house” The Buddha goes on to describe the nature of these lodgers and what, through the portal of direct knowledge, is to be understood, abandoned, developed, and realized through our relationship with these “guests.” [2] In each instance, we are presented with a condition to whole-heartedly offer our attentiveness as a means of directly knowing these guests and learning to relate to them more wisely.

Following the fragrance of this image across 1,800 years….

In the 13th century, during the last twelve years of his life, Rumi composed the Masnavi, a six-volume song composed of 52,000 lines of rhyming couplets filled with allegories, discourses, fables, and stories, from the bawdy to the sublime, about the human condition, our relationships to self, others, the world, and to the divine. One of these stories has come to be widely known as the contemporary poem entitled, “The Guest-House.” There are several translations of this discourse.

Rumi too begins with the guest house image and then names some of the “guests.”

“This being human is a guest house…
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor….” [3]

And from another version…

“Darling, the body is a guest house;
every morning someone new arrives.

…If a sorrowful thought stands in the way,
it is also preparing the way for joy.” [4]

Whether external or internal in origin, you’ve probably noticed that being alive guarantees a steady stream of “visitors.” While some are foreseen, others are completely unanticipated. Some are momentary; others linger with us for hours, days, months, and even decades. Often enough, we flee from these visitors, locking our doors, shuttering, and bolting the windows and hunkering down. Alternately, we might gird ourselves against the guests and go to war. Sometimes, we freeze; we play dead; we go numb and checkout. These are our familiar options. Sometimes they work. Usually, at best, they offer only momentary relief.

And yet…

We have within us another possibility: as unwanted as these guests may be, instead of fighting, fleeing, or freezing, we can learn to “welcome and entertain them.” “Entertain” as in being willing to offer our attention to the guests by turning toward them. This gesture of turning is an expression of our inborn wakefulness, courage, and intimacy – an embodiment of our willingness to surrender and take a risk by stepping outside of our usual reactive habits and boundaries and becoming increasingly honorable hosts.

And still….

You might be wondering, “Why should I offer hospitality to these unwanted visitors, these strangers at my door?” Since they are here, why not get to know them? Why not see what they might reveal to us? This does not mean that we must like them, swing our doors wide open or pretend that we are happy about their arrival. Yet, behind all our liking or disliking, we may begin to discover that an increasingly open-handed attitude towards these visitors gives us a real chance of stepping outside the prison walls of our conditioning and into a new kind of relationship with the guests.

Ah, but Rumi will not be contained by our usual accounts of reality. Ignited by the fire of love, with deep trust in the divinity of our humanity, Rumi, as he is wont to, reveals to us a radically fresh view…

“Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.” [5]

And in another version…

“Whatever enters your heart is a guest
from the invisible world: entertain it well. “[6]

His call to “be grateful” and counsel to “treat each guest honorably” reminds us of our capacity to meet and perhaps befriend the arrivals. His “Each has been sent as a guide from beyond” and “Whatever enters your heart is a guest from the invisible world, entertain it well” are pointing-out instructions: lighting flashes of the heart rending the curtain of appearances and bestowing upon us a direct glimpse into the transcendent or intuitive dimension of thought and emotion we so often overlook or undervalue.

Stepping outside the circuitousness of the discursive mind, this “whatever-enters-your-heart” approach offers us the possibility of cultivating increasingly hospitable relationships with the visitors. Hostility diminishes as we learn to give up the knee-jerk compulsion of protection and short-term relief. Turning from enmity to befriending makes room for the lodgers. We learn to surrender…even just a little bit. This, in turn, opens the space for us to perceive a larger reality transpiring in the guise of the guest.

The Guest-House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

– Rumi

The Guest House

Darling, the body is a guest house;
every morning someone new arrives.
Don’t say, “O, another weight around my neck!”
or your guest will fly back to nothingness.
Whatever enters your heart is a guest
from the invisible world: entertain it well.

Every day, and every moment, a thought comes
like an honored guest into your heart.
My soul, regard each thought as a person,
for every person’s value is in the thought they hold.
If a sorrowful thought stands in the way,
it is also preparing the way for joy.
It furiously sweeps your house clean,
in order that some new joy may appear from the Source.
It scatters the withered leaves from the bough of the heart,
in order that fresh green leaves might grow.
It uproots the old joy so that
a new joy may enter from Beyond.
Sorrow pulls up the rotten root
that was veiled from sight.
Whatever sorrow takes away or causes the heart to shed,
it puts something better in its place—
especially for one who is certain
that sorrow is the servant of the intuitive.

Without the frown of clouds and lightning,
the vines would be burned by the smiling sun.
Both good and bad luck become guests in your heart:
like planets traveling from sign to sign.
When something transits your sign, adapt yourself,
and be as harmonious as its ruling sign,
so that when it rejoins the Moon,
it will speak kindly to the Lord of the heart.

Whenever sorrow comes again,
meet it with smiles and laughter,
saying, “O my Creator, save me from its harm,
and do not deprive me of its good.
Lord, remind me to be thankful,
let me feel no regret if its benefit passes away.”

And if the pearl is not in sorrow’s hand,
let it go and still be pleased.
Increase your sweet practice.
Your practice will benefit you at another time;
someday your need will be suddenly fulfilled.

– Rumi

Citations

1. The Connected Discourses of the Buddha, Bhikkhu Bodhi
2. Ibid
3. “The Guest-House” In: Say I Am You, Coleman Barks and John Moyne
4. “The Guest House” In: The Rumi Collection, Kabir Helminski
5. “The Guest-House” In: Say I Am You, Coleman Barks and John Moyne
6. “The Guest House” In: The Rumi Collection, Kabir Helminski

*Thanks to Christopher Titmus for pointing out this Buddhist discourse

Practice Suggestion:

Over the course of the next month, you might begin experimenting with meeting some of the guests arriving at your door. Feel free to do so at your own pace. Nothing need be forced. There is no obligation to swing the doors of your house wide open.

Observing your approach to the guests is a useful place to begin. You might notice the impulse to flee, or fight, freeze, or deny the presence of a guest whether external or internal. When the guest arrives, you might see what it is like to gently offer your attention to sensations in the body and/or to what is happening in the mind. Do bodily sensations affect the condition of the mind? If so, how so? Do thoughts and emotions associated with the arrival of the guest affect the condition of the body? If so, how so?

For now, rather than attempting to figure all of this out intellectually, the invitation is to see if it is possible to get a little closer to the actuality of your experience as a way of learning to know and understand yourself more directly and deeply.

The keynote of this practice is to proceed with tenderness and a light touch…