Rumi’s “The Guest House” and Accepting Ourselves

This week, in the days before Thanksgiving, we read and unpacked Rumi’s “The Guest House.” Here it is in full:

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’re 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 whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

Rumi uses an extended metaphor (the same technique in Hughes’s “Mother to Son” and Dickinson’s “Hope is the thing with feathers”) to make his point about accepting one’s emotions, whether they are positive or negative. Last week, students wrote gratitude lists. It’s easy, I tell them, to feel grateful for the things that feel good. Rumi is asking us to be grateful for the hard or disturbing emotions as well:

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture.

Few students have had to deal with that kind of emptying, debilitating grief, but some day it will come. Some of them have, in fact, been there already, and I can see it in their faces. But even small griefs, I tell them, must be sat with, cared for.  Rumi goes further:

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

We must be present to even the darkest places of ourselves. We can’t deny them or slam the door—they’re already there. If we do not acknowledge them, we cannot learn from them. Vietnamese Buddhist monk Tich Nhat Hanh writes about caring for our anger or dark emotion as if it were a small child, or a friend in pain: Sit down with it, be compassionate towards it, make it tea. In this way, it can heal.

How wonderful for students to receive this message, the idea that the painful or troubling parts of themselves should be welcomed and cared for with kindness, not suppressed or buried in layers of shame and fear.

And the way we treat ourselves is ultimately the way we treat others: If we can accept our whole selves with compassion, we can begin to accept others with compassion as well. If we are gentle with ourselves, we will be gentle with others. In our strongest moments, we might even be able to “be grateful for whoever comes”—to find gratitude and grace in even the most painful lessons of this life.

 

Classroom Activities: After we read and analyze this poem, I have had students generate their own extended metaphor poems, or draw a picture (with quotes) of what’s happening in Rumi’s poem. Find slides for Rumi and these activities here.