Discourses of Rumi

FIHI MA FIHI V 33what they know has no connection with theessential reality that alone exists when all these“signs” are gone. They speak wisely, expound atgreat length, and finally pronounce that what theking has in his hand is a sieve. They have noknowledge about the root of the matter: life’s purpose.I am a bird. I am a nightingale. If they say tome, “Make some other kind of sound,” I cannot.My tongue is what it is. I cannot speak otherwise.However, those who learn the song of birds arenot birds themselves—on the contrary, they arethe enemies of birds and their captors. They singand whistle so others will take them for birds.Ask them to produce a different sound and theycan do so, because that sound is merely assumedby them. It is not truly their own. Like the scholars,they are able to sing other songs because theyhave learned to rob those songs, and to show offa different tune stolen from every breast.