I learned that Coleman Barks died on 23 February 2026. I knew him for the first time from Coldplay’s ‘Kaleidoscope’, a mash‑up song of ‘The Guesthouse’ and ‘Amazing Grace’–sung, or recited, by Barks and Obama.

In March 2026, for the Eid holiday, in one of many book runs of our trip to Perth, I bought a paperback copy of The Book of Love at Planet Books Northbridge. Barks’s way of presenting and interpreting Rumi’s poems is unconventional: he’d ramble about how the poems move him. I have heard bits of Rumi’s poems (of course!), but Barks was my guide to a dedicated deep dive into Rumi.

Barks studied under Sufi Bawa Muhaiyaddeen. He was influenced, among others, by Beatnik (I also bought Alan Watts’s Zen and the Beat Way from Mount Street Books). The poets and artists congregated in sunny California on the Pacific Coast. Because of active interaction with Japan, Oriental wisdom has a strong hold there. Zen took root easily in California’s fertile soil, where machine‑like cities have not dominated its landscape.

Barks preached the religion of no‑religion: an examination of what God is not, not by hermeneutical study of the scriptures, but on direct observation of one’s experience. I learned an alternative translation of ‘Laillahaillallhuallah’: ‘There is nothing but God.’ Everything is God. It reminds me of a German Book for All and None–about a prophet: Zarathustra.

If you prefer non-atheistic term: Barks call it the ‘Love Religion’. Some would accuse him of wordplay, and they are right: poetry is playing with words.

Rumi was a jurist. He took pride in his knowledge of Quran, Hadith, and Islamic jurisprudence. When he met a wandering mystic Shams of Tabriz, Rumi told Shams that he knew nothing. Shams replied, ‘No, you know nothing.’ In the discussions—the musyawarah—about Islam and the nature of God between the jurist and the mystic, Rumi fell in love with Shams and decided that communion with God must be done beyond written and spoken words: through meditation on the inner world which allows you to reflect the external environment—by poems, music, and dances: the transcendent whirling of the Mevlevi Order, the dervishes).

The mystics seek love that annihilates the self. In this way, the Sufis are like the Tantric Hindus and the Zen Buddhists (or the scientists studying the mysteries of natural law; the artists engaging in creative work–any dedicated action which allows you to experience the unconditional meaningfulness of life). Paradise is not a place, but a state of mind.

I read Reza Aslan’s God: A History of Human Religion, and I agree that a theological approach to examining God creates division in organised religions. But mystics all came to the same conclusion. Their paths seem to converge: God (with a capital G) is not a man, but everything and nothing. God is the none and the all.

Someone on Instagram aired his grievance that Barks’s popular interpretation of Rumi removed the word ‘God’ and obscured the Islamic tradition. He insinuates that this is out of malice. When Rumi was first introduced to the West in Victorian times, the Islamic references were also removed. This is a tacit refusal to acknowledge that a ‘rival’ culture can produce something so powerful, beautiful, and profound.

Barks, after all, did not speak Persian. He never claimed otherwise and disclosed such deficiency. He declared and disclaimed that his work is interpretation, not translation. He also explained that Rumi’s poems have no title. When you refer to ‘The Guest House,’ it is Barks’s codification according to Western tradition of poetry.

I found a secondhand copy of A Year With Rumi online. Bought it and read every poem for every day since the date of acquisition of 17 May 2026. On 6 July, I read ‘Emptiness’. The poem makes explicit references to ‘Qur’an’ and ‘God’. 13 July’s poem, ‘Ramadan Silence’, is about the Islamic holy month. The accusation of erasure, therefore, is unsubstantiated. 

If some Muslims are unhappy and still feel like Barks’s interpretations ‘dilute’ Islamic elements, I can only tell them that it is a personal choice. And it helps non‑Muslim readers and audiences to better relate or connect with Rumi’s messages—and for people like me.

During the pandemic, I enrolled in an online meditation course. The Balinese meditation guru teaches his class in Indonesian and English. I noted that the way he teaches is not just translating linguistic vocabulary. He speaks in Indonesian cultural contexts, in which religious identity is still important and supernatural belief is strong. In English classes, he avoids telling stories which seem to bend natural laws and answers questions with materialist language. I did not interpret his approach as malicious: he is simply practical and student/customer/human‑centric. He wants to teach meditation to help his students live a better, happier, more meaningful life.

I read that Bawa taught his students by reflecting the traditions they are familiar with. He welcomed all people from all backgrounds. He was Sri Lankan and had students from Buddhist and Hindu even Christian traditions.

Whether you believe that consciousness is the inherent state of being—a soul within a decaying material shell called the body or that it is a consequence of biological function (or maybe something both), consciousness exists. It is the basis of our experience.

Our existence may inherently have no meaning. Thus, we can make any meaning. Conversely, we can only discover the meaning of our life if we learn to live in harmony with the natural order of things: God, cosmic love, providence, the universal Truth—whatever you call it. 

One thing is absolute: we cannot survive without meaning. That’s why New Atheism got old (but in my defence, it was necessary for my liberation from the orthodoxy of the old religion).  Sure, you can believe in a God or build a new one. Such belief may be necessary to maintain a social order—a society. We are ultra‑social animals. We cannot survive and thrive as individuals per se. But society’s fictions can be obsolete and, to a certain extent, may be incompatible with certain individuals. To have meaning–or to have the patience in waiting for a meaning to be revealed–an individual needs a community. (Do not mistake community with a ‘collective’ or a uniformed ‘mass’ which unite individuals for material–economic–purposes. A community does not deface individuality: a community gives the individuals the freedom to choose the community)

The theological approach is the jurisprudence approach of introspection: you focus on definitions and precedents. The hazard of this approach is design lock‑in—you think there is no other approach, or your precedents are the truth, when they could only be available information at that time.

Maybe what Rumi and other sages or mystics are trying to tell is to introspect—to find ‘God’ within. His hint, as other contemplative traditions have also hinted, is to un‑self yourself. You enter the flow state when you forget yourself, engrossed in doing what you should be doing. Shokunin.

Like when I am writing this, or when I was reading Barks’s interpretations of Rumi.

I finished The Book of Love on the day of Eid (21 March 2026, according to Georgian calendar). I spent the day at Perth’s King’s Park. Doing almost nothing. I read Rumi’s poems under komorebi. Grateful for the heartbreaks which allowed me to understand the love the Sufi is talking about. I listened to Coleman Bark’s poem ‘Luke and the Duct Tape’ and other wistful songs.

I watched people, Perthians, doing what we’re doing. Two women doing watercolour paintings. Two girl friends alighted from CAT bus and brought sushi lunch from Woolworths. Muslims walked the park in their traditional dress: a Malaysian family in baju kurung, South Asian ladies in shalwar kameez.

The rest of the day was uneventful as planned. Great lunch and coffee at Koorak. Wanted to get inside Rio Tinto Naturescape, but it was closed early at 1230. 

How easy it was to be kind and grateful here. I was tense about expenses during the whole trip (the Indonesian Rupiah continued to be devalued), but felt relaxed on the last day. Maybe it’s like any end, you savour the last of everything good (or you simply in the position to judge that the time and money were well spent).

When it was 5pm, we walked back to our hotel. We saw luxury picnics overlooking Perth’s CBD skyline. Valentine is celebrating her 40th birthday. Other picnics were celebrating life in all its simple glory. (Luxury picnic providers seem to cater mostly for white girls, but I would love to do that one day)

I felt a warm kind of love. A gratitude for witnessing a great use of life. Rumi taught us not to have restraint on food for the soul.

I’m pretty new to reading and enjoying poetry. What I learned is that, unlike prose, poetry doesn’t need to make sense literally (obviously). Sometimes the sound of the words matters more than the meaning. I have to read them on paper; Kindle does not work. I don’t make claims to have any ounce of authority in poetry. I just enjoy some of them. 

Barks’s interpretations of Rumi are some of them.

The vacuum of space and the uninhabitable planets are the norm. Our life‑giving sun and the spherical ecology-sustaining rock in this corner of the Milky Way are the exception. The universe we know is full of darkness and death. 

I don’t know if there is any post‑mortem existence. I hope there is not, as existing data known to me suggests. All I know is I am grateful to have shared a spacetime—through paper, ink, and pen as well as digitised sound—with Rumi and Barks.

Post-script: 

The poem for 25 May is ‘I Met One Travelling’:

In the evening between sleep and waking
I met one traveling. He was the light of consciousness.
His body was soul, his pure wisdom apparent 
in his beautiful face

‘The light of consciousness.’ I wonder what the original Persian text is? It is a literal translation of my name in English. Was my father inspired by the poem when he named me?