“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,

the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other

doesn’t make any sense.”

Above is Rumi’s poem as translated by Coleman Barks.

Below is the Original Rumi’s poem in Pharsi (Persian) :

از کفر و ز اسلام برون صحرائی است

ما را به میان آن فضا سودائی است

عارف چو بدان رسید سر را بنهد

نه کفر و نه اسلام و نه آنجا جائی است

The Persian word سودا means “Exchanging Goods” and in this context it means exchanging ideas or dialogue.

Here is my crude interpretation of Rumi’s Persian poem where I have replaced the word “Islam” with “faith” and the word “field” with “meadow”

Beyond the realm of heresy and faith there is a meadow

Within that space, we each have understandings to bestow

When the sage reaches that juncture, he’ll rest all his conjecture

Since neither heresy, nor faith, not even that place, any longer has a place

“A true understanding can be achieved through a dialogue (meeting) in a field where at the outset there is no preconceived precepts of what is right & what is wrong.”

This means to really understand each other we need to start the dialogue with a clean slate, where there are no biases and nothing is right or wrong to begin with; where everything just “is”, exists, as phenomenon that occurs in nature. This does not mean that as we engage in dialogue we can not come-up with principals of right or wrong that serves everyone (humanity in general) and not just a particular group or inner-circle.