"Range with emptiness"

[KhalidW]

Salam to Shaykh Ibrahim and all,

My mother just asked me abut the quote "When everyone is trying to be something, be nothing. Range with emptiness", attributed to Shams Tabrizi. She was asking what exactly "range with emptiness" means and how else it could be translated.

As always with Rumi quotes from online, I assume it's fake first and proceed from there! But I wonder if it is based on something Mevlana or Shams said?

Fi Amani Llah

Khalid

[Ibrahim]

Salām Khalid,

This is a fake quote, a version of a quote from a novel about Rumi and Shams with fictionalized "quotes" of Shams-i Tabrizi that have become widespread on the Internet (in other words, there is no source in Persian). The novel is by Turkish author, Elif Shafak, "The Forty Rules of Love." This is Rule 33 from the book: 

"While everyone in this world strives to get somewhere and become someone, only to leave it all behind after death, you aim for the supreme stage of nothingness. Live this life as light and empty as the number zero. We are no different from a pot. It is not the decorations outside but the emptiness inside that holds us straight. Just like that, it is not what we aspire to achieve but the consciousness of nothingness that keeps us going."

https://david-gev.medium.com/who-was-shams-of-tabrizs-and-what-are-the-40-rules-of-love-36089d83fe16

Ibrahim

[KhalidW]

Thank you so much for the reply Shaykh Ibrahim, I will pass that on!

Khalid