The frustrating treasure scroll

Yes. I think the reason you found this section confusing is that the “treasure scroll” is only the literal beginning of a much larger spiritual argument. Rumi introduces the scroll as an actual object in a story, but then he progressively turns the treasure into a metaphor for the seeker’s relationship with God.

The relevant passage begins around 1907, with the explicit heading “Story of the treasure-scroll”.

What is the “frustrating treasure scroll”?

Literally, it is a written instruction for finding a buried treasure.

A poor faqir has been suffering from poverty. One night he receives a supernatural message telling him to find a particular written scroll among the writing samples in a stationer’s shop. The scroll gives extremely specific instructions:

• go outside the city;

• find a particular domed shrine;

• turn your back toward it and face the qibla;

• shoot an arrow;

• dig where the arrow lands.

He finds the scroll exactly as instructed.

But here is Rumi’s joke—and the central mystery:

The faqir follows the instructions, but he never finds the treasure.

Eventually the news reaches the king. The king thinks, If this scroll really identifies a treasure, I’ll find it. He spends more than six months shooting arrows and digging holes all over the countryside. Nothing. Finally he becomes disgusted and throws the scroll back to the faqir.

So the scroll is “frustrating” because it promises treasure with apparently precise instructions but produces only enormous effort, frustration and disappointment.

And Rumi makes the point explicit: the treasure has become like the legendary ’Anqā—everyone knows its name, but nobody can find its actual substance.

But then Rumi changes the meaning completely

The crucial thing is that the treasure isn’t really buried gold.

The faqir is actually a spiritual seeker. Rumi says that the treasure-search represents something much deeper: the human search for the Divine.

The king represents the ordinary intellect and worldly power. His approach is:

“Give me the instructions. I’ll follow them. I’ll exert enough effort. I’ll dig everywhere. Eventually I’ll get the result.”

And Rumi deliberately lets that approach fail.

The king eventually gives up.

The faqir, however, doesn’t give up.

That leads to one of the most important passages in the whole section. The king basically says: Here, take your useless treasure-scroll back. You’re the sort of person who has nothing better to do than pursue this madness.

And Rumi suddenly says that this is exactly what Love does.

Love is willing to pursue something even when there is no apparent profit. Reason asks, What’s in it for me? Love keeps going when there is no reward.

That is the first major key to the passage.

The king searches for a treasure.

The faqir searches for God.

And those are two completely different kinds of searching.

The really interesting part: the arrow

This is where I think the passage becomes much easier to understand.

The scroll says:

Shoot an arrow and dig where it lands.

The king interprets this literally.

So he shoots an arrow—and then digs.

And shoots another—and digs.

And keeps doing it for six months.

But near the end of the section, the heavenly voice explains what was wrong with his interpretation.

Rumi says, in effect:

You were told to put an arrow on the bow. You were not told to strain yourself by drawing the bow.

That’s the revelation that comes near the end of the section.

This is an extraordinarily Rumi-like joke.

The king assumed:

“I have to make this happen.”

The spiritual meaning is closer to:

“You have to release.”

The arrow is therefore an image of the spiritual seeker.

You don’t manufacture the destination by enormous exertion. You become an instrument through which the Divine movement can occur.

Why does Rumi make the treasure so difficult?

Because the treasure is actually closer than the seeker thinks.

Earlier in the passage Rumi makes this connection through Moses. He says, essentially, that Moses searches for the heavenly light, only to discover that the light is emerging from his own bosom.

That is the same paradox as the treasure scroll.

The seeker thinks:

“Where is the treasure?”

Rumi’s answer is:

“You are looking in the wrong direction.”

This connects very strongly with a recurring Masnavi theme: the thing you desperately seek outside yourself may already be present at the deepest level of yourself.

A second story appears inside the section

And this is probably another reason the 1915–2380 passage felt confusing.

Rumi doesn’t simply tell the treasure story from beginning to end. He interrupts it repeatedly with other stories and theological digressions.

Around the 2000s he moves into a meditation on the relationship between the human voice and the Divine voice. He uses the reed as an analogy: the sound coming from the reed appears to originate in the reed, but actually comes from the breath of the person playing it.

That is another version of the same idea:

What appears to be “me” is actually being breathed through by something deeper.

Then Rumi moves through discussions of saints, spiritual knowledge, fear, work, prayer and divine providence.

At one point he makes the interesting argument that ordinary human fear actually helps organize the world: the ox works because it fears the whip; the merchant works because he wants to relieve his needs; everyone seeks a remedy for his particular pain, and consequently the entire world gets organized.

So the treasure story becomes a launching point for a much larger meditation:

What makes us act? What are we really seeking? Who is actually directing the search?

Then comes the story of the man praying for food

This is particularly important.

Rumi returns to a faqir who has been praying to God for lawful food without having to work for it. Eventually his prayer is answered—but absurdly.

He sees a cow, kills it, and says essentially:

“There! God answered my prayer. This cow is my provision.”

Naturally, the owner of the cow is furious and drags him before David.

Rumi is playing with the distinction between:

a genuine answer to prayer

and

our interpretation of what the answer means.

The man thinks he knows exactly what God’s answer looks like.

He doesn’t.

And that is again the treasure-scroll problem.

Then the passage becomes explicitly mystical

The story eventually reaches the idea of the primordial covenant, “Alast”—the Qur’anic “Am I not your Lord?” and humanity’s response, “Yes.”

Rumi says that the true believer carries the taste of that original encounter within the heart.

That is enormously important for understanding the treasure.

The deepest treasure isn’t something you discover for the first time.

It is something you remember.

You have already encountered God at the deepest level; ordinary consciousness has simply forgotten.

So the spiritual quest is paradoxical:

you search for something you already possess.

And this leads to Daqūqī

Near the end of your section Rumi turns to Daqūqī, the famous wandering saint.

Daqūqī searches for spiritually awakened people whom he cannot find. He grieves for them for years. Eventually he is told not to look merely at their physical appearance. He must learn to see the spirit rather than the outward form.

Rumi tells him, essentially:

Close the satanic eye that sees only forms. Seek them with the spiritual eye.

And then comes the striking instruction:

“Seek!”

Because seeking itself is the foundation of success.

This sounds contradictory after the failed treasure hunt.

But it isn’t.

Rumi is distinguishing between two kinds of seeking:

egoic seeking:

“I will find it through my own power.”

spiritual seeking:

“I will keep my heart oriented toward it while surrendering the demand that I control the result.”

That’s why the faqir succeeds where the king fails.

So what does the treasure actually represent?

I’d put it this way:

Story element

Spiritual meaning

Treasure

Divine reality / God / spiritual fulfillment

Scroll

Revelation, instruction, spiritual teaching

Arrow

The seeker’s intention or effort

Shooting

Seeking

Digging

Spiritual exertion

King

Intellect, worldly power, self-directed effort

Faqir

The lover/seeker

Failure to find treasure

The failure of purely external seeking

Heavenly voice

Divine guidance

Six months of digging

The futility of excessive self-reliance

Treasure already associated with the seeker

Divine reality is nearer than the seeker imagines

The key is that Rumi doesn’t say “don’t seek.”

Quite the opposite. He repeatedly says seek.

But seek in the right way.

The king’s mistake is not that he seeks too much. His mistake is that he assumes that more external effort will necessarily produce the spiritual result.

And I think the title “frustrating treasure scroll” is actually quite clever

The frustration is the point.

Rumi wants you to experience the same frustration as the king:

“I followed the instructions! I did everything! Why isn’t the treasure here?”

Because eventually you have to question the assumption behind the search.

And that is precisely what happens near the end. The heavenly voice tells the seeker that he misunderstood the instruction about the bow: he was supposed to put the arrow on the bow, not force the bowstring.

In other words:

The spiritual problem isn’t necessarily insufficient effort. It may be the kind of effort you’re making.

That is why this passage is much more subtle than a simple “treasure within” story.

It is really about the difference between striving and surrender.

And it connects beautifully with something Rumi says elsewhere in the Masnavi: “Sorrow is a treasure, and your pain is as the mine.”  The very frustration that seems to prove the search is failing can itself be the means by which the seeker is transformed.

One-sentence summary

The “treasure scroll” is a mysterious divine instruction that sends a poor man and then a king on an apparently impossible search for buried treasure; Rumi uses their failure to show that the spiritual treasure cannot be obtained by merely following external directions and exerting more force—the real treasure is Divine reality already present within, which is discovered through persistent seeking, love, prayer, and ultimately surrender of the ego’s demand to control the search.

If you’d like, I can also  go through 1915–2380 in about 10–15 sections, explaining what Rumi is doing at each point. That would make the seemingly unrelated stories—treasure, the reed, the saint, fear/work, David, Alast, and Daqūqī—fit together as one argument.