point us away from misery

I love poet-translator Coleman Barks' paragraphs introducing his translations of Rumi poems as much as I love the poems themselves. This is from The Essential Rumi:

Green Ears Everywhere: On Children Running Through

In China they tell of three laughing Taoist masters, who taught by going into town and standing in the marketplace and laughing. One of them died. People curious as to how the remaining two would act gathered at the funeral pyre. The other two masters had been given instructions not to prepare the body in any way, not even to change the clothes the dead man was wearing. He had crammed his pockets full of firecrackers. The teaching began again. Rumi's poems are like firecrackers on a funeral pyre. They won't allow much public posturing, and they point us away from misery.