Unveiling the Garden of Love

Two well loved stories of love from the Sufi and the Hindu traditions where both serve as metaphors for the love of the Beloved

clipped from astore.amazon.com Discover the common ground shared between Islamic Sufism and Hindu Bhaktism through their literary expressions. This book examines two classic love poems-The Story of Layla Majnun (written by Nezami in the Sufi tradition) and Gita Govinda (written by Jayadeva in the Hindu tradition)-and finds common experiences of love shared between these seemingly disparate cultures.

Contemporary Sufi Poetry

This is a re-posting that was originally on my other blog, The Sufi Book and Music Blog but I thought it worth posting it here too as I get more readers here and contemporary Sufi poetry is definitely worth bringing to a wider audience.

If you do a Google search on Sufi poetry the results will most likely bring up a wealth of sites with information and examples of the masters of the art. Honoured and respected poets on the Sufi path who wrote about what they experienced and ‘tasted’ on the journey of return to unity with the One. It is a journey of longing and struggle in which all things are seen as the signs of God, including our own selves. Metaphors of love are commonly used in such poetry where the lover longs for union with the Beloved. We see this in the images of the nightingale singing to the rose or the moth drawn to the flame. There are many translations from the original languages in which this poetry was written, Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Urdu, to English. Some of these translations are more like free interpretations attempting to capture the spirit of a piece for contemporary readers. For example, the thirteenth century Sufi poet/mystic Jalaluddin Rumi is one of the most widely read poets in the United States today. But what about Sufi poetry written today by contemporary students on the Sufi path?

Very little contemporary Sufi poetry is published for a mainstream readership. There appears to be little publishing interest in contemporary Sufi writing. Yet many of today’s dervishes, like Sufis of old, still feel compelled to allow words to flow and the recent phenomenon of the blog provides a structure for that expression. Try some of the following blogs for poetry from the heart written today. Just click on the titles.

Knocking from Inside

Poems from the Edge of the Continent

The Wandering Troubadour

Court of Lions

Ecstatic Exchange

Gathering of Thoughts

Sufi: Expressions of the Mystic Quest

"Through the Sufi themes of the descending arc of Creation, the foundation of the human soul, and its return through the ascending arc of the Quest, Laleh Bakhtiar brings to light the spiritual reality that underlies the forms and rhythms of the Islamic tradition. Her introduction is suitable for both novice and experienced readers."

I remember when I first began reading the work of Laleh Bakhtiar many years ago and how I immediately felt that connection to the author that happens when the author is writing from her own experience and practice. As the Qur’an maintains that all things are the signs of God then all of creation is a book to be read. Then we have a third ‘book’ of signs, and that is ourselves. As we read in that well known hadith that is central to the Sufi path, know yourself and you will know your Lord. This allows us to read all of creation in the way of the path and in this book, Laleh Bakhtiar looks at the forms and the rhythms of the Sufi path in their relation to the arc of descent that brought us from our primordial creation to our present lives, and the arc of ascent, which is the journey of return to our origins in God. This is the great quest of every lover who seeks union with the Beloved and Laleh Bakhtiar takes the reader through the Islamic Sufi tradition and its reflection in the architecture, poetry, music, dreams, and geometry of the Muslim world.

This is a wonderful introduction to the core concepts of Sufism and also a great pleasure for the seasoned traveller, for learning never ceases. Sufi: Expressions of the Mystic Quest is well worth reading and digesting.

Ibn ‘Arabi and Spiritual Refreshment

I can always rely on Ibn ‘Arabi for spiritual refreshment and feeling greatly in need of drinking close to the source of compassion I have been reflecting on the great Shaykh’s life and work recently. Ibn ‘Arabi is also known as the Shaykh al-Akbar, the greatest Shaykh. He was born in Al-Andalus in the mid twelfth century and lived half his life there before travelling east. He wrote prodigiously and claimed never to write anything he had not experienced personally. His influence on the development of Sufism was immense. Stephen Hirtenstein has written a biography of Ibn ‘Arabi and what I appreciate so much about this biography is the way he introduces the reader to the thought of Ibn ‘Arabi and also describes the historical context in which he lived, wrote, and pursued his spiritual path. Many scholars see Ibn ‘Arabi as being equally significant to our present day concerns alongside the work of Jalaluddin Rumi. To read this book is like stepping into the times of Ibn ‘Arabi in Al-Andalus and bathing in his spiritual wisdom. Having lived in Andalucia I often had a sense of his presence in the places he had been whether in the mosque of Cordoba, the port of Adra, or under the mulberry trees in the Alpujarran Mountains. It felt like remembering his presence in Andalucia brought a special blessing and that I had moved back several hundred years through time, or that time had become blurred and no longer relevant. One day, insh’allah, I hope to visit his tomb in Damascus.

If you would like to read more about this great Shaykh then just click on the image.

Sufis in Palestine

"Rare glimpses of two 20th-century Sufi saints are offered in this work: the eminent Shaykh al-Alawi and the lesser-known woman saint Fatima al-Yashrutiyya, both of whom continued on the Sufi path even as they watched their world crumble. Shaykh al-Alawi's influence was pivotal to the spiritual development of Thomas Merton, who looked to al-Alawi's writings and teachings in his own practice. Fatima al-Yashrutiyya is a rare example of a literate Muslim woman living a public spiritual life. Readers will see a new side of the Sufi Path from her uncompromising viewpoint, and can catch an uncommon glimpse of life in the early 20th century for a spiritual seeker, writer, and self-educated woman in the Muslim world. These essays represent Islam in its esoteric dimension and raise issues of regional unrest and colonial intervention that are still relevant. Through the words of these two saints the world of the Sufi brotherhood is opened, revealing an underlying theme of the oneness of Allah."

Fatimah al-Yashrutiyya was born in Acre, Palestine in 1883. The Yashruti Sufi Order in which she grew up and in which her father was a Shaykh (spiritual guide) are a branch of the Shadhili Order, founded in 1258. Fatimah’s father promoted the advance of education for women and in her autobiography she speaks of the many scholars of philosophy and the Sufi path from whom she learnt. Following the Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948, known to the israelis as the War of Independence, Fatimah and her family had to flee their home to live permanently in Beirut. The book pictured on the left, Two Who Attained contains a translation of her autobiography and is published by Fons Vitae. Just click on the image if you would like to order it. Below is an excerpt from the autobiography. The book also contains translations of the work of Shaykh Ahmad al-Alawi, another 20th century Sufi saint.

“The Shadhiliyya Sufi method is founded on the Holy Book and the Sunna of the Prophet Muhammad, the search for knowledge, and the frequent practice of invocation in an attitude of worshipfulness and consciousness of the divine. This means of calling upon God is the easiest and most direct of spiritual paths, for it does not entail great hardship or much strenuous effort. The primordial light lying dormant within the soul gains strength through the light of knowledge and through the light of invocation, so that the soul is rid of its defects and impurities. It can then draw nearer to the Divine Presence until it is completely absorbed and the invocation burns away all thoughts of anything other than the One Invoked.”

Photo of Fatima al-Yashrutiyya taken from the Fons Vitae website

Rumi’s Daughter

clipped from astore.amazon.com Rumi was one of the great mystical poets of all time, a vibrant figure whose unorthodox views on love still resonate today. Although little is known about his life, we do know that he lived in Anatolia, had an extraordinary spiritual friendship with a man named Shams, and brought an adopted girl, Kimya, into his family. This stirring novel is Kimya’s story—of how she finds herself drawn to the mysterious Shams, and how, by marrying him, her soul begins its true journey into fire. Set against the decline of the Byzantine Empire and the Mongol invasions, this tale of a tempestuous love affair combines all the timeless themes and passions of Rumi’s own verse. Kimya, a Forgotten Mystic This review was originally printed in Sufi, 69, Spring 2006. It is reprinted here with permission from Alireza Nurbakhsh, editor of Sufi. “Rumi’s Daughter is both a delightful and informative novel. It comes to us from Muriel Maufroy, French-born author and ex-journalist for the BBC World Service who currently lives in London. Partly imagined and partly factual, it recounts the life of Kimya, the adopted daughter of Maulana Jalalud-Din Rumi (1207-1273) who is known today both for his mystical love poetry written to his beloved God and the Sufi Order of the Whirling Dervishes founded after his death. Nothing is really known about Kimya’s origins, and we know very little about her life in Rumi’s household. Yet through her enchanting depiction, Maufroy lovingly evokes the spirit of a vivacious and ingenuous young girl. She brings to life this child of seven in all her innocence and simplicity as the girl awakens to a world of wonder and embraces the life of a mystic, even before she meets Rumi and Shams. This book is especially unique, in that it offers a glimpse into Rumi’s life from the women’s point of view, something which had not been done before. It seems plausible that Kimya was born in an Anatolian village near Konya, that as a child she went into trances when she would black out and enter another dimension losing all track of time, and that her love for God was all-consuming, shaping what she became. As a young child Kimya frequently wonders, “Why am I alive? Where was I before I was born?” She appears to have been where Rumi and Shams are long before she meets them. Following one of her reveries she tells her mother sobbing, “I was somewhere where I was so happy … Then it was all over.” Maufroy writes, “And for a second it seemed the child had been touched by a beam of light.” In turn, Kimya’s Greek Christian mother Evdokia wonders how Kimya happens to be her child, and her Turkish Muslim father Farokh jokes whether perhaps she might be a witch. Both parents feel she does not “belong” to them. Through this cross-cultural family, Maufroy gives us a flavor of the times in Anatolia when the Seljuk Turks ruled (1077-1308) the land, gently weaving historical facts in between her delightfully inspired fiction. She infuses the pages of her book with images that instruct: Farokh talks of nearby cities, Konya and Laranda, where his cousins used to visit and would return to tell stories about houses carved out of stone and “people speaking strange languages and wearing even stranger dresses.” Kimya’s father tells his inquisitive daughter of his nomadic childhood herding goats and sheep, bartering and selling milk, cheese, wool, and rugs, while living in tents made of felt, looking up to shamans for spiritual guidance, worshipping idols, and making offerings to the gods. In contrast, they now live in a stone house, work the land, and attend the mosque. Thus we learn about the landscape, inhabitants, and living conditions in the Taurus Mountains in the thirteenth century. Incidentally, Maufroy has traveled to Turkey on numerous occasions and even lived in a Turkish village in the area. We also discover Konya and its many preachers: “Not only the Christian monks who tried to stem the rise of Islam, or the Franks on their way to Palestine, but all those beggars in disguise who came from the East and made their living from swallowing swords, spitting fire, or pretending to read the future.” Indeed, thirteenth-century Anatolia was a place where many faiths were intertwined: Hellenic, Gnostic, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian, and Pagan. And the region was layered in many cultures: Greek, Roman, Persian, Turkish, and Arab. One could hear Venetian, Saxon, or Frank, Greek or Persian, Turkish or Arabic spoken in the streets. We meet characters like Ahmed, a Persian youth from Konya, his friend Theophanes, a young Greek boy, or Father Chrisostom, a Christian priest and a friend of Kimya’s family. Young Kimya wisely comments on this miscellany of peoples saying, “Perhaps one day everybody will speak the same language.” As already indicated, Maufroy cleverly embeds her sensitively inspired tale within much historical fact. For example, through the ruminations of Father Chrisostom we learn that in the villages “Islam and the language of the Turkomans were slowly supplanting Christianity and the Greek language. How unsettling it was at times to live in this land of Anatolia and the Taurus, pulled between the Byzantine and Persian empires!” We also become aware of the tumultuous times in which Kimya lived, when the Mongol hordes were invading the country: “It was not only the individual who was threatened, but whole ways of life with their unique forms and richness. One heard of libraries disappearing in blazes, of illuminated manuscripts torn to pieces, of works of art reduced to rubble.” But what the author really wants and succeeds to impress on us is her belief that, in the eyes of God, religious and gender differences are of little importance. We learn about Jalalud-Din Rumi as a preacher who accepts people of all faiths, and “even women,” as his disciples, which leads to much gossip about the propriety of his tolerance and his unorthodox views. In fact, Rumi’s second wife Kerra, whom we meet in this novel, was Christian. In the story Rumi is revered as Maulana, Our Master. Most importantly, we hear his own words, expressing the heart of his teaching: “Love for the Creator is latent in all men.” The Greek priest Chrisostom also voices sentiments similar to Rumi’s: “People have their faiths and God hears each one of them. Who are we to tell them how to talk to Him?” Thus, real-life characters and fictional ones blend together. Kimya’s story begins in 1239 when she is seven. Rumi would have been thirty-two years old that year, a young scholar and spiritual figure gaining recognition and gathering a following. Their lives converge when Kimya’s parents, after much heart-wrenching contemplation, take the precocious young girl to Konya, where she can be taught by nuns in a convent. Instead, it is Kimya’s fate to cross paths with Rumi, who invites her to live in his home with his wife and children. By that point, Kimya has already learned about Rumi and his teaching from Ahmed, who teaches her the precious Persian word, doost, meaning “the Friend”–”the one I Love”, “the One I Long For.” It is with the sensitivity and compassion of a true believer that Maufroy evokes the exchange that might have transpired between Rumi and Kimya when they meet physically for the first time: “We have already walked a long way together,” remarks Rumi to Kimya. And through Kimya, who is not even ten yet, we see Rumi: “From his whole being emanated a feeling of warmth and kindness, though his eyes looked sharp and alert.” What follows in the rest of the novel after that point is both intense and a delight, as the author shows us through the young girl’s eyes what Rumi the man might have been like, what might have transpired in his household day to day, and how he might have talked and behaved in everyday life. It is thus that we meet Rumi’s second wife Kerra, his grown sons Sultan Walad and Alaud-Din, his six-month-old son Alim, his friends Sadruddin Qonavi, Namj al Razi, Salah ud din Zarkob, and finally, his doost Shams of Tabriz, “the confidant of [his] soul.” Approximately the last two thirds of the book follows Kimya as she matures beyond her years both psychologically and spiritually in a very short time. This part of Kimya’s tale is grounded in more familiar territory for readers who already know the historical facts of Shams and Rumi’s relationship, Shams’s wondrous entry into Rumi’s life in 1244, the jealousy that ensued among Rumi’s followers, and Shams’s heartbreaking disappearance forever only four years later. Kimya is barely fifteen when she enters into a marriage with Shams, her senior by at least three decades, who evokes emotions that are both exhilarating and devastating for anyone, let alone a child her age. Shams neglects her most of the time, instead spending his time with Rumi, locked in a room, without even food, for days and nights on end, lost in mystical conversation. The historical Kimya was much pitied for having been neglected and for dying of loneliness and despair. This is not how Maufroy sees it, though. And this is another important aspect of this curiously powerful book. All along, the author indicates that too often our perceptions distort what really happens. We do not see reality; we interpret it according to our conditioning. This is particularly noticeable in Kimya’s relationship with Shams, which to Maufroy, is much more than an arranged marriage or one of convenience. The relationship is also one of teacher and disciple. We witness Kimya’s burning and her mystical transformation, as Shams allows her “almost at will to enter the place where her heart [is] content.” The discrepancy between perception and reality is equally demonstrated in the parallel relationship between Rumi and Shams, which clearly remains incomprehensible to the onlookers. But the main theme in the novel is first of all the Sufi theme of love and separation. Early in the book one of the characters proclaims: “Love’s task is to take us beyond the realm of separation. It has nothing to do with happiness here”–a statement which actually foretells Kimya’s, and later on Rumi’s story itself, as well as the very foundation of his teaching. As a whole, this is an insightful novel that does not only interweave historical facts with a creative account of a young girl’s experiences growing up in Rumi’s household, but is imbued with Sufi thought and knowledge: “God’s knowledge is as free as a bird and so is your soul.” “There is a knowledge the mind knows nothing of”. Such statements subtly draw the reader into the Sufi mystic’s world and its language. “When Kimya left,” Maufroy writes, “the sky was softening into a rose-tinted gold, as tender as God’s whisper”. It is this whisper from God that this novel manages to make us hear.” Müge N. Galin, Ph.D., from the Department of English at The Ohio State University, has written Between East and West: Sufism in the Novels of Doris Lessing (State University of New York Press, 1997), Turkish Sampler (Indiana University, 1989), and Fatma Aliye Hanim (Isis Press).

Compassionate Listening

I have just added a new blog to my blogroll. It is Listening to the Tune in Dialogue by my friend Lisa Saffron. Lisa has been running dialogue sessions using the skills of compassionate listening for some time now and having attended a couple of her Jewish-Muslim sessions I can testify to how powerful these sessions can be. Compassionate communication is as much about listening to oneself as it is about listening to others and about being heard without judgement.

Lisa has also written a novel called Checkpoint which is about the meeting of a Palestinian and an Israeli family in tragic circumstances and how this experience changes lives.

Go across to Lisa’s blog and take a look.

A Sufi Novel by Irving Karchmar

This novel is written by Irving Karchmar who many of you may already know from his blog, Darvish. Exciting, informative, and uplifting, this is the kind of literature we need more of for everyone interested in the spiritual path. Irving also has a page about his novel here

clipped from astore.amazon.com Here is a tale set on the Path of the Heart, a beautifully written mystical adventure wherein a modern-day Sufi Master sends seven companions on a perilous quest for the greatest treasure of the ancient world- King Solomon’s ring. The legendary seal ring is said to control the Jinn, those terrifying demons of living fire, and in seeking it the companions discover not only the truth of the Jinn, but also the path of Love and the infinite mercy of God. About the Author Irving Karchmar, the author of Master of the Jinn, has been a writer, editor and publisher for many years, and a darvish of the Nimatullahi Sufi Order since 1992. He resides near New York City and is currently at work on his second novel, a sequel entitled Tale of the Jinn.

A New Era for Kurdish Literature

This sounds like a very interesting novel that explores the conflicting interests of politicians and novelists. The author, Bakhtyar Ali, hopes that this novel will herald the end of the subordination of Kurdish writers to politicians. I hope this novel will soon be translated into English and thereby gain a wider readership.

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk A leading novelist’s latest work could mark a new era for Kurdish literature. In an unprecedented deal, author Bakhtyar Ali has been paid $25,000 by a publisher in the Kurdish region of Iraq, who has printed 10,000 copies of Ghazalnus and the Gardens of Imagination. The plot features elements of fantasy: the poet discovers a land that turns into an infinite garden at night, a group of women living in a shelter to escape domestic violence weave the world’s biggest carpet, and a Hollywood film buff leads a group of blind children on an imaginary sea journey. The plot of the novel depicts opposing realms, and opposing interests of poets and politicians.