Jahane Rumi In search of the unsearchable: O, my soul! where would you find your house?

25Feb/100

His form has passed away and he has become a mirror (Rumi)

Sunlight has recently offered two versions/translations of Rumi's Mathnawi story of the dervish Bayazid Bestami
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BESTAMI
That magnificent dervish, Bayazid Bestami,
came to his disciples and said,
"I am God."
It was night, and he was drunk with his ecstasy.
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10Feb/103

The Destruction of Holy Sites in Mecca & Medina – Destroying Islamic Heritage

The Asian Age: The Arabian Peninsula, the cradle of Islam, is being demolished by hardliners. In countries such as Saudi Arabia almost all of the Islamic historical sites are gone, but this is not the first time they have been destroyed.
In 1802, and army led by the sons of Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab (the founder of Wahhabism) and Muhammad ibn Saud occupied Taif and began a bloody massacre. A year later, the forces occupied the holy city of Mecca. They executed a campaign of destruction in many sacred places and leveled all the existing domes, even those built over the well of Zamzam. However, after the army left, Sharif Ghalib breached the truce, inciting the Wahhabis to re-occupy Mecca in 1805.
In 1806, the Wahhabi army occupied Medina. They did not leave any religious building, including mosques, without demolishing it, whether inside or outside the Baqi’ (graveyard). They intended to
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28Sep/090

Don’t talk about the journey (Rumi)

come come come
my endless desires
come come come
come my beloved
come my sweetheart
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16Sep/091

Out, Out, Damned Atheists – Karen Armstrong weighs in on God

By Lisa Miller | NEWSWEEK
Published Sep 11, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Sep 21, 2009
The latest salvo in the war between the atheists and the believers comes from the doyenne of religious intellectual history, Karen Armstrong. Her tone is one of high-minded irritation. Her argument is compelling. To oversimplify: "faith" and "reason" are not like political parties. You don't join one after having been convinced via argument of its validity. What the Greeks called logos and what they called mythos define two different aspects of the world and our experience in it: the knowable and the unknowable. You can believe in both. The bridge between them, Armstrong submits, is not the snarky badinage or righteous browbeating that has so defined faith-versus-reason debates of late, but practice. By practice she means not the occasional yoga class but genuine, difficult, repetitive practice, which over time gives the practitioner—even the reasonable practitioner—glimpses of the transcendent or the divine. Call it God.
The Case for God, which comes out this month, is Armstrong's 19th book, and it rides the crest of a wave of books meant to dismantle the arguments of the atheists Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins. Armstrong is uniquely qualified to write on this subject, for having been a Roman Catholic nun, she then rejected faith. "For many years, I myself wanted nothing whatsoever to do with religion," she writes. "But my study of world religion during the last twenty years has compelled me to revise my earlier opinions…One of the things I have learned is that quarreling about religion is counterproductive and not conducive to enlightenment." Armstrong shows that for most of human history, "faith" and "reason" were not mutually exclusive and that even today all kinds people believe in a God that in no way resembles the God the atheists despise. "Jews, Christians, and Muslims all knew that revealed truth was symbolic, that scripture could not be interpreted literally, and that sacred texts had multiple meanings, and could lead to entirely fresh insights," she writes. "Revelation was not an event that had happened once in the distant past, but was an ongoing, creative process." This critique has not been articulated often or clearly enough: the new atheists are, in effect, buying into one particular modern, Western fundamentalist notion of God in order to make God look ridiculous and knock him (or her or it) down. For them to fail to concede that what William James called "religious experience" is far more complex than what certain contemporary believers preach is extremely disingenuous.
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15Sep/091

What a fine, broad kingdom

Another fine poem by Rumi - translation followed by the original

In the world there are invisible ladders,

leading step by step to the summit of heaven.

There is a different ladder for every group,

a different heaven for every path.

Each one is ignorant of the other's condition in this wide kingdom which

has no end or beginning.

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27Aug/090

A Sacred Blasphemy

Rumi once again...

Be off and know
That the way of lovers is opposite all other ways.
Lies from the Friend
Are better than truth and kindness from others.

For Him
The impossible is commonplace,
Punishment is reward,
Tyranny is justice,
Slander is the highest praise.

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24May/091

Mir Taqi Mir’s discovery of Simurgh

Tha woh to rashke hoor-e-behesti hameen mein Mir!
Samjhe na hum to fahm ka apne qusoor tha

(That hoor from paradise was part of my being.
I blame it on my utter lack of comprehension of the Ultimate Truth).

Mir, like other great Urdu poets, has seen Simurgh.

Excerpted from here

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24Sep/080

This Love — Quatrain from Rumi

This Love is the king,
yet a throne cannot be found.
It is the essence of the Koran
yet a verse cannot be found.
Any lover hit by the Hunter's arrow
will bleed all over,
yet a wound cannot be found.

-- Version by Jonathan Star and Shahram Shiva
"A Garden Beyond Paradise"
Bantam Books, 1992

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15Nov/077

Of Autumn and Roses

I sent this poem to Fahmida Riaz a few days ago to comfort her. Little did I know that there would be another death of a close one; and I had to read it again to console myself!

Autumn Rose Elegy

You've gone to the secret world.
Which way is it?
You broke the cage and flew.
You heard the drum that calls you home.
You left this humiliating shelf,
This disorienting desert
Where we're given wrong directions.
What use now a crown?
You've become the sun.
No need for a belt:
You've slipped out of your waist!
I have heard that near the end
You were eyes looking at soul.
No looking now.
You live inside the soul.
You're the strange autumn rose
That led the winter wind in
By withering.
You're rain soaking everywhere
From cloud to ground.
No bother of talking.
Flowing silence and sweet sleep
Beside the Friend
Rumi translated by Coleman Barks
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8Jul/078

Sufi Zikr – inspiration for a painting

This is a painting that I revisited and converted its earlier abstract form into a calligraphic experiment. Now the challenge was that in addition to the lack of training in oil painting, I was also a novice in calligraphy. Anyway, the image inside Rumi's tomb that I posted on this blog earlier as well as the three attributes of the Almighty helped me in putting this together. The letters in the centre are Hu (affirmation of the Divine presence and a Sufi chant) and its mirror image. In Rumi's words:

Eternity is the mirror of the temporal, the temporal the mirror of pre-eternity - in this mirror those
two are twisted together like his tresses..(translated by Arberry).

This was truly inspirational as I remembered the lines with a brush in my hand. Another little flash was the three words that I have remembered abundantly thanks to a guide. Alas, I am out of touch with him.

The three words, familiar and lyrical, on the right side of the painting represent the key attributes of Allah : Ar-Rahman(the Beneficient), Ar-Raheem (the Merciful), Al-Kareem (the Generous).

Muslim mystics have chanted these names since centuries in the quest to attain inner peace and closeness to Divine consciousness.

With this little feat, I am sort of feeling peaceful myself.

View entry >>

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20Jun/073

Enough of learning, my friend! – Bulleh Shah

Enough of learning, my friend!

Enough of learning, my friend!

To it there is never an end

An alphabet should do for you,

It's enough to help you fend.

You've amassed much learning around,

The Quran and its commentaries profound.

There is darkness amidst lighted ground.

Without the guide you remain unsound.

Learning makes you a Sheikh or his minion,

And thus you create problems trillion.

You exploit others who know not what,

Misleading them with wild opinion.

You meditate and you say your prayers

You go and shout at the top of the stairs.

Your cry reaching the high skies,

Its your avarice which ever belies.

The day I learnt love's lesson,

I plunged into the river of divine passion;

An overwhelming gale, I was confounded and lost

When Shah Inayat cruised me across.

Source: here

More on Bulleh Shah here and here

Punjabi version is below

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18Jun/073

Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai

If you are seeking Allah

If you are seeking Allah,
Then keep clear of religious formalities.
Those who have seen Allah
Are away from all religions!
Those who do not see Allah here,
How will they see Him beyond?

Let us go the land of Kak
Where love flows in abundance,
There are no entrances, no exits,
Every one can see the Lord!

There is no light nor day
Every one can see the Lord!
Those who love the Lord
The world cannot hold them.
Palaces do not attract them,
Nor women nor servants
Nothing binds them:
The renouncers leave everything behind.

A message came from the Lord:
A full moon shone
Darkness disappeared
A new message came from the Lord:
It does not matter what caste you are
Whoever come, are accepted.

Where shall I take my camel,
All is Light...
Inside there is Kak, mountain and valley,
The Lord and the Lord: there is nothing but the Lord.

(translated from Sindhi by D. H. Butani)

Legacy of Shah Latif is a recent book on Bhitai's life and works. In a recent book review, Anwar Abro writes:

"Two and a half centuries after his death, the celebrated Sindhi philosopher-poet Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai (1689-1752 AD) continues to inspire and influence the lives and activities of the peace-loving mystic souls of Sindh. Intellectual activities, social, political or ideological discourses are considered meaningless without the recitation of his poetry. Shah Latif has become an essential part of the day-to-day life of the people of Sindh so much so that everyone wants to find out more about his life, his principles and beliefs and discover the true interpretation of his mesmerisingly meaningful poetry..."

read more here

Picture above right is courtesy Himal Magazine

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5Jan/071

Nizamuddin Auliya – for Marta Franceschini

My post on the pictures of Nizamuddin Auliya's dergah (shrine) attracted a visitor whose devotion to the great Nizamuddin is quite touching. Marta wrote:

"...picture of the Dargha is next to my bed, first thing I see in the morning and last in the evening. .... No one ever loved me like he does. To experience the power of his love is something impossible to express with words, something that has changed completely the perspective of my life."

Commenting further on the pictures, Marta said:

".....The best gift for Christmas. I am not muslim, nor christian, or anything else, but however my heart is full of love for God which, I am sure, is One and Overwhelming. And does embrace me all time long. If my presence doesn't offend anyone in your site I will be glad to come back again, and possibly talk to anyone close to the Great Chisthy Saint."

Her full comment can be found here

I visited this remarkable place recently spending my evenings and all the spare time at the shrine. I have met more and more people at the dergah including a devotee who also runs the Sufi Inayat Khan Center nearby. I will write more about that later.

Now that I have had some time to sort out my pictures, I am posting a few more here. These are dedicated to Marta and I hope she will find them inspiring again...

And this is the last one - the renovated mosque that looks ethereal in the night time.

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30Jul/062

The Universalism of Kabir

Troubled by the ongoing middle east crisis, the destruction of Lebanon and the acrimony generated by the tragic Mumbai blasts, I am reminded of this poem by Kabir:

Allah and Rama

If Khuda inhabits the mosque,
then whose play-field is the rest of the world.

If Rama lives in the idol at the pilgrim station,
then who controls the chaos outside?

The East is Hari's domicile, they say,
the West is Allah's dwelling place.

Look into your heart, your very heart:
That's where Karim-and-Rama reside.
All the men and the women ever born,
Are nothing but Your embodied forms:
Kabir's a child of Allah-and-Rama
They're his Guru-and-Pir

(translated by Vinay Dharwadker in Kabir: The Weaver's Songs)

A miniature painting of Kabir, c.1825

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