The First Eighteen Verses of Rumi's Masnavi

The First Eighteen Verses of Rumi's Masnavi

The first eighteen verses of Rumi’s Masnevi are like an entrance to his great villa where he welcomes his guests and gives them the keys of the rooms without which the guests might get lost and falter in the corridors of his grand villa –the Masnevi. If you intend to enter the building, you should surrender humbly to the spiritual entertainment he offers at the entrance.

The first eighteen verses are the summary of the six volumes of the Masnevi. The verses begin with “B” and end with “M”, which are the first and the last letters of “Bismillahirrahmanirrahim”. = “In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful” with which each sura of the Koran begins.

First, the text of the verse itself has been corrected, where necessary. (a) gives the literal meaning of the verse and (b) the literary meaning and a commentary, which is further compared with the other commentaries. Where other information is needed (c) is added to the commentary.

1) a) Listen to this Ney (the reed-flute) that is complaining and narrating the story of separation.

b) The Ney is the body of man and the breath blown into it is the spirit (breath of God). This refers to the Koranic verse: Behold, thy Lord said to the angels, “I am about to create man, from sounding (dry) clay...” and “when I have fashioned him (man) and breathed into him My spirit fall ye down in obeisance unto him (the Koran, XV/28 and 29); and “for God has poured His love into our hearts by means of the Holy Spirit who is God’s gift to us” (the Bible, Romans 4/5).

2) a) Ever since they (the people) have plucked me from the reedland, my laments have driven men and women to deep sorrow.

b) The “reed-land” here means the original place of man where he dwelt before his coming to earth. It was in the vicinity of his Beloved God (Paradise) where he was watered with His spiritual light, as was the reed of the Ney once watered by a stream or a lake. Since man is deprived of the vicinity of God and is separated like the piece of reed from its origin, he too laments and cries in every sort of company (of men or women). He can no more be green and fresh (attain eternal joy) unless he succeeds in obtaining spiritual water.

c) The “Ney” here does not necessarily mean a “perfect man” as most of the commentaries say, because being at the higher spiritual stage (being naught in God), a perfect man is already with God and he is free from any worldly worries as the Koran says: “Behold verily, with the friends of God there is no fear nor shall they grieve” (X/62-63). It can mean any man who is in love with God and has begun to feel abandonment. Moreover, it is not used here in its ordinary meaning of “a Ney = a flute “as Ahmad Atesh says (see his article, p.48)

3) a) I want someone with chest (heart) pierced by abandonment so that I may tell him about the pain of my longing.

b) The Ney (actually Rumi or a lover of God) says that it wants to express its unbearable pains caused by the separation from the Beloved to someone who has a heart full of pain like that of its own. Those who have no feeling for love will not be able to appreciate the grief brought about by the separation.

4) a) He who falls aloof from his origin seeks an opportunity to find it again.

b) Rumi here gives a general rule that everything in the universe tends towards its origin. For instance, the physical elements of a human body desire to go back to the earth but the spirit of man wants to rejoin its Centre; and like the dry piece of reed in the shape of the Ney yearns for its reed-land. The breath blown into the Ney also wants to go back to its blower. Since the spirit is the breath of God, it wants to go back to Him. The farther the spirit falls from its Origin, the more it loses the attraction of the Centre.

5) a) I am mournful in all sorts of company and sought by the happy as well as by the unhappy.

b) The company of the Ney can be enjoyed both by the happy and the unhappy (the wretched). Here the happy are those who have attained the Divine Love and are preoccupied with it; and the unhappy are those who indulge in the temporary pleasures of the world and who are prisoners of shapes and forms. They listen to the Ney for physical entertainment but the former listen to it because they hear the voice of their Beloved.

6) a) Everyone becomes a friend with me according to his faculty of perception and many do not seek my inner secret.

b) The “inner secret” here means the spiritual states that a Sufi experiences. Many failed to discover the states Rumi passed through, especially under the guidance of Shams, and they judged Rumi and his master just by looking at their outer appearance. Some orthodox Muslims thought that music, dance (the Sema), and even poetry were non-Islamic elements.

7) a) My secret is not distant from my cries, but physical eyes and ears do not possess the light (to see it).

b) God says in the Koran, “Those who reject our signs (our symptoms in each phenomenon) are deaf and dumb and they are in the midst of darkness” (the Koran VI/39). “The best kind of knowledge is gained when a man may discover God by means of His signs...

The friend is closer to me than myself,

And strange it is that I am so far from him!”. (Bhagawat Gita, Per., p. 79)

Thus, the spirit of man is not concealed from the body but not all-physical ears and eyes can see it. In order to see what lies behind a physical object, one needs spiritual intelligence and illumination.

8) a) (In fact) the body from the spirit and the spirit from the body are not concealed, yet none (not many) are allowed to see it.

b) The spirit that is connected with Divine World is not far from the human body. The spirit and the body can recognise each other, but men may not be able to discern it.

9) a) The sound of Ney is fire and it is not the ordinary wind but he who does not have this fire may he become non-existent.

b) For many people the wind blown into the Ney and its sound are ordinary phenomena, while for a lover of God it is the fire that burns in the core of his heart. The person who has no feelings of love might as well die, because without the divine love, life is meaningless. As the heat of physical body is essential for life so is the love of God for the spirit.

10) a) It is the fire of Divine Love that has entered the Ney, it is the yearning for love that has bought the wine into action.

b) Fermentation of wine, the vibration of the musical instruments or even the motivation of the living beings is due to the hidden attraction of Divine Love. The lovers of God are all in search of their Origin and when they hear the sound of the Ney their fire of love increases too.

c) Like the word “Ney”, wine is also a well-known metaphor in the Sufi language. It means “the esoteric joy or a paroxysm of ecstasy”. If wine is taken in this sense then it would mean that zeal of a Sufi is because of his spiritual drunkenness and due to his physical pleasure.

11) a) The Ney is a friend with anyone who has been deserted, and its musical divisions have torn off veils too.

b) It is not possible to hide the moaning of the Ney when it is played. Similarly, a lover of God (Sufi) cannot hide his feelings of love. Thus the notes of the Ney (perde) tear off the curtains (perdes) of a lover. The Persian word “perde” has been used rhetorically in the double meaning (Homonym).

12) a) Who has seen an antidote as well as a poison like the Ney; who has seen a sympathising and longing lover like the Ney?

b) The Ney is a poison to those who fail to pass from sensory phenomena to intelligible noumena under the light of intuitive guidance, and who remain the prisoners of outer forms. For those whose spiritual eyes have been opened, the Ney is like an antidote, which consoles them when they burn with the fire of love. “The Ney is poison” also refers to orthodox Muslims who give more importance to physical rituals than to inner enlightening.

13) a) The Ney speaks about the bloody and dangerous path and tells stories of Majnun (who sacrificed himself for his beloved Leyli).

b) The path of Divine Love is not a bed of roses for in this path one has to sacrifice all his selfish, carnal desires, egoistic intelligence, and passions. One’s heart should be filled with nothing else but the love of God.

14) a) None other but he who has abandoned his worldly senses can comprehend the secret of my heart (or the story of the Ney); and it is the ear that is the customer (receiver) of the tongue.

b) In order to understand the spiritual state of a lover of God (or the Ney) one has to move out of the bounds of this physical intellect and attain the intuition and spiritual illumination with the heat of Divine Love and devotion. In order to receive the celestial message one has to possess spiritual ears.

15-16) a) In sorrow our days have lost sense of time and they have become fellow travellers with our grieves. If the days have passed away, tell them to keep on going there is nothing to worry about; but O you the purest one (the love of God) stay with us.

b) The love of God makes a lover oblivious of time; and along with this he forgets his worries. The time, fame and wealth of this world are transient but love is eternal and in its presence, the fear of death and the cruelty of time have no value. It is the enduring love that converts all worries into real happiness, so be with such a love.

c) The “pure one” does not mean God Himself as indicated by Nicholson with the capital letter “Thou” (Nich.1/5) nor is it a reference to Husameddin but “Ma=we” refers to all lovers.

17) a) Everyone except a fish is sated with water and he who is not provided with his daily bread (earing) fails to pass days in comfort.

b) “Fish” is again a symbol. It means a lover of God whose desire for spiritual water is endless because he is in the Sea of Mercy and Love. Like a fish the more he drinks of the reviving water of God’s love, the more he desires it. But the man who has never been in such a Sea, he is like a person without wages or a job for he cannot buy spiritual food for himself. The currency of this world is of no use in the love-land of God.

18) a) Since a raw (immature) man is unable to perceive the state of a ripe (mature) man, it is better to cut a long story short and bid him farewell.

b) “An immature man” means a person who is preoccupied with sensory pleasures and is detained from journeying further on the path of love, while “a ripe man” is a person who has gone further towards Truth. Immature man also refers to a fanatic Muslim who does not understand the story of the Ney (Rumi) and who would scorn the musical companies of Sema and the recitation of the Masnevi. To such people Rumi suggests that we should say “farewell” only. In Urdu there is a proverb, “To play the Ney (Biin) in front of a buffalo” or the English “To cast pearls before swine” is what is meant here.

It is evident that in the first eighteen verses Rumi has tried to give us eighteen steps that lead to salvation or unification with God. In order to facilitate the divisions of the following chapters, these steps have been reduced to nine. This will enable us to simplify partially the “peculiar” looseness in the association of ideas of the Masnevi (as put by Jan Rypka, p.241). Rumi brought in parables and tales that may or may not relate to the theme of his Masnevi to attract the attention of his reader. These parables have been excluded from this book to save time. Moreover, they do not need explanation. Their exclusion from the text may result in certain monotony, although the verses selected here cover extracts from them, too.

The Steps:

1. The state of an immature man (a materialistic man).

2. The awakening (searching for daily bread or spiritual food).

3. The desire and quest (feeling of separation from the Origin like that of the Ney).

4. Indifference to worldly riches (Majnun’s submission).

5. Divine Love (the blood stained path of love).

6. Devotion and sacrifice.

7. Bewilderment (tearing of veils).

8. Observation of God in every phenomenon.

9. Unification.

تأملي بر جهان بيني مولانا

تأملي بر جهان بيني مولانا

تأملي بر جهان بيني مولانا جلال الدين محمد بلخيدستگير صادقي

Lament of the Reed by Rumi - بشنو از نی

Listen to the story told by the reed,
of being separated.

“Since I was cut from the reedbed,
I have made this crying sound.

Anyone apart from someone he loves
understands what I say.

Anyone pulled from a source
longs to go back.

At any gathering I am there,
mingling in the laughing and grieving,

a friend to each, but few
will hear the secrets hidden

within the notes. No ears for that.
Body flowing out of spirit,

spirit up from body: no concealing
that mixing. But it's not given us

to see the soul. The reed flute
is fire, not wind. Be that empty.”

Hear the love fire tangled
in the reed notes, as bewilderment

melts into wine. The reed is a friend
to all who want the fabric torn

and drawn away. The reed is hurt
and salve combining. Intimacy

and longing for intimacy, one
song. A disastrous surrender

and a fine love, together. The one
who secretly hears this is senseless.

A tongue has one customer, the ear.
A sugarcane flute has such effect

because it was able to make sugar
in the reedbed. The sound it makes

is for everyone. Days full of wanting,
let them go by without worrying

that they do. Stay where you are
inside sure a pure, hollow note.

Every thirst gets satisfied except
that of these fish, the mystics,

who swim a vast ocean of grace
still somehow longing for it!

No one lives in that without
being nourished every day.

But if someone doesn't want to hear
the song of the reed flute,

it's best to cut conversation
short, say good-bye, and leave

Rumi -Trans. by Coleman Barks.






بشنو از نی چون حکایت می کند
از جدایی ها شکایت می کند

کز نیستان تا مرا ببریده اند
در نفیرم مرد و زن نالیده اند

سینه خواهم شرحه شرحه از فراق
تا بگویم شرح درد اشتیاق

هر کسی کو دور ماند از اصل خویش
بازجوید روزگار وصل خویش

من به هر جمعیتی نالان شدم
جفت بدحالان و خوشحالان شدم

هر کسی از ظن خود شد یار من
از دورن من نجست اسرار من

سر من از ناله ی من دور نیست
لیک چشم و گوش را آن نور نیست

تن ز جان و جان ز تن مستور نیست
لیک کس را دید جان دستور نیست

آتش است این بانگ نای و نیست باد
هر که این آتش ندارد نیست باد

آتش عشق است کاندر نی فتاد
جوشش عشق است کاندر می فتاد

نی حریف هر که از یاری برید
پرده هاایش پرده های ما درید

همچو نی زهری و تریاقی که دید؟
همچو نی دمساز و مشتاقی که دید؟

نی حدیث راه پرخون می کند
قصه های عشق مجنون می کند

محرم این هوش جز بی هوش نیست
مر زبان را مشتری جز گوش نیست

در غم ما روزها بیگاه شد
روزها با سوزها همراه شد

روزها گر رفت گورو باک نیست
تو بمان ای آنک چون تو پاک نیست

هرکه جز ماهی ز آبش سیر شد
هرکه بی روزیست روزش دیر شد

درنیابد حال پخته هیچ خام
پس سخن کوتاه باید_ والسلام

Jose Saramago: Responsibility of the Intellectuals

Jose Saramago, Portuguese writer, poet, essayist, and Noble Prize winner for literature 1998. Excerpts are from Saramago's essay "La responsabilidad de los intelectuales".

Mystical power

Why Sufi Muslims, for centuries the most ferocious soldiers of Islam, could be our most valuable allies in the fight against extremism.

THIRTY YEARS AGO this month, the collapse of the Shah’s government marked the launch of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, and since that point the topic of Islam has rarely been out of the headlines. All too often, we hear about Islam in the context of intolerance and, often, violence — of Al Qaeda savagery, of Taliban misogyny, of nuclear weapons in Pakistan and perhaps in Iran itself. Even in Europe, many fear the growth of a radical Islamic presence. For three decades, Western observers have worked fervently to comprehend Islam’s global power and appeal, its ability to inspire the poor and to topple governments. But in all that intense attention, most observers have missed a crucial part of the story: a global web of devout religious brotherhoods that by all logic should be a critical ally against extremism.

Sufis are the power that has made Islam the world’s second-largest religion, with perhaps 1.2 billion adherents. Not a sect of Islam, but rather heirs of an ancient mystical tradition within both the Sunni and Shia branches of the faith, Sufis have through the centuries combined their inward quest with the defense and expansion of Islam worldwide. At once mystics and elite soldiers, dervishes and preachers, charismatic wonder-workers and power-brokers, ascetic Sufis have always been in the vanguard of Islam. While pushing forward the physical borders of Islam, they have been essential to the spiritual and cultural fullness of the faith. Today, the Sufi tradition is deeply threaded through the power structures of many Muslim countries, and the orders are enjoying a worldwide renaissance.

To look at Islam without seeing the Sufis is to miss the heart of the matter. Without taking account of the Sufis, we cannot understand the origins of most contemporary political currents in the Middle East and Muslim South Asia, and of many influential political parties. We can’t comprehend the huge popular appeal of Islam for

women, who so often seem excluded from Muslim life. Sufis are central to the ability of Muslim communities to survive savage persecutions — in Chechnya, in Kosovo — and then launch devastating insurgencies. They are the muscle and sinew of the faith.

And, however startling this may seem, these very Sufis — these dedicated defenders and evangelists of mystical Islam — are potentially vital allies for the nations of the West. Many observers see a stark confrontation between the West and Islam, a global conflict that entered a traumatic new phase with the Iranian revolution. But that perspective ignores basic conflicts within the Muslim world itself, a global clash of values over the nature of religious practice, no less than overtly political issues. For the Islamists — for hard-line fundamentalists like the Saudi Wahhabis and the Taliban — the Sufis are deadly enemies, who draw on practices alien to the Quran. Where Islamists rise to power, Sufis are persecuted or driven underground; but where Sufis remain in the ascendant, it is the radical Islamist groups who must fight to survive.

Around the world, the Sufis are struggling against violent fundamentalists who are at once their deadly foes, and ours. To look at Islam without seeing the Sufis is to be ignorant of a crucial clash of civilizations in today’s world: not the conflict between Islam and the West, but an epochal struggle within Islam itself.

If the word “Sufi” conjures up any images for Americans, they normally involve mystical poetry or dance. Thirteenth century poet Rumi was a legendary Sufi, as are Turkey’s whirling dervishes. But these are just the most visible expressions of a movement that runs deeply through the last thousand years of Islam.

Emerging around the year 800, they were originally pious devotees, whose poor woolen clothes showed their humility: “Sufi” comes from the Arabic word for wool. Above all, the Sufis sought the divine reality or ultimate truth that stands above all the illusions and deceptions of the material world. In order to achieve ecstatic union with God, they incorporated techniques of sound and movement — chanting and music, swaying and dance. Believers joined in tight-knit brotherhoods or tariqahs, each following a charismatic leader (shaykh). Among the dozens of these orders, a few grew to achieve special influence, and some operate in dozens of nations, including the United States.

But the orders are more than confraternities of pious devotees. Early in their history, Sufis developed a powerful military streak, making them the knights of Islam, as well as the monks and mystics. Like the Japanese samurai, the brotherhoods trained their followers to amazing feats of devotion and overcoming pain. Fanatical dervish warriors were the special forces of every Islamic army from the 13th century through the end of the 19th.

The expansion of Islam outside the core areas of the Middle East is above all a Sufi story. Sufi orders led the armies that conquered lands in Central and South Asia, and in Southeastern Europe; through their piety and their mysticism, the brotherhoods then won the local populations over to Islam. They presented an Islam that incorporated local traditions and worship styles, including Christian saints and Hindu gods. Today, Sufi styles and practices dominate in the non-Arab Muslim world: in India and Pakistan, in Indonesia and Malaysia, Nigeria and Senegal, and in the Muslim countries of Central Asia, such as Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

Over the centuries, the territories where Sufi orders seeded Islam have evolved from the faith’s frontiers to its demographic heartlands. These regions now encompass Islam’s largest and fastest-growing populations. Of the eight nations with the world’s largest Muslim communities, only one (Egypt) is Arab. A fifth of the world’s Muslims today identify with Sufism, and for many millions more, Sufism is simply part of the air they breathe.

The Sufi orders enhanced their political role as Western empires encroached. When Islam was under threat, the Sufis were the trained soldiers, and their close-knit brotherhoods allowed them to form devastatingly effective resistance movements. Sufi orders led anti-colonial movements from Morocco to Indonesia. Most Americans, for instance, have heard of the stubborn Chechen guerrillas, but few realize how absolutely this movement is rooted in Sufism. When the Russians pushed south into Muslim lands in the 19th century, the heroic Sufi sheikh Imam Shamil launched a decades-long guerrilla war. Even Stalin’s terror campaigns could not root out the Sufi brotherhoods. The fearsome leader of modern-day Chechen resistance, Shamil Basayev, was named for the original imam.

A similar story can be told of other oppressed peoples, in Kurdistan, Kashmir, Albania, Kosovo, and elsewhere, who owed their solidarity and cohesion to the immense power of the Sufi brotherhoods.

The Sufis might sound like America’s worst nightmare. Not only do they ground political activism in religion, but their faith spreads through intense and secretive brotherhoods, led by charismatic masters: this recalls every sinister stereotype of Muslim fanaticism that potboiler thrillers have offered us over the decades. But it would be a terrible mistake to see the Sufis as enemies. Sufis certainly have fought Western forces through the years, and Sufi-founded movements have on occasion engaged in terrorist actions — witness the Chechens. But in the vast majority of cases, such militancy has been essentially defensive, resisting brutal colonial occupations. This is very different from the aggressive global confrontation pursued by groups such as Al Qaeda.

Today, moreover, Sufi brotherhoods face a deadly danger from the strict puritanical or fundamentalist Islam represented by Qaeda and similar movements, which are as threatening to the Sufi brotherhoods as they are to the West. To the extent that we, like the Sufis, face a real danger from violent jihadi fundamentalism, our interests are closely aligned with those of the Sufis.

But the Sufis are much more than tactical allies for the West: they are, potentially, the greatest hope for pluralism and democracy within Muslim nations. The Sufi religious outlook has little of the uncompromising intolerance that characterizes the fundamentalists. They have no fear of music, poetry, and other artistic forms — these are central to their sense of the faith’s beauty — and the brotherhoods cherish intellectual exploration. Progressive Sufi thinkers are quite open to modern knowledge and science.

From their beginnings, too, Sufi traditions have been religiously inclusive. Wherever the orders flourish, popular Islamic religion focuses on the tombs of saints and sheikhs, who believers venerate with song and ritual dance. In fact, they behave much like traditional-minded Catholics do when they visit their own shrines in Mexico or southern Italy. People organize processions, they seek healing miracles, and women are welcome among the crowds. While proudly Islamic, Sufi believers have always been in dialogue with other great religions.

This open-mindedness contrasts with the much harsher views of the fundamentalists, who we know by various names. Salafism claims to teach a return to the pure religion taught by the prophet Muhammad in the seventh century, and in that early Islamic community Salafis think they can find all they need to know about life and law. The most powerful and best-known version of this back-to-basics ideology is the Wahhabi movement that emerged in the 18th century, and which in modern times has built a worldwide presence on the strength of Saudi oil money. At its most extreme, this exclusive tradition rejects knowledge that is not clearly rooted in the Quran and Islamic legal thought, and regards other religions and cultures as dangerous rivals lacking any redeeming virtues. Al Qaeda and its affiliates represent an extreme and savage manifestation of this fundamentalist current.

As fundamentalist Islam spreads around the world, Sufism is one of its targets, even in such strongholds as Indonesia, Pakistan, and Nigeria. Often this comes in the form of ideological struggle, but open violence has broken out as well. Sudan’s Islamist government attacks the black Sufi population of Darfur; in Iraq, suicide bombers target Sufi centers. Sufis have literally everything to lose from the continued advance of the Islamist extremists.

But Sufis are anything but passive victims, and in their resilience lies their true importance to the West. In many nations, Sufi brotherhoods exercise influence within local regimes, and those alliances allow them to drive back radicalism. Sufi brotherhoods have emerged as critical supporters of government in several post-Communist regimes, including in former Yugoslav regions like Kosovo and Bosnia, and in Albania. When a Qaeda-affiliated Islamist movement arose in Uzbekistan, the government’s intimate alliance with the Sufi orders allowed it to destroy the insurgents quite thoroughly. Syria cultivates tolerant-minded Sufi orders as the best means of fending off Islamist subversion. For similar reasons, even the Chinese government openly favors Sufism. Hard as they try, fundamentalist radicals find it impossible to gain much of a foothold in societies where Islam is synonymous with Sufism, and where Sufi loyalty is deeply tied to cultural and national identity.

In 2007, the influential RAND Corporation issued a major report titled “Building Moderate Muslim Networks,” which urged the US government to form links with Muslim groups that opposed Islamist extremism. The report stressed the Sufi role as moderate traditionalists open to change, and thus as potential allies against violence.

Some Western nations are just now grasping the rich rewards that would come from an alliance with the Sufi, with Muslim forces who can claim such impeccable historical and religious credentials. The British government especially has befriended the Sufi orders, and has made groups like the British Muslim Forum and the Sufi Muslim Council its main conversation partners in the Muslim community.

Sufis, better than anyone, can tell disaffected young Muslims that the quest for peace is not a surrender to Western oppression, still less a betrayal of Islam, but rather a return to the faith’s deepest roots. And while Sufis have religious reasons for favoring peaceful and orderly societies, they also stand to benefit mightily from government support in their struggle against the fanatics. As the fundamentalists have expanded, they press hard on Muslim populations who are overwhelmingly drawn from countries where the Sufi current has always dominated Islamic life, from Pakistan, Turkey, and North Africa.

If this British model works, it would encourage the growth of a Euro-Islam that could reconcile easily with modernity and democracy, while yielding nothing of its religious content.

Nobody is pretending that building bridges with Sufis will resolve the many problems that divide the West from the Islamic world. In countries like Afghanistan or Somalia, warfare and violence might be so deeply engraved into the culture that they can never be expunged. Yet in so many lands, reviving Sufi traditions provide an effective bastion against terrorism, much stronger than anything the West could supply by military means alone. The West’s best hope for global peace is not a decline or secularization of Islam, but rather a renewal and strengthening of that faith, and above all of its spiritual and mystical dimensions.

Philip Jenkins is Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University. He is author of “The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia — and How It Died” (HarperOne, 2008).

© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

Taliban and Fanaticism, an analysis

Nazis fanatics burning books, in Germany

Taliban fanatics burning books, in Afghanistan

Taliban fanatics destroying Buddha Statues, in Afghanistan

Nazi fanatics destroying Synagogues on "Crystal Night", in Germany


Taliban and Fanaticism, an analysis

An Afghan's homage to "El maestro", Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz

A poetic description of Paz, India and Afghanistan

http://magazine.artistswithoutfrontiers.com

دربزرگداشت شاملو و نادرپور A Homage To My Favorite Persian Poets (Shamlu & Naderpour)

A Homage To My Favorite Persian Poets

احمد شاملو

ياران من بياييد
با دردهايتان
و بار دردتان را
در زخم قلب من بتكانيد.

من زنده ام به رنج...
ميسوزدم چراغ تن از درد...

ياران من بياييد
با دردهايتان
و زهر دردتان را
در زخم قلب من بچكانيد



Ahmad Shamlu
(1925-2000)

Ahmad Shamlu, the indisputable maestro of contemporary Farsi poetry, is prominent both as a great historical literary figure and a major poet. His historic contribution to the reform of Farsi poetry has been a subject of numerous books. But it is his eminence as a national poet that sets him apart as Iran’s offering to world literature. Shamlu’s poetic vision accords with both Western and modernist concepts as well as the modern transformation of classical Farsi poetry. As a humanist and a socially conscious intellectual, he has skilfully woven personal love and affection with social attitudes. His poetry exudes both hope and a passion for justice:

Shams and Rumi relationship, an understanding

A Reply to Misunderstandings about Rumi and Shams

by Ibrahim Gamard

Dari Language Throughout History - زبان و ادبيات دری در درازنای زمانه ها

Persian/Farsi/Dari Speaking Countries

زبان و ادبيات دری در درازنای زمانه ها

فرهنگ فلسفه - فیلسوفان غربی

(هابز، لاك، اسپينوزا، روسو، كانت، هگل و ماركس)

Rumi's Moses and the Shepherd- موسی و شبان

A brief synopsis of Rumi's Tale of Moses and the Shepherd

"In Rumi's tale about Moses and the Shepherd, Moses rebukes an illiterate shepherd for uttering a prayer to God that expresses his devotion as a naive desire to darn God's socks, rub his feet, wash his clothes, comb his hair, and pick his lice before sweeping a place for God to sleep. Speaking as the bearer of the Commandments, Moses (who is the prophet and the person most frequently mentioned by name in the Qur'an) denounces such prattle as blasphemy and harshly chastises the shepherd, who wanders off, deeply chagrined. But God reveals that by this action Moses has torn a servant of God from the presence of God...Moses then goes after the shepherd to console him, only to find that the shepherd's pure intentions have made him take this rebuke to heart, and have caused him to climb to a higher rung on the ladder of spiritual ascent.

This tale presupposes God's love for his servants, and his willingness to overlook their shortcomings and to judge them by the spirit of their intent, rather than their outward conformity to the letter of law and dogma. Without the emanations of this divine grace and loving-kindness, all the eloquent hymns and praises, the subtle thoughts of humanity in description of the deity, would be so much anthropomorphic nonsense (Masnavi 2: 1800-1804). This grace flows from God to man not, for example, when he correctly performs rituals such as prayer, but when man's spirit is oriented God-ward (Masnavi 2: 1814).

Excerpts from 8-Part Articles on Rumi's Masnavi - by the eminent contemporary American scholar of Rumi, Prof. Franklin Lewis.

Discourses of Rumi (Fihi Ma Fihi)

Discourses of Rumi (Fihi Ma Fihi)

Rumi, El Poeta Místico

Rumi

Nunca se ha expresado el pulso de la espiritualidad oriental y occidental con el extraordinario ímpetu que inunda la obra del santo sufi Jalaluddin Rumi. Su poesía abarca toda época y cultura, todo misterio y toda verdad. Sus palabras brotan de un espacio de amor e inspiración, de un lugar donde el alma y su creador son uno mismo. Durante su vida, los musulmanes, los judíos y los cristianos se sintieron inspirados por sus palabras y utilizaron sus enseñanzas para iluminar las atemporales verdades espirituales de su fe.

Hasta este día, casi ocho siglos después de su muerte, el mundo sigue encontrando inspiración en sus exquisitos versos. Resulta inevitable comprobar que revelan algún íntimo aspecto de nosotros mismos, que descubren algún anhelo secreto o que expresan perfectamente nuestros sentimientos más íntimamente guardados. Al captar el pulso espiritual de su época, Rumi ha abarcado todas las épocas. Al expresar el éxtasis de su corazón, ha conseguido tocar todos los corazones.

Latin America's Rumi, Paulo Coelho

I'm a huge fan of Paulo Coelho and had the fortune of reading most of his works, particularly his universally acclaimed masterpiece, The Alchemist. Is he Latin America's Rumi?

Malang, Sufis, and Mystics

Malang, Sufis, and Mystics
An Ethnographic and Historical Study of Shamanism in Afghanistan

Muhammad Humayun Sidky
Asian Folklore Studies, Vol. 49, No. 2 (1990), 275-301
http://www.khyber.org/publications/041-045/afghanshaman.shtml

Homayun Sidky is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. He holds a Ph.D in Cultural Anthropology and his areas of inerest/expertise are Ecological Anthropology, History, Theory of Anthropology, Anthropology of Religion, Central Asia, Afghanistan, and Easter Island.

Rumi, Islam, and America

Rumi, Islam, and America
Dr.Ehsan Azari



Toward the end of Candid, Voltaire writes in 1758 about a dervish saint who lived in Turkey without citing his name. In the novel, Candid approaches and asks the dervish: “Master…we have come to ask a favour. Will you kindly tell us why such a strange animal as man was ever made?

“When His Highness sends a ship to Egypt, do you suppose he worries whether the ship’s mice are comfortable or not.” The dervish answered.

This dervish was Jalaluddin Mohammad Rumi, also known as Mavlana-i-Balkhi, the greatest metaphysical thinker and Sufi poet of all times. He was born in 1207 AD in Balkh, a northern province of Afghanistan, in a revered family of theologians with a long learned line of Islamic teachings. Following the brutal invasion of Afghanistan by the Mongol hordes, his father and Rumi—still a young child—were forced flee their country and take refuge in Anatolia (Turkey)—at the time part of the Eastern Sultanat (Kingdom) of Roman Empire and then Byzantium.

Educated as a theologian and a grand mullah, Rumi was transformed into an ecstatic mystic poet after he had met a Peripatetic Sufi, Shams in 1244. Shams became a male Muse for his entire poetic creation. Their first meeting was a great episode in the world history of mysticism. Like Beatrice who in The Divine Comedy, encounters Dante at the top of the earthly paradise, legendary Shams encountered, by chance, in an oriental bazaar Rumi who became heart and soul of his Divan of 2,500 long odes, his opus magnum. Rumi’s poetry was indeed as Coleman Barks says, like “eavesdropping” on this cosmic meeting and a few years friendship between the two.

In Rumi’s poetic parlance Shams is often referred to as, “O Shams, If I see anything but God in your bright and sparkling mirror, I would be worse than an infidel”, “My Shams and my God”, “Only love know you [Shams], not intellect”, “What I thought of before as God, I met today in a person (Shams)”, “For Shams’s Love, like a wandering particle, I am a restless and lost insomniac”.

As the labyrinth of suffering and injustice and fever of war is raging in our world today, the West looks upon the East for inspiration as Voltaire did in his turbulent age. For our age, Rumi’s poetry offers the remedy for the apocalyptic hysteresis of our time. It is the prime reason why Rumi is becoming increasingly popular in the West. The medieval poet is loved and read in the West and he still is a bestseller in the US. His ideas and poetic legacy still haunt universities, pubs, spiritual industries, valentine day, theatre, opera, ballet, film etc.

The “Excellent Rumi,” as Hegel called him, has always been loved and cherished by poets in the West more than anyone else. He inspired leading Western poets and thinkers such as Dr Johnson, Goethe, Emerson, Walt Whitman, Robert Grave, Doris Lessing, to name but a few. For the German poet Hans Meinke Rumi was “the only hope for the dark times we are living in”. And the French writer Maurice Barres remarked, “When I experienced Mevlana’s poetry, which is vibrant with the tone of ecstasy and with melody, I realised the deficiencies of Shakespeare, Goethe and Hugo.”

Besides his poetry, the ritualistic dance, Whirling Dervishes, is another charm that has made Rumi a household name in the West. The esoteric dance—introduced to Europeans first by Danish fairytale writer, Hans Anderson—induces a spiritual trance within Western audiences. This dance is where like Whitman he celebrates the Aristotelian notion of the unity of body and soul. In this dance the spirit speaks through the body. Body for him was like Stoics and contemporary French theorists not a prisoner of the soul, but its very essence, substance and vehicle. Through music bodily movements and chanting the Rumi dancers achieve spiritual wholeness and harmony.

The first great thinker who popularised Rumi in Europe, especially in the English-speaking world was his fellow compatriot, Idris Shah who translated many works of the poet into English. In his remarkable book The Sufis, Shah writes, “Jalaluddin Rumi, who founded the Order of the Whirling Dervishes, bears out in his career the Eastern saying, “Giants come forth from Afghanistan and influence the world.”

Rumi and Idris Shah himself were among the great inspirers for the Western esotericism, New Age in the 1960s. Rumi’s spiritual doctrine of God as an apex of a pyramid with numerous paths leading to it was adapted by the New Agers. This led within the movement the notion of unity and harmony between all religions of the world. With the help of a spiritual master, one can get access to such a high consciousness and a cosmic energy beyond human physical faculties. However, Rumi warns his disciples not to fall into the dungeon of a pale imitation of spirituality: “At first enlightenment comes to you from the Adepts. This is imitation. But when it comes frequently, it is the experience of truth.” We in the West must be on the alert against some charlatans and the exploiting spiritual industry who try to fool us with a false sense of spiritual fulfilment.


Finally, Rumi bridges Islam and the West at this hour of mistrust, created by the psychosis of terrorism in some Islamic countries and the igno(arrogance) of some Western powers that through a sweeping generalisation equalise Islam with terrorism. One has to read Rumi to learn the true spirit of Islam:

Come, come, whoever you are, come and come again,
If you are an infidel, a fire worshipper, or a Buddhist, Come.
Our conviction is not of despair,
Come, come again, even if you broken your repent a hundred time.


Rumi lived in a time of religious war and he tried to serve as a uniting figure among the followers of all faiths. Among his pupils were Muslim, Christians, and Jews. He loves them all and he related his teaching to all religions:

What is to be done, O Muslims? For I do not recognise myself
I am neither Christian, nor a Jew, nor a fire-worshipper, nor Muslim
I am not of the East, nor of the West, nor of the land, nor of the sea;
I am not of Nature’s mint, nor of the circling heavens.
I am not of India, nor of China, nor of Bulgaria, nor of Saqsin
I am not of Iraq, nor of Khurasan (old name of Afghanistan)
My place is the placeless and my trace is the traceless.


When Rumi died in 1273 in Turkey, followers of all faiths were mourning and wailing. According to Rumi’s biographers, in (at his) his funeral someone asked a Christian who wept so bitterly at the death of Rumi, “why are you crying at the funeral of a Muslim poet?

“We esteemed him as the Moses, the David, the Jesus of the age. We are all his followers and his disciples.” The Christian replied.

The excellent Rumi is now a favourite in American, and if we believe Coleman Barks, Rumi’s grand translator, today more Americans read Rumi than Shakespeare. What lies behind this passionate love of Americans for Rumi?

I think we may certainly find the answer to this again by looking at Candide, for Voltaire’s novel has been the best literary reflection of a turbulent area in human history when religion was used as a masquerade for heinous crimes and genocide in Europe. For Voltaire, his era was a time when “devil…rules the roast here and everywhere.”

Candide in the novel refrains from going to England after he has seen a horrific scene. A stout admiral is brought to execution for he didn’t enough dead men on his record. The execution was also carried out in order to encourage other officers to kill more and more people.

“The waterside was crowded with a host of people who were gazing intently at a stout man kneeling, with his eyes bandaged, on the deck of a man of war. Four soldiers stood opposite him and fired three rounds each into his skull with the utmost composure, at which the crowd dispersed evidently quite satisfied.”

Nowadays religion veils killings everywhere. Al-qaida uses Islam as a cover for its dirty culture of killing and even justifies its political ideology as a reflection of Allah’s scripture. On the other side of the Atlantic, some extremists under the Bush administration use Christianity as a tool to justify their cruel invasions.

So, the first reason for the American people’s love for Rumi arises from the demand of our time. Religion, which was traditionally the source of spiritual wellbeing, is being hijacked by big powers and terrorists. It is worth mentioning that Rumi is Sufism is not favoured in Saudi Arabia, because for Islamic fundamentalists, Sufism is something old and useless. In Saudi Arabia the teachings of many Sufi philosophers are banned at schools and universities.

The second reason for the American peoples love for Rumi is certainly the poet’s dense erotica, permeated in his love poems. Rumi like all other mystic poets thought his erotica was not for sexual desire but a way of expression for mystic love of God. In Sufi symbolism known as Shathyaat, sexual references such as love making, drinking wine, kissing, etc have an underlying symbolic meaning. Rumi’s eroticism and mysticism is closer to Georges Bataille, but with a big difference. Rumi’s love poems never teach moral transgression, guilt or masochism. Rumi’s mystic love is very close to John Donne’s poetry. For both, love arises from separation and in the meantime a vehicle for reunification. Rumi’s love is both poison and antidote.

However, today’s literary theory would not accept Rumi’s justification and symbolism. In this context, Rumi’s eroticism would be given a textual treatment far from what the poet claims. In today’s poststructuralist theory, as Derrida said nothing is outside the text, so, Rumi’s symbolism or Shathyaat is nothing but an internalised denial like courtly love is held in the West.

Poststructuralist theorists ask us to visit Rome and see Bernini’s statue, “The Ecstasy of St Theresa” in order to see spiritual ecstasy. Rumi’s pictures ecstasy in words:

In my hallucination I saw my beloved’s flower garden
In my vertigo, in my dizziness, in my drunken haze,
whirling and dancing like a spinning wheel,
I saw myself as the source of existence,
I was there at the beginning and I was the spirit of love,


But American love doesn’t last long as Freud once said. Once Freud was worshiped in American but the love withered away. Will Rumi’s love in America last longer? We don’t know. The future will ultimately answer this.
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پیدایش سماع

پیدایش سماع 

شخصیت زن نزد مولانا

شخصیت زن نزد مولانا 

 سمیع رفیع 

هوالمعشوق

مولانا، سخنور مشفق و مهرباني است كه نور سخنش چون صبح صادق عالم جان را روشن ميسازد و از فروغ آن مملكت دل را منور. او هم در عمل و هم در فضل درياست.

Rumi and the Play of Poetry (Coleman Barks reciting Rumi)

Noted translator and poet Coleman Barks, a Distinguished Visiting Fellow in the UCSB College of Creative Studies, presents the poetry of 13th century Afghan-born Sufi mystic and poet, Jelaluddin Rumi. Bark's intense and artful translations convey Rumi's insights into the human heart and its longing for passion and daring. Barks performs the words of Rumi, accompanied by musicians Barry and Shelly Phillips. Video's length: 1:47:31

RELEVANCE OF RUMI

RELEVANCE OF RUMI

AN INTERVIEW WITH NEVIT ERGIN
By : Anjum Naim

From Molana (Rumi) With Love

From Molana (Rumi) With Love
By Dr. Majid Naini