2022/05/04

A Sufi Metamorphosis:: Sufi Love

A Sufi Metamorphosis:: Sufi Love
A Sufi Metamorphosis:: Sufi Love

A Sufi Metamorphosis:

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu,Buddhist, Sufi, or Zen.Not any religion or cultural system. I am not from the east or the west,My place is the place-less, a trace of the trace-less.Neither body or soul. I belong to the beloved,have seen the two worlds as one.

Thursday, February 15, 2018


Sufi Love


In Sufism, love is an alchemical force of enlightenment; the lightning bolt which brings you back to life. Love symbolized the emotional element in religion, the rapture of the seer, the courage of the martyr, the faith of the saint, the only basis of moral perfection and spiritual knowledge.




A lover asked his beloved,
Do you love yourself more
than you love me?
The beloved replied,
I have died to myself
and I live for you.
I’ve disappeared from myself
and my attributes.
I am present only for you.
I have forgotten all my learning,
but from knowing you
I have become a scholar.
I have lost all my strength,




but from your power
I am able.
If I love myself
I love you.
If I love you
I love myself.
I’m drenched
in the flood
which has yet to come
I’m tied up
in the prison
which has yet to exist
Not having played
the game of chess
I’m already the checkmate
Not having tasted
a single cup of your wine
I’m already drunk
Not having entered
the battlefield
I’m already wounded and slain
I no longer
know the difference
between image and reality
Like the shadow




I am And I am not


Practically, it is self-renunciation and self-sacrifice, the giving up of all possessions--wealth, honour, will, life, and whatever else men value--for the Beloved's sake without any thought of reward. I have already referred to love as the supreme principle in Sufi ethics, and now let me give some illustrations.


"Love," says Jalaluddin, "is the remedy of our pride and self-conceit, the physician of all our infirmities. Only he whose garment is rent by love becomes entirely unselfish."


I was dead, I became alive, I was tears, I became laughter
The sovereignty of love appeared, and I became everlasting sovereign.


Jalaluddin Rumi proclaims :"Our copper has been transmuted by this rare alchemy,"meaning that the base alloy of self has been purified and spiritualised.


In another ode he says: "O my soul, I searched from end to end: I saw in thee naught save the Beloved; Call me not infidel, O my soul, if I say that thou thyself art He."


Divine Love in Sufism, like gnosis, is in its essence a divine gift, not anything that can be acquired. "If the whole world wished to attract love, they could not; and if they made the utmost efforts to repel it, they could not." Those who love God are those whom God loves. "I fancied that I loved Him," said Bayazid, "but on consideration, I saw that His love preceded mine."


Junayd defined love as the substitution of the qualities of the Beloved for the qualities of the lover. In other words, love signifies the passing-away of the individual self; it is an uncontrollable rapture, a God-sent grace which must be sought by ardent prayer and aspiration.






In Sufism, the human form of love can be, and for the Sufi is---- the ladder to Divine Love.


Sufism decrees that by learning how to love through the love of a person, the sincere Sufi could – in principle – transform his or her love of a person into the love of Allah.


Because love is the most brutal ego annihilation, Being IN love means surrendering your ego. The word orgasm in French is called little death. Being in love with anyone is like dying to your old life and being reborn into a new dimension.


The relationship is dangerous.
It is dangerous because the more you love someone, the more and more you evaporate. And when you have come really close you are no more. It is dangerous because it is suicidal but the suicide is beautiful. Because if you survive this suicide---you will walk towards God because you would have experienced the limitations of egoic living and tasted the ecstasy of surrender.


All the love-romances and allegories of Sufi poetry--the tales of Layla and Majnun, Yusuf (Joseph) and Zulaykha, Salaman and Absal, the Moth and the Candle, the Night-ingale and the Rose--are shadow-pictures of the soul's passionate longing to be reunited with God.

Death in human love is a catalyst of an alchemical crucible which can -potentially- lead to transformation.




To love so that nothing of you remains, is the way to enlightenment.You no longer exist.Non-being is the way to being, and love is the most adequate method to disappear.Just as nature abhors a vacuum, God also abhors a vacuum.


You become a vacuum, and love of God rushes in to you!


Ibn al-‘Arabi claims that Islam is peculiarly the religion of love, inasmuch as the Prophet Mohammed is called God's beloved (Habib).




To die in God is the only way to live really. Until you die, until you die voluntarily into love, you live an existence which is simply mediocre; you vegetate, you don't have any meaning. No poetry arises in your heart, no dance, no celebration; you simply grope in the darkness. You live at the minimum, you don't overflow with ecstasy.






Nuri, Raqqam, and other Sufis were accused of heresy and sentenced to death.
"When the executioner approached Raqqam, Nuri rose and offered himself in his friend's place with the utmost cheerfulness and submission. All the spectators were astounded. The executioner said, 'Young man, the sword is not a thing that people are so eager to meet; and your turn has not yet arrived.' Nuri answered, 'My religion is founded on unselfishness. Life is the most precious thing in the world: I wish to sacrifice for my brethren's sake the few moments which remain.'"




In the Hindi Film Anwar (2007), the chosen murshid (guide) advises the young protagonist of the movie Anwar, that he has to fall in love in the earthly realm in order to evolve true love for God in his heart.










Poetry has that elusive quality of transcending words and lightly touching upon this secret garden of the human heart.In the book, Rumi, The Persian, The Sufi, Rumi quietly murmurs and speaks from his heart about his personal experience:






Do you know who is alive?




That one who is born in love.
I am not the moon, or the universe, or thunder
Or clouds
I am all love, all love, I am all soul by your
Soul
I am full of love, flaming as a burning tree;
A stranger to everyone except love, like oil and
Water


While Divine Love might appear to some to be completely distinct from human love, for many Sufis such as Ahmad al-Ghazali (d. 520/1126), Ruzbihan (d. 606/1209), Ibn ‘Arabi (d. 638/1240), Rumi, and ‘Iraqi (d. 688/1289), there was a continuum from human love to Divine love.










The contemporary scholars Chittick and Wilson, in the introduction to their translation of ‘Iraqi’s Lama’at, discussed this relationship of human love and Divine love.
Speaking of ‘Iraqi’s understanding of love, they stated, “There is no irreducible dichotomy between divine and human love…There is a gradation from the love of forms, which is “apparent love” (‘ishq-i majazi) to the love of God, which alone is ‘real love’ (‘ishq-i haqiqi).


Love is the ark appointed for the righteous,
Which annuls the danger and provides a way of escape.
Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.
Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment intuition. RUMI














That is the meaning when Jesus says, "God is love because it is the purification of love that will bring you to God.Love is the bridge. Love is the process of alchemical change in your consciousness.


Rumi's couplet is alluding to this state.








My head is bursting
with the joy of the unknown.
My heart is expanding a thousand fold.
Every cell,
taking wings,
flies about the world.
All seek separately
the many faces of my love.






When you fall in love with a person you have seen a glimpse of the divine. It is not really the person that you have fallen in love with; They have been just a window, a beautiful window but still a window. You have seen something beyond, it may have been just a flash; that’s why it is so difficult to explain your love affair to anybody.


If somebody asks, ’Why have you fallen in love with this person?’ it is almost inexplicable. And if you try to explain it looks absurd, even to you. But the problem is that you have not fallen in love with this person at all: you have fallen in love with something beyond.








"This woman, who is your beloved, is, in fact, a ray of His light,
She is not a mere creature. She is a creator. RUMI












Sufi's believe that only when a person treads on the path of earthly ‘true romantic love’ and suffers the pain of separation from one’s beloved, can one get in touch with the separation from God Almighty that is suppressed in the heart of every Individual.




A true Lover doesn't follow any one religion,
be sure of that.
Since in the religion of Love,
there is no irreverence or faith.
When in Love,
body, mind, heart and soul don't even exist.
Become this,
fall in Love,
and you will not be separated again










We hear the same answer that Ibn Arabi heard in one of his intimate conversations when he asked Allah “How could one get close to You?
”And Allah responded, “Through an attribute that I do not possess”, meaning ubudiyyat, which means servant-hood














You think you are alive
because you breathe air?
Shame on you,
that you are alive in such a limited way.
Don't be without Love,
so you won't feel dead.
Die in Love
and stay alive forever.
Rumi

===
Posted by Sofia at 8:13 AM
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Labels: Sufi Love
===

9 comments:


Muhammad HadiDecember 17, 2011 at 5:30 AM


Beautiful article, it talks to the soul. They say follow your "heart" (i.e. irrational gut feelings) and Quran says don't follow your whims.


How to do justice to both mind and soul. I have problem with sufism that it exclusively deals with heart and relegate mind to nothingReply






AnonymousJanuary 23, 2014 at 7:16 AM


What a Superb note on the true path to Divinity - Very exact in nature and as stated by another, this piece of work speaks to the soul.
January 23rd, 2014.Reply






Syed Ali Abbas ZaidiFebruary 25, 2014 at 2:47 PM


School of Ahmad Ghazzali and Iraqi do not agree with uboodia't being the only means to be close to God, as Ibn-e-Arabi. Relationship is of "friendship" primarily, servanthood has been the hall-mark of clerics, orthodox. Friendship and love has been the hall-mark of Sufis, and other mystics.Reply






UnknownMay 17, 2016 at 10:12 PM


This comment has been removed by the author.Reply






UnknownJuly 23, 2017 at 1:20 PM


O Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
Oh my heart has started to love you


Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you


Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you


Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you


Gali-gali Ghoome Dil Tujhe Dhoondhe
My heart travels wanders one lane after another lane in search of you




Gali-gali Ghoome Dil Tujhe Dhoondhe
My heart travels wanders one lane after another lane in search of you


Tere Bin Tarase Nayan
Without you my eyes pine
Without you my eyes yearn


Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you


Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you


Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you


Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you


Aa Ja O Meri Jaan
Come to me my love


Mere Dil Ka Jahaan
World of the my Heart


Maange Teri Khabar
wants the news about you


Dhoondhe Tera Nishaan
Its seeks a trace of you


Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
Oh my heart has started to love you


Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you


Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you


Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you


Gali-gali Ghoome Dil Tujhe Dhoondhe
My heart travels wanders one lane after another lane in search of you


Gali-gali Ghoome Dil Tujhe Dhoondhe
My heart travels wanders one lane after another lane in search of you


Tere Bin Tarase Nayan
Without you my eyes pine
Without you my eyes yearn


Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you


Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you


Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you


Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you


Tera Tujhako Saunp De Kya Laagat Hai Mor
What I return to you always belonged to you


Mera Mujhamen Kuchh Naaheen Jo Hovat So Tor
What I have to lose of my own I owned nothing
Everything belongs to you, owned by you


Tere Bin Mera Man
Without you my heart


Jaise Ban Men Hiran
Is like a deer in the forest


Jaise Pagali Pawan
A wandering wind


Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
Oh my heart has started to love you


Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you


Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you


Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you
Reply






UnknownJuly 23, 2017 at 6:02 PM


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8wMuBUz6e0Reply






UnknownJuly 23, 2017 at 6:53 PM


Tujh Mein Rab Dikhta Hai


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RD8MfZpt-QA


Satrangi re


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfvGrChLEn0


Kun fayakun


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jbb7miKWaI


Chaiya chaiya


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOYN9qNXmAwReply






yhussJune 25, 2018 at 1:05 AM


What an amazing article about the essence of life's journey. Amazing because it interleaves the spiritual with the corporeal to appeal to both our reason and our intuition.Reply






UnknownAugust 4, 2018 at 6:40 AM


Wow, This is Jihad.
My response is that the inner eyes do not open until one has done some degree of internal Jihad against one’s ego-personality (nafs). The potentiality is there in everyone – man is made in the image of God – to reach a degree of perfection in his attributes, but he has been sent to the lowest of t


======


Thursday, February 15, 2018

Sufi Love

In Sufism, love is an alchemical force of enlightenment; the lightning bolt which brings you back to life. Love symbolized the emotional element in religion, the rapture of the seer, the courage of the martyr, the faith of the saint, the only basis of moral perfection and spiritual knowledge.

A lover asked his beloved,
Do you love yourself more
than you love me? 
The beloved replied,
I have died to myself
and I live for you.   
I’ve disappeared from myself
and my attributes.
I am present only for you. 
I have forgotten all my learning,
but from knowing you
I have become a scholar. 
I have lost all my strength,              

but from your power
I am able. 
If I love myself
I love you.
If I love you
I love myself.
I’m drenched
in the flood
which has yet to come 
I’m tied up
in the prison
which has yet to exist
Not having played
the game of chess
I’m already the checkmate
Not having tasted
a single cup of your wine
I’m already drunk
Not having entered
the battlefield
I’m already wounded and slain
I no longer
know the difference
between image and reality
Like the shadow


I am And I am not

Practically, it is self-renunciation and self-sacrifice, the giving up of all possessions--wealth, honour, will, life, and whatever else men value--for the Beloved's sake without any thought of reward. I have already referred to love as the supreme principle in Sufi ethics, and now let me give some illustrations.

"Love," says Jalaluddin, "is the remedy of our pride and self-conceit, the physician of all our infirmities. Only he whose garment is rent by love becomes entirely unselfish."
             
I was dead, I became alive, I was tears, I became laughter
The sovereignty of love appeared, and I became everlasting sovereign.


Jalaluddin Rumi proclaims :"Our copper has been transmuted by this rare alchemy,"meaning that the base alloy of self has been purified and spiritualised. 

In another ode he says: "O my soul, I searched from end to end: I saw in thee naught save the Beloved; Call me not infidel, O my soul, if I say that thou thyself art He." 

Divine Love in Sufism, like gnosis, is in its essence a divine gift, not anything that can be acquired. "If the whole world wished to attract love, they could not; and if they made the utmost efforts to repel it, they could not." Those who love God are those whom God loves. "I fancied that I loved Him," said Bayazid, "but on consideration, I saw that His love preceded mine." 

Junayd defined love as the substitution of the qualities of the Beloved for the qualities of the lover. In other words, love signifies the passing-away of the individual self; it is an uncontrollable rapture, a God-sent grace which must be sought by ardent prayer and aspiration.


In Sufism, the human form of love can be, and for the Sufi is---- the ladder to Divine Love.

  Sufism decrees that by learning how to love through the love of a person, the sincere Sufi could – in principle – transform his or her love of a person into the love of Allah. 


Because love is the most brutal ego annihilation, Being IN love means surrendering your ego.  The word orgasm in French is called little death. Being in love with anyone is like dying to your old life and being reborn into a new dimension. 


The relationship is dangerous.

It is dangerous because the more you love someone, the more and more you evaporate. And when you have come really close you are no more. It is dangerous because it is suicidal but the suicide is beautiful. Because if you survive this suicide---you will walk towards God because you would have experienced the limitations of egoic living and tasted the ecstasy of surrender.

 All the love-romances and allegories of Sufi poetry--the tales of Layla and Majnun, Yusuf (Joseph) and Zulaykha, Salaman and Absal, the Moth and the Candle, the Night-ingale and the Rose--are shadow-pictures of the soul's passionate longing to be reunited with God. 





Death in human love is a catalyst of an alchemical crucible which can -potentially- lead to transformation.

To love so that nothing of you remains, is the way to enlightenment.You no longer exist.Non-being is the way to being, and love is the most adequate method to disappear.Just as nature abhors a vacuum, God also abhors a vacuum.

You become a vacuum, and love of God rushes in to you!

Ibn al-‘Arabi claims that Islam is peculiarly the religion of love, inasmuch as the Prophet Mohammed is called God's beloved (Habib)
.

To die in God is the only way to live really. Until you die, until you die voluntarily into love, you live an existence which is simply mediocre; you vegetate, you don't have any meaning. No poetry arises in your heart, no dance, no celebration; you simply grope in the darkness. You live at the minimum, you don't overflow with ecstasy.


Nuri, Raqqam, and other Sufis were accused of heresy and sentenced to death.
"When the executioner approached Raqqam, Nuri rose and offered himself in his friend's place with the utmost cheerfulness and submission. All the spectators were astounded. The executioner said, 'Young man, the sword is not a thing that people are so eager to  meet; and your turn has not yet arrived.' Nuri answered, 'My religion is founded on unselfishness. Life is the most precious thing in the world: I wish to sacrifice for my brethren's sake the few moments which remain.'"


In the Hindi Film Anwar (2007), the chosen murshid (guide) advises the young protagonist of the movie Anwar, that he has to fall in love in the earthly realm in order to evolve true love for God in his heart.   


     

        Poetry has that elusive quality of transcending words and lightly touching upon this secret garden of the human heart.In the book, Rumi, The Persian, The Sufi, Rumi quietly murmurs and speaks from his heart about his personal experience:



Do you know who is alive?

That one who is born in love.
I am not the moon, or the universe, or thunder
Or clouds
I am all love, all love, I am all soul by your
Soul
I am full of love, flaming as a burning tree;
A stranger to everyone except love, like oil and
Water


While Divine Love might appear to some to be completely distinct from human love, for many Sufis such as Ahmad al-Ghazali (d. 520/1126), Ruzbihan (d. 606/1209), Ibn ‘Arabi (d. 638/1240), Rumi, and ‘Iraqi (d. 688/1289), there was a continuum from human love to Divine love.





The contemporary scholars Chittick and Wilson, in the introduction to their translation of ‘Iraqi’s Lama’at, discussed this relationship of human love and Divine love.

          Speaking of ‘Iraqi’s understanding of love, they stated, “There is no irreducible dichotomy between divine and human love…There is a gradation from the love of forms, which is “apparent love” (‘ishq-i majazi) to the love of God, which alone is ‘real love’ (‘ishq-i haqiqi).

Love is the ark appointed for the righteous,
Which annuls the danger and provides a way of escape.
Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.
Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment intuition. RUMI






 That is the meaning when Jesus says, "God is love because it is the purification of love that will bring you to God.Love is the bridge. Love is the process of alchemical change in your consciousness.

Rumi's couplet is alluding to this state.

My head is bursting
with the joy of the unknown.
My heart is expanding a thousand fold.
Every cell,
taking wings,
flies about the world.
All seek separately
the many faces of my love.



        When you fall in love with a person you have seen a glimpse of the divine. It is not really the person that you have fallen in love with; They have been just a window, a beautiful window but still a window. You have seen something beyond, it may have been just a flash; that’s why it is so difficult to explain your love affair to anybody.

If somebody asks, ’Why have you fallen in love with this person?’ it is almost inexplicable. And if you try to explain it looks absurd, even to you. But the problem is that you have not fallen in love with this person at all: you have fallen in love with something beyond.


"This woman, who is your beloved, is, in fact, a ray of His light,
She is not a mere creature. She is a creator.  RUMI




Sufi's believe that only when a person treads on the path of earthly ‘true romantic love’ and suffers the pain of separation from one’s beloved, can one get in touch with the separation from God Almighty that is suppressed in the heart of every Individual.

A true Lover doesn't follow any one religion,
be sure of that.
Since in the religion of Love,
there is no irreverence or faith.
When in Love,
body, mind, heart and soul don't even exist.
Become this,
fall in Love,
and you will not be separated again


 




We hear the same answer that Ibn Arabi heard in one of his intimate conversations when he asked Allah “How could one get close to You?

”And Allah responded, “Through an attribute that I do not possess”, meaning ubudiyyat, which means servant-hood





You think you are alive

because you breathe air?
Shame on you,
that you are alive in such a limited way.
Don't be without Love,
so you won't feel dead.
Die in Love
and stay alive forever.
 Rumi








9 comments:

  1. Beautiful article, it talks to the soul. They say follow your "heart" (i.e. irrational gut feelings) and Quran says don't follow your whims.

    How to do justice to both mind and soul. I have problem with sufism that it exclusively deals with heart and relegate mind to nothing

    Reply
  2. What a Superb note on the true path to Divinity - Very exact in nature and as stated by another, this piece of work speaks to the soul.
    January 23rd, 2014.

    Reply
  3. School of Ahmad Ghazzali and Iraqi do not agree with uboodia't being the only means to be close to God, as Ibn-e-Arabi. Relationship is of "friendship" primarily, servanthood has been the hall-mark of clerics, orthodox. Friendship and love has been the hall-mark of Sufis, and other mystics.

    Reply
  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

    Reply
  5. O Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
    Oh my heart has started to love you

    Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
    My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you

    Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
    My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you

    Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
    My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you

    Gali-gali Ghoome Dil Tujhe Dhoondhe
    My heart travels wanders one lane after another lane in search of you


    Gali-gali Ghoome Dil Tujhe Dhoondhe
    My heart travels wanders one lane after another lane in search of you

    Tere Bin Tarase Nayan
    Without you my eyes pine
    Without you my eyes yearn

    Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
    My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you

    Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
    My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you

    Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
    My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you

    Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
    My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you

    Aa Ja O Meri Jaan
    Come to me my love

    Mere Dil Ka Jahaan
    World of the my Heart

    Maange Teri Khabar
    wants the news about you

    Dhoondhe Tera Nishaan
    Its seeks a trace of you

    Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
    Oh my heart has started to love you

    Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
    My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you

    Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
    My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you

    Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
    My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you

    Gali-gali Ghoome Dil Tujhe Dhoondhe
    My heart travels wanders one lane after another lane in search of you

    Gali-gali Ghoome Dil Tujhe Dhoondhe
    My heart travels wanders one lane after another lane in search of you

    Tere Bin Tarase Nayan
    Without you my eyes pine
    Without you my eyes yearn

    Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
    My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you

    Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
    My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you

    Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
    My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you

    Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
    My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you

    Tera Tujhako Saunp De Kya Laagat Hai Mor
    What I return to you always belonged to you

    Mera Mujhamen Kuchh Naaheen Jo Hovat So Tor
    What I have to lose of my own I owned nothing
    Everything belongs to you, owned by you

    Tere Bin Mera Man
    Without you my heart

    Jaise Ban Men Hiran
    Is like a deer in the forest

    Jaise Pagali Pawan
    A wandering wind

    Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
    Oh my heart has started to love you

    Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
    My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you

    Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
    My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you

    Lagan Laagi Tum Se Man Ki Lagan
    My heart seeks you my heart goes out for you

    Reply
  6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8wMuBUz6e0

    Reply
  7. Tujh Mein Rab Dikhta Hai

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RD8MfZpt-QA

    Satrangi re

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfvGrChLEn0

    Kun fayakun

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jbb7miKWaI

    Chaiya chaiya

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOYN9qNXmAw

    Reply
  8. What an amazing article about the essence of life's journey. Amazing because it interleaves the spiritual with the corporeal to appeal to both our reason and our intuition.

    Reply
  9. Wow, This is Jihad.
    My response is that the inner eyes do not open until one has done some degree of internal Jihad against one’s ego-personality (nafs). The potentiality is there in everyone – man is made in the image of God – to reach a degree of perfection in his attributes, but he has been sent to the lowest of the low.

Love in Sufi Poetry - The Fountain Magazine | The Fountain Magazine

Love in Sufi Poetry - The Fountain Magazine | The Fountain Magazine

LOVE IN SUFI POETRY

MATTHEW KELLY
2012-05-01 


The enduring resonance of the poetry of thirteenth-century Islamic poet, Mevlana Jalal al-Din Rumi, extends across cultures and through the centuries of time. Perhaps, the popularity of Rumi could be attributed to the profusion of descriptions of love in his poetry, for as Rumi, himself, remarked, "One can discuss it forever and never exhaust it." Love has a very important meaning in Islam, and for Rumi and other practitioners of the Sufi tradition, "Love totally dominates and determines the Sufi's inward and psychological states." How do Sufis understand love? How does their poetry reflect love as a spiritual teaching?

The best place to begin this discussion is with the Qur'an. There are numerous verses that mention love, but whenever the word love is used "the quality is always ascribed to God and human beings, and nothing else; and God's love is always directed at human beings." Not only does this mean that the relationship between God and human beings is unique, but love defines that unique relationship. In the verses that mention love for God, the Qur'an makes two important points. Firstly, God wants people to love him, and secondly, their love for God follows upon His love for them. The verse of the Qur'an most cited for this is "...whom He loves, and who love Him" (5:54). The inferences that Sufi mystics have drawn from this verse is that love cannot be learned, it is the result of divine grace, and the initiative comes from God. This feeling of God's desire "to love and to be loved" inspired Rumi to suggest:

Not a single lover would seek union if the beloved were not seeking it.

The message of the Qur'an compelled Muslims to understand their relationship with God as one requiring reciprocated love. Sufi poets then searched for a vocabulary to describe their love for God, including words not found in the Qur'an or Hadiths.

In the early period of Sufism "the majority of teachings on love are contained in poems and brief statements that focus upon the human love for God, wherein there is always a duality between the human lover and the Divine Beloved." This developed into a trend within Sufi thought in which "all aspects of creation and spiritual aspiration are presented in an imaginal language fired by love." An important development in this trend was the use of the word for passionate love, ishq, rather than the more accepted vocabulary of the Qur'an. The Qur'anic terms for love are hubb and mahabba that describe the measured affection of God. Ishq came into the lexicon of Sufi poetry to describe "the essential desire for God and the love of God as an essential attribute, which fills the heart of the mystic."

 Using the word ishq in a religious context means that:

Love is no longer merely an expression of gratitude for the blessings of God; it is no longer content with rigorous asceticism and meticulous ritual observance. It becomes an absolute necessity, entailing neither enjoyment nor alleviation, but intensifying as the reciprocity of the lover and the loved comes into effect.

By redefining their love for God as ishq, the early Sufi poets extended their vocabulary, and by doing this they could more accurately describe their inner response to the revelation of the Qur'an. The recognition of two types of love is expressed by Rabia in the following quatrain:


TWO LOVES I GIVE THEE, LOVE THAT YEARNS.
AND LOVE BECAUSE THY DUE IS LOVE.
MY YEARNING, MY REMEMBRANCE TURNS
TO THEE, NOR LETS IT FROM THEE ROVE.

Here, Rabia identifies the spontaneous love for God she feels within herself – and the dutiful love she is obliged to give to God in the performance of her religious responsibilities. As Chittick wrote, "Love pertains to the experiential dimension of Sufism, not the theoretical; it must be experienced to be understood." Sufism connects experiential knowledge to the belief that "nothing is dearer to God than that man loves him." A mystic and poet who lived in Anatolia in the same period as Rumi, Yunus Emre, described the intensifying experience of love for God:


YOUR LOVE HAS WRESTED ME AWAY FROM ME
YOU'RE THE ONE I NEED, YOU'RE THE ONE I CRAVE.
DAY AND NIGHT I BURN, GRIPPED BY AGONY,
YOU'RE THE ONE I NEED, YOU'RE THE ONE I CRAVE.
FOR YUNUS EMRE, "LOVE IS THE MOST POWERFUL OF EVERYTHING."

When love for God is described in terms of passion then the language of romantic love is readily accessible to be adapted as the metaphoric language of the spiritual journey. In Sufi poetry there is a convention of the spiritual supplicant being called the lover of God, while God is referred to as the Beloved. Throughout Sufi poetry we read verses that elaborate ideas about the relationship of the lover and the Beloved. A good example of this is seen in this verse by Rumi:


LOVERS SHARE A SACRED DECREE –
TO SEEK THE BELOVED.
THEY ROLL HEAD OVER HEELS
RUSHING TOWARD THE BEAUTIFUL ONE
LIKE A TORRENT OF WATER.

Here God has two titles, the Beloved and the Beautiful One, but this poem could easily be read as secular love poetry. In this verse Rumi includes the beliefs that the impetus to love comes from God, as it is a sacred decree, and doing so is as unstoppable as the rush of water.

Another poem of Rumi that can be read as secular love poetry uses less recognizable references to God:


IN ONE SWEET MOMENT
SHE BURST FROM MY HEART.
THERE WE SAT ON THE FLOOR,
DRINKING RUBY WINE.
TRAPPED BY HER BEAUTY,
I SAW AND I TOUCHED –
MY WHOLE FACE BECAME EYES,
ALL MY EYES BECAME HANDS.

Through the use of the conventional poetic symbols of his era, for example, drinking wine as a symbol for spiritual intoxication, the poet again express both secular and spiritual meanings simultaneously. As one of the translators of the above piece comments in his introduction to the selection of Rumi's poems:


NOTHING WITH RUMI CAN BE TAKEN LITERALLY: ONE MUST ALWAYS BE AWARE OF THE MEANING BEHIND THE MEANING, AND THE VEILS BEHIND VEILS.

The translator Jonathon Star, says that Rumi, like other Sufi poets, at "the deepest level" of his poetry "tells only one story: the soul's search for the Beloved."

For Rumi, passionate love, ishq, has two expressions. The first is love in the material world, "like the love between male and female", and the second is the "real love," which is the "love felt toward God." These couplets of Rumi's explain how the poet signified both aspects of ishq:


LOVE IS THE ATTRIBUTE OF GOD, WHO HAS NO NEED OF ANYONE. TO BE IN LOVE WITH OTHER THAN HIM IS METAPHORICAL LOVE.
AND
LOVE, BE IT REAL OR METAPHORICAL,
ULTIMATELY TAKES HUMANS TO GOD.

These two couplets express two fundamental beliefs of Sufism. In the first couplet we read that love is an attribute of God – as stated in the Qur'an. In the second we see that love "takes humans to God."

While the Qur'an shows that love is an attribute of God, for many adherents of the Sufi tradition love is God's most important attribute because for the spiritual journey of the wayfarer, love provides the path that takes them to reunion with God. In Rumi's "spiritual masterpiece," the Masnavi, the poet seeks to show that "God is known primarily through love." The significance given to love in this part of the Islamic tradition has allowed some to suggest simply that "God is Love." However, it is important to note that love is not the only attribute of God:

...He is Mercy, Knowledge, Life, Power and Will. He possesses all these qualities; His Being is the same as their Being; but we may not say that God is Mercy and nothing else, or that He is Knowledge and nothing else... He possesses all His Attributes absolutely, yet in His Essence He is beyond them all.

More than a generation before Rumi the mystic Farid al-Din Attar (d.1220) wrote a variation of the shahada (testimony of faith) as la ilaha illa ishq – No God but Love. In his Divan Rumi shows that he did not believe God could be defined as such. In fact, this excerpt from the Divan could be commenting on the above phrase of Attar:


OTHERS CALL THEE LOVE, BUT I CALL THEE THE SULTAN OF LOVE – OH THOU WHO ARE BEYOND THE CONCEPT OF THIS OR THAT, DO NOT GO WITHOUT ME!

Rumi's poetry not only shows that God cannot be defined but He can only be described with symbol, metaphor or analogy, which eventually also proves to be inadequate:


ALL OF THESE ARE SYMBOLS – I MEAN THAT THE OTHER
WORLD KEEPS COMING INTO THIS WORLD.
LIKE CREAM HIDDEN IN THE SOUL OF MILK, NO PLACE
KEEPS COMING INTO THIS PLACE.
LIKE INTELLECT CONCEALED IN BLOOD AND SKIN, THE
TRACELESS KEEPS ENTERING INTO TRACES.
AND FROM BEYOND THE INTELLECT, BEAUTIFUL LOVE
COMES DRAGGING ITS SKIRTS, A CUP OF WINE IN ITS HAND.
AND FROM BEYOND LOVE, THAT INDESCRIBABLE ONE
WHO CAN ONLY BE CALLED "THAT" KEEPS COMING.

In this piece of sublime verse Rumi uses analogy to communicate a sense of God. We also see an explanation of the variance of love and intellect, but most importantly, embedded in the poetry, Rumi presents the difference between love as an attribute of God, and "the Indescribable One who can only be called 'That'" which is God.

As we saw in one of the couplets quoted above, Rumi believed that love, "real or metaphorical, ultimately takes humans to God." The journey to reunion with God was made by "constant purification and, in exchange, qualification with God's attributes." For the Sufi mystic, "the qualities of the Beloved enter in the place of the qualities of the lover." This is a heightened sense of jihad, when jihad is thought of as "the personal struggle against one's own shortcomings that is required of all Muslims so that they can perfect their submission."

For the Sufi mystic, however, the demand of reunion with God was to "qualify yourself with the qualities of God," which was achieved by constant mental struggle to exchange the base qualities of the mystic for the praiseworthy qualities by which God has described himself in the Qur'anic revelation. The Mevlevi Sufi, Sefik Can, suggests this is achieved when "The goal of the Sufi mystic is to understand and love The One who has created humankind." The connection of love to reunion with God is explained when Sefik Can says "In the Sufi tradition, love is described as annihilation in the Beloved." Again, the poetry of Rumi makes a vivid representation of this teaching:


LOVE CAME AND IT MADE ME EMPTY.
LOVE CAME AND IT FILLED ME WITH THE BELOVED.
IT BECAME THE BLOOD IN MY BODY
IT BECAME MY ARMS AND MY LEGS.
IT BECAME EVERYTHING!
NOW ALL I HAVE IS A NAME,
THE REST BELONGS TO THE BELOVED.

The verse describes the progressive, experiential knowledge of love. First came abandonment of the ego. Then, came submission whereby one no longer acts according to the ego, but in submission to the Beloved who now becomes "... his hearing with which he hears, his seeing with which he sees, his hand with which he strikes and his foot with which he walks..." as in the well-known hadith qudsi. The Sufi understanding of the annihilation of the self in the Beloved can be regarded as an expression of the ultimate understanding of tawhid – asserting God's unity. Annemarie Schimmel suggests that "to declare that God is One is the goal of religious life for the Muslim in general and the Sufi in particular." An elaboration of this idea leads to the assertion that only God has real existence and hence only God has the right to say "I," for "God is the only true subject."

It is the tawhid that underpins the expression of love in Sufi poetry because "the true lover sees everything as pertaining to his beloved." This is a teaching that Rumi sought to convey in the Masnavi-ye Ma'navi, for he intended

... to coax out of his readers the misapprehension that the world is made up of a multitude of separate selves apart from God and into the knowledge that all reality subsists only in relation to God.

It is a state of mind whereby "the poets recognized God everywhere," as Annemarie Schimmel said, citing the verse of the Qur'an that inspired this awareness: "Withersoever ye turn, there is the face of God" (Surah 2/109). Two couplets quoted by Schimmel use the above-mentioned symbolism of wine to begin their explanation of tawhid:


THE GLASS IS ALL AND THE WINE IS NAUGHT,
OR THE GLASS IS NAUGHT AND THE WINE IS ALL –
BUT THE VOCABULARY OF RELIGION CONCLUDES THE REALIZATION:
THAT ALL THAT IS, IS HE INDEED:
SOUL AND LOVED ONE AND HEART AND CREED.

Because "love is desire and need," it is stated that God, at the level of His attributes, created the world because He desired (or "loved") to be known. Furthermore, God's love for the Prophet is evident in this saying, "But for thee I would not have made the celestial spheres." Ultimately, God's desire to be revealed through the prophets and the saints "was the motivating force in His creation of the universe," and all the world's forms, movements and activities result from that original love. On this Rumi wrote:

The creatures are set in motion by Love, Love by Eternity-without-beginning; the wind dances because of the spheres, the trees because of the wind.

When we use the metaphor of the spiritual journey, we know from Sufi poetry that love is the vehicle par excellence for the traveller.


BIBLIOGRAPHY

    • Can, Sefik. 2005. The Fundamentals of Rumi's Thought: A Mevlevi Sufi Perspective. Translated by Cuneyt Eroglu and Zeki Saritoprak, New Jersey: The Light Inc.
    • Chittick, William C. 1983. The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi, Albany: State University of New York Press.
    • Lumbard, J.E.B. 2007. "From Hubb to Ishq: The Development of Love in Early Sufism." Journal of Islamic Studies, 18:3, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    • Murata, S. and Chittick, W.C. 1994. The Vision of Islam, London: I.B. TAURIS.
    • Rumi. 1992. A Garden Beyond Paradise: The Mystical Poetry of Rumi, translated by Jonathon Star and Shahram Shiva, New York: Bantam Books.
    • Rumi. 2006. Spiritual Verses: The First Book of the Masnavi-ye Ma'navi, translated by Alan Williams, London: Penguin,.
    • Schimmel, A. 1975. Mystical Dimensions of Islam. University of North Carolina Press.
    • Schimmel, A. 1982. As Through a Veil, Mystical Poetry in Islam. New York: Columbia University Press.
    • von Donzel, E., Lewis, B., and Pellat, C. (eds). 1978. The Encyclopedia of Islam, New Edition, Vol. 4, Leidin, Netherlands: E.J. Brill.
    • Yunus Emre, trans. Turgut Durduran. http://www.stwing.upenn.edu. Accessed 17/5/08.

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