Yesterday I Polished My Mirror

Peace, one and all…

Yesterday I polished my mirror,
Made it bright and placed it before myself.
I saw so many faults of my own in the mirror
That I forgot other people’s faults completely

Ruzbehan Baqli, Quatrain 3 (Source)

For Making A Profit Is Not The Point

Peace, one and all…

With what work at you occupied,
and for what purpose are you purchased?
What sort of bird are you,
and with what digestive are you eaten?
Pass up this shop of hagglers
and seek the shop of Abundance where God is the purchaser [Quran 9:111].
There Compassion has bought
the shabby goods no one else would look at.
With that Purchaser no base coin is rejected,
for making a profit is not the point.

Masnavi 6.1264 – 1267

Shaykh Kabir Helminski: Movement as Worship of the One

Peace, one and all…

A beautiful exploration of movement and worship, as transmitted through sacred Mevlevi tradition.  This wonderful talk also explores some of the symbolism of the whirling ceremony (sema).  May it be of benefit.

Source: SFH Mureed

Ask olsun,
Abdur Rahman

Sheikh Kabir Helminski: Collectedness and the Mantle of Ecstasy

Peace, one and all…

A beautiful reflection on some important verses from the Masnavi serif, by Kabir Dede.

When Jafar advanced against a certain fortress,
to his thirsty throat the fortress became a single gulp.
Riding alone, he charged up to the fortress,
so that they locked the fortress-gate in dread.
No one dared to meet him in battle:
Any more than a sailboat’s crew would attack a leviathan.

The king turned to his vizier, saying,
“What is to be done in this crisis, Counselor?”
He replied, “You should say goodbye to your pride and cunning,
and present to him your sword and shroud.”
“Why,” said the king, “isn’t he just a single man alone?”
He replied, “Don’t underestimate this man’s singleness.
Open your eye: look well at the fortress:
it is already trembling before him like quicksilver.
He sits in the saddle, his nerve unshaken,
as if all the East and West were at his side.

Several men rushed forward, like Fida’is,
and flung themselves into combat with him.
He struck each of them with just a blow of his mace
and they fell headlong at the feet of his steed.
God’s action had bestowed on him such collectedness
that he was confronting a whole people single-handedly.
When my eye beheld the face of that emperor,
quantity became nothing in my sight.”

The stars are many; though the sun is one,
When it appears, their foundation is demolished.
If a thousand mice put forth their heads,
the cat feels no fear or apprehension of danger.
How should a throng of mice advance
if they have no collectedness in their souls?
The collectedness in outward forms is a vain thing:
listen, beg from the Creator collectedness of spirit.

Collectedness is not the result of material quantity:
know that body, like reputation, is built on air.
If there were any collectedness in the heart of the mouse,
a number of mice would arise in indignation,
And, rushing up like assassins,
would without hesitation throw themselves upon the cat!
One would tear out her eyes,
while another would rip her ears with its teeth,
And another tear at her side:
there would be no escape from their unified alliance.

But the soul of the mouse has no collectedness:
at the cry of a cat its wits fly out of its soul.
The mice are paralyzed by the wily cat,
even if the mice are a hundred thousand.
Does the butcher care how big the flock is?
Can your daytime thoughts hold off slumber forever?

He is the Lord of the kingdom: He gives collectedness to the lion,
so that he springs on the herd of wild asses.
A hundred thousand savage and courageous wild asses
are as naught before the onset of the lion.
He is the Lord of the kingdom:
He gives to a Joseph the kingdom of Beauty,
so that he is like rainfall from white cumulus clouds.

He bestows upon one face the radiance of a star,
so that a king becomes the slave of a girl.
He bestows upon another face His own Light,
so that even in the darkest night
it can discern the good from the bad in everything.
Joseph and Moses brought the light of God
into their cheeks and countenances, and into their inmost centers.
A flashing beam shot forth from the face of Moses:
and he wore a veil to cover his face.

The radiance of his face would have overwhelmed all eyes
just as the emerald dazzles the eyes of the deaf python.
He asked God to make that veil
a covering for that powerful Light.
And God said, “Listen, make a veil of your felt cloak,
for the garment of gnosis can be trusted,
because that cloak has absorbed the Light:
the Light of the Spirit shines through its warp and woof.

Nothing will be a repository except a mantle like this:
nothing else can endure Our Light.
If Mt Qáf should arise as a barrier,
the Light would shatter it like Mt Sinai.”
Divine omnipotence has given the bodies of men
the ability to support the unconditioned Light.
His power makes a glass vessel the dwelling-place of that Light
of which Sinai cannot bear in the least.
A lamp-niche and a lamp-glass have become
the dwelling-place of the Light
by which Mt Qáf and Mt Sinai are blown to pieces.
Know that their bodies are the lamp-niche and their hearts the glass:
this lamp illumines the empyrean and the heavens.
Their light is dazzled by this Light
and vanishes like the stars in this radiance of morning.

Hence the Seal of the Prophets has related
the saying of the everlasting and eternal Lord—
“I am not contained in the heavens or in the void
or in the exalted intelligences and souls;
I am contained, as a guest, in a faithful heart,
without qualification or definition or description,
so that through the medium of that heart everything,
above and below, may win from Me sovereignties and fortune.
Without such a mirror neither Earth nor Time
could bear the vision of My beauty.

I caused the steed of mercy
to gallop over the two worlds:
I fashioned an expansive mirror.
In which fifty wedding-feasts appear in a flash:
face the mirror; don’t ask me to describe it.”

The gist is this: Moses made a veil of his cloak,
he knew the penetrating nature of that Moon.
Had the veil been of anything except his raiment,
it would have been torn to shreds,
even if it had been a solid mountain.
That Moon would penetrate iron:
how could the veil withstand the Light of God?
That veil was, itself, aglow:
it had covered a mystic in moments of bliss.
The fire is latent in the fuel
because the fuel was meant to burn.
Masnavi 6.3029-3082

Meister Eckhart: Counsels on Discernment 8

Peace, one and all…

In his eighth counsel, Meister Eckhart explores the need for zeal.

Counsel 8: Of constant zeal for the highest growth

A man should never be so satisfied with what he does or accomplish it in such a way that he becomes so independent or overconfident in his works that his reason becomes idle or lulled to sleep.  He ought always to lift himself up by the two powers of reason and will, and in this to grasp at what is best of all for him in the highest degree, and outwardly and inwardly to guard prudently against everything that could harm him.  So in all things he will lack nothing, but he will grow constantly and mightily.

Father Thomas Keating: Oneness & The Heart of the World

Peace, one and all…

A fascinating lecture on Oneness by Father Thomas Keating.

Through the Real

Peace, one and all…

‘Forgetting the self is remembering the Real.  Anyone who knows the Real through the Real is alive, and anyone who knows the Real through his self perishes’

Bayazid Bistami, as recorded in Attar’s Memorials of the Saints

Love is the Imam

Peace, one and all…

For us, love is the imam; the heart is the Congregation.
Our qible is the face of the Beloved;
our prayer is continuous.

Upon seeing the Beloved’s face, polytheism was taken away.
That’s why the Holy Law was left at the door.

The heart prostrates itself in the mihrab of the Beloved.
It strikes its head upon the ground
and supplicates God.

There is no ‘time’ like the silent and fervant prayers there.
Whoever is with the Beloved;
that moment is halvet.

The Holy Law says, ‘Be sure you don’t neglect
the sitpulations of the Holy Law.’
But stipulations are for that person who is perfidious.

The breath of those who achieved mystical knowledge
is a fortunate symbol.
With it we became secure from trouble.

At that first time in time, we said, ‘Yes’.
It is still one moment,
from that time to this hour.

Five of us assembled together,
we arrived at one time;
making five one, who will worship

We do not oppose anyone’s religion;
when religion is complete,
love is true.

He who guards Truth at the Beloved’s door,
without doubt
will find divine fortune.

At that door Yunus is the lowest of servants;
this honour of service has lasted
from Eternity without Beginning to Eternity without End.

Yunus Emre, trans. Grace Martin Smith

Meister Eckhart: Counsels on Discernment 7

Peace, one and all…

In his seventh counsel, Meister Eckhart turns to explore the notion of work, and how we might pursue our work in a spiritually appropriate manner.

Counsel 7: How a man should perform his work in the most reasonable way

One often finds people who are not impeded by the things that are around them – and this is easy to attain if one wishes – nor do they have any constant thought about them.  For if the heart is full of God, created things can have and find no place in it.  But, what is more, this alone should not satisfy us.  We ought to turn everything into great profit, whatever it may be, wherever we may be, whatever we see or hear, however strange or unlikely it may be.  Then for the first time all is well with us and not until then, and one will never come to an end in this.  One can always go on increasing in this, gaining more and more from it in true growth.

And in all his activities and under all circumstances a man should take care to use his reason, and in everything he should have a reasonable consciousness of himself and of his inwardness, and find God in all things, in the highest degree that is possible.  For a man ought to be as our Lord said: ‘You should be like men who are always watching and waiting for their master’ (Luke 12:36).  Truly, people who wait stay awake and look around them for whence he for whom they are waiting may be coming; and they are on the lookout for him in whatever may come, however unknown it may be to them, for perhaps he might somehow be in it.  So we should have in all things a knowing perception of our master.  We must show zeal in this, and it must cost us everything we are capable of in mind and body, and so it will be well with us, and we shall find God in everything alike, and find God always alike in all things.

Certainly, one work differs from another; but whoever undertakes all his works in the same frame of mind, then, truly, all that man’s works are the same.  Indeed, for the man for whom God shines forth as directly in worldly things as he does in divine things and to whom God would be so present, for such a man things would be well.  Not indeed that the man himself would be doing worldly things, unlike to God; rather, whatever external matters he chanced to see and hear, he would refer it all back to God.  Only he to whom God is present in everything and who employs his reason in the highest degree and has enjoyment in it knows anything of true peace and has a real kingdom of heaven.

For if things are to go well with a man, one of two things must always happen to him.  Either he must find and learn to possess God in works, or he must abandon all works.  But since a man cannot in this life be without works, which are proper to humans and are of so many kinds, therefore he must learn to possess his God in all things and to remain unimpeded, whatever he may be doing, wherever he may be.  And therefore if a man who is beginning must do something with other people, he ought first to make a powerful petition to God for his help, and put him immovably in his heart and unite all his intentions, thoughts, will and power to God, so that nothing else than God can take shape in that man.

The Path of Amazement

Peace, one and all…

I cannot say who it is I am.
I am amazed, I am amazed!

I cannot call this self ‘myself’.
I am amazed, I am amazed!

Who is in my eyes seeing?
Who is in my heart enduring?
Who is inhaling and exhaling?
I am amazed, I am amazed!

Who is speaking with my tongue?
Who is listening with my ears?
Who is understanding with my mind?
I am amazed, I am amazed!

Who is stepping with these feet?
Who is tasting with my mouth?
Who is chewing and who swallowing?
I am amazed, I am amazed!

Who holds these riches in his hand?
Who is the one throwing them away?
Who is buying and who selling?
I am amazed, I am amazed!

Why is there life coursing below my skin?
Why are my eyes bloodshot from crying?
Why this religion, why this faith?
I am amazed, I am amazed!

O Seyyid Nizamoglu, hear this:
Everything comes from the One.
Abandon yourself to this mighty beauty.
I am amazed, I am amazed!

Seyyid Seyfullah Nizamolgu

The Mark of the Friends of God

Peace, one and all…

‘The mark of the friends of the mighty and glorious Lord is that their thought is concern for the Lord, their repose is with the Lord, and their occupation is in the Lord’
Bishr al-Hafi, quoted by Attar in The Memorial of the Saints

While He is in All That Sees

Peace, one and all…

‘The ones who understand are the ones who have resolved to find themselves and to know Allah by knowing themselves and spend all effort, for they have the divine light of the love and the wish for Allah in their hearts.  These are the ones who will know that there is no existence other than He.  The one who has neither the wish nor the intention for this will not understand.  Allah Most High says in the Holy Quran:

‘They cannot see Him but He sees all eyes’ (6:103)

In other words, no sight can reach Him, while He is in all that sees’
(Ibn Arabi, On the One Alone, 251-252)

The One Who Works and the Work Itself

Peace, one and all…

‘God’s work is nothing other than His revelation in the soul when He shows Himself to the soul.  Then God is both the one who does the work and the work itself.  And He is what He works, and what He works is He.  Therefore God draws the soul away from all things so that it can become receptive to His work.  And God’s work makes the soul one spirit with God, which is what God desires most from men and women, that they should allow Him always to work within them without any obstruction, so that they may become one spirit with Him’
(The Book of Spiritual Poverty, p.56)

Meister Eckhart: Counsels on Discernment 6

Peace, one and all…

In his sixth counsel on discernment, Meister Eckhart discusses detachment of the soul.

Counsel 6: Of detachment and of the possession of God

I was asked: ‘Since some people keep themselves much apart from others, and most all like to be alone, and since it is this and in being in church that they find peace, would that be the best thing to do?’  Then I said: ‘No! and see why not!’  If all is well with a man, then truly, wherever he may be, whomever he may be with, it is well with him.  But if things are not right with him, then everywhere and with everybody it is all wrong with him.  If it is well with him, truly he has God, he has him everywhere, in the street and in company with everyone, just as much as in church or in solitary places or in his cell.  But if a man really has God, and has only God, then no one can hinder him.

Why?

Because he has only God, and his intention is toward God alone, and all things become for him nothing God.  That man carries God in his every work and in every place, and it is God alone who performs all the man’s works; for whoever causes the work, to him it belongs more properly and truly than it does to the one who performs it.  Then let our intention be purely and only for God, and then truly he must perform all our works, and no person, no crowds, no places can hinder him in all his works.  In the same way, no one can hinder this man, for he intends and seeks and takes delight in nothing but God, for God has become one with man in all his intention.  And so, just as no multiplicity can disturb God, nothing can disturb or fragment this man, for he is one in that One where all multiplicity is one and is one unmultiplicity.

A man should accept God in all things, and should accustom himself to having God present always in his disposition and his intention and his love.  Take heed how you can have God as the object of your thoughts whether you are in church or in your cell.  Preserve and carry with you that same disposition when you are in crowds and in uproar and in unlikeness.  And, as I have said before, when one speaks of likeness, one does not mean that we should pay like to all works or all places or all people. That would be quite wrong, because praying is a better work than spinning, and church is a better place than the street.  But you ought in your works to have a like disposition and a like confidence and a like love for your God and a like seriousness.  Believe me, if you were constant in this way, no one could come between you and the God who is present to you.

But a man in whom truly God is not but who must grasp God in this thing or in that thing from outside, and who seeks God in unlike ways, be it in works or people or places, such a man does not possess God.  And it may easily be that something hinders such a man for he does not possess God, and he does not seek him alone, nor does he love and intende Him alone; and therefore it is not only bad company that hinders him.  Good company can also hinder him – not just the street, but the church too, not only evil words and deeds, but good words and good deeds as well, for the hindrance is in him, because in him God has not become all things.  Were that so, everything would be right and good for him, in every place and among all people, because he has God, and no one can take God away from him or hinder him in his work.

On what does this true possession of God depend, so that we may truly have Him?

This true possession of God depends on the disposition, and on an inward directing of the reason and intention toward God, not on a constant contemplation in an unchanging manner, for it would be impossible to nature to preserve such an intention, and very labourious, and not the best thing either.  A man ought not to have a God who is just a product of his thought, nor should he be satisfied with that, because if the thought vanished, God too would vanish.  But one ought to have a God who is present, a God who is far above the notions of men and of all created things.  That God does not vanish, if a man does not willfully turn away from Him.

The man who has God essentially present to him grasps God divinely, and to him God shines in all things; for everything tastes to him of God, and God forms himself for the man out of all things.  God always shines out in him, in him there is a detachment and a turning away, and a forming of his God whom he loves and who is present to him.  It is like a man consumed with a real and burning thirst, who may well not drink and may turn his mind to other things.  But whatever he may do, in whatever company he may be, whatever he may be intending or thinking or working at, still the idea of drinking does not leave him, so long as he is thirsty.  The more his thirst grows, the more the idea of drinking grows and intrudes and possesses him and will not leave him.  Or if a man loves something ardently and with all his heart, so that nothing else has savour for him or touches his heart but that, and that and nothing but that is his whole object: Truly, wherever he is, whomever he is with, whatever he may undertake, whatever he does, what he so loves never passes from his mind, and he finds the image of what he loves in everything, and it is the more present to him the more his love grows and grows.  He does not seek rest, because no unrest hinders him.

Such a man finds far greater merit with God because he grasps everything as divine and as greater than things in themselves are.  Truly, to this belong zeal and love and a clear apprehension of his own inwardness, and a lively, true, prudent and real knowledge of what his disposition is concerned with amid thigns and persons.  A man cannot learn this by running away, by shunning things and shutting himself up in an external solitude; but he must practice a solitude of the spirit, wherever or with whomever he is.  He must learn to break through things and to grasp God in them and to form him in himself powerfully in an essential manner.  This is like someone who wants to learn to write.  If he is to acquire the art, he must certainly practice it hard and long, however disagreeable and difficult this may be for him and however impossible it may seem.  If he will practice it industriously and assiduously, he learns it and masters the art.  To begin with, he must indeed memorise each single letter and get it firmly into his mind.  Then, when he has the art, he will not need to think about and remember the letters’ appearance; he can write effortlessly and easily – and it will be the same if he wants to play the fiddle or to learn any other skill.  It will always be enough for him to make up his mind to do the hard work the art demands; and even if he is not thinking about it all the time, still, whatever he may be thinking of when he does perform it, this be from the art he has learned.

So a man must be penetrated with the divine presence, and be shaped through and through with the shape of the God he loves, and be present in Him, so that God’s presence may shine out of him without any effort.  What is more, in all things let him acquire nakedness, and let him always remain free of things.  But at the beginning there must be attentiveness and a careful formation within himself, like a schoolboy setting himself to learn

What Is This World To You?

Peace, one and all…

If you have reached greatness, what is form to you?
If you have found a path to the spiritual realm,
what is this world to you?

Give up this world; come and enter the fire of love.
Reach the stage ahead;
what is this remaining behind of yours?

This body’s property is not just fire and water and earth.
Each one of these returns to its source;
what is this heedlessness of yours?

Idol-temple and wine shop become a mosque to the true soul.
Not one coin of yours will be wasted;
what is this lying to you?

Since you are strong enough to go to the Hereafter,
leave aside the false pretension of this world.
If you are a lover, what is this love of goods and treasures to you?

If you gather goods saying, ‘They are mine,’
do you have pretensions of being God?
The King will not look at your crime;
what is this being lost on the way to you?

Night and day you suffer worries; ‘What should I do? I am a miserable wretch,’ you say.
He is generous; He gives you your daily bread;
what is this worry to you?

Unfortunate one, eat, feed others; if food is lacking, God will provide.
One day your body will enter the earth;
that which is left behind – what is it to you?

Yunus, you have become very drunk from this goblet of love.
While you lost consciousness of self, you reached God;
what is sobriety to you?

Yunus Emre, translated by G.S. Smith

For Water is Sweet When it Flows

Peace, one and all…

‘Travel, for water is sweet when it flows, and when it settles, it stagnates’

Bishr al-Hafi, as quoted in Attar’s Memorials of the Saints

Meister Eckhart: Counsels on Discernment 5

Peace, one and all…

In his fifth counsel, Meister Eckhart focuses on exploring the ground of our being.

Counsel 5: See what can make our being and our ground good

A man’s being and ground – from which his works derive their goodness – is good when his intention is wholly directed to God.  Set all your care on that, that God become great within you, and that all your zeal and effort in everything you do and in everything you renounce be directed to God.  Truly, the more you do this in all your works, whatever they are, the better they are.  Cleave to God, and He will endow your with all goodness.  Seek God, and you will find God and every good thing as well.  Yes, truly, with such an attitude you could tread upon a stone, and that would be a more godly thing for you to do than for you to receive the Body of our Lord, if you were thinking more of yourself with less detachment.  If we cling to God, then God and all virtues cling to us.  And what once you were seeking now seeks you; what once you hunted after now hunts you, and what you once wished to shun now avoids you.  Therefore to him who clings greatly to God, everything clings that is godly, and from him everything takes flight that is unlike God and alien to Him.

The Beautiful Names of God: al-Fattah & al-`Aleem

Peace, one and all…

An interesting lecture on the Divine Names al-Fattah and Al-`Aleem.