The Sufi Message of Love, Harmony, and Beauty

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

“The Sufi sees the truth in every religion. If invited to offer prayers in a Christian church, the Sufi is ready to do so. The Sufi will go the synagogue and pray as the Jews do; will offer Salat with Muslims; and in the Hindu temple worships the same God. Yet the Sufi’s true temple, the true mosque, is the human heart, in which the divine Beloved lives. Sufism is a religion if one wants to learn religion from it; it is a philosophy if one wants to learn wisdom from it; it is mysticism if one wants to be guided by it in the unfoldment of the soul; and yet it is beyond all these things. It is the light of life which is the sustenance of every soul. It is the Message of Love, Harmony, and Beauty.”

– Hazrat Inayat Khan

Ya Haqq!

“The whole universe… is the Qur’an.”

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

“The whole universe, everything, including you, is the Qur’an.”

– Shaykh Tosun Bayrak al-Jerrahi al-Halveti 

Ya Haqq!

There is Only One River

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

“Sufism is not different from the mysticism of all religions. Mysticism comes from Adam, of monks, of hermits, and of Muhammad (God’s peace be upon him). A river passes through many countries and each claims it for its own. But there is only one river. Truth does not change. People change. People try to possess truth and keep it for themselves, keep it from others. But you cannot own the truth.”  – Sheikh Muzaffer Ozak

Ya Haqq!

Mystic Heart – The 3rd Sufi Poetry Carnival!!!

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

God hath treasures beneath the Throne,
the keys whereof are the tongues of poets.
– a saying of the Prophet (pbuh)

Alhamdulillah!

Welcome to the 3rd Annual Sufi Poetry Carnival, co-hosted by our brother Sadiq of the highly acclaimed Technology of the Heart blog.

The Carnival will run from April 7th to April 30th, during National Poetry Month in the US, and will be posted on our blogs on May 7th, inshallah.  The Sufi theme this year is:

The Mystic Heart

If you have a blog or website, you can submit a direct link of your poem. If you don’t have a blog or website, you can email your submission to the address below, with the subject line:  Sufi Poetry Carnival

All May Enter: We are all spiritual beings having a human experience,  so may submit their poetry, whether a Sufi or not, as long as the poetry is in English and the Mystic Heart theme is followed.

Send your links and entries to me at: Irvingk1945@gmail.com

And please send a duplicate copy to Sadiq at mysticsaint@gmail.com

We will then each post a selection of the poems chosen :)

In your light I learn how to love,
in your beauty, how to make poems.
You dance inside my chest where no-one sees you,
but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.
– Rumi

 

Ya Haqq!

Tale of the Jinn – Sequel to Master of the Jinn – Page One

“Verily, Satan has said, ‘By Your Honor and Grandeur, O Allah, my temptations will not depart from your servants as long as their souls are in their bodies.’ And the Lord said, ‘By My Honor and My Grandeur, never will I cease forgiving those who ask My forgiveness.’”
– A hadith of the Prophet (peace be unto him), recorded by Ahmad and al-Haakim

In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate.

O Lord, bestow on us Thy mercy, and provide for us a right course of action!  Praise be to God the Highest, who has revealed the mysteries to His intimates and the subtleties of the Way of Truth to His friends . He it is that brings the day in its glory and the night in its beauty, and brings dead hearts to life by the perception of His eternity.

I, Ishaq, named the scribe, am commanded by my Master to set forth the Jinn-i-Nama, this Book of the Jinn, to which, by the mercy of God, my companions and I have in part born witness.

Therefore, I have asked God’s blessing and resolved to tell the full tale, so that the eyes of the people may be opened and the truth of the Jinn and the Subtle Realm revealed. For verily an Age of Wonder is upon us, wherein the  two kindred, if they will, may know the love and mercy of God.

Thus, may Allah guide my pen, for by His will alone is the Truth revealed.

Ya Haqq!

Note: In two weeks, the next page of the Jinn-i-Nama, the Book of the Jinn, will be posted, the long awaited sequel to Master of the Jinn: A Sufi Novel.

Justice in Islam

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

“His Throne is upon the waters, and in His other hand is the balance (Justice), and He raises and lowers (whomever He will).” – a hadith of the Prophet (pbuh)

One of the Names of God is Al-Adl, the Just, and in Islam, Justice demands a balance, a fairness that is clearly seen and felt. And the best example may be the ‘best of creation’ himself:

When the Prophet (peace be unto him) was drawing near death, he availed himself of one last chance to practice justice:

He came to the mosque wrapped in a blanket, and there were those who saw signs of death in his face. “If there is any among you,” he said, “whom I have caused to be flogged unjustly, here is my back. Strike in your turn. If I have damaged the reputation of any among you, may he do likewise to mine. To any I have injured, here is my purse… It is better to blush in this world than in the hereafter.” A man claimed a debt of three dinars and was paid.

In Islam and on the Sufi path as well, the highest level of Justice is to do Justice without demanding it, recognizing that our own demands may be the cause of the imbalance itself. Thus, a story is told of Dhu’l Nun al Misri, the great Egyptian Sufi saint. There was a drought in Egypt, and the people implored him to pray to God for rain. He did so, and during his prayer, God informed him that he himself was the source of the drought. So he left Egypt, and the rains came.

And for the dictators in the world,  a reminder:

Beware of oppressing someone with no defense against you except God. – Hazrat Ali

– Edited from The Virtues of the Prophet, (Chapter IX) by Charles Upton.

Ya Haqq!

Gladdening Hearts

Salaam and Greetings of Peace

It is related that in the late 1970s, there was a young man from Southern California who was seeking spiritual knowledge. He had lived in communes and sought, as the young in every generation do, the answers to life in ancient wisdom and eternal truths. Perhaps partly because of this, he was also estranged from his wealthy and conservative father.

The young man decided to go to India to seek enlightenment and find a teacher, and while traveling a roundabout way through Iran, found himself in Tehran.  By fortune or fate, which is another way of saying by God’s will, one of the various people he met there was a darvish, who, upon learning of his desire for spiritual attainment, took him to the Nimatullahi Sufi khaniqh and introduced him to the Master, Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh.

The young man had heard of Sufism, but of course had never met a Sufi Master, especially one of such a loving nature and humor and strength of personality.  He spoke at length with the Master on several occasions, and after some consideration, became initiated. He afterwards spent some time in Tehran with Dr. Nurbakhsh, and happily considered that his spiritual quest for a teacher had been fulfilled. Eventually, he expressed his wish to go back to California, and the Master gave him permission, but also commanded that he reconcile with his father.

The young man, now on the Path of Love, knew that this was the right thing to do, and wanted to bring back a present for his parents. He decided on a Persian red and blue rug from city of Kerman (Kirman), because he had heard that their rugs were famous for their rich, blue color.  It was said that the blue of the sky in Kerman was the truest, most beautiful cerulean blue, because of the quality of the light there. Dr. Nurbakhsh, who was himself born there, was delighted to hear of it, and personally contacted Nimatullahi dervishes in Kerman who dealt in rugs, and arranged for the young man to purchase a high quality Kermani rug at a fair price.

Some time passed, and the young man, once again living in his parents house, received word that Dr. Nurbakhsh was arriving in Los Angeles to visit the just purchased khaniqah there. The young man was very happy to hear it, and his parents, to thank the Master for bringing back their prodigal son, invited Dr. Nurbakhsh and the dervishes traveling with him to tea on their arrival.

The Master was jet-lagged and very tired, but he accepted the invitation, and they made the long drive to the parent’s large and palatial home.

The father answered the door in shorts and a Polo shirt, and shook hands with the Master. “Hi! Glad to meet you!” he said, looking somewhat suspiciously at the foreign-looking gentleman and his entourage. The Master shook his hand warmly, and through an interpreter, expressed his thanks for the kind invitation. The dervishes, however, were nonplussed that this American man treated their Master so casually, instead of with the awe and respect they were used to, but the Master thought nothing of it, and just smiled and put them all at ease.

As tea was being served, out of the picture window overlooking the back deck, they watched the sun setting over the Pacific ocean. The slanted light was particularly lovely on the blue of the Kermani rug at their feet. The young man sat with the dervishes, smiling at his parents, who wholeheartedly thanked the Master for all he had done to bring them back together.

Finally, as they said their goodbyes, and the Master got into the car for the long ride back to the new khaniqah, he looked very tired after the long day, having used the last reserves of his energy for the ride to pay his respects to the young man’s parents. Some of the dervishes could not help but wonder why he went through so much trouble.

As if in answer, he suddenly said, “Alhamdulillah! We have gladdened one heart today. That is all that we do. We gladden hearts.”

And so it is.

 

Ya Haqq!

The Knowing Heart

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

“The Sufis have been the educators of hearts for at least fourteen centuries. Their teaching and methods are based neither upon dogma nor conjecture, but upon a divine and objective foundation which is the primordial religion of humanity.

“Sufism does not offer salvation in the sense of a guarantee of heaven in the afterlife. Sufism offers a path to complete humanness, a state in which the spiritual and the human are unified, in which the world of spiritual qualities and material existence are seen as one.

“This education is empirical, practical, and integrated with daily life. At the same time it is attuned to the most transcendent Truth. This education is a unified whole, but it touches on so many areas of experience: individual psychology, relationships, marriage, family, community, livelihood, creativity, and worship.”

We are the mirror as well as the face in it.

We are drunk on this life of God.

We are both the pain and its cure.

We are the fresh, cool water

and the jar that pours.

–  Rumi (Quatrain 1652)

From The Knowing Heart: A Sufi Path of Transformation by Kabir Helminski

Ya Haqq!

“There is no existence save His existence.”

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

“There is no existence save His existence. The existence of the beggar is His existence, and the existence of the sick is His existence. And the existence of all created things, both accidents and substances, is His existence; and when the secret of one particle of the atom is clear, the secret of all created things, both outward and inward, is clear; and you do not see in this world or the next anything except God.” – ibn Arabi

Ya Haqq!

Note:  See also this poem.

Sufi Comics – The Blind Astronomer

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

From Arif and Ali Vakil’s Sufi Comics blog. Reposted with permission.

Indeed,  within us is the greatest universe, a fountain of surprises :)

Ya Haqq!