Sufism

I'm going to take my final final tonight, so I bring you Sufism!

This is the mystical "esoteric" strand of Islam, but it's still Islam.  Sufis say that the prophet Muhammad was their model because in addition to being a businessman (taking Khadidja's caravan from place to place), he was very contemplative and had a deep prayer life, which they say led to his receiving the Qur'an (recitations).  Muhammad  said, according to Sufis, that every verse of the Qur'an has both an inner and an outer meaning--like the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, I was surprised to learn.  Fitzgerald, who translated it in the version most of us know, thought it was all about hedonism, but it's really pretty much the opposite.  It's all about getting closer to God.  (I was wondering whether the same thing could be said about the Song of Solomon, but I'm not going to go there right now.)  The aim of Sufism is to become so purified of ego and self that you're a perfect mirror for the divine attributes.  I haven't quite mastered the vocabulary, but here are some words:

Fana is the total annihilation of the ego (naf) because the nafs keep us from Truth, which is God, according to the Sufis.  In literary metaphors, it's the annihilation of the lover (ego) in the Beloved (God), but this may require a teacher or spiritual master.

Murshid--teacher

or a shaykh--spiritual master

In this world there's the Zahir (exterior, apparent) and the Batin (what's within the nature of God)

The Ghayb is the unseen, the hidden dimension not visible to our five senses.

Myein is to close our eys and go within

Tawhid means that God is one, but we can unite with that one.

Ecstasy and suffering provide the fuel and the tool to get closer to God.

There's nothing that's not God.

Then a Sufi can receive the barakah--Blessing, sacred power passed down from the shaykh to the shaykh all the way back to Mohammad, who transmitted the barakah to 'Ali.

(Do you suppose that Barakah is the basis of Barak Obama's first name?  Just looked it up:  lightning, blessing, grain farm.  I'll go with blessing.)

Tariqas are esoteric orders, but I wonder whether that's also the path.

tariqah is the way to unite with the Reality. Tariqa is sthe Persian word for path. 

Dhikr is the concentrated, repetitive chanting of the names of God or the shahada (There is no god but God, and Muhammad is his prophet.  But I've read that Sufis think this means "There is nothing but God" because God is all that is real and the only thing that lasts.)

It started when some Muslims were disenchanted with the Umayyad dynasty (661-750) because of the focus on the pursuit of wealth and the overly legalistic religious perspectives.  Sufis wanted to go back to the form they believed Muhammad practiced.  They wore wool, a coarse weave to show they shunned wealth, and from the word for wool, they were given the name Sufis.  According to Sambul Ali-Karamali, the author of The Muslim Next Door:  The Qur'an, the Media, and that Veil Thing, there's sober Sufism and drunken sufism, but those are just figurative words.  Sober emphasizes the Shari'a (pronounced like Maria) and reason, and drunken Sufism emphasizes the ecstatic union with God or nearness to God, and that's where we get Sufi poetry.  We all grew up with the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam, which I've recently listened to with the paraphrasing and extended explanation of Paramahansa Yogananda, the author of Autobiography of a Yogi.  Just to give you an idea, here's the verse most of us remember from high school literature class:

Awake!  for Morning in the Bowl of Night

Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:

And Lo!  the Hunter of the East has caught

The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.

According to Yogananda, who may base his explanations on the insights of Swami Govinda Tirtha, who wrote The Nectar of Grace:  Omar Khayyam's Life and Works, the Morning is the dawn of awakening from delusive earthly existence, and the bowl of night is the darkness of ignorance that keeps the immortal soul in mortal consciousness.  The stone is spiritual discipline, so when it puts the stars, attractive twinkling material desires,  to flight, it helps us get closer to God.  The Hunter of the East rfers to Eastern wisdom, which knows that delusion shoudl be slain.  The Noose of Light is the divine illumination of wisdom.  You get the idea!

One of my favorite verses is this one:  

For in and out, above, about, below,

'Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show

Played ina Box whose Candle is the Sun,

Round which we Phantom Figures come and go.

Without going into a complete paraphrase, I'll just say that I sometimes think that may be life as we know--a Magic shadow show--all illusion.  Also, the sun is God's light, which causes the appearance of all the images.  

A few years ago, Rumi became very popular in the United States, and he's still widely read.  He was a Sufi, and his poetry is like this--full of metaphors that are all about Sufism and God.    Have I mentioned the Whirling Dervishes?  Rumi is the one who inspired the mevlevi Dervish Order in Turkey that's famous for its "Whirling Dervishes," whose dances lead to transcendent rapture.  

Al-Ghazali, a very famous (now I know!) Persian philosopher and the author of The Incoherence of the Philosophers,  legitimized Sufism by staring one of the first Sufi orders.  

But now I think I'll dream, as I did last night but maybe on a different topic?  Last night I dreamed that I was discussing politics or philosophy, and then I excused myself to give birth and went right back to the politics and philosophy.   Then it occurred to me, What about the baby?  Is the baby all right?  I'm kind of old to be giving birth.  Maybe the baby isn't all right.  No one has let me see it.  The baby wasn't all right.  That may just be about taking final exams.  Until tomorrow, when "morning in the bowl of night has flung the stone that puts the stars to flight."