The One True Faith

Within my heart, all forms may find a place,
The cloisters of the monk, the idol's fane
A pasture for gazelles, the Sacred House
Of God, to which all Muslims turn their face;
The tables of the Jewish law, the Word
Of God, revealed unto His Prophet true.
Love is the faith I hold, and whereso'er
His camels turn, the one truth faith is there.

Muhyi al-Din Ibn 'Arabi (d. 1240 CE); tr. Margaret Smith, 1950.

We Have Not Come To Take Prisoners

We have not come here to take prisoners, but to surrender ever more deeply
To freedom and joy.

We have not come into this exquisite world to hold ourselves hostage
From love.

Run my dear, from anything that may not strengthen your precious
Budding wings.

Run like hell, my dear, from anyone likely to put a sharp knife into the sacred,
Tender vision of your beautiful heart.

We have a duty to befriend those aspects of obedience that stand outside of our house
And shout to our reason "O please, O please, Come out and play."

For we have not come here to take prisoners or to confine our wondrous spirits,
But to experience ever and ever more deeply our divine courage, freedom, and light.

[from The Gift: Poems By Hafiz, tr. Daniel Ladinsky, slightly modified].

Dervish Ethical Ideals

According to the Ni'matullahi order:

Prayer of Jami

"O Allah! Dervish let me live, and dervish die, and in the company of dervishes raise Thou me to life eternal."

Boulder-Dushanbe Tea House

I just want to be the tea-master in the khanaqah of love.

Renderings of Hafez

I followed the path of the mad libertines for years--
Long enough, until I was able, with the consent
Of intelligence, to put my greediness into prison.



I didn't find the way to the nest of the great bird
Of the far mountain by myself. I made
The trip with the help of the bird of Solomon.



Seek satisfaction in what comes contrary
To your habit. I found interior concentration
At last in your disheveled head of hair.

Bring a cooling shade over my interior burning--
You are a hidden treasure--because it is out of the melancholy
Of desire for you that I have wrecked this house.

I repented and swore that I would never kiss
The salty lip of the cup-bearer again; but now I am biting
My own lip, and I wonder why I ever listened to an idiot.

Being a model of modesty or drunkenness
Is not up to us. Whatever the Master
Of Pre-Eternity told me to do, I did.

Because of the grace of Pre-Eternity, I have a longing
For the Garden of Paradise, even though I spent
Long years as a doorkeeper in the tavern.

Here at the door of old age, the fact that the companionship
Of Joseph has graced me is a reward for my patience
When living like Jacob in his house of sorrow.

No reciter of scripture who stands in the mihrab
Of the Firmament has ever enjoyed such delight
As I have received from the wealth of the Qur'an.



[tr. Robert Bly and Leonard Lewisohn].

A Persian Lesson

For his o'erarching and last lesson the greybeard sufi,
In the fresh scent of the morning in the open air,
On the slope of a teeming Persian rose-garden,
Under an ancient chestnut-tree wide spreading its branches,
Spoke to the young priests and students.

"Finally my children, to envelop each word, each part of the rest,
Allah is all, all, all--immanent in every life and object,
May-be at many and many-a-more removes--yet Allah, Allah, Allah is there.

Has the estray wander'd far? Is the reason-why strangely hidden?
Would you sound below the restless ocean of the entire world?
Would you know the dissatisfaction? the urge and spur of every life;
The something never still'd--never entirely gone? the invisible need
of every seed?

It is the central urge in every atom,
(Often unconscious, often evil, downfallen,)
To return to its divine source and origin, however distant,
Latent the same in subject and in object, without one exception."

--Walt Whitman

A Brief History of the Caucasus

Theodor Horschelt, The Surrender of Shamil (1863)

The Caucasus mountains have been a site of conflict for centuries as the Russian Empire, then the Soviet Union and, in recent years, the Russian Federation, have all attempted to exercise control over the local tribes whose villages occupy territory that the Russians regard as strategic to their interests in the region.



Tolstoy immortalized the struggle of the Russians with the Chechen people in his late novel Hadji Murad.



The Caucasus mountains are not only a land of imperial ambitions and resistance but also of rugged physical beauty.



It is a land of warriors and dervishes and, yes, even warrior-dervishes.

The Two Schools of Tasawwuf

Baghdadi Sahw ("sobriety," of which Junayd is the emblem) on the outside (zahir)...



Khorasani Sukr ("intoxication," of which Bistami is the emblem) on the inside (batin)...



"The two traditions," as Darbandi and Davis remark, "are not wholly exclusive" (Attar, The Conference of the Birds, Penguin Classics, 12).



Two schools, one dervish.

"Open your inner eyes--see..."

Be just and you're judged a pious man,
Cruel, a bloody cur!
Open your inner eyes--see
which name is yours!

--Said Abu'l Khayr (tr. Reza Ordoubadian)

The Conference of the Birds

Farid ud-Din Attar's (d. approx. 1220 CE) Manteq at-Tair is--like all great fables--deceptively simple. When I first read it (sometime in the late 1990's) I found it clever but quaint. It takes some time to get used to the sing-song quality of what Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis term (in their Introduction to the Penguin Classics edition [1984]) "the common masnavi metre of Persian narrative poetry" (p. 23). One does not expect such verse to be a vehicle for profound reflections about the nature of the universe and human existence. The success of Coleman Barks as a "translator" of Rumi's poetry is due, in part, to his recognition that the Euro-American ear expects a different sort of tuning and, in addition, to his ability to render Mevlana's lines in a way that better conforms to such expectations.

But an important aspect of learning to read poetry lies in the acquisition of a different "ear." Dipping into Attar's masterpiece from time to time over the past decade and a half has permitted me, ever so slowly, to gain a greater appreciation for Persian verse; meeting Dick Davis several years ago and learning from him a little about his translation process was also extremely helpful.

Nowadays I treasure the work. It is a poem meant to be sung and, when sung, its deceptively simple renderings of complex philosophical, theological, and pietistic ideas insinuate themselves in the subconscious. Once past the cultural barrier, one learns from Farid ud-Din by learning, first, to sort of "hum" his lines. In time, one learns, ineluctably, to think like him. This seems to be only fitting considering the fact that Attar's own connections to Islamic pietism and intellectual traditions remain sketchy:

"... E. G. Browne quotes a Persian source to the effect that though Majd ad-Din was Attar's teacher it was medicine that he taught him, not the Way of sufism. There is another persistent tradition (first mentioned by Rumi, whom Attar is said to have dandled on his knee as a child and whose poetry is considered by Persians to be the ne plus ultra of mystical literature) that Attar had in fact no teacher and was instructed in the Way by the spirit of Mansur al-Hallaj, the sufi martyr who had been executed in Baghdad in 922 and who appeared to him in a dream" (Attar, Conference, 12). The connection to al-Hallaj leads, by another road, to fellow Khorasanian Said Abu'l Khayr--who is said to have been the first poet to have sung the martyr's teachings (to be followed, subsequently, by Sana'i, Attar, and Rumi--ibid., 13).



Khorasan! O Khorasan!



Hoopoe, bird of the heart.

The Dervishes Next Door

Just your average dervish family.

The Dervish Diaries

Your love-madness indwells in Holy Ghost,
your affairs carried by the One Wisdom.
The wayfarer of the universe is heart
Yearning: hand on his head, feet in mud.

[Said Abu'l Khayr, d. 1049, tr. Reza Ordoubadian].

Houses of the Holy, Part Four

Sheikh Muzaffer Ozak's kitabevi in Istanbul's old book market.

Houses of the Holy, Part Three

Bosnian Tekke: A place I long to visit.

Houses of the Holy, Part Two

From age 41-48, my Khanqah.

Houses of the Holy, Part One

From childhood to age 41, a regular ziyara destination for me.

The Young Writer In America

As true today or more true than when it was written (1951):

What we need today to give a literature of vitality and significance, in spite of the prevailing inertia and confusion, is a few writers of genius, men who would be able to go on day in and day out, year in and year out, patiently creating out of their own spiritual resources master works of art. They would have to be as strong as Proust and Joyce in order to survive in the midst of isolation and paralysis. They would have to be big enough and dedicated enough to withstand all our efforts to kill them, frighten them, buy them off, or send them to prison. But if we had them and they were able to survive, they might succeed in envisioning for us the reality we seek and cannot find for ourselves. And then all the small, confused, and misguided talents whose troubles concern us now might be impelled to draw close around them and discover, in their example, the means and the desire to create a literature that would be worthy of our time.

--John W. Aldridge, After the Lost Generation, p. 257.

I would suggest one small amendment to Aldridge's fire sermon: for it seems to me that the writers we have today are indeed "worthy of our time"--and that is the problem. What we really need are artists who can rise above the current malaise and "envision for us the reality we seek and cannot find for ourselves." Without a vision, the people perish. What passes for vision today is religious ideology placed in the service of capitalistic cant.

We need the invisible Whitmanian republic to ascend into visibility and "sound its barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world." We need the Thoreauvian tariqa of sauntering and "ecstatic witness" to build new Walden-Khanqas next to other ponds. We need a hail storm of Milleresque "happy rocks" to rain down on the White House, the Capital, K-Street and the Pentagon:

There are limits to everything, and so I believe there is a limit to human stupidity and cruelty. But we are not yet there. We have not yet drained the bitter cup. Perhaps only when we have become full-fledged monsters will we recognize the angel in man. Then, when the ambivalence is clear, may we look forward with confidence to the emergence of a new type of man, a man as different from the man of today as we are from the pithecanthropus erectus. Nor is this too much to hope for, even at this remote distance. There have been precursors. Men have walked this earth who, for all they resemble us, may well have come from another planet. They have appeared singly and far apart. But tomorrow they may come in clusters, and the day after in hordes. The birth of Man follows closely the birth of the heavens. A new star never makes its appearance alone. With the birth of a new type of man a current is set in motion which later enables us to perceive that he was merely the foam on the crest of a mighty wave.

--Henry Miller, Sunday After the War, pp. 159-160.

"One has to be so terribly religious, to be an artist."

In an often quoted passage from a letter to Ernest Collins (Letters, 1913), D. H. Lawrence observed:

"There are so many little frets that prevent our coming at the real naked essence of our vision. It sounds boshy, doesn't it. I often think one ought to be able to pray before one works--and then leave it to the Lord. Isn't it hard, hard work to come to real grips with one's imagination--throw everything overboard. I always feel as if I stood naked for the fire of Almighty God to go through me--and it's rather an awful feeling. One has to be so terribly religious, to be an artist" [L i 519, quoted in Keith M. Sagar, D.H. Lawrence: Poet, p. 7].

Poet and Pietist: Shaykh Said Abu'l Khayr (d. 1049 CE)

Abu'l Khayr is remembered as a dervish-poet who encouraged his fellow wearers of the suf "to dance and feast, and worship God with joyful hearts" (John Alden Williams, Islam [1961], 150). Although extravagant views and miraculous deeds are often attributed to him, he is also considered to be the author of remarkably sober apothegms:

(a) If men wish to draw near to God, they must seek him in the hearts of men. They should speak well of all men, whether present or absent, and if they themselves seek to be a light to guide others, then like the sun, they must show the same face to all. To bring joy to a single heart is better than to build many shrines for worship, and to enslave one soul by kindness is worth more than the setting free of a thousand slaves.



(b) The (true saint) sits in the midst of his fellow-men, and rises up and eats and sleeps and buys and sells and gives and takes in the bazaars among other people, and marries and has social intercourse with other folk, and never for an instant forgets God.

[Margaret Smith, Readings from the Mystics of Islam, p. 49]

Henry Miller: Word-Scratcher

Henry Miller: American Dervish

"Whether it be admitted or not, there are hierarchies of being, as well as of role. The highest types of men have always been those in favor of 'unlimited circulation.' They were comparatively fearless and sought neither riches nor security, except in themselves. By abandoning all that they most cherished they found the way to a larger life. Their example still inspires us, though we follow them more with the eye than with the heart, if we follow at all. They never attempted to lead, but only to guide. The real leader has no need to lead--he is content to point the way. Unless we become our own leaders, content to be what we are in process of becoming, we shall always be servitors and idolators. We have only what we merit; we would have infinitely more if we wanted less. The whole secret of salvation hinges on the conversion of word to deed, with and through the whole being. It is this turning in wholeness and faith, conversion, in the spiritual sense, which is the mystical dynamic of the fourth-dimensional view. I used the word salvation a moment ago, but salvation, like fear or death, when it is accepted and experienced, is no longer 'salvation.' There is no salvation, really, only infinite realms of experience providing more and more tests, demanding more and more faith. Willy-nilly we are moving towards the Unknown, and the sooner and readier we give ourselves up to the experience, the better it will be for us..." Henry Miller, "The Wisdom of the Heart" [italics added].

I first discovered Miller's essay in 1980. I was twenty years old. I shared the essay with a good friend of mine who was several years older than me, and a clergyman. He responded positively to the essay, but he did not grasp its real meaning for me. For I knew then that I was not a Christian--and that I could never be a Christian--because Christianity is "salvation religion" and I understood, only too clearly, that there is no salvation, within the Church or without. Indeed, salvation is not the point of human life. There is no point to human life beyond the hard-won "wisdom of the heart" that permits us to be "content to be what we are in process of becoming."

Salvation religion is for those who feel that they must justify the accidents of their birth and the choices they have made in life as a consequence of those accidents. Saul of Tarsus, religious genius, extraordinary poet, and guilt-ridden diaspora Jew embraced the nascent Jesus movement and then, through the power of his personality, managed to steer it in the direction of soteriology--understandably so, for after his career as Persecutor-in-Chief, he found himself sorely in need of life-justification.

But Saul's problems only become ours if we let them. In lieu of Saul's problems, we do better if we contemplate Henry's solutions (solutions that reflect, incidentally, those of Jesus and his Jerusalem followers, not St. Paul's).

Tragically, prurience and shallowness prevent most people from accepting Henry Miller as a wisdom writer. It is a shame. Heir to Whitman--most clearly--but also to the anarchistic sensibility of Thoreau, Miller's writings amount, in the end, to a collection of 20th century American dervish diaries. Miller was not conscious of himself as a dervish, but that is just a function of his historical and cultural location. Had he ever found his way to Jalaladin Rumi, he would have left this world whirling.