Mystic Troubadours Of Azerbaijan (Ashiq)

Troubadours

Prayer

If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will

If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing

If it be your will
If there is a choice
Let the rivers fill
Let the hills rejoice
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell
If it be your will
To make us well

And draw us near
And bind us tight
All your children here
In their rags of light
In our rags of light
All dressed to kill
And end this night
If it be your will

If it be your will.

~ Leonard Cohen, 1984.

Join The Resistance

Tolstoy Re-Visited

I started reading Tolstoy in my late twenties and never recovered, thank god. With me, Tolstoy is a terminal addiction.

Picking up my old copy of Anna Karenina, glancing idly through it, I have not been able to put it down.

Notice how, in Chapter V, Levin is introduced; read his conversation with Oblonsky, how few words pass between them, and yet everything is "said."

Tolstoy did not write "books." Anyone can do that. Tolstoy wrote life itself.

The Life Of David Hume, Esq.

"It is difficult for a man to speak long of himself without vanity; therefore, I shall be short..."

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

Omar Khayyam.

The Peace Which Passeth Understanding

ἀταραξία/سكينة

Ultimism

Keep The Doubt!

Skepsis is the antidote to dogmatism and credulity. It is for this reason that Muhammad Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111) engaged in systematic doubt as a spiritual practice. The testimony of faith in the Islamic tradition is an exercise in metaphysical minimalism or negative dogmatism: There is no reality but the real and this was Muhammad's message.

Those who seek to encumber this simple formula with further dogmatic assertions are confessing their weakness, their failure of nerve. They do not attain the ideal state of the faylasuf: ataraxia.

Falsafa

The whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspense of judgment appear the only result of our most accurate scrutiny, concerning this subject. But such is the frailty of human reason, and such is the irresistible contagion of opinion, that even this deliberate doubt could scarcely be upheld did we not enlarge our view, and opposing one species of superstition to another, set them a quarreling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape into the calm, though obscure regions of philosophy.

~ David Hume, Natural History Of Religion.

On The Way To The Other Beginning

The absconding of the gods must be experienced and endured.

~ Martin Heidegger, Contributions.

The Balm Of Reason

The Gardener's Catechism

In response to the Pasha Tuctan's question as to the Gardener Karpos's religion, Karpos replied: "... I love God with all my heart, and I sell my vegetables reasonably."

Asked about his principles, Karpos replied: "... they are few in number, but they are enough for me; and if I had more of them, they would encumber me." Prodded to name them, he added:

"Well, for instance, to be a good husband, good father, good neighbor, good subject, and good gardener; I don't go beyond that, and I hope that God will have mercy on me."

~ Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, tr. Peter Gay.

Deo Erexit Voltaire

From the Voltaire Foundation.

A Transgressive Transcendentalist Inheritance

In addition to a handful of genetic traits, my paternal grandparents passed down to me (through my parents) part of their personal library. I started to peruse this treasure in my early teens.

Some of those books were of passing interest only (e.g., a copy of Erskine Caldwell's Tobacco Road); others, like Thomas Wolfe's Of Time and the River, had a more lasting impact. Still others became constant companions and formative influences: The Complete Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (published in a single volume by Wm. H. Wise & Co., New York, in 1929) and The Works of Voltaire (translated by William F. Fleming and published in forty-two volumes in 1904).

To my mind, Emerson and Voltaire were both exemplars of what I term "transgressive transcendentalism" for both sought to "overcome" the found world through the cultivation of a capacious (and critical) consciousness. Although both men were seasoned ironists, Emerson's tone tended to be more measured than Voltaire's. To be sure, this difference may be attributed, in part, to their distinctive personalities. But we should also be mindful of their historical contexts: Voltaire was a great Enlightenment precursor, and it was his sufferings that purchased the more liberal air that subsequently blew with the West winds to North America and filled the sails of the likes of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. Emerson was a beneficiary of the struggles of earlier generations; he could afford to be more judicious in his thinking, more temperate in speech.