Chara

Layla and Majnun: Love is Fire and I Am Wood

A SUFI ALLEGORY OF MYSTICAL LOVE

by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Laylā and Majnūn is the best-known love story of the Middle East, and for the Sufi is an allegory of mystical love. Sufis are lovers of God, wayfarers travelling through the desert of the world, making the journey from separation back to union with God. For these mystics the relationship with God is that of lover and Beloved, and it is the longing for their Beloved that turns them away from the world, drawing them deeper and deeper into the mystery of the heart. Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, PhD, is an author and a Sufi teacher in the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya Sufi Order.

 

(Photo by Rina H)

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The Kaleidoscope of Love

RUMI’S USE OF MOVING COLORS AND SHAPES IN THE DIVAN-I SHAMS

by Fatemeh Keshavarz

In The Kaleidoscope of Love, Dr. Fatemeh Keshavarz explores the dynamism and sense of play in what she calls Rumi’s ‘kaleidoscopic poems’, providing a sense of the way Rumi used them to portray what is hard to put into words, namely the plurality and the fleeting nature in the experience of love. Dr. Fatemeh Keshavarz is a professor of Persian and Comparative Literature and Chair of the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures, Washington University-St. Louis. Among Keshavarz’s works is her book “Jasmine and Stars: Reading more than Lolita in Tehran.”

 

(Artwork by Martin Harris)

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Love, Passion and Divinity

JUDITH ERNST and VASUDHA NARAYANAN ON EROTIC POETRY AND DIVINE LOVE IN THE SONG OF SONGS AND HINDU TRADITIONS

Interview by Llewellyn Smith

Llewellyn Smith interviews distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Religion at the University of Florida, Vasudha Narayanan  and visual artist Judith Ernst on erotic poetry and divine love in Western and Eastern traditions as  found in The Songs of Songs and Hindu traditions; both women have been profoundly  influenced in their work by these writings.

 

(Photograph Krishna with Radha ©OMKR/Dreamstime.com)

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Tagore’s Gitanjali

AN INTRODUCTION

by Coleman Barks

For the occasion of Tagore’s 150th Birth anniversary, Coleman Barks sets the scene for the introduction of Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali to a Western audience. This resulted in his receiving the Nobel Prize in 1913. He was the first Asian to receive that honor.  Poet, writer and translator of Rumi, Coleman Barks is currently working from the original notebook prose translations of Gitanjali made by Tagore himself on his sea journey to England in 1912, to produce new free verse renderings. Coleman Barks has been collaborating with Persian scholars for thirty years to bring the poetry of Rumi and other mystic poets to the general public.

(Photograph of Tagore 1916 by Eward Curtis)

 

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Archives Issue #80

FROM THE EDITORS

THE GENDER ISSUE: ART | POETRY | CULTUREWATCH | BOOK REVIEWS | & more…

From Issue #80 on we have shifted the focus of SUFI to how it could best contribute to raising the spiritual consciousness among people of diverse backgrounds, beliefs and experience, and to introduce more diverse interpretations of the Sufi path and other spiritual disciplines in both a contemporary and historical context.  Thus, in this issue our featured articles and narratives present expressions of women’s experience and perspective of the mystical in modern life – an Asian Sufi living in World War Two Europe, an American woman experiencing the mystical dimension on the streets if Istanbul, a Sufi scholar examining gender bias through a foundational Sufi Text, and an interview with a rabbi who overcame religious and gender prejudices to reach her goals.

DISCOURSE, ARTICLES, NARRATIVES AND INTERVIEWS

THE EXPERIENCE OF NOTHINGNESS Discourse by Alireza Nurbakhsh  

DAUGHTER OF SUFISM The Passion of Noor Inayat Khan by Yousef Daoud

WRESTLING WITH GOD A Conversation with Rabbi Tirzah Firestone Interview by Llewellyn Smith and Kelly Thomson

FROM HISTORY TO HER STORY Women in Sufi Discourses by Safoura Nourbakhsh

UNDER THE MINARET Narrative by Jan Shoemaker

CULTUREWATCH

Low Budget Mysticism / Spiritual tourism in India by Sholeh Johnston
Revealing the Truth/A Rapper on Rumi by Sholeh Johnston
Community, Nur Foundation Working for the Needs of the Poor-Spain

BOOK REVIEWS by Robert Landau Ames and Eliza Tasbihi
A Soaring Minaret by Laury Silvers
Sacred Spaces, A Journey with the Sufis of the Indus by Semina Quraesh, Ali S. Asani, Carl W. Ernst and Kamil Khan Mumtaz

POETRY

Whoever Becomes Nothing Becomes God by Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh
Friend of God by Jeni Couzyn
The Way Under the Way by Mark Nepo
I Was a Fable by Peter Valentyne

FEATURED POET

JENI COUZYN, Poet

FEATURED ARTIST

MINA MOMENI, Photographer ( www.minamomeni.com)

 

(Front Cover Photo Mina Momeni)

 

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Featured Poet: Mark Nepo

Mark Nepo is a poet and philosopher who has taught in the fields of poetry and spirituality for over thirty-five years. A New York Times #1 bestselling author, he has published thirteen books and recorded eight audio projects. Recent work includes his next book of spiritual inquiry, Seven Thousand Ways to Listen (Simon & Schuster, with audio book, Fall 2012).   www.marknepo.com

THE WAY
UNDER THE WAY

For all that has been written,
for all that has been read, we
are led to this instant where one
of us will speak and one of us will
listen, as if no one has ever placed
an oar into that water.

It doesn’t matter how we come
to this. We may jump to it or be
worn to it. Because of great pain.
Or a sudden raw feeling that this
is all very real. It may happen in a
parking lot when we break the eggs
in the rain. Or watching each other
in our grief.

But here we will come.  With very
little left in the way.

When we meet like this, I may not
have the words, so let me say it now:
Nothing compares to the sensation
of being alive in the company of
another. It is God breathing on
the embers of our soul.

 

(Photo by Jim Kosinski.)

 

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Under the Minaret

by Jan Shoemaker

Under the Minaret is a compelling essay about an American woman experiencing the mystical dimension on the streets of Istanbul.

“…my mind wandered again to the woman in the road and I felt the tug of eternity.  Was it possible my mother had traveled along?  I felt the recognition of it open in me.  Under the minarets, below the dome of Hagia Sophia, outside the synagogues tucked behind fortified gates, I’d found but failed to see her in a a stranger’s gaze.” (Photo by Timothy O’Brien.)

(Photo ©Timopthy O’Brien)

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Wrestling with God

A CONVERSATION WITH RABBI TIRZAH FIRESTONE

Interview by Llewellyn Smith and Kelly Thomson

Author, psychotherapist and lecturer, Rabbi Tirzah Firestone is the founding rabbi of Congregation Nevei Kodesh of Boulder, Colorado.  Today her energies are devoted to the re-integration of ancient mystical wisdom into contemporary Jewish life.  Her book, The Receiving: Reclaiming Jewish Women’s Wisdom (Harper 2003), gives us stories and teachings of forgotten female sages and mystics from the Jewish traditions.  Rabbi Firestone’s interview reveals an intimate account of the honest-to-life God -wrestling throughout her spiritual journey.

(Photo courtesy of Rabbi Tirzah Firestone.)

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