HENGKI KOENTJORO was born in Semarang, Central Java, Indonesia, in 1963. He is a graduate of the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California where he majored in film. He now lives in Jakarta where he specializes in fine art photography both underwater and on land. www.koentjoro.com
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by Dani Kopoulos
In this issue of Sufi, Dani Kopoulos presents an original slant on Love, Passion and Divinity through the ultimate internet dating experience. Dani Kopoulos is a writer and teacher living in New York City. She received her MA in Creative Writing from the New School University in New York and her BA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
(Photo © IStockPhoto.com/NorthLightImages)
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A SUFI ALLEGORY OF MYSTICAL LOVEby 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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RUMI’S USE OF MOVING COLORS AND SHAPES IN THE DIVAN-I SHAMSby 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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JUDITH ERNST and VASUDHA NARAYANAN ON EROTIC POETRY AND DIVINE LOVE IN THE SONG OF SONGS AND HINDU TRADITIONSInterview 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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AN INTRODUCTIONby 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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