Shamsa

 

A shamsa (from the Persian word for "sun") is a radiant, starburst-lke medallion or rosette used in Persian and Islamic art. Typically painted with vibrant colors and intricate gold leaf, these geometric or floral designs usually symbolize divine light, cosmic order, and the unity of the Divine.

Rumi's Celebrity

The American translator, Coleman Barks, has helped make Djalleledin Maulana Rumi’s spiritual and mystical epics, the Masnavi and the Divan, amongst the most loved poetry in the US. The growing popularity of the the 13th century Muslim poet has even spawned an upcoming Hollywood biopic, with Leonardo DiCaprio at one time favoured to play the lead role. 

Though, as a mystic, Rumi transcended man-made religious dogmas, he was also a devout Muslim, and a renowned Islamic scholar. Barks' translations are beautiful, but his interpretations downplay the Islamic inspiration of the Rumi's works almost to the point of erasure. In New Age quotations and anthologies of Rumi, there is often little or no acknowledgement of Rumi's religion. Instead, images of people doing hatha yoga on beaches, or even photos of Buddhist statues, are likely to accompany the quotes. 

On one level there is nothing wrong with this - it is a testimony to Rumi's universality - but it may also be a kind of whitewashing, as some have suggested is the case with the choice of an actor of European background to play a Persian historical figure. 

This article in The New Yorker examines this phenomenon:

THE ERASURE OF ISLAM FROM THE POETRY OF RUMI

By Rozina Ali

   January 5, 2017

... Like many others, Omid Safi credits Barks with introducing Rumi to millions of readers in the United States; in morphing Rumi into American verse, Barks has dedicated considerable time and love to the poet’s works and life. And there are other versions of Rumi that are even further removed from the original—such as the New Age books by Deepak Chopra and Daniel Ladinsky which are marketed and sold as Rumi but bear little resemblance to the poet’s writing. Chopra, an author of spiritual works and an alternative-medicine enthusiast, admits that his poems are not Rumi’s words. Rather, as he writes in the introduction to “The Love Poems of Rumi,” they are “ ‘moods’ we have captured as certain phrases radiated from the original Farsi, giving life to a new creation but retaining the essence of its source.”

Discussing these New Age “translations,” Safi said, “I see a type of ‘spiritual colonialism’ at work here: bypassing, erasing, and occupying a spiritual landscape that has been lived and breathed and internalized by Muslims from Bosnia and Istanbul to Konya and Iran to Central and South Asia.” Extracting the spiritual from the religious context has deep reverberations. Islam is regularly diagnosed as a “cancer,” including by General Michael Flynn, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for national-security adviser, and, even today, policymakers suggestthat non-Western and nonwhite groups have not contributed to civilization.

For his part, Barks sees religion as secondary to the essence of Rumi. “Religion is such a point of contention for the world,” he told me. “I got my truth and you got your truth—this is just absurd. We’re all in this together and I’m trying to open my heart, and Rumi’s poetry helps with that.” One might detect in this philosophy something of Rumi’s own approach to poetry: Rumi often amended texts from the Koran so that they would fit the lyrical rhyme and meter of the Persian verse. But while Rumi’s Persian readers would recognize the tactic, most American readers are unaware of the Islamic blueprint. Safi has compared reading Rumi without the Koran to reading Milton without the Bible: even if Rumi was heterodox, it’s important to recognize that he was heterodox in a Muslim context—and that Islamic culture, centuries ago, had room for such heterodoxy. Rumi’s works are not just layered with religion; they represent the historical dynamism within Islamic scholarship.

Read full article: here

Sanai

Belief brings me close to You
but only to the door.
It is only by disappearing into
Your mystery
That I will come in.

- Hakim Sanai

Sanai was a Persian poet who lived in the 11th and 12th centuries. While travelling in India he met a Sufi teacher and himself became a Sufi, giving up a life of wealth and luxury as a court poet.
The Walled Garden of Truth (Hadiqat al Haqiqa) is his master work, and the first Persian mystical epic of Sufism.

The Lotus of a Thousand Petals

The Sahasrara Chakra is the seventh and highest centre of the subtle body, and is located at the crown of the head.

In this antique diagram, it is depicted as a white lotus of many petals. (In yoga texts, the Sahasrara is described as having a thousand petals).
At the centre of the lotus are the feet of the Supreme Being/Self. One is shown white, representing Shri Shiva (the masculine, un-manifest half of the Self), and one red, representing Shri Shakti (the feminine, creative half of the Self).
The trikona, or triangle, may represent the three qualities that pervade the universe: the creative, sustaining and destructive powers, enclosed by the circle of time.

A beautiful image from Indian devotional poetry reveals the crown of the head as a pedestal on which the cool, fragrant, lotus feet of the Divine may rest. In India, the feet of the Divine are considered to pour out blessings and auspicious vibrations, just as in Hindu mythology, the sacred Ganges, source of all sustenance, is said to flow from the feet of Lord Vishnu.

When a person's sahasrara opens, they experience Self-realisation. After this happens, Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi recommends daily meditation with the attention lightly on the sahasrara. Some ancient yoga texts say to put the attention on the brow centre, but these were probably written with the assumption that the aspirant would not yet have had self-realisation - an achievement considered very rare and difficult in previous times. Placing the attention at the crown for meditation, means that the awareness is above the distractions of the mental level, as the lotus of sahasrara blooms above the turbulent or murky waters of the lake of mind, and its petals repel the droplets of thoughts.

In Jewish mysticism, the Sephirot centre known as Kether (literally 'crown'), is similar in it's qualities to the Sahasrara of yoga philosophy. Situated at the top of the Tree of Life within the body, it represents pure consciousness and union with the Divine.

The mystical Sufi strain of Islam has a system of subtle centres known as latifas. The highest latifa: Akfha (the 'most subtle') is also located at the crown of the head, and is the point of unity where beatific visions of Allah are directly revealed.

Modern, New Age interpretations often depict the Sahasrara as having a violet or purple colour, but this is not seen in traditional paintings and scriptures. This probably comes from the idea that the colours of the chakras follow the colours of the rainbow, starting with red at the first centre, orange yellow green blue and violet. Traditionally, however, the white colour represents the purity of this centre, and its integration of all the elements and colours. White contains all colours. 

Sometimes it is described as a lotus of multicoloured petals, and often depicted as an inverted lotus, with the petals opening downward to release divine nectar and fragrance into the brain.

This South Indian temple is crowned by an inverted sahasrara lotus.

Eliminating inner negativity

"Holy is the warrior who goes to war with himself."

In this Hadith (saying) the Prophet Muhammad made it clear that one should eliminate the ego and negativity within oneself rather than attacking others. The true meaning of the term jihad is inner spiritual struggle, not holy war.

Photo source: www.bbc.co.uk

There is nothing else but the Self

The beginning, the end, the manifest and the hidden.
The seer and the listener, all is Him,
He is in everything yet He is beyond,
there is nothing else, everything is Him;
abandon the duality of me and you,
see one, there aren't two at all,
understand this and disappear in it;
when you are not, then truly He is.

- Hazarat Ali

Hazarat Ali was the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad. Sufis identify him as the founder of their strain of Islam. For his courage, wisdom and compassion he is revered by Muslims (the Alawis even consider him to be an incarnation of the Divine), and he has also been greatly praised by Western scholars since the 18th century. The poet Kahlil Gibran wrote of Ali:

"In my view, ʿAlī was the first Arab to have contact with and converse with the universal soul. He died a martyr of his greatness, he died while prayer was between his two lips. The Arabs did not realise his value until appeared among their Persian neighbors some who knew the difference between gems and gravels."

The Prophet, Ali, Husayn and Hasan in Paradise, public domain image from wikimedia commons.

Shakti Shekhinah Sakinah

In all the major religious traditions there is, or was, the concept of a feminine manifestation or Presence of God.

Hinduism

Shakti from Sanskrit shak – "to be able", meaning sacred force or empowerment – is the primordial cosmic energy and represents the dynamic forces that are thought to move through the entire universe in Hinduism. Shakti is the concept, or personification, of divine feminine creative power, sometimes referred to as 'The Great Divine Mother' in Hinduism. On the earthly plane, Shakti most actively manifests through female embodiment and creativity/fertility, though it is also present in males in its potential, unmanifest form.

Not only is the Shakti responsible for creation, it is also the agent of all change. Shakti is cosmic existence as well as liberation, its most significant form being the Kundalini Shakti, a mysterious psychospiritual force. Shakti exists in a state of svatantrya, dependence on no-one, being interdependent with the entire universe.

In Shaktism, Shakti is worshipped as the Supreme Being. However, in other Hindu traditions of Shaivism and Vaishnavism, Shakti embodies the active feminine energy Prakriti of Purusha, who is Vishnu in Vaishnavism or Shiva in Shaivism. Vishnu's female counterpart is called Lakshmi, with Parvati being the female half of Shiva.

-Source Wikipedia

Judaism

The feminine, creative, transformative Presence of God is called Shekhinah in Judaism. Shekhinah is associated with the Throne of God and the holiest precinct of the Temple. She is said to reside within the Ark of of the Covenant. As a Pillar of Cloud by day, and a Pillar of Fire by night, the Presence of God, the glorious Shekhinah, guided the people of Israel.

Shekhinah is a feminine noun in Hebrew and derives from a word meaning 'dwelling', while the Hindu Shakti means 'power'; however, it may not be a coincidence that the two words are similar, both referring to the feminine power or manifest presence of the Divine.
In the Talmud, Shekhinah is the power which caused the prophets to prophesy and King David to compose his Psalms. 

"The Shekhinah does not rest amidst laziness, nor amidst laughter, nor amidst lightheadedness, nor amidst idle conversation. Rather, it is amidst the joy associated with a mitzvah that the Shekhinah comes to rest upon people, as it is said: 'And now, bring me for a musician, and it happened that when the music played, God's hand rested upon him' [Elisha]"

-Talmud

There is a tradition of the Shekhinah as the Sabbath Bride. This recurrent theme is best known from the writings and songs of the legendary mystic of the 16th century, Rabbi Isaac Luria. Here is a quotation from the beginning of his famous shabbat hymn:

"I sing in hymns to enter the gates of the Field of holy apples. A new table we prepare for Her, a lovely candelabrum sheds its light upon us. Between right and left the Bride approaches, in holy jewels and festive garments..."

A paragraph in the Zohar starts: "One must prepare a comfortable seat with several cushions and embroidered covers, from all that is found in the house, like one who prepares a canopy for a bride. For the Shabbat is a queen and a bride. This is why the masters of the Mishna used to go out on the eve of Shabbat to receive her on the road, and used to say: 'Come, O bride, come, O bride!' And one must sing and rejoice at the table in her honor ... one must receive the Lady with many lighted candles, many enjoyments, beautiful clothes, and a house embellished with many fine appointments ..."

Christianity
In Christianity, the inspirational powers of the Shekhinah have been absorbed into the figure of the Holy Spirit.

Islam

The Islamic form of Shekhina, is Sakinah, and is associated with the quality of Divine Tranquility. Sakinah is mentioned several times in the Koran.

According to Ali, nephew of the Prophet Muhammad, "Sakinah is a sweet breeze, whose face is like the face of a human".
Ali's son Hussein, named one of his daughters Sakinah. The name has now become popular in Islamic countries.

The World is a Bridge

Islam and Christianity are not as far apart as is generally believed. Indeed, a bridge was once made between the two faiths. 

The Muslim Emperor Akbar the Great had the following saying of Jesus inscribed prominently on the entry gate to the Mosque adjacent to his palace and administrative capital, at Fatehpur Sikri: 

"Jesus, Son of Mary (on whom be peace) said: The World is a Bridge, pass over it, but build no houses upon it. He who hopes for a day, may hope for eternity; but the World endures but an hour. Spend it in prayer, for the rest is unseen." 

Visiting Fatehpur Sikri as a young backpacker, the English writer, William Dalrymple, was surprised to discover this inscription on a muslim monument, and later to find out that it is one of several sayings that Islam has retained but which western Christianity has lost.

These sayings of Jesus circulated around the Muslim world from Spain to China, and many are still familiar to educated Muslims today. They fill out and augment the profoundly reverential picture of Christ painted in the Koran where Jesus is called the Messiah, the Messenger, the Prophet, Word and Spirit of God, though – in common with some currents of heterodox Christian thought of the period – his outright divinity is questioned. 

There are also frequent mentions of his mother Mary who appears in no fewer than 13 surahs (chapters) and who is said to be exalted "above the women of the two [celestial and temporal] worlds" and, like Jesus, a "model" for Muslims. Mary is in fact the only woman mentioned by her proper name in the entire Koran, and appears more often in the Koran (34 times) than she does in the Gospels, where she is mentioned only 19 times.

-  William Dalrymple

Mughal Nativity Scene, National Museum, Delhi

Akbar the Great laid the foundations for the non-denominational religious neutrality of the modern, secular Indian state.

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