E II MERSON speaks of the poet as one who "sees and handles that which others dream of, traverses the whole scale of experience, and is representative of man, in virtue of being the largest power to receive and to impart." These words, particularly the last phrase, seem applicable with regard to the Sufi poets of Persia, for, after the lapse of centuries and the accompanying decline of Sufiism, there is nothing to-day so representative of the teaching, nor so much a power to impart it, as the work of certain of the great Persian poets. A number of the greatest among these were Sufis, and it naturally follows that some of the finest expressions of Sufiism were in verse. So far as they are accessible then-for translations are comparatively few-the work of these poets may afford a fairly complete understanding of what Sufiism really was and of what it stood for. For this purpose, no better example could be found than Jalálu'dDin-Rumi, who has been termed the greatest mystical poet of any age. Jalal was born at Balkh, in Persia, in 1207. At that period in Europe, Innocent III was conducting the numerous Crusades against the infidel abroad and the heretic at home, and Saint Francis of Assisi was calling his people to a new love of God-though these facts, since the cyclic law in the orient probably operates differently from our own, need convey no special significance, serving merely to link less familiar with more familiar events. The father of the poet was a professor and a preacher, a man of great learning, who for political reasons moved to Bagdad shortly after the birth of his son and just before the destruction of Balkh by Genghis Khan who, with his Mongol hordes, was then laying waste all Asia. For a considerable time the family moved from place to place, remaining several years in Mecca, Damascus and elsewhere, and finally settling in Iconium. Here, on the death of his father, Jalal succeeded to his professorial duties. He had possessed unusual ability from early youth, was a man of brilliant attainments, and drew pupils from far and near, having about four hundred in attendance on his instruction. Such was his life when, in 1244, there appeared a dervish, Shamsu'ddin or Shamsi Tabriz-a great Sufi teacher-sent in turn, according to some accounts, by his teacher, to seek out Jalal who, it had been revealed to him, would be a great Sufi. Partly, no doubt, because of lack of accurate information and partly because of the oriental flavour-the atmosphere that we are all familiar with in the Arabian Nights -Shamsu'ddin is represented as a weird and mysterious figure clad in black felt and wearing a peculiar cap-the subject of numerous though rather vague legendary accounts. By some he has been compared to Socrates, chiefly because, while more or less illiterate himself, he had the power to draw to him men of rare gifts, even of genius, through whom his message could be given to the world. He was a man of great power, eloquence and magnetism; also a man of great spirituality. Jalal was quick to recognize his spiritual greatness; at once gave himself completely to his teaching, and the two withdrew for a time to the solitude of the desert. Curiously enough, Jalal's response to his master's call roused no kindred feeling among his friends and pupils, but inspired in them -perhaps because of certain antagonistic qualities in the master, perhaps for other reasons-only wrath and resentment. Their teacher they regarded as mad, for a time, and their ill treatment, either actual or threatened, of Shamsu'ddin, resulted in his sudden flight to Tabriz. Jalal immediately followed and brought him back. A repetition of the expressions of ill-will which was shared by the populace as well, caused a second flight and, this time, a two years' sojourn in Damascus. Again he was induced to return. But he was not to dwell in Iconium unmolested, and in a short time he died a violent death,-long and deeply mourned by Jalal, who wrote in his honour one of his most exquisite lyrical poems, and instituted the dance of the Order of Mevlevi dervishes. Probably the most noted of the works of Jalal is his Masnavi, an epic poem which has been styled the "sacred book of Sufiism." Translators of Persian poems warn the reader of the difficulty, almost the impossibility of preserving in their work the true flavour of the original. We all know how much may be lost, what a pale reflection may result, in making a simple translation say from French into English. In an oriental tongue the difficulty is infinitely greater. The orient deals with a world of ideas with which the occidental mind is wholly unfamiliar; modes of thought, laws of esthetics, rules of rhetoric, all may be totally different from ours, or, if similar, then employed with a different significance. The poetic value and beauty of the Masnavi in the original are attested beyond all question, but it is one of the works in which the difficulties of translation are obvious. It is enigmatic and ambiguous; full of subtleties of thought and obscurities of expression. It is not, as might be expected, a treatise on Sufiism. Instead, it is a collection of ethical teachings, allegories, interpretations of Koranic texts, wise counsels given in various forms and all strung loosely together, without any methodical progression of thought. Yet, with all its peculiarities of style and form, there is not a page that does not repay whatever effort the reading may involve, for its truths are universal. The author is a student of life, and the lessons he teaches are lessons that each reader, oriental and occidental alike, can apply with profit to his own everyday difficulties. The absurdity and the evil of servile imitation; the necessity of rooting up bad habits while they are new; the futility of seeking in mere outer form the "fruit and produce of the tree of spirituality"; the need of finding a touchstone to distinguish the counterfeit from the true gold in daily life, where we, every one of us, are seekers after gold, these and many another truth are taught in simple allegory, often in the current phraseology of the day. One such story may be given, not merely as an illustration, but also because of the aptness of its lesson. A shepherd was praising God in his simple way, saying, “O God, O God! Where are you that I may become your servant; .that I may kiss your little hands, and rub your little feet, and when the time of sleeping comes I may sweep out your little room,-O You for whom all my goats be sacrificed!" Moses, who stood nearby, was stern in his rebuke, declaring that such blasphemy had "turned the brocade of religion into old rags." And the shepherd tore his garments and departed, repenting, into the desert. But God was displeased with Moses and said: "You have separated my slave from me. "Have you been sent in order to unite, or have you been sent in order to separate? "I have put in every one a particular character; I have given to every one a particular mode of expression. "From him it is praise, but from you it would be blame; from him it is honey, but from you it would be poison. "I do not become pure through their ascription of praise; it is they who become pure and scatterers of pearls. "I do not look at the tongue or speech; I look at the soul and condition. "I inspect the heart as to whether it be humble; though the speaking of the words be not humble. "Enough of these words, conceptions, and figurative expressions! I wish for ardour, ardour! Content yourself with this ardour! "Light up the fire of love in your soul, and burn entirely thought and expression." Following close, however, on the simplicity of lines like these, may come obscurities such as the following: "Do not flee to the six-sides, because in sides there is the station of the six valleys, and that station is check-mate, check-mate." Or,-"Dust be on the head of the bone which prevents the dog from hunting the rational soul." The first of these means, briefly, that the material world should be abandoned for the spiritual world; and the second concerns the Sufi teaching of the "carnal soul" (here termed the dog), which may incline toward earthly things, the things of the body (the bone) or, by discipline and religious exercise, may lift itself up and become one with the "rational soul." Again there are occasional lines which show the author in his true guise of mystical poet, and in his "Except at night the Moon has no effulgence. Seek not the Heart's Desire except through heart's pain,"— we have the oriental counterpart of the Christian mystic's certainty that there can be no love without suffering and that the Master draws nearest in the dark hour of trial. Lines like these suggest that lyric already mentioned, for which the poet is justly noted, namely, the Divani Shamsi Tabriz, written partly in memory of the teacher, and altogether as a tribute to him. "In the Divani," says one commentator, "we have the poet with his singing robes about him." Truly we have that and much more, for the poem is an exquisite expression of the message of Sufiism, written in the language of love of the lover and the Beloved. It is the speech of one who has tasted of communion and would call others to that joy. "I cried out at midnight, 'Who is in this house of the heart?' He said, ''Tis I, by whose countenance moon and sun are shamed.' He said, 'What is this other image, bedabbled with heart's blood?' To quote at too great length would, of course, be a mistake, yet how, but in his own words, give the urge of his plea that we leave the "world of severance" where the "earthly flame has entrapped us" and, listening to the voice of Love, seek the world of union: "Oh how long shall we, like children, in the earthly sphere Fill our lap with dust and stones and sherds? Let us give up the earth and fly heavenwards, Let us flee from childhood to the banquet of men. A voice came to the spirit, 'Spirit thee away to the Unseen, This, perhaps, is the message of Sufiism,—take the gain and the treasure, and lament the pain no more. And it is a message not only for the men of an earlier day, but for each and every one in our own day, who can hear and comprehend. As compared with the commonplace world of care and weariness, loneliness and misunderstanding in which the vast majority now live, what a new world it opens up. What perfection of understanding and sympathy, what intimacy of devotion, what generous outpouring of love, love given and love received-the complete fulfilment of all that many a human heart so longs for. And the Beloved, the Master, is calling his children now, as he has called through the centuries, "Come, come, for you will not find another friend like me. Where indeed is a beloved like me in all the world. Come, come, and do not spend your life in wandering to and fro, You are as a dry valley and I as the rain, You are as a ruined city and I as the architect. Except my service, which is joy's sunrise, Man never has felt and never will feel an impression of joy." J. C. STUDYING LIGHT ON THE PATH I N OUR Branch we had not read Light on the Path together for a great many years. Of course we studied it individually, but some of us had had experiences with its uncompromising revelations and demands which made us wary of any united effort to probe into its teachings. Here is a typical case. Several of us were reading and discussing the book; we were all new students, all trying to orient ourselves, and not in the least confident, at any moment, whether we were standing in the shoals of the "ocean of Theosophy," or rapidly being carried out to sea by its unseen currents, of which, if the truth were told, we were all secretly much afraid. With all those conflicting notions shut up, out of sight, in some very stupid, commonplace looking exteriors, a few of us took up Light on the Path, because of the promise held out by its title. The text itself seemed to us an odd way of stating the facts of life, as we had come to know them-we wished, some of us, that we could invite the author of the book to attend one of our little gatherings; his point of view was so original that we should have liked to hear his phrasing of the more modern problems with which we each had to deal. Suddenly one day, the most interesting and constructive member of our coterie announced that he did not care to go on with the reading, but that he would be delighted to join us later when we took up some other book, especially if it were some modern treatise on philosophy. There was consternation, because this man's reading of our text had been so discriminating, had shown such insight, that we were all greatly indebted to him; we felt that we could not afford to lose his contributions to our discussions. Pressed for some account of his sudden loss of interest, he first fenced, and then said, bluntly,-"This is all for me; I have had enough. The teaching is plain-do this and that, and you will get access to more light. It is, I am convinced, the light for which I have been looking, but the fact is that I am not willing to pay the price indicated; there are other things that I want to enjoy. I find that I cannot reconcile myself to doing without them, just yet. Later, I hope I shall strike this road again, but as long as I want what lies in the fields beside it there is no use in continuing to think about what is down the road, for I am not going there." The rest of us either thought he was giving a clever description of how it feels to be bored, or else envied his vision of what was demanded in order to get light. To us it was by no means clear what the price might be; we wanted to find out. Yet somehow that episode broke up our impromptu gatherings; and later some of us began to wonder whether he who had rejected the truth had not understood it better, had not really paid it higher tribute, than the rest of us who went blundering on, working at it now and then, trying half-heartedly to understand what it was all about. |