Between the Poles of the Conscious

Between the poles of the conscious and the unconscious,
there has the mind made a swing:
Thereon hang all beings and all worlds,
and that swing never ceases its sway.

Millions of beings are there:
the sun and the moon in their courses are there:
Millions of ages pass, and the swing goes on.

All swing! the sky and the earth and the air and the water;
and the Lord Himself taking form:
And the sight of this has made Kabîr a servant.

-Saint Kabir

Many legends abound about the birth, life and death of Kabir, AD.1440—1518 India’s poet and sufi mystics. His birth itself is shrouded in mystery, some say he was the son of a Brahman widow,what is known though is that he was brought up in a family of muslim weavers. He was never formally educated and was almost completely illiterate.

The Moving Finger writes..

Perhaps the most celebrated verse of Fitzgerald’s Rubaiyat,
Which is effortless and sincere, which expresses the reality and consequences of life.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it

-Omar Khayyam

Eternity

The following is a parable from ‘Echoes of an Autobiography’ by the Nobel Laureate Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz.

Sheikh Abd-Rabbih al-Ta’ih said:

I stood before the holy tomb as I asked God for health and long life. An old beggar with tattered clothes approached me. “Do you really want a long life?” he asked me.

“Who does not wish it ?” I said, with the terseness of someone not wanting to talk to him.

He presented me with a small, closed receptacle and said, “Here you have the flavor of eternity-whoever tastes of it will not endure death.” I smiled disdainfully, and he said, “I have dealt with it for thousands of years and I am still weighed down by the burdens of life, generations after generations.”

I mumbled in derision, “What a happy man you are!”

“Those,” he said despondently, “are the words of someone who has not suffered the passing of the ages, the succession of circumstances, the growing of knowledge, the demise of loved ones, and the burying of grandchildren.”

Adjusting to his strange appearance, I inquired, “Who could you be among the men of the age?”

he answered sadly, “i was the master of existence-have you not seen my great statue? With the setting of each sun I lament my wasted days, my declining countries, and my transitory gods.”

-Naguib Mahfouz.

Furthermore wish to append & connect with excerpt from his equally spiritual and profound: Nobel speech

In spite of all what goes on around us I am committed to optimism until the end. I do not say with Kant that Good will be victorious in the other world. Good is achieving victory every day. It may even be that Evil is weaker than we imagine. In front of us is an indelible proof: were it not for the fact that victory is always on the side of Good, hordes of wandering humans would not have been able in the face of beasts and insects, natural disasters, fear and egotism, to grow and multiply. They would not have been able to form nations, to excel in creativeness and invention, to conquer outer space, and to declare Human Rights. The truth of the matter is that Evil is a loud and boisterous debaucherer, and that Man remembers what hurts more than what pleases. Our great poet Abul-’Alaa’ Al-Ma’ari was right when he said:

“A grief at the hour of death
Is more than a hundred-fold
Joy at the hour of birth.”

I finally reiterate my thanks and ask your forgiveness.

Three Oddest Words

When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no nonbeing can hold.

- Wislawa Szymborska Polish Poet (Born July 1923)/Nobel Literature Prize 1996

Excerpt from her Nobel Lecture
December 1996

Poets, if they’re genuine, must also keep repeating “I don’t know.” Each poem marks an effort to answer this statement, but as soon as the final period hits the page, the poet begins to hesitate, starts to realize that this particular answer was pure makeshift that’s absolutely inadequate to boot. So the poets keep on trying, and sooner or later the consecutive results of their self-dissatisfaction are clipped together with a giant paperclip by literary historians and called their “oeuvre” …

The Poet and the World by Wislawa Szymborska
©THE NOBEL FOUNDATION 1996

Dervish Dance

A dervish was asked why he worshipped God through dance.

“Because,” he replied, ” to worship God means to die to self; dancing kills self.
When the self dies all problems die with it.
Where the self is not, Love is, God is”

Illusion….

If your eyes are not deceived by the mirage
Do not be proud of the sharpness of your understanding;

It may be your freedom from this illusion
Is due to the imperfection of your thirst.

Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi  [ Sufi Philosopher ]