This book “Make a shield from Wisdom” is the translation of selected verses from Nasir-i-Khusraw’s Divan, by Annemarie Schimmel, who was the Emeritus professor of Indo Muslim Culture at Harvard University and Honorary professor at the University of Bonn. She has a wide range of books published on Islamic literature, mysticism and culture and has also translated work from Persian, Urdu, Arabic and Turkish into English and German.
Nasir-i-Khusraw was a Persian poet and thinker, and is quite well known among the historians of modern and medieval Islam. Although he was well known but, not well understood by them. His philosophy and poetry is deeply rooted in Shia Ismaili Muslim interpretation of Islam, which is more of the esoteric understanding of revelation of Quran than exoteric. His poetry and his work is based on his belief. His love for Prophet Muhammad’s family (ahl-al- bait and his successors) is clearly the center of his writings.
He believes that intellect, reason, speech and virtue should be the highest attributes of the thinkers, poets and writers; and they should practice these attributes for the betterment of society, not for reward or fame just like he was doing.
“Tear off the rope from the unbridled masses!
You’d better bring about something in writing!
You are the pen of God, the true Creator-
Well done and bravo, o you sober reed!
To Intellect your word became the writing;
So, make a covenant and do not leave it!
Give only letters of advice and wisdom
To mankind’s ear, be they low, be they high.
Without a robe of honor you are noble,
For you are known for writing, not for robes!
His work reflects that it is difficult to read the Qur’an according to its true inner meaning; and it needs a guide or a true interpreter to explain the Tawil (inner meaning); and that guide should be from prophet’s own family and should be very close to him. He claims that anyone who denies this right of prophet’s family is the enemy of Islam. His beliefs and understandings about the prophet’s family put him against the political environment of that time and he was thrown in exile in Yumgan. This isolation made him bitter which was evident in his expressions for those Muslim rulers who denied the right of Ahl-i-Bait (prophet Muhammad’s family).
His love for prophet’s family was very deep rooted and echoed through his writing loud and clear.
“O Lord of the dark blue mill
A hundred thousand thanks be to thee from this slave
That Thou has saved me through the family of Thy Messenger
From the flock of these half men! (284)
His understanding of Islam was very deep and based on reason and intelligence. As Annemarie Schimmel explains
“Deep as Nasir-i-Khusraw’s faith was, it is never ‘the faith of the old women’; rather, it is built upon the fundament of reason, of intelligence. Therefore Nasir-i-Khusraw invites men to think, to weigh the different possibilities, and to acknowledge that the true treasure of wisdom is given to those close to the faith. Time and again he leads the reader to the conclusion that the Fatimid ruler of Egypt, as the descendant of Fatima and ‘Ali, is ‘the keeper of God’s garden’, and that he has drawn the sword of true religion from the scabbard.”
Another beautiful aspect of Nasir-i-Khusraw’s work visible in this book is the use of unique comparisons of things to explain difficult concepts. Annmarie Schimmel did the beautiful job in finding close vocabulary words to bring this beauty into English while translating.
“your body is the child of grass
And grass the child of dust.
That’s why it’s constantly inclined,
Toward it’s ancestors. (303, ef. 522)
Nasir’s poetry is very inspiring and his thoughts about reason, intellect and virtues inspired many poets after him. Such as Allama Iqbal, a sufi poet from Sub continent (Indo Pak) in 19th century.
The biggest tragedy of Nasir-i-Khusraw was that his words of wisdom were little heard because of his isolated life.
Nasir-i-Khusraw’s mission was not to be famous instead his true focus of writing was to improve life of the people and bring inner truth of Divine message out to the people. He strongly believed that the people with the wisdom are obligated to support this cause. His Divan is not only his words instead it grew out of his personal experiences, which reflects his hopes and pains, and firm faith in the Fatimid cause.
Annmarie Schimmel’s choice of verses is excellent and clearly reflects multiple dimensions of Nasir’s work. Her selection clearly shows Nasir-i-Khusraw’s expertise in poetry and deep view of his inner being. She justified her work as a translator wonderfully and certainly deserves applause.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Saturday, February 5, 2011
The Power of Myth
The Power of Myth is a wonderful book based on the conversation between Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell. In this conversation whole horizon of believes opened up, and detailed analysis of Campbell’s understanding of mythology spread up like a wide variety of colors on canvas. Questions which Bill Moyers was asking were like fire and answers that Campbell was giving were like roaring flames whose heat touched my heart and I felt warm and cozy inside.
This book is divided into eight chapters and every chapter explains myth with a different perspective but still having the same fundamentals which all religions have. The myth was defined when Moyers asked this question.
“--------Myths are stories of our search through the ages for truth, for meaning, for significance.
--------we all need help in our passages from birth to life and then to death. We need for life to signify, to touch the eternal, to understand the mysterious, to find out who we are?”
Campbell answered by opening up a broad horizon of meaning and said.
“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own inner most being and reality, so that we actually feel the rupture of being alive. That’s what it’s all finally about, and that’s what these clues help us to find within ourselves.”
That is how he changed the definition of Myth by broadening the horizon from search for meaning to experiences of meaning. Therefore it is important that the Myths should be appropriate to the time in which we are living. Today’s biggest problem is that time is moving too fast and Myths have lost their speed. Therefore our children are losing faith in religion and see the faiths as a historical story which they are unable to relate themselves with.
When Moyers asked the question, “How we live without the Myths then?”
Campbell answered by saying that “The individual has to find an aspect of myth that relates to his own life.”
He explained that myths basically serve four functions.
First is realization of wonder of universe and oneself.
The second is Cosmological dimension, the dimension with which the science is involved.
The third is Sociological function which supports and legalizes social order.
Fourth is the pedagogical function, which teaches us how to live like human under certain circumstances.
Myths are primarily inward journeys, they tell you something which you know in your heart that it is true. The truth which relates you to the one who is transcend meaning which is beyond duality, and field of time and space
In explaining the concept of duality, time and space he gave multiple examples. The one which is common in all Monotheistic religions is the story of Adam and Eve, was beautifully explained by him.
His description of symbolism behind it was amazing.
“---Moyers: What is the myth of Adam and Eve trying to tell us about the pairs of opposites? What is the meaning?
Campbell: It started with the sin, you see in other words, moving out of the mythological dreamtime zone of the Garden of Paradise, where there is no time, and where men and women don’t even know that they are different from each other. The two are just creatures. God and man are practically the same. God walks in the cool of the evening in the garden where they are. And then they eat the apple, the knowledge of the opposites. And when they discover they are different, the man and woman cover their shame. You see, they had not thought of themselves as opposites. Male and female is one opposite. Another opposite is human and God. Good and evil is the third opposite. The primary oppositions are the sexual and that between human beings and God. Then comes the idea of good and evil in the world. And so Adam and Eve have thrown themselves out of the Garden of Timeless Unity, you might say, just by that act of recognizing duality. To move out into the world, you have to act in terms of pairs of opposites.”
Then he gave multiple examples from other religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism etc. where field of time, space and duality is explained.
In his understanding “Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it get stuck to its own metaphor, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.”
Then he gave detailed analysis of metaphor which is an image that suggests something else. For example we understand sin as a willful breaking of religion or moral law but he explains sin as a metaphor which is simply a limiting factor that limits our consciousness and fixes it to an inappropriate condition.
He explained that energies of inner world need to meet the field of our incarnation or outer world to get going.
Then Moyers asked him about what the idea of reincarnation suggests?
And Campbell answers
“----It suggests that you are more than you think you are. There are dimensions of your being and a potential for realization and consciousness that are not included in your concept of yourself. Your life is much deeper and broader than you conceive it to be here. What you are living is but a fractional inkling of what is really within you, what gives you life, breath, and depth. But you can live in terms of that depth. And when you can experience it you suddenly see that all the religions are talking of that.”
Then he explained that all religious symbols are pointing toward the experiences but they are not the experiences themselves. In his words
“---The person who has had a mystical experience knows that all the symbolic expressions of it are faulty. The symbols don’t render the experience, they suggest it. If you haven’t had the experience, how can you know what it is? Try to explain the joy of skiing to somebody living in the tropics who has never seen snow. There has to be an experience to catch the message, some clue- otherwise you’re not hearing what is being said.”
Then he explained many rituals from multiple religions, and traditional believe systems, which are pointing toward some experiences.
“----The main theme in ritual is the linking of the individual to a larger morphological structure than that of his own physical body.”
Campbell’s command on telling related stories is amazing. He explains very deep concept with the story and makes it clear and understandable for a common person. Like poets and artists he brings abstracts of myths to life and conveys the message loud and clear. Certainly he is the master of story- telling and Moyers did a wonderful job of pulling right strings as questions to get the music started.
Quoting all stories is not possible for me as I don’t have command and beautiful vocabulary like Campbell does to make stories come alive. But I cannot resist sharing a story from Mayan’s ritual which is named as “Worthy to be sacrificed as aged.” In which
“---The Mayan Indians had a kind of basketball game in which, at the end, the captain of the winning team was sacrificed on the field by the captain of the losing team. His head was cut off. Going to your sacrifice as the winning stroke of your life is the essence of the early sacrificial idea.”
The Moyer concludes Campbell’s story by the statement “The idea of sacrifice especially of the winner being sacrificed is so foreign to our world. Our ruling motif today is winner take all.”
In the process of taking it all what is missing is being bigger than only a winner. Yes we enjoy being a winner for some time but in the end we fail to follow our bliss. He explains the bliss through a story of a twelve year old in a restaurant forced by his father to drink tomato soup and the mother said “Don’t make him do what he doesn’t want to do.” The father looked at her and said “He can’t go through life doing what he wants to do, if he does only what he wants to do, he’ll be dead. Look at me, I’ve never done a thing I wanted to in all my life.”
Campbell felt that these are the people who never followed their bliss and always try to be right for the society only. Following the bliss doesn’t mean being rebellious to the society, it simply means experiencing the path of your heart and do what you want to do even it is different from what everybody else is doing. When you follow your bliss you are enjoying the freshness of the life within you and you enjoy this all the time. Then he explains the concept of hero as those people who did “something beyond the normal range of achievement and experience. Hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.”
He clearly explained that a hero will not escape from the society for ecstasy or for the light, instead he will stay among the people and serve them. He clearly distinguishes between celebrity and hero, where celebrity lives only for self, whereas a hero acts to redeem society.
There were many wonderful explanations given to many religious themes and their respective mythology. Then Moyers raised a concern that people perceive Myth lies. And Campbell answered as
“-----no mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth - penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words, beyond images, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told-------“
His explanation of time is amazing and enlightening. He explains circle of a clock as the circle of totality. Everything within the circle is enframed. No matter where you go will always come back.
“---God is the Alpha and the Omega, the source and the end. The circle suggests immediately a completed totality, whether in the time or in the space.”
This wonderful book helped me understand my inward self. Especially because some of my actions which differs greatly from everybody else around me. I will suggest the readers to go through this book and take its meaning in mythological sense to truly appreciate the depth of author’s understanding.
This book is divided into eight chapters and every chapter explains myth with a different perspective but still having the same fundamentals which all religions have. The myth was defined when Moyers asked this question.
“--------Myths are stories of our search through the ages for truth, for meaning, for significance.
--------we all need help in our passages from birth to life and then to death. We need for life to signify, to touch the eternal, to understand the mysterious, to find out who we are?”
Campbell answered by opening up a broad horizon of meaning and said.
“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own inner most being and reality, so that we actually feel the rupture of being alive. That’s what it’s all finally about, and that’s what these clues help us to find within ourselves.”
That is how he changed the definition of Myth by broadening the horizon from search for meaning to experiences of meaning. Therefore it is important that the Myths should be appropriate to the time in which we are living. Today’s biggest problem is that time is moving too fast and Myths have lost their speed. Therefore our children are losing faith in religion and see the faiths as a historical story which they are unable to relate themselves with.
When Moyers asked the question, “How we live without the Myths then?”
Campbell answered by saying that “The individual has to find an aspect of myth that relates to his own life.”
He explained that myths basically serve four functions.
First is realization of wonder of universe and oneself.
The second is Cosmological dimension, the dimension with which the science is involved.
The third is Sociological function which supports and legalizes social order.
Fourth is the pedagogical function, which teaches us how to live like human under certain circumstances.
Myths are primarily inward journeys, they tell you something which you know in your heart that it is true. The truth which relates you to the one who is transcend meaning which is beyond duality, and field of time and space
In explaining the concept of duality, time and space he gave multiple examples. The one which is common in all Monotheistic religions is the story of Adam and Eve, was beautifully explained by him.
His description of symbolism behind it was amazing.
“---Moyers: What is the myth of Adam and Eve trying to tell us about the pairs of opposites? What is the meaning?
Campbell: It started with the sin, you see in other words, moving out of the mythological dreamtime zone of the Garden of Paradise, where there is no time, and where men and women don’t even know that they are different from each other. The two are just creatures. God and man are practically the same. God walks in the cool of the evening in the garden where they are. And then they eat the apple, the knowledge of the opposites. And when they discover they are different, the man and woman cover their shame. You see, they had not thought of themselves as opposites. Male and female is one opposite. Another opposite is human and God. Good and evil is the third opposite. The primary oppositions are the sexual and that between human beings and God. Then comes the idea of good and evil in the world. And so Adam and Eve have thrown themselves out of the Garden of Timeless Unity, you might say, just by that act of recognizing duality. To move out into the world, you have to act in terms of pairs of opposites.”
Then he gave multiple examples from other religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism etc. where field of time, space and duality is explained.
In his understanding “Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it get stuck to its own metaphor, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.”
Then he gave detailed analysis of metaphor which is an image that suggests something else. For example we understand sin as a willful breaking of religion or moral law but he explains sin as a metaphor which is simply a limiting factor that limits our consciousness and fixes it to an inappropriate condition.
He explained that energies of inner world need to meet the field of our incarnation or outer world to get going.
Then Moyers asked him about what the idea of reincarnation suggests?
And Campbell answers
“----It suggests that you are more than you think you are. There are dimensions of your being and a potential for realization and consciousness that are not included in your concept of yourself. Your life is much deeper and broader than you conceive it to be here. What you are living is but a fractional inkling of what is really within you, what gives you life, breath, and depth. But you can live in terms of that depth. And when you can experience it you suddenly see that all the religions are talking of that.”
Then he explained that all religious symbols are pointing toward the experiences but they are not the experiences themselves. In his words
“---The person who has had a mystical experience knows that all the symbolic expressions of it are faulty. The symbols don’t render the experience, they suggest it. If you haven’t had the experience, how can you know what it is? Try to explain the joy of skiing to somebody living in the tropics who has never seen snow. There has to be an experience to catch the message, some clue- otherwise you’re not hearing what is being said.”
Then he explained many rituals from multiple religions, and traditional believe systems, which are pointing toward some experiences.
“----The main theme in ritual is the linking of the individual to a larger morphological structure than that of his own physical body.”
Campbell’s command on telling related stories is amazing. He explains very deep concept with the story and makes it clear and understandable for a common person. Like poets and artists he brings abstracts of myths to life and conveys the message loud and clear. Certainly he is the master of story- telling and Moyers did a wonderful job of pulling right strings as questions to get the music started.
Quoting all stories is not possible for me as I don’t have command and beautiful vocabulary like Campbell does to make stories come alive. But I cannot resist sharing a story from Mayan’s ritual which is named as “Worthy to be sacrificed as aged.” In which
“---The Mayan Indians had a kind of basketball game in which, at the end, the captain of the winning team was sacrificed on the field by the captain of the losing team. His head was cut off. Going to your sacrifice as the winning stroke of your life is the essence of the early sacrificial idea.”
The Moyer concludes Campbell’s story by the statement “The idea of sacrifice especially of the winner being sacrificed is so foreign to our world. Our ruling motif today is winner take all.”
In the process of taking it all what is missing is being bigger than only a winner. Yes we enjoy being a winner for some time but in the end we fail to follow our bliss. He explains the bliss through a story of a twelve year old in a restaurant forced by his father to drink tomato soup and the mother said “Don’t make him do what he doesn’t want to do.” The father looked at her and said “He can’t go through life doing what he wants to do, if he does only what he wants to do, he’ll be dead. Look at me, I’ve never done a thing I wanted to in all my life.”
Campbell felt that these are the people who never followed their bliss and always try to be right for the society only. Following the bliss doesn’t mean being rebellious to the society, it simply means experiencing the path of your heart and do what you want to do even it is different from what everybody else is doing. When you follow your bliss you are enjoying the freshness of the life within you and you enjoy this all the time. Then he explains the concept of hero as those people who did “something beyond the normal range of achievement and experience. Hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.”
He clearly explained that a hero will not escape from the society for ecstasy or for the light, instead he will stay among the people and serve them. He clearly distinguishes between celebrity and hero, where celebrity lives only for self, whereas a hero acts to redeem society.
There were many wonderful explanations given to many religious themes and their respective mythology. Then Moyers raised a concern that people perceive Myth lies. And Campbell answered as
“-----no mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth - penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words, beyond images, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told-------“
His explanation of time is amazing and enlightening. He explains circle of a clock as the circle of totality. Everything within the circle is enframed. No matter where you go will always come back.
“---God is the Alpha and the Omega, the source and the end. The circle suggests immediately a completed totality, whether in the time or in the space.”
This wonderful book helped me understand my inward self. Especially because some of my actions which differs greatly from everybody else around me. I will suggest the readers to go through this book and take its meaning in mythological sense to truly appreciate the depth of author’s understanding.
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