Rev Left Radio - The Sufi Path of Rumi: Islamic Mysticism and The Journey to Divine Love

Episode Date: February 17, 2025

Dr. Rory Dickson is a professor of Islamic Religion and Culture and author of several publications on Sufism, the mystical path within Islam. He joins Breht to have an incredibly deep conversation about the Sufi poet Rumi, his life and work, Rumi's relationship to his teacher Shams of Tabriz, the concepts of fana (annihilation of the self) and baqa (subsistence in God), the spiritual practices of Sufism, non-duality and perennialism, "dying before you die", Buddhist enlightenment, the Quran, Serving the People in politics and religion, the role of Divine Love in spiritual transformation, transcending the ego, Bodhicitta and the Heart of the Bodhisattva, the counter-cultural aspects of the historical dervishes, The Masnavi  (aka the "Persian Quran"), Christian Mysticism, the evolution of human consciousness, the linguistics of translation, and much, much more! Check out Rory's book "Dissolving into Being: The Wisdom of Sufi Philosophy" Recommendations for Further Exploration: Rumi's World: The Life and Work of the Great Sufi Poet The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi Check out our related episodes with Dr. Adnan Husain: Sufism: Islamic Mysticism and the Annihilation of Self in God St. Francis of Assisi: Patron Saint of Ecology & Brother to All Creation ------------------------------------------------------------ Outro Music: Something's Out There by Neva Dinova Support Rev Left and get bonus episodes on Patreon Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio Follow RLR on IG HERE Learn more about Rev Left HERE

1. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Hello, Hello everybody, and welcome back

to Rev Left Radio. Today I have for you one of my favorite episodes I've ever done. I'm just going to say that up front. A fascinating, in-depth conversation about the Sufi poet Rumi that some of you may heard of, may know a lot about, may know not a lot about. But I have on Dr. Rory Dixon to come on and talk about Sufism, about the life of Rumi, the work of Rumi. We just have a fascinating and deep discussion on these traditions, on Buddhism, on Christian mysticism, on Islamic mysticism, and it's just a profound conversation. I'm really, really excited to share with all of you, my listeners, I think no matter what your views on religion are, you're atheistic, you're spiritually inclined, do you have a set

religion, or none of the above, I think you will find genuine depth and fascination in this conversation and I could not ask for a better guest. Just making this stuff so accessible and so well articulated and so inspiring. Truly, I walked away from this conversation genuinely inspired and I'm willing to bet you will as well. So strap

in for this wonderful conversation with Rory on Rumi and Sufism more broadly. And as always, if you like what we do here on RevLeft, you can support us on patreon.com forward slash RevLeft Radio and in exchange for just $5 a month, you get access to bonus monthly episodes

every single month as well as a back catalog of I think over 300 bonus episodes on the Patreon over the last eight or so years. And if you don't want to get on Patreon, if you don't like the membership model, you just don't like Patreon or whatever the reason may be, I've created a Buy Mea Coffee link for a one-time donation. So if you just want to just throw a few dollars our way to support the show, me and producer Dave deeply appreciated, as do our families. And that link will be in the show notes as well. It's buy mea coffee.com forward slash RevLeft radio and you can just do a one-time donation and call it good. But if you don't have disposable income, no worries whatsoever, sharing this episode, reviewing our podcast positively on Apple,

all those things go a long way to helping the show increase its reach if you're so inclined to do so. But yeah, if not, just go ahead and sit back and enjoy two hours of a fascinating and incredibly deep conversation with Dr. Rory Dixon on Rumi, Sufism, and Islamic mysticism. Enjoy. So my name is Rory Dixon. I am an associate professor in the Religion and Culture Department at the University of Winnipeg, and I specialize in the study of Sufism. And so I've written some stuff on Sufism in North America. That was really my first major research project.

And I've recently published a book called Dissolving Into Being, the wisdom of Sufi philosophy, which is turning more to the Sufi philosophical tradition and trying to, anyways, make that a little bit more accessible for contemporary folks. I love that. Very excited to have you on. As we were talking before, we started recording, I heard you on the podcast Guru Viking. And I immediately knew that I had to have you on. I'm operating out of Omaha, Nebraska. So Winnipeg, I think, is just straight north, and I'm very excited to have you on the show. And maybe this will be the beginning of multiple episodes, because I felt right away when I listened to you that everything you're doing vibes so much with what I'm trying to do here.

Beyond just politics here, I dive into religious mysticism, Buddhist philosophy. I've done episodes on Sufism before, Christian mysticism, et cetera. So we have a shared spirit for sure, and I'm honored to have you on. well thank you kindly and i'm honored to to be on so thank you absolutely let's get into it so people listening may or may not know much about roomy i'm sure if you're at all interested in spirituality or religious traditions you've bumped up against the name maybe know that that rumy is a poet um but you know i would assume that most people in my audience might not fully understand the historical context the time period we're talking about etc so i think we should start with with that

who was Rumi? What do we know about his early life, his family, and the sort of context that he was born into? Yeah, it's a great question, great place to start. I mean, it's interesting when I think of, you know, the name Rumi in the contemporary West, we might say, or in North America. He has become, I think, quite a universal figure, which in some ways, I think, really does vibe with his writings and his work. But at the same time, he was also a very particular person who lived in a particular world. And so happy to talk a bit about that to kind of, let's say, flesh out Rumi. So his name is, full name was that Muhammad Jalaladin, and Jalaladin is an interesting name. In the Islamic tradition, God is thought to have two kinds of qualities, qualities of Jalal, which means like transcendence, majesty, power, and then also Jamal, which means beauty, intimacy, mercy, close, that kind of thing. So Jalaladin means something like the majesty of, and then Dean is an Arabic

term for faith or religion. So Jalaladin is like the majesty of the faith or the majesty of religion. And so that that was the name that he would have gone by, generally speaking. And then Rumi, interestingly, literally means the Roman. And this is because Rumi will get to in a second where he was born, but he really spent the majority of his life in Kenya in Turkey. And so Turkey was formerly Byzantium or the Byzantine Empire. So in Muslim cultures, it was generally known as simply Rome. So he was called Rumi, which means the guy from Rome or from the Roman province or area, which present-day Turkey was again seemed to be a part of.

So Rumi was actually born into a scholarly family. family. His father was named Baha'adine, and just like Jalaladine means the majesty of the faith, Baha'adine means something like the splendor of the faith, so this was fairly common naming practice. And Baha'adine was an Islamic legal scholar and preacher. He was actually sought out for his legal rulings, or fatwa. And interestingly, with his father, he had quite a profound mystical side. He was very much a mystic, but he kept this a bit on the down low. He did have some students, but wasn't, let's say, so public about his quite passionate mysticism. And we kind of speculated his son Rumi really know much about that side of him.

So we have Bahaddin, Rumi's father, who is an Islamic legal scholar and teacher, but also a Sufi mystic. And he actually left us a diary that documents his mystical experiences, which is pretty cool. So now Baha'adine was based in Belch, which is a jub, which is a just outside of Masari Sharif in present-day Afghanistan. So Rumi, Jalaladin, was born there in 1207. And then when he was a small boy, they moved to Samarkand, which is in present-day Uzbekistan. So, you know, sometimes Rumi is actually also called Jalalidin al-Belheh,

because, you know, he's really from that region. But again, we'll see that they made their way west eventually. So there's a bit of debate over. whether or not Bahaddin left that that region of Central Asia as a result of Mongol invasions. I mean, we know that they were definitely coming. And so it looks like either it was serendipitous that they left just prior or that they were getting wind, so to speak, of what was coming. But regardless, by about 1220, they left that region and made their way west for several

years, really. I mean, they were living in Damascus for a time and then eventually ending up in Kenya in present-day Turkey. And again, that being the Byzantine region, known as Rome, and hence Rumi. Now, during that move west, probably about 1718, Rumi was married to the daughter of a family friend, and by the time he was in Konya, towards the end of the 2020s, he would have had a few children. And interestingly, his father, now close to 80, because of his scholarly reputation, was given a teaching position at a college, a madrasa, or an Islamic university, we can say, in Konya. And so when he dies in 1231, just a few years after getting there, Rumi is sort of appointed as his successor.

And this is interesting, I think, for contemporary listeners, especially here in North America and in what we might broadly call the West, not always so familiar with this aspect of who Rumi was, but he basically took over from his father teaching what you call the traditional Islamic old And so elm is an Arabic word for science or knowledge. And the Olum are the sciences, the traditional Islamic sciences. So this would have included teaching the Quran, teaching hadith reports about what the Prophet Muhammad said or did, and also Sharia or Islamic law jurisprudence. And he would have been doing this largely within what's called the Henefi School, which is one of the main schools of Islamic jurisprudence. So at this point, Rumi is basically, we can say, a sort of mild-mannered scholarly family man,

respectable religious authority. He developed a kind of prestige as an Islamic scholar and preacher. There are stories of some local Christians who converted to Islam through his talks. And so that's basically Rumi up until the meeting with Shams. Yeah, so do you think it would be appropriate right now to kind of lay some definitions on the table with regards to mysticism and the role that Sufism plays within the broader Islamic tradition, or do you think after this next question it would be better fit? No, very happy to, yeah.

Okay. Let's talk about that because I know that, you know, we cover a lot of things, and Rev. Left is known primarily, obviously, for, you know, political theory, political philosophy, revolutionary politics. So, you know, I don't want to leave anybody behind here. We have done episodes on mysticism. We've done episodes on Sufism, so people can go back and find those if that interests them. But for those that are just engaging for the first time, sort of what is mysticism as far as you can define it outside of Rumi as a particular person, just as a tradition more broadly?

And then how do you make sense of Sufism within the broader umbrella of the different, you know, sort of sex of Islam? Yeah, yeah, fantastic questions. Thank you. And so one of the ways I think about mysticism, and, you know, this is obviously having spent most of my time studying Sufism, as opposed to other traditions, I'll maybe use some Sufi terminology. but I think we can certainly speak quite generally about this. And actually now that I think about it, you know, the Christian mystical tradition shares some of the same terminology. So I'm thinking of here in the Christian tradition,

this notion of the three eyes. And it's something that Sufis actually articulated almost identically and around the same time, which is quite interesting. But in the Christian tradition, there was this sense in the medieval or classical period that the human being has three faculties of knowing. And again, Sufis articulated this very, very similarly.

And those faculties are the eye of the flesh, as they called it, the empirical senses. This is how we know the outer world. This is how we know physical, material things. The eye of the mind. And this is how we would know things like mathematical equations or, you know, maybe the meaning of a play, something like that. certain things that might not have an exact physical manifestation, but you can sort of see them with your mind, logic, things like that. And then finally, an eye of the heart or an eye of the soul. And so I think this is really where mysticism comes in. It's this way of knowing through a

faculty that generally mystics would say is underused. You know, certainly in the Sufi tradition, this would be seen as the knowledge of the heart. And in Arabic, there's a term, a special for it, ma'arifa, which sometimes is translated as nosis, of course, noses being a Greek word for knowledge, but in this case, a special kind of knowledge, and that is a direct knowing through the heart. And so, you know, mystics would often say, we all actually know through our hearts. We know when something is meaningful. We know when we love somebody. And you can't really put, you know, measurements on that. You know, it's not 12 kilograms of love or something like that. But it is a kind of knowing. You know, you know when you experience something of meaning and significance in

your life. And they would say, well, that's the knowing of the heart. And generally mystical tradition suggests that this faculty can be developed, much like if you have your eye of the flesh and you train yourself, you know, to use a microscope. And this is an analogy that Ken Wilbur, who's an interesting American Buddhist philosopher, you know, he wrote some on this, you know, you can train these senses to see things that otherwise they couldn't. And the heart is also something that if polished, so to speak, if clarified, purified, or focused on and developed through meditation, through various kinds of contemplative practice, that becomes a faculty through which you can see more. And so mystics basically say, you know, if you cultivate that faculty, there's a great deal that can be known. And fundamentally, they suggest that the inner universe is as expansive as the outer universe, right?

So sometimes, you know, Rumi and other Sufis talk about this kind of ocean. And so it's a bit like living on the surface of an ocean, which is our everyday self, and thinking of it as a kind of puddle because we've never really taken the time to see what's beneath the surface. But according to the mystics, if you do, there is an entire ocean of being that can be discussed. Yeah, so let's pause right there because I think you've put a lot on the table. There's the three ways of knowing are the three eyes, the flesh, the senses. You can kind of think about empiricism, going out in the world, interacting with the physical world, and gaining knowledge that way.

There's the mind or the ability to abstract, right, to think abstractly. This can be thought of as the philosophical tradition of rationalism in some sense. We all are familiar with that mind and matter. And then there's this heart, soul, or spiritual approach, which can also be cultivated, but is often hidden, often obscured, obviously not very, you know, in a mainstream sense culturally known or talked about. And that's much more about like a sort of direct experience, you know, without the veil of conceptual thinking or even without the veil of bodily sensory organs in some sense, that you can find a place within you that can go beyond the

limitations of the senses and of the abstract conceptual mind and sort of touch, touch reality directly. And, you know, through practices in my tradition of Buddhism is obviously meditation and, you know, there's practices in all of these mystical traditions. But, you know, I've, and I don't want to get too much about me, of course, we'll move on quickly. But through, you know, many, many years of meditative practices, I've had these experiences that often are on the tail end of long periods of sort of existential and spiritual suffering where because I'm so softened by my suffering internally. The ego loses its sort of grip, at least momentarily. And the way that that's manifested for me is a profound feeling of being swamped by love where I look out at the world. And there's

this one story I've told in past episodes where I'm in the Target parking lot after this long multi-month sort of session of suffering. And I just sort of broke open. And what happened was that like my ego, the sense of an individual controller behind my eyes and between my ears, you know, experiencing things or alienated from the world got flooded out by this complete feeling of unconditional love for every single stranger I saw. And like I wept with overwhelming love for these complete strangers as if they were not only myself, but my own children, which I would say I love more than myself, right? Like I loved them so much. I wanted to hold them all and protect them from suffering. And And it only lasted a few moments.

It's happened a couple times in my life, always at the tail end of profound sessions of internal suffering. But, you know, I just felt like I touched something deep. And that went beyond the senses. That went beyond the abstract mind. And that touched something much, much deeper. And I think that is maybe a personal experience of mind that kind of gestures towards what we're talking about when we discuss this mysticism or this heart, soul, direct experience,

orientation, right? Yeah. And, you know, if you don't mind, I'll, I'll, to share another anecdote that's that's kind of along those lines. And I think, you know, this will also eventually take us into Rumi and the Sufi tradition, which really speaks of this, this love, divine love, cosmic love, universal love, both within and without, as being like a wine, right? So they use this metaphor of wine. And they talk about a master, a mystical teacher being like a tavern owner or bartender who liberally pours the wine. And so it makes

me think of an experience I had that maybe is a bit similar to what you're describing. And it was meeting with the Sufi teacher in the United States. And we interviewed, I'd interviewed him for some of my research. And he'd kind of offhandedly shared, you know, if you want to hang out and meditate with us after. I was like, yeah, you know, I made my way here. And let's, let's, let's, let's do it. So I sat and was really just, you know, doing my usual. I sit there and doing my, basically some kind of, like a mantra in the Sufi tradition, you know, repeating certain names of God, which I normally do and can have some interesting experiences with, but nothing quite like this. And all of a sudden, I, exactly as you're describing, I found myself, just almost

feeling like an infant in, in the arms of some giant beautiful love that I just felt like this is all any of us are ever going for, you know, and also like wanting to just give it to everybody and then thinking of everybody that I know and care about. I'm like, I would love just to give them this. And, you know, and then after we, and it was, you know, 20 minute, half hour meditation. And I kind of stood up and was almost like stumbling a little bit. And one of the other students there came up and said, aren't you glad you didn't drive here? And I laughed and I, and all of a sudden, And I'm like, oh, I get now why folks like Rumi talk about this, this wine and this drunkenness, because it's so powerful that, you know, I mean, we all sort of stumbled out. And it's, yeah, it's a pretty cool thing.

Absolutely gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous. And after you have a heart opening like that, it certainly oscillates back, right? There is a constriction after that, but it never fully closes. The door is always cracked. And I think it makes you more attuned to human suffering, more able to. you know, push forth like loving compassion, a deeper understanding and a sort of wisdom that can emerge from that. Even if you constrict back into ego and your heart shuts 98%

of the way again, there's still left an indelible mark. And you can continue to develop that through more practice. I think that's right, yeah. All right. Well, let's get back into Rumi. I do want to circle back later and touch on the Ken Wilber thing. I think there's something interesting there, but we'll get there maybe. But let's go ahead and talk about this transformation. You talked about the biography of Rumi leading up to his meeting with Shams of Tabriz. So who was Shams and why was this relationship so deeply impactful for Rumi? Yeah, a great question again. And I think what's interesting about Shams is it really allows me to say just a few words about the Sufi tradition more generally because it takes many forms historically.

And so certainly in the West when scholars were first discovering Sufism, they weren't really sure what to make of it. and some saw it as being something separate from Islam or outside of it. But what I've really found in my research, both of contemporary Sufism and looking at the classical texts, is that it really has taken on a few different forms. So probably the majority of Sufis historically would have been pretty well ensconced in the traditional systems of Islamic knowledge. So many of them would have been scholars like Rumi's father. You know, Rumi's father, Baha'adin, is a great example of that. You know, somebody trained in the classical Islamic sciences, you know, the law, the scripture, but also a mystic, you know, and I think that's how a lot of Sufis were.

But there were also punk rock Sufis, basically, you know, people who really, the dervishes, they were called, or the colanders. And these folks really were on the outskirts of society. I mean, some were pretty wild. They let their hair grow into dreads. They could be pierced, you know, not wearing a lot of clothes, which, again, Islamic. clothing norms tend to be, you know, emphasizing, covering. And so they could have been quite shocking and very countercultural in a way. Some even purposefully wore their hat crooked. It's kind of like if you think in North America, you know, the backwards cap. They kind of had this like

doing things differently. And so interestingly, Shams is kind of a, he's a bit of both, which is so interesting. You know, he was he was trained in the classical Islamic sciences like Rumi. And Shams, you know, was also a wandering dervish. He didn't really have an address, and he would basically go from village to town to village, really wandering much of Central Asia. Now, his name Shams means son. So Shams is the Arabic word for son,

and Tabrizzi means he's from Tabriz. So again, hailing from Central Asia, and he actually said to Rumi, when eventually they were together and having a sort of teacher-student relationship, that he said, you know, Tabriz, he said, I'm the driftwood that's washed up from the oceans there. You know, he felt like there were some very, very powerful, realized mystics in Tabriz and that he saw himself as kind of the debris that has washed up.

So Tabriz was known historically as a hotbed, we can say, of Sufism. And so Shams was one of these wandering dervishes, again, though, you know, trained in the Islamic sciences, but definitely not one who was conventional in his understanding. understanding. He was uncompromising. He actually would, we would joke later that Rumi was too nice. He said, you know, if Rumi sees somebody and they're about to fall into a pit, you know, he might be too shy to do something. He said, but I'll grab that person by the tail and yank them out. So, you know, I think metaphorically what he was referring to is if he sees somebody, you know, getting caught in delusion, he's willing to yank them out of that. And so this was one of his characteristics kind of a fight. passionate dervish. And so what's kind of fascinating about the eventual meeting with Rumi, there are all these great stories about it. And one of my favorite is, and this one is almost certainly legendary, but it's still great. And, you know, Rumi's having one of his classes, right? He's, again, this kind of respectable family man scholar. And also here we're getting a classic

story of like the scholar encountering the mystic. And I know in Buddhist tradition, there are some really wonderful stories of this as well. Oh, yeah. With, like, Naropa in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition or the Vajriana tradition. It's another great one. And so here, you know, Rumi is teaching one of his classes and in wanders this, you know, fiery dervish, probably looking a little sketchy. And he asks Rumi as Rumi's holding a book, what's that? And Rumi says, you wouldn't know or you wouldn't understand.

All of a sudden the book starts on fire. And Rumi goes, what's this? And Shams goes, you wouldn't understand either. Wow. Yeah. So it's a great. And really there's such a powerful symbol there because Shams was also, even though again, having been trained in scripture and things like that, he really felt like books were not

it. You know, that was one of the things that he was trying to show Rumi that words and concepts and books can become a giant veil over discovering your own essence, discovering reality, discovering the living reality of love and God. So he really was somebody who, when they met each other, and another story is that he presented to Rumi a kind of Islamic koan, you know, that one of the highest of the Islamic saints or one of the highest of the Sufis, Biazid, Istami, basically at one point said something like, you know, glory be to me, which, you know, using an Arabic phrase that you usually use for God, sort of almost like

suggesting that he had become one with God, and then the Prophet Muhammad was always praying to know more God. And so he'd kind of pitched to Rumi perhaps, you know, who was, who had realized more. And either Shams or Rumi, you know, one of them had said to the other, and this is partly where they bonded, that actually the Prophet Muhammad was realized more because something like Biazid, you know, he got drunk off of one cup and he was satisfied. But the Prophet Muhammad, you know, his thirst was never quenched. He always won't know more and no more. And for sure in Sufi philosophy, the idea is that knowledge of God is infinite because God is infinite and never repeats himself as the saying, Sufi saying goes. So reality is new every moment

for infinity without any repetition forever. So the sense of a kind of, again, infinite ocean of knowledge. So however that encounter was, again, whether a book started on fire or not, Who can say? But definitely, I think Rumi was just completely dumbstruck by the power and presence of Shams. You know, definitely, as we've been describing, encountering a profound experience of love. And, you know, really just totally transformative. And Shams would even joke that he said, once people taste my company, all other companies starts to taste bitter, which is a bit of a joke. But this is basically what happened. you know, Rumi started spending all of his time with Shams and really, I think, wanting to

kind of absorb that, that realization, that spiritual state, that love, that knowledge. And so eventually this would become a bit of an issue. You know, Rumi's family and other students and scholars were kind of like what's happening to Rumi here. He's getting, like, caught up with the sketchy dervish and hanging up with him all the time. And so it's, I think basically Shams would have sensed that there was trouble brewing and just left. And I think also this wanting Rumi to discover within, to discover the reality of Shams of the spiritual son within himself. So he leaves.

And this puts Rumi in definitely a state because at this point, it's almost like, you know, the water. He, you know, he's now like scrounging, you know, struggling trying to find this water. that he was almost living off of spiritually speaking. And so eventually, from what we know, he does find Shams in Damascus and sends one of his sons to bring him back. And Shams then basically lives, I think, if not in the same household, quite close to Rumi.

He marries a woman in Rumi's household. And basically, they spend some time together, probably a few years. And I think this is where really, you know, Rumi kind of deepens his spiritual realization. But the jealousy continues from family members. And it looks like, from what we know, one of Rumi's sons kind of orchestrated

the killing of Shams. And so, you know, Rumi doesn't know this. And he starts, you know, frantically, he thinks, okay, Shams has just left again. So apparently he thinks maybe I'll go to Damascus and see if I can find him there again. and from what we know at some point he he discovers shams within he realizes that everything shams has been showing him is is found within his own deepest essence and uh you know so there's that

and then the other thing i would say besides this the sort of spiritual journey that he goes on with shams this is also where the poetry comes in and and the music and you know he he wasn't really into that uh as this kind of sober scholar family man uh but after spending time with Shams and, you know, the whirling and the poetry kind of just pours forth. Yeah, fascinating. And I think that speaks to a certain sort of narrative that applies in many of these religious traditions where you have a sort of awakened or highly realized teacher that people, you know, huddle around, Jesus, Buddha, in this case, Shams, that being in the presence of that person is transformative and can open up parts of your being that have a

otherwise have been locked down by too much intellectualization or whatever, but then always the teacher must leave, right? Buddha dies at the age of 80 something. Jesus obviously is pulled away and crucified. Shams left once because I thought, I think he saw that in Rumi that, you know, he needed to let Rumi have his space for development and then was obviously later murdered and taken away for good. And then the development from that point is the student has to sort of incorporate the teacher into them, but also they have to radically walk their own path, right? In the mystical traditions and these spiritual traditions, ultimately, you have teachers play an important essential role, but you have to walk the path alone. It is uniquely yours. There is as many

paths as there are human beings to walk them, and nobody's ever going to be able to hold your hand to walk you all the way through. They can introduce you to it, right? They can lead you to water, but you're the one that has to drink. And I think that that basic narrative structure sort of pops up again and again in these different tradition. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And then the other thing I wanted to mention is the, you know, the book's going on fire thing and Rumi sort of from that sober, scholarly, I know a lot intellectual position has this hubristic, you know, dismissal of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the Sufi that came in there. And then Shams, you know, one ups him on that level. And then you mentioned coons in Buddhism, which are precisely devised to frustrate that intellect, to get beyond the intellectual hubris and the intellectualization of experience. experience to direct experience. And so, you know, in Zen Buddhism, it could be a meditation master hitting you with a stick.

In this case, it could be the book you're holding going up in flames. But time and time again, there's a place for the intellect. There's a place for study. But that ultimately is limiting. And if you just get completely lost in that, you know, you sort of are deeply off the path. You have to transcend that. That's exactly right. Yeah.

That's very much the position of, of. the Sufi tradition. And, you know, another Sufi that I've spent some time studying Ibn Arby, he talked about the different faculties of the human, each having a playing field that is kind of their zone. And he said, you know, the intellect has its purpose. But, you know, when it comes to things like God or ultimate reality, I mean, it's just not equipped to deal with that. And so as you're describing, a koan kind of short circuits the mind and hopefully, you know, shows the practitioner or allows them to discover something beyond it. Absolutely.

All right. Well, let's go ahead and move on to sort of Rumi's transformation into a mystic proper. A lot of people know Rumi, specifically and primarily as a poet. But his poetry wasn't just, you know, about beautiful words. It was born out of profound mystical experience. And honestly, even engaging with his poetry itself can sort of open up that stillness and silence within you if you would give yourself over to it. But can you walk us through?

how his spirituality evolved and how it was articulated through his poetry, especially after the disappearance of his teacher shams. Yeah, so, you know, one of the first things I'll say on this, it's kind of interesting.

Rumi was actually quite ambiguous about poetry despite being an absolutely phenomenal and prolific poet. He joked quite a bit in his poems about this. And at one point he said, writing poetry is like preparing tripe. You know, this dish of intestines for a guest because you know he likes it,

but you think it's kind of gross, but you still do it because you know that they like, right? So it's kind of like, yeah, he, you know, he was kind of ambiguous about poetry and expressed it as being kind of gross at times. Or even he would joke too, like he would say, you know, I've babbled on too much, you know, in one of his poems and I don't want to offend the beloved

by talking too much, you know, or he would say, I feel ashamed of writing about love when it's a reality, that goes so far beyond words. You know, I feel almost an embarrassment or a shame for trying to talk about something that goes completely beyond language. So I think there is this ambiguity around poetry that that's good to keep in mind. And so really where that came from, though, where this poetry comes from, you know, it's this

presence of shams and then the eventual absence. And it kind of awakes in him something that's a bit, I don't know if unhinged is the word, but a sort of exuberant creativity and ecstasy. And he felt like almost like an irresistible need to express. And so I think initially the poetry was almost spontaneous. And the whirling and the draw to music, I think there was a spontaneity to that, that emerges out of the spiritual ecstasy.

And so he talked about even like he joked when he was with Shams. He said, you know, to Shams, I would have invited you up to the pulpit. to deliver one of the weekly sermons. But he said, I'm afraid that the pulpit would sprout wings and fly off into infinity, just like my heart does in your presence. So he had this kind of real profound opening of the heart. He also described being kind of like impregnated with Shams's glory and having no choice

but to give birth to these sort of ecstatic poems of love. So we can really think of Shams as like a spiritual revolution. for Rumi and the poetry is is the outcome of that you know in Sufi philosophy there's this idea that human consciousness is unique in the cosmos for having a potential to reflect God in totality or to reflect all of the names of God or all of the qualities of the real and one of the names of God in the Islamic tradition is al-Hak which means the real or truth or reality and so Sufi has really used that a lot

and I find it useful when talking to students and other folks about Sufism especially if you're coming from a tradition or a background that isn't necessarily comfortable with what we might call God talk just talking about the real talking about what is ultimately real can be valuable but so in Sufi philosophy

there's the sense that each human consciousness has this you know they call it this sort of Adamic, you know, this is the archetype of the Adamic or basically fundamentally human nature is that it has this potential to reflect all of the qualities of the real. It can be a mirror for all. But, of course, that mirror has to be polished. And so Rumi said about Shams, O Shams al-Hak, or O son of reality, if I see in your clear mirror, anything but God, I am worse than an infidel. So, you know, seeing in Shams this reality, this vast, vast cosmic reality of wisdom and love, again, was something like a revolution. And so he, really the poetry, the music, the dance, you know, all of this is, again, kind of the outcome of that ecstatic and transformative encounter.

Yeah, and I think that does speak to something about the mystical path, whatever you want to call it. You know, I just did an episode on the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza. Oh, cool. Yeah, he's famous for the line, you know, nature or God. And we discussed in that episode, if he was being tongue in cheek, if he was hiding his naturalism under the facade of sort of the dominant religious talk of the time. And we can get into that debate. But I think that synonymous sort of combining of those two things is really helpful because you can really talk about it different ways. like the Christian mystics, the Sufis, the Jewish mystics in Kabbalah, and even Hindus talk about it often

in terms of God. But whether we're talking about Spinoza or certain strains of Buddhism or Taoism, they gear much more in the direction of talking about it as a sort of force of nature. And I don't think it really matters, right? This is the way that we're trying to capture the ineffable through language using the historical and cultural context of our time. You know, Jesus, I think Jesus probably saw the reality of non-duality and spoke about it in terms that the people in his life and his cultural tradition could make sense of. And it came out as, you know, the words of Jesus, the New Testament, etc. But I have no problem talking about it in either way, but for some people with certain, you know, for reasons in their own personal development, they're not comfortable

with, as you say, the God talk. We can talk about it in natural terms. But whatever it is, It seems to be that when you, through these practices of honestly, whatever your practice is, it's always something to do with attention, right? It's always something to do with concentration of your attention on something, a mantra, your breath, even in the whirling dervishes context of just the movement itself, the bodily movement. You know, there's Tai Chi and Taoism of the movement of the body. Whatever you're doing, in Christianity, it's on prayer. right so it's just and it can be a different thing but it's an object of deep concentration of your

meditation and um that is the thing that i think opens up the door to these experiences and then what what happens is you kind of get out of your own way that you kind of see through the illusion of egoic control um and something unfolds or blossoms through you it's almost like um a natural force um that sort of emerges through you and in that way these new dimensions this new depth is opened up, even if you're hesitant to it. So Rumi's sort of hesitant to this poetry spilling out of his heart. But he's not in control, right? Something else is acting through him. And in that tradition, it's obviously God and God's love. In a different tradition, it may be talked about in terms of natural forces or a blossoming or, you know, an intelligence that nature

has operating through you. But I think in the end, it amounts to the, to pretty much the same thing. And it's just a matter of preference regarding what sort of language you want to use around it. Does that sound right to you? Yeah. And, you know, it brings to mind both the Sufi principle and a story that Rumi told that's really beautiful. And so one of the foundational aspects of the Sufi perspective is the distinction between meaning and form. You could also say the distinction between appearance and reality. And so the idea is that, and really what Sufi's point to is that sometimes reality and appearance can be quite distinct. Things are not always as they appear. But also, that words and forms, when you trace back the meaning, you can actually often find, you know, people can find this in friendships or relationships sometimes, right? You're arguing, but you're both saying the same thing in a different way, right? Rumi's got this great story that I think illustrates this precisely what you're describing. And it's a story about four guys who go to a

market. And they're in the market. And one of them's Turkish, one of them's Greek, one of them Arab and one of them's Persian. And so they say, well, let's pull our money together. And then we can buy something in bulk and get a lot of something, right? So the Turk says, let's get this. And he says a Turkish word. And the Greek guy goes, whoa, no, no, no. If we're going to pull our money, I say we get, and he says a Greek word and so on and so forth.

They all pitch their word and they start fighting. And somebody who knows all four languages approaches them and says, give me your money. I'll come back and satisfy all of you. which sounds like potentially a sketchy deal, but they do, they hand over the money, and he comes back with a big basket of grapes. And the Turk goes,

that's what I was talking about. And the Greek guy goes, that's what I was trying to say. And the Persian and the Arab all go, that's what I was saying. And so to me, it's a beautiful story about, you know,

as we're describing, I think it doesn't necessarily matter. I mean, you know, words have histories and tradition, and I value that. But when you encounter the thing, whether that's Buddha nature, whether that's Allah, whether that's Christ, you know, go down the list of our traditions, we have language. But when you encounter the reality, everybody goes, that's what I'm talking about. You know, when you encounter real wisdom and transformative love, everybody goes, that's, that's it. And so I think it's a nice story that highlights that we might say distinction between form and meaning. Absolutely. Yeah, I really love your ability to bring in an anecdote to explain the sort of highfalutin idea that is being discussed. That's really grounding and really amusing as well, you know, the disagreement resulting in. We're just using different words for the same thing, and that really is spot on to what I was trying to say. So thank you for that. Now, let's move forward. We've talked about love and clearly, you know, for people that are skeptical of this or, you know, don't really engage in it or, you know, have a a much more scientific or materialist

or even reductionist perspective on ontology in the cosmos. When we start talking about love, eyes start rolling, right? It sounds cheesy. Yeah. It sounds like, you know, third grade poetry.

You know, something an angsty teen would be writing into the folds of their notebook during class. But we mean something deeper, something more, something that really is foundational. And when you touch it,

even if it's only for a moment, it's clarifying, right? It doesn't mystify. It demystifies. There's something, true that is just felt viscerally in your bones about it. That is not merely, you know, your brain chemicals have shifted in such a way that you're just having the illusion of this. It feels realer than real, realer than normal life. And so I at least want people who are maybe skeptical of this

love talk to just open up your mind a little bit and just set aside your skepticism just a tad and try to wrestle with what's going on here because there's a reason this comes up in every single religious tradition ever through space and time and culture. There's a reason that comes up and is foundational and central. So one of the most striking things about Rumi's work is his emphasis on love, not just romantic love, of course, but love as a force that shatters the ego and draws one toward the divine. So how did this understanding of love differ from conventional religious teachings at the time? Yeah, and this was one of the things that got Sufis into a bit of trouble historically.

You know, the monotheistic traditions, certainly some of the more outward-facing expressions of them tend to want God to stay up in the sky, so to speak. I'm speaking a bit facetiously, but there's the sense of, you know, God is the transcendent Lord, and you obey, and you worship from afar. And certainly some expressions of Islamic theology fall more towards that. Now, what's fascinating is the Sufi tradition has always emphasized the simultaneous total transcendence and unknowability of God with the utter intimacy and closeness of God in ourselves in the world. And really, they draw this from the Quran, which has a very beautiful way of indicating that there is nothing like God, that you cannot know God, but that God is closer to you than your jugular vein, it says. Or it says everywhere you turn, every direction, all you see is the face of God.

So you've got in the Quran itself. Also, the Quran has two names for God. Very, very interesting. One is Zahir, a Zahir, which means the visible, the obvious, the manifest. And botan, which means the totally hidden and unknowable. So God is both totally obvious and absolutely unknowable. And of course, paradoxes is the waters that mystics swim in because, well, it appears that reality is something quite paradoxical at heart. at least according to the mind, right?

At least when the mind tries to grasp it. So this is something that Sufi is emphasizing, both the transcendence and the imminence or the closeness of God, they were comfortable speaking of God, sure, as a sort of essence or Lord or something transcendent or beyond or unknown, but also as the beloved, also as, and especially with experience, once they would say you get a taste,

and this is a really important word in the Sufi tradition, the Velk, which means taste. And so Sufis have always emphasized that, you know, you want to taste these realities for yourself. And when you do, you know, it's just so beyond what we see in our world every day. You know, I mean, really this world is that. It's the traces of that.

But when you get to really the source, it just goes so beyond that. Almost like love is a natural outcome. You know, ecstasy is a natural, outcome of encountering, you know, the one true source of all beauty and goodness and love and also discovering that it's infinite, you know, love is a very natural response. So Sufis have always said, you know, don't waste your life, you know, reading maps but not doing any hiking. You know, don't waste your life just reading menus, but not eating any food.

You know, and they, I think, would look at some of the religious scholars as folks who are doing this, you know, they're just looking at the menu. They're studying the menu. They're studying the menu for their entire life. And they're like, but you're not tasting, you know, and once you taste, then you get, you understand what is meant by this love or, and really one of the words they use, and this also scandalized a lot of, uh, theologians is, uh, isch. So there are different words in Arabic for love. Hobb is one, which means, that's probably the most general meaning, uh, of love, but

ish like also kind of means like passionate desire. And so Sufis would say when you encounter, uh, the essence of reality, it is so incredibly beautiful that it is like absolutely falling head over heels and love and just like the, with a passion, a radical passion that you described, I think correctly, you know, is totally transformative. But also really hard to put into words. I mean, Rumi, he's got this great line in his Nasnavi in one of his, you know, famous works. He talks about the impossibility of ever speaking to it. He says, would you try to count the drops in the sea. Before the ocean of love, the seven seas are nothing. Right? So it's even just thinking of

the physical world, the vastness of it. And he's saying next to love, it's, it almost becomes nothing. So yeah, I mean, Sufism is considered a way of love and a path of love. And it's actually at times been called the Medhhabi ishq. Medhhab means generally that was like a legal school or a school of religious methodology. So they were like, yeah, our methodology is Ishk, is passionate love. And it's actually seen as something much more than just, of course, a feeling, or it's seen as being really foundational to the cosmos. There's a saying of the Prophet Muhammad's that says that God was like a hidden treasure

that longed or loved to be discovered. and that this is this initial longing or love of the one to be known by and through the many that is is the impetus for the manifest universe so in one sense love is is the substrate we could say of the cosmos umi writes in another one of his works the creatures are set in motion by love love from eternity without beginning the wind dances because of the movement of love in the heavenly spheres and the trees dance because of the wind. So this sense of this sort of essence and then we might say manifesting through the different levels of reality.

So yeah, you know, love is also seen as, and I've thought of this too when it comes to discipline. You know, discipline is always seen as importance on a mystical or spiritual path. And for Sufis, they say that's because the self, the ego has a kind of gravitational pull on us. and it sort of is constantly wanting to pull us into dispersion and distraction and forgetfulness of our essence and Rumi actually says, you know, to forget what you're here for,

it's like a king has sent you to a foreign country to accomplish a task. And he says, you go there and you do everything but the task. You know, it's like we get so lost at all of these dispersions. It's like discipline is seen as necessary to constantly reorient the mind and heart towards essence and source and what is real. Now, when I think of this in terms of love, you know, sometimes, and certainly in the West,

maybe we get some kind of, I don't know, Puritan, Protestant kind of vibes that can be, like, you know, discipline is like digging in a hot, you know, digging in a ditch on a hot day. And, you know, there's even this kind of self-flagellation at times that, you know, I must be disciplined and all of this sort of stuff that can happen, especially you could say in a sort of like capitalist society. So, you know, and I think what's how I understand love, too, is that it actually brings sweetness to discipline, you know, then discipline isn't like that. Discipline, you know, if you have love, then you, I mean, I think of this even with work. Like, I feel very blessed to be able to work as a professor and I really love the work. So I often don't feel like I do work, even though I'm busy doing a bunch of stuff. I'm reading and I'm writing and I'm talking and I'm teaching. And but oftentimes because I love it, you know so to me that's like a healthy way of relating to discipline i i think love is essential for for discipline to be healthy and and certainly on the sufi path it's seen as being something that is as you said allows you to really go beyond the ego and kind of break out of that that self-reference

absolutely yeah incredibly well said and i always talk about the importance of you know speaking of like discipline the importance of um you know cultivating attention in an era of mass distraction where we have, like I always call them, you know, these dopamine casinos in our pockets. We're surrounded by screens. We can constantly escape boredom, escape any negative emotion, even subconsciously, by diving into distraction. And so there's something so increasingly sacred about cultivating and protecting your attention in these ways. And, you know, you mentioned something about capitalist society, and we don't need to go off into that right now. But clearly that's a big strain in what I'm trying to do, because what I am trying to do and my overarching goal with this show,

is to say, I truly believe, agree with me or not, revolutionary transformation of the social, economic, and political realm is absolutely necessary. This system, as it currently is constructed, capitalism, imperialism, is bringing our species to the brink of self-destruction. It is increasingly not being able to provide for the majority of people. It's rooted in exploitation. And those are all things, I think, that come out of a sort of egoism, right? And if we really want to transform the outside objective world, we also have to take radical responsibility for transforming our inner worlds to at least get some space between ourselves and our ego, to be able to stand back from it and see it.

Because if we try to create a new world with that same old entrenched ego identification as the main psychological orientation to the world, we're going to replicate disaster. We're going to replicate exploitation in one way or another. We're not going to be able to reach our fundamental goals. And there's a big strain within Marxism that is very dismissive of that, of that idea that that inner transformation has any place to play here, that, you know, that talking in these terms is helpful whatsoever. There's a lot of, I've been met with a lot of dismissiveness on this front, but still I persist because I truly believe that if we want to build a better world, it's not just an outward transformation. It's an outward and an inward transformation. And I think that actually is much more aligned with dialectics than seeing things. things only one dimensionally, but perhaps that's a discussion for another day. What I wanted to

emphasize with what you're saying is that I think love is the natural result of dissolving the duality between self and other, of the subject, object duality. You know, love is actually what occurs when you stop seeing yourself as an isolated ego inside of a bag of skin, looking out at a world that is not you once that subject object duality is seen through even momentarily it's it what is what fills that space is love because it is all you or it's not you right and i think that's the we're talking about what paradox right and and and this idea of of both having intimate knowledge of god and being um you know it's unknowability being separated from it at the same time it only sounds paradoxical to the conceptual logical mind. Once you transcend the conceptual logical mind and get into

direct experience, that seeming contradiction is dissolved, you know, and sort of destroyed in that moment. And so I think that the mainstream institutional hierarchical religions, all the religions have that form, and all those religions also have this underbelly of mysticism, like, you know, Kabbalah, Christian mysticism, Sufism. Even Buddhism can be reified into this hierarchical. There's gods, this belief system-oriented way of being. And then there's the Buddhism of practice, of true enlightenment, of the path that the Buddha himself walked. And what the institutionalized mainstream and hierarchical forms of religion do is what the human mind does, which is falls into the illusion of duality and separation. That we're fundamentally different not only from one another,

but from God. And, you know, we're here to sort of perform for a being that is judging us, et cetera. And that can obviously create a lot of psychological suffering. It can offer psychological comfort. It can do different things. But that fundamental duality, that fundamental sense of separation is the thing that is ultimately overcome through all these traditions. And love is what's left, right? And one thing, you know, just to help your case of why inner transformation is so necessary, you know, I think of precisely along the lines of what you're saying. In the Sufi tradition, there's a sense that this self, this lower self, and they can call it the nefs, it actually called it the commanding self, that, you know, it's sort of the tail that wags the dog. It's, it's, you know, something that eventually if you learn to master, it can be a wonderful vehicle, but we often find it mastering us.

And this is the desires and, of course, the sense of separation and hence then the fear and the need for accumulation and all these things that come with that. But the point that the Sufis make is that that lower self has a remarkable power to co-opt, to co-opt things. So if you give it any beautiful teaching, any ideal, it can, if you're operating at that level and you haven't transformed or gone beyond it, it will co-opt whatever you throw at it. And so if you give it religion, you get like the self-righteous fundamentalism, you know, you get egoic religion, right? Or maybe you get some kind of flaky new age way of getting out of being. a responsible person or something, like all these different ways that we can co-opt things for our own often narcissistic ends, you know, that's seen as being a perpetual problem unless you are able to go beyond. So they would look at different, you know, politics and religion

and different forms and go, well, what are the level that people are operating at? Because you could give them the best system, but they could turn it into a nightmare if they're all operating at this lower level. So just to be, you know, to kind of put another point on that, you know, I think that's one of the reasons why inner transformation is necessary is the ego. It really has a profound power to co-op things. Absolutely. Yeah. And just touching on the Ken Wilburne consciousness evolution scale, I think it's fascinating. I think people should check it out. I think it's very interesting. There's elements of it that you can disagree with or criticize, of course. But I think it is very interesting because it's basically this attempt to try to understand how consciousness

evolves, you know, and then how we as individuals participate in different levels of consciousness. And there's like the sort of, I think he calls it the rational achiever level of consciousness where is that is where capitalism comes online, right? And then there's this postmodern consciousness just above that, which is like progressive, sometimes morally relativist, deconstructing of old hierarchies and ways of being. And then there's a step above that, which is just emerging now. throughout around the world, which is like what he calls integral, and then there's stages above that. But one way that I think about it is my relationship to Christianity and

Christ as I've sort of made, stumbled my way through these steps. And what's, it starts off is sort of, you know, a traditional dogma. I believe in Jesus Christ. I believe in heaven and hell. You know, I converted to Catholicism when I was 13. I was a weird kid. And then, you know, I evolved. I kept growing a little bit. And then I went into my new atheist phase. And now Christianity and Jesus is something to just be rationally deconstructed, to show how it doesn't make sense. It's logically incoherent. People who believe in this stuff are silly, stupid, right? That's the rational achiever level, the scientific mind. And then you evolve to the next level, which is this postmodern, where Jesus now is turned into a useful but kind of

shallow, hippie Jesus, right? He's just the Jesus that walks around in sandals and he had some really important things to say and we should listen to him and that's why they killed him yeah he's not actually god and all that stuff is bullshit but you know he he was an important spiritual teacher and then you go a level up into the integral situation and you realize you start to understand christ consciousness that christ touched on the truth of non-duality like the buddha did like rumy did like so many of these figures throughout history and all these different religions did and he was articulating in the confines of the language and culture of his time that experience he says stuff like you know love your neighbor as yourself i am one with god the kingdom of heaven is within you

and these things sound sort of mystical and religious and people can either interact with that from the level of ego from the level of separation oh jesus is somebody to be worshipped he is god on earth literally and you know this is my belief system etc but then when you get up to the higher stages of your relationship with Jesus, you kind of start to see he's articulating a viewpoint that is accessible to all of us. The kingdom of heaven truly is within us. And it's just a matter of going, you know, in that direction and seeing it or framing it in that way. And then after you understand that intellectually, the next stage is to embody that viscerally. And I'm not, I'm not there yet by any means. But I've always kind of been amused that how my relationship

with Christianity and with Jesus Christ mirrors something real. in what Ken Wilbur laid out there. And I'm wondering if you have thoughts on any of that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I've enjoyed Ken Wilbur's books, and I like how you put it. And I mean, I think really this is something I try to help students get is, you know, to not if you're,

it's like food, you know, chew it before swallowing it or spitting it out if you think it's gross. You know, but so often we have this instinct to either accept or reject. We ask ourselves, do I accept that or do I reject that? But allowing oneself a space to chew on something and to get a feel for it, I think is really, really important. And so I like how you put it with Ken Wilber's philosophy, like any, like any, you know, pick up any book, look at any system of thought. And, you know, to just see that there might be things that you really resonate and connect with and others that maybe you don't. I just think that's generally a good way to approach things.

But yeah, I've also liked his, that kind of color scheme he has, right, of like, you know, the kind of red is almost like. the tribal, the gang, the family, you know, my group versus other groups, and then you kind of developing consciousness through these different levels. And I think it's a useful way to look at political tendencies and movements. And so, yeah, I've enjoyed that. And also just like this idea of an integral consciousness that integrates the various aspects of life and reality. And that's something that I think in the Sufi tradition, I've found that as well, that, you know, Suafis really looked to the Prophet Muhammad as kind of an archetype of an integral spirituality. You know, somebody who was often spending his nights in prayer and meditation was doing

a lot of what we might think of as like spiritual things, but also fully, fully integrated into the world. You know, he had a family. He had close friends. That was one of the things actually that was most reported about him. He was always surrounded by friends. So he lived communally. He was a social activist, no doubt, I mean, worked really hard to transform the economy and the ways that people were functioning socially. But at the same time, had this very, very committed, devout spiritual life. And so Sufis have really seen that as an archetype of this integral spirituality. And the way I wrote about it in my book, dissolving into being, was something like being both at the, you're having your heart or your inner on the peak of a

mountain where it's totally silent. It's, it's oneness, it's aloneness, and then also having your body and mind and everything at the base of the mountain where all the activity is. So simultaneously kind of integrating the base and the peak and living that way. And that's really been a Sufi ideal to be, you know, present with God, to be present with love, to be present with reality in your inward self, but outwardly to be functioning with family and friends and community and be contributing to, you know, projects of making things as good as we can. So, yeah, that's something that comes to mind. It's crucial. Yeah. In Buddhism, it's framed as, you know, the mystic that goes off and lives

in a cave and meditates intensely and has these experiences and, you know, sees through ego illusion and, you know, is one with God or whatever, and then comes down from the mountain and comes back into society, has to deal with their difficult family, the traffic whizzing by, an asshole in the market and all of a sudden all your wisdom evaporates and so that's the importance of integration, yeah.

Yeah, well, that's where the rubber hits the road, right? And there is, I think, in a way, the world is a wonderful test, right? I mean, you know, I've heard it put actually by a Buddhist teacher on the guru Viking podcast, Nak Chang Rinpochei.

He had a nice way of saying, you know, if you want to know if spiritual practice is taking hold, you know, just look at yourself and see if you're getting triggered by people to anger. If you're if you're reactionary, if you're finding yourself, you know, launching into an angry word in response to something that somebody says that annoys you, you still got some work to do. And that the less that happens, the less you are easily, you know,

struck by things to leading to anger responses, things like that, the less that that's happening, there's your, there's your evidence of some development. So I think, yeah, you know, the world is, is peerless in that sense. It'll really let you know pretty quickly where you're out. Yeah, and it has to be sincere. There's a way of spiritual bypassing where these people, you know, kind of get into this mindset, get into a community, and then they try to affect not being disturbed by things, right? Put on this affect, and that's a form of spiritual bypassing. It has to be sincere. If you're angry, totally be aware of that and accept that. You got triggered. You got reactionary in this moment. And you can't shy away from that or repress that

because then it comes out in much uglier ways. Precisely, yeah. Well, this talk of separation leads very well into the next question because we're getting into the themes and the teachings of Rumi, and one of his most famous metaphors is the idea of a reed flute, the idea of being separated from source and this longing to return. What's the deeper meaning behind that? What is a reed flute for those that might not know?

And how does it reflect this broader spiritual philosophy that Rumi is developing and putting into poetry and words, as it were? Yeah, well, the ney, the reed flute, it means an incredibly beautiful instrument. I mean, man, you listen to some of that music. It is just so, like, instantly takes you somewhere. Somehow it just, I don't know, it's almost like a trace of vastness comes through. And there's a lot of tradition around it in Islamic Sufi cultures. You know, some people feel like, you know, the flute has to choose you if you're going to play it.

And there's also the sense of being able to hit a note properly in that sometimes, you know, can take years and sometimes it's almost like the flute gives it to you. So there's a lot of cool, kind of mystical stuff around the flute. But yeah, what Rumi's really pointing to there, and this is one of the things that's so incredible about Rumi is, you know, the way I thought about it, it was taking some of the most profound philosophy, cosmology, ontology, and expressing it in like rhyme, beautiful rhyme, folk tale, jokes. it to me would be like Einstein

like wrapping out his entire theory of you know physics and somehow putting that into a rap that then is also making jokes and talking about pop culture and so to kind of really join heaven and earth like that is phenomenal and rare and so yeah that's really one of the cool things

about Rumi's he really expresses these complex rich vast ideas in very uh really encapsulates them in these cool little stories. So with the reed flute, you know, what he's talking about there is this, this flute, you hear its mournful longing for the bed, the reed bed from which it's come. And so we're kind of, again, dealing with this idea of separation and unity. So maybe what I can do to help your listeners appreciate Sufi philosophies talk a bit about maybe the background of what Rumi is referring to there. And you can kind of see how he's

really capturing it in this short little story or metaphor. So the Sufi philosophical worldview, and really it goes back to the Quran, and interestingly, it goes back to the Islamic creed. But as the Sufis always do, they see things having a surface meaning and a deeper meaning. And so the core Islamic belief, or it's called the shahada, the statement of faith, is la ilaha, illah, illah, which means there is no God but God. And sure, if somebody's a monotheist, they go, yes, there's only one God. and that you could say is a surface meaning and Sufis say, yes, that's fine to understand it that way. But they say if you go down the rabbit hole of what that means, God's name is also Al-Hak or the real. So what they're also saying is there's no real but one real.

There is only the real. There is only one being. La ilaha illah, allah, there is only God. Now that can sound a bit strange. people look around and go, well, it seems as though there are actually a lot of beings and things, like billions upon billions of them. And so this sounds a bit strange to say there is only one reality. Sufis say, well, you're right. There certainly appears to be many things. But the deeper meaning of la ilaha illa is that multiplicity or the world only exists in appearance. Right. So if we

think of the meaning of appearance, it has essentially two meanings. First is short-term presence. Right? If you go to a party, but maybe you're an introvert, you kind of suffer through some small talk, but you make an appearance and then you bounce, right? So this idea of only being somewhere for a short period of time, which they say that's the world in us. Although it seems like we're here for a long time while we're here, if you wait long enough, every appearance is disappearing. Everything is going away. And the Quran actually says everything is in a state of disappearance or annihilation except for the face of God. so everything only shows up everything makes an appearance and eventually totally goes away and eventually there will be no trace of any of us or anything just it might take a while but it'll get there the second meaning of appearance is that something seems to be there but not really and an example that Sufis have given is like you know if you take like a stick let's say you're a campfire and you light that stick and you start spinning it around really quickly you can see a circle, right? The burning stick, if spun fast enough, you do see the circle.

Like, the circle is there in appearance, but you also know not really. So Sufis say that our world is appearance in both meanings of just popping in for a bit and then also this campfire sky circle thing. The world appears to exist, but it does not have a substantial reality of its own. So this is basically a very simple statement of fact, you could say, and the Buddhist tradition also is very good, I think, at articulating the inherently passing nature, the transient nature of all things, and the interdependent nature, meaning things don't have some kind of absolute independent existence. So this can, you know, it's, I think, a very simple statement of fact, but it can feel like, well, wait, okay, so then what's truly real? you know what what really is real and this is where we get to the reed flute lamenting its separation from the reed bed it's longing for something real it's longing for the essence and when we do encounter real stuff which we all know in our life real presence real connection with somebody

even authenticity in our own selves and we're being true to ourselves when we have a genuine communion with another soul if we encounter beautiful art and music anytime we encounter something real we want it and we long for it because it's better than anything else. And Sufis would say the real is, in essence, totally good, true, insanely beautiful. And so the reed bed is longing for this reel, which it comes from into the world of appearance, which can never really satisfy it. But Sufis say these appearances are nothing but traces of the real. And so partly the quest is to follow those traces back within your own self,

in the world to the source, to the essence of everything. And that's the second part of la-ilaha-el-la. So, you know, there is no reality but the real. And so there is something real and it's something vast and it's something beautiful and it's something good. And so our hearts naturally long for this source that we come from. And I think that's partly what he's encapsulating there. You know, I mean, here's something I can share as well.

Rumi writes in one of his, poetic works he says the other world keeps coming into this one like cream hidden in the soul of milk no place keeps coming into place like intellect concealed in blood and skin the traceless keeps leaving traces and from beyond the intellect beautiful love comes dragging its skirts a cup of wine in hand and from beyond love, that indescribable one who can only be called that keeps coming. Wow. Yeah. So gorgeous, so profound. I mean, this is why I love Sufism and have such a deep respect for it and you really are fleshing this out and making it, making it hit home in profound ways. It's a gorgeous tradition, aesthetically, artistically, philosophically. And that longing for, wholeness, it is the common human condition, right? There is this sense, you know, in psychoanalysis, they put it in terms of lack, of this sense of not being quite full. And then

this endless search to fill that hole within ourselves through experience or external things or money or relationships or status. And it's just an endless search. And this is in some Buddhist context, samsarra, the cycle of suffering, this repeated attempt to try to go out and fill that hole through these artificial means. And what is capitalism, if not this constant urge and desire for consumption as the main mode of attempting to do that? And then we have a society of alienation, of depression, of addiction, and we wonder why. We are fools in the cycle of samsaurus searching for something that can never satisfy us.

And the only thing that can satisfy us really is this union with the oneness. and all these mystical traditions in their own beautiful and gorgeous way, return here again and again and again. And so if that resonates with you, dear listener, if you feel like that you've always been searching, you're never quite satisfied. The search to try to satisfy just leads to more disappointment. Even when you get something that you desire,

it never lives up to what you thought it would, and then it's just immediately replaced by another desire. The answer from Rumi, from Buddha, from all these figures, is to give up the search, to go inward. You are never going to find that thing outside of yourself, outside of your own being. It is within your being as the only hope that you have of really finding it. And even if you touch on it once for a millisecond, any skepticism is eradicated. You know it's there.

And then so many of us, once we touch it, we can't help but continue to go back to the well. Even if I wanted to stop this pursuit, if I just, you know, this meditation thing, this spiritual suffering, it's all just too much. I just want to return to a normal life and not have to worry about it. the stuff or or wrestle with these things or face my own fears or anything like that you just can't because you've already opened up the process the flower is blooming and you can't shut the petals ever again and so then there's this sort of surrendering that you have to give up your will you have to give up your control to this unfolding process and all of that has deep deep resonance as you said and made explicit with with Buddhism the idea of impermanence the idea of no abiding self

that there is no substance within anything that is real on its own but is connected to this idea of dependent origination, that everything is profoundly and deeply interconnected and things only arise when a multitude of conditions take hold for that thing to arise. And that thing is always liminal and ephemeral and always passes away once again. And why do we suffer? According to Buddhism, because we cling to that ephemerality. We try to make a permanent self in this constant swirl of change and to try to try to, to do that is to fail, which is to suffer. And it's only through surrender.

And I'm sure all these mystical traditions have versions of surrender within them. It's only through that surrendering that we can ever actually, quote, unquote, solve that problem. But by the time you solve it, there's no you and there's no problem left, right? Yeah, I think that's very well said. And, you know, as you were describing this, you know, kind of looking without for what is actually within. a couple things I can share from Rumi too that just like encapsulated so well so this is from his meth now he says a basket of bread

sits under your head yet you go door to door begging for crusts leave your deluded knocking look at your own head knock on your heart's door you are up to your knees in the stream and yet ignorant of self so you seek a drink from this person in that would that you could know yourself

for a time would that you would of your own beautiful face see a sign. Then you would not sleep in water and clay. You would go to the house of every spirit and fly away. Spot on. Beautiful. Absolutely. And yeah, there's people out there that are listening

that if that touches you, if that moves you, if that stirs you, if you feel like something being said here is true even if you can't fully understand it intellectually, that is the sign that you should continue to pursue this. And the beautiful thing about this is that whatever tradition you come from, you don't need to be alienated from it.

If you grew up in Christianity, you grew up in Islam, and you don't want to, you know, do this grotesque, reductionist, atheistic, you know, turn away from it all and deconstruction of it. But you want to actually go into that tradition to find the beautiful kernel of reality within it. Every tradition, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, they all have it within them. And so that's this gorgeous idea of perennialism. And, you know, we can disagree or debate the nuances of it. more or less is that you don't have to run away from your tradition. You can go deeper into it and find these gems within all of them.

And that's what's beautiful. And for some people, like, you know, Buddhism will speak to some people and Sufism will speak to others and Christian mysticism will speak to others. Whatever speaks to your heart, that's a path. And to commit to that path is a beautiful fucking thing. And I highly encourage people to at least stay open to it. Yeah, I love that, man. I love that.

Yeah. And, you know, it's interesting. As you were speaking, I was thinking, like, part of the, what I think life, you know, if you're interested in this stuff, is about it. It's kind of like digging for a well. You become a digger. And it's interesting, apparently, and I read this somewhere and then I searched it out and found it was true that if you dig anywhere in the earth, you eventually hit water. And to me, that that's a really nice analogy for the real. I mean, our world are of appearances and manifestation, all of these traces of the real, but wherever you

dig, you'll eventually get there. So it's, and I think you're right, you don't have to go somewhere else, you know, you have your own self, you have your own life experiences, your own interests, your own culture, your own religion. And it's partly the depth. You know, if you dig in, you start digging that well, you will eventually hit water. And when you do, you know, you're never the same as you pointed to. Yeah. Great analogy, absolutely. So let's go ahead and move on. And we've talked about paradox and Rumi plays a lot with paradox in his work, ideas of losing oneself to find oneself or dying before you die, a really deep idea behind that slogan. But how does this all connect to like these core Sufi concepts like, and I'm sorry if I

mispronounce them, but fauna or annihilation of the self and Baca, subsistence in God? Yeah, that's right. And they are really interesting concepts in the Sufi tradition. So one of the ways to think about this concept of basically the annihilation of the self and Bacca or the subsistence of the self and God. So if we get back to that basic Sufi worldview that says us in the world

is real in appearance only, another way to say is that there's something kind of dreamlike or illusory about it. Now, you only really know an illusion when you come to something more real. So if you think about this, and in the Hindu philosophical tradition, they talk about

this as sublation. So you discover a deeper level of reality and then are able to see the less real nature of what you thought was totally real. So the great example of this is a dream. If I'm in the middle of a dream, unless I'm lucid dreaming, I think the dream is real. As it's an experiencing subject, if I've, you know, won the lottery or something, then I feel like I really have. And then you wake up and you realize, oh, that was just a dream. So you sublake the dream reality by waking reality. Now, interestingly, the saying you pointed to goes back to the prophet Muhammad who said

a few different things. One, he said, this life is a dream and when you die, you wake up. So he also said, die before you die. And so if you think about that, if this life is something dreamlike in nature, but there is something more real that you can wake up to, dying before you die means to awaken to the real before you die, before your actual death. So we could say that when you do awaken to the real, it's a simultaneous discovery of something way more real than what you've known, but also the discovery of the relatively illusory nature of your own self. And Sufis like to say, you can never know God. You know, God can be known, but there's no you left to know him when this happens. You know, Rumi writes about this in his Masnawi, he says,

no one will find his way to the palace of magnificence until he is annihilated. He also writes, you are your own shadow, become annihilated in the rays of the sun. He says, come to the garden of Phana, come to the garden of annihilation, and behold paradise after paradise within the spirit of your own baka, your own subsistence. So it's this idea of discovering the illusory nature of your ego, of your separate self, of your identity, but also discovering the reality of the real, which is infinite and vast and beautiful. So another way to think about this is if you totally dissolve into the light of the real, you in a sense become annihilated. You in a sense become nobody. However, this nobody is now an empty vessel through which the light of the real can shine

unencumbered. So that shining of the light of the real and its qualities of wisdom and compassion and beauty, now you've become a vessel or a clear window that it can shine. through. So there is something there, and that's the bachah, and that is the subsistence of the entity through the reality of God or through the real. But again, when that's happening, there's no real ego left anymore because the vessel has been emptied of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that sparks this idea within me, and I would love to hear if there's any analogous concept or experience within the Sufi tradition that I'm unaware of, but certainly

within the Christian mystical and the Buddhist tradition, the two most familiar traditions for me, this exists with this idea of dying before you die. So basically what you're doing is you're annihilating this false sense of self, this small self, the ego. You can call it that. It's somewhat kind of crude and it's not totally annihilated, right? It's, as you said earlier, it becomes a tool. Instead of you being used by it, it's used by you when it's conventional. You've got to go around in society. You know, you have to talk to your banker and fill out paperwork and apply for jobs that doesn't go away right you don't just like get lost in mystical bliss and just cease to function that's right but it's no longer the dominant identification that you have but

in buddhism and you know in christian mysticism as this process unfolds as the small sense of self is being transcended or we can talk about it as being annihilated it starts to freak out there is there is a real sense of terror that can grip some people, and it's referred to perhaps as the dark night of the soul, that the ego feels its death to be imminent. And what is the ego, but the sort of evolutionary and socially constructed defense mechanism that we adopt as ways of, as a means for survival? And it's served us well evolutionarily as that function. It serves that function and when you begin to transcend it there is this period of time that many people on the path report going through where there is this time of being completely unmoored of being

disoriented and sometimes of even being terrified like deeply terrified because the ego senses its death as imminent and it can't conceive of anything that's left after it dies so it experiences it literally as death that you are dying and that process is terrifying to the ego. But what happens is if you push through it and that ego does, you know, dissolve or evaporate or whatever word we want to use for it, that there's life on the other side that is so much bigger, so much broader, so much all encompassing than the ego ever was. And in Buddhism, we'll hear talk like once you die before you die, you realize there's no death, right? There's no birth, no death. Concepts like that, that to the intellectual mind and to

the egoic mind are absolutely incomprehensible. But from this higher form of awareness, it makes total and complete sense. And then the terror of death completely disappears. And so I'm wondering if there is a, the dark night of the soul in particular, but if any of that, if there's analogies in the Sufi tradition to those experiences. Yeah, I mean, I loved how you, you know, you said die before you die and then we don't die. I mean, this is really interesting because, so my PhD supervisor, Professor Mina Sharififi Funk at, she's in Waterloo, Ontario, and then that's where I did my PhD. And she was studying with a Sufi teacher in Damascus, Syria, and was doing a master's in Arabic literature there. And

this, this professor, Asad Ali is his name, well-known professor, a teacher, but also Sufi master and poet, really profound poet. And so she was studying with him. And at the beginning of her time with him, he said, you know, what is your, what is your question? You're fundamental question. Why are you here? And she said, I want to learn how to die before I die. And so she waited for a response and weeks went by attending classes and weeks go by. And finally, there's a bit of a student gathering after class. And he walked up to her and said, we don't die. Goodbye. Walked away. So that made me think of that. And I think there is. Yeah, it's, I'm also thinking of like Ram Dass, an American Hindu teacher, formerly Richard Alpert, a psychology professor,

really wonderful dude who's written some great stuff. But he talked about the fact that like our consciousness is almost like these different channels. And so you've got like the channel of the body, you've got the channel of the mind. And he's talking about them like television channels. And he said, you know, those are what shut off when you die. And he said, and if you haven't encountered the channel of the soul, you know, these other channels that are available to consciousness, it's going to be terrifying because it's going to appear like total annihilation. And from the perspective of the body and the mind, that is precisely what is happening. But if you are able to tune in to the level of, we might say, the soul or one's deeper reality, you can

really watch the whole process unfold with a lot more equanimity because you are seeing something or you are now in touch with something that does not die. Absolutely. And it's not just a mental process. It's a physiological process. There are energetics in the body that sort of gets stirred up and that are kind of unleashed when this filtering cap of the ego is removed or blown off, as it were. And people experience this process very differently. There's sudden awakenings. There's very gradual awakenings where it's not so much fireworks and extreme terror, right? I think some people can even get in over their heads so that the most often sort of cited experience in Buddhism is like somebody, who has, you know, been meditating for 15 minutes a day for a year or two. And then they decide it's time for a retreat and they go on like an intensive 10 day or, you know, three week or heaven forbid one month retreat where you're meditating 16, 18 hours a day. And that's just, they're just in the deep end too quickly. And so this whole process that for somebody else could take years to play out in a gradual way is sort of condensed into a really roller coaster exhilarating but terrifying ride.

And it can honestly sometimes, you know, be too much for people and overwhelm them. But one thing that I've noticed in my experience and that seems to be true of this process, but maybe not for everybody because these experiences are so unique to the individual is that as I've gotten deeper and deeper in my practice over many, many, many years, I've had to go deeper and deeper into my core fears, my core traumas. In Buddhism, this has talked about as burning off karma, right? Yeah. And I've had to, this is not a path of lollipops and rainbows. It's not easy.

It's going to make you face every terror, every repressed thing in some sense, and talking about it in psychoanalytic terms, you're going through your subconscious and you're making it conscious. And that process, what is the subconscious? But instincts and repressed emotions and hidden traumas. And if you want to develop to the full being, you have to walk through that hell and you're going to have to face, these things are going to be bubbling up within you. And that takes a lot of, like, courage and resilience to walk through. It's not for the faint of heart. And so I never

want to give the impression that it's all bliss and good feelings. It is the most challenging thing you'll ever do. And it results in the, you know, the death before you die sort of process. And that's not just a metaphor. That's the real visceral feeling that one experiences when they really go down this road. So I think that should also be, you know, noted if anybody's interested in diving into this. Yeah, and I'll say just something about what Rumi says on this and then maybe say something too about the Sufi path more generally. But, you know, he describes God in all of this beautiful language as the beloved, but he also says the beloved is a blood drinker, a slayer who slaughters those whom he loves. He described God like a surgeon operating on you without anesthetic.

Right? So he's the most dangerous friend. He's irresistible, but he's incredibly dangerous because, you know, and he says love, you know, is full of, you know, it's not just the rose. It's the thorns. It's full of a lot of suffering and trial. And I think when we look at something like the Sufi Path, what's interesting, and I think you're pointing to this as well, in these traditional systems, there's always a sense of wanting to, and this is partly what tradition is for, is to kind of build a container that helps you navigate difficult or extreme or weird experience. And so, you know, in Rumi's, the Sufi order that would eventually form called the Mevlavi Sufi order, you know, they really, there's a lot of emphasis on community, on art, on shared learning, but also in service. And so there is a thousand days where the new dervish in the order is assigned to basically do cleaning and food prep in the Sufi lodge. So they are cleaning bathrooms, they are changing sheets on beds, they're probably like a line cook, and they do that for a thousand days before they start getting into the spiritual practice. And really what that is partly meant to do is one, help get over yourself, get an orientation of service and of being used to others and consideration and awareness of others. It embeds you within a community so that when you do start engaging spiritual practice and you are maybe having whether blissful experiences or negative experiences, you're not going to get too attached to those or interpret them in an egoic way, but you can really kind of integrate those a little bit easier.

So I think it's an important point that any kind of self-development, self-exploration, you will face experiences of darkness or instability. and yeah, mental health can be an issue, you know, if you're not careful. And this is, I think, partly why these traditions have developed of, you know, communal practice or working with a teacher, you know, even in a certain Sufi masters who are seen as being very advanced, can actually hide a student's own realization from them, from their own self. They somehow find a way to allow the student to progress, but they kind of hide where they're really at until they can see that they're ready to integrate. some of those experiences. And so, yeah, that makes me think of, you know, negotiating the challenges of the path. That's partly what these traditions and communities are for. And another way to put it is you need to be grounded.

You know, people, there's real value in developing like a healthy, grounded sense of place in the world with good relationships as best you can with, whether it's family or friends or, you know, you need that because, yeah, some of these experiences can be pretty far out. or disturbing and you know you want to be able to integrate them as you go on absolutely and i live in nebraska there's not a lot of of those communities and teachers and for and i was sort of naive and even perhaps arrogant in the early days and i kind of lone wolfed it in a lot of ways and i suffered dearly for that and to be in the midst of that form of suffering and not to have a teacher or a community or even a real tradition to be embedded in and held within it can make those those difficult parts all the more difficult and disorienting. So yeah, highly encourage people who set out on these paths to, yeah, embed yourself in those traditions. Don't make the mistake of cherry picking

from all these different traditions or to make it seem like you can do it all by yourself. Every tradition emphasizes community and teachers and a single path for a reason. We can learn from other paths. I love engaging with Sufism and Hinduism and these other paths and learning from them and integrating what I can from them. But at the end of the day, day like I like sticking to my path of Zen Buddhism as the main orientation that I personally take because I think there is also a danger in trying to, trying to walk too many paths or pull from different things or the perennial mistake of turning away from any tradition whatsoever and thinking you can kind of go it alone. I think there's lots of dangers on those paths.

Well, there's a nice Sufi story about this and it basically says something like we're like exiled on this island and the spiritual teachings are like boatmaking. And so they're people who've preserved the knowledge of boat making and you build a boat, you get in the boat and then you go to the other shore where you come from. Now, at times, people think, oh, this boat making is superstitious and there's no need to leave the island and that kind of thing. And you can think of these sort of anti-spiritual approaches, whatever you want to call them. But at the same time, if you think about it, you could try swimming to the other shore. But I don't know. Yeah, I don't know if I'd recommend it. I might sort of see if you can get in a boat.

So I think that's one way to look at these traditions and what the issues around a do-it-yourself approach might be. Yeah, that's great. That's great. And then the last thing I just want to say, before we move on really quickly, as you mentioned, service. You know, some people call it the path of devotion, this outward focused. I am humbling myself. I'm not pursuing my individual pursuits. I'm serving others. I'm a parent of three kids.

So whether I like it or not, that's foisted upon me. But in the Marxist tradition, we talk about serving the people, right? of subordinating your individual careerist ambitions or, you know, in certain terms, egoic self goals and to subordinate that to a broader project of trying to revolutionary transform the world and serve other people in that process. And so, again, I think there's resonance there for that aspect of my listenership that is concerned primarily with sort of revolutionary politics. But let's go ahead and move forward into this next realm. And, you know, I'm asking questions. I'm sort of out of my depth here. So if I get something wrong, don't hesitate to correct me. But as far as I

understand, Rumi's poetry wasn't just meant to be read. It was sung and danced and physically embodied. There's that word again embodied. What role did music and movement and especially this term Sama or Sama, the whirling dance, play in his overall spiritual practice and in Sufism more broadly? Yeah, it's a great question. And it's interesting because Rumi, I think, would not have been a proponent of music really before meeting shams. And the Islamic tradition as a whole is a bit like the Greek philosophical tradition in that there's a certain ambiguity towards music. And I think this is partly actually just recognizing its incredible power. Right. I mean, music, it's really quite phenomenal that just, you know, modifying sound waves communicates human emotion. I mean, it's wild when you really think

about it. But if you look at how powerful it is, I mean, I even think of, you know, growing up a teenager in the late 90s and, you know, developing an identity based on music. You know, and then people still do this to this day. And for some of us, that might be a lifelong identity. For some, it's just a phase as a teen. But if you're thinking of like, you know, you're into punk, you have like, you become a punk. You know, if you're listening to hip-hop, you know, a lot, you might start dressing a certain way, right? Or EDM or like, you know, music can actually create whole subcultures of identity. So it is incredibly powerful. And I think there's, there's been this recognition of music's power in the Islamic tradition. And in some cases, wanting to kind of

forestall any negative power. But there's also been, opening to appreciating the positive power of music. And it's interesting because the Quran itself is recited and it's recited according to a musical scale. There's several musical scales you can recite it according to. The call to prayer is recited according to different musical scales. And so they're not seen as being music as such. But at the same time, there is this musical quality built into Islamic tradition. And eventually the Sufis would really see the possibilities for music to lead to spiritual elevation. And so Sama is a an Arabic term that just means literally listening. And so it was a tradition of listening to music

contemplatively. And it's interesting. Some Sufi said, you know, it's all about where you're at. Like some music is going to be forbidden for you. If it's going to just mess you up, some music is, you know, neutral. And some music might actually be required obligatory for you to engage because of where you're at. It can really open some doors. So I think when we look at the character And the whirling that the whirling dervishes, as they're called, you know, this is really characteristic of Rumi's Sufi order or the Sufi order that was really developed after his death, we should say, called the Medlebees. So for them, they developed these really quite beautiful forms of what we had now called classical Turkish music that they would do this whirling dance to. And it's really a meditation. And so I think really what we're seeing there is this the possibilities of music to be engaged contemplative.

And there are really different ways of doing this. I mean, it was funny. I was in a Sufi lodge in Toronto, a Persian Sufi order. And they had this little ceremony that they do, I think, weekly, where they turn off all the lights. And they play this classical Persian music. And it was pretty far out, pretty cool. But apparently I'd kind of miss the point because I talked to the teacher after and he said, what did you think?

I'm like, yeah, man, like, no, the lights were off and the music. And he's like, but did you understand? any of the words? I said, no, I don't really know Persian. And so you could tell, he was kind of like, you may have missed the point a little bit. So you could also, you know, suggests that a simple aesthetic approach to music, which personally I probably take a lot of the time, I love music, but I think there's an idea that it's actually going beyond just aesthetic appreciation, that there are ways that music can actually allow you to access deeper aspects of your heart and consciousness. And so certainly I think that's how it's been,

used in the Sufjorda that developed around Rumi's teachings. And so in the context of the whirling dance, is that as you're dancing, you're also listening to music and then is there something that is done specifically with the attention? Because I assume you're not just like thinking about what you're going to make for dinner when you're engaged in this activity. Can you kind of flesh that out? Yeah, 100%. And this will maybe just in general, we can talk about, you know, each of these boats that

we can hop in to go back to the other shore, each of these traditions have characteristic methods. And now within Sufism, and that is a very particular expression of this method, the whirling dance, and other Sufi orders would approach this differently. But it's all meant to do one thing. And really, the Quran says this, you know, it commands this daily prayer. And then it says, but vikor Allah is Akbar. And vikarala means the remembrance of God, the remembrance of source, the existential orientation towards the real is the whole point of everything. And, you know, many Muslim scholars have said this. The whole point of the Quran and the law and the ritual and the practice is nothing

but the remembrance of God. So vicarola is the main Sufi practice. And the way that the characteristic method of the Sufi path is to do this through the 99 names. So this is something that all, as far as I'm aware of, Sufi practice is based upon, is the engagement with these names. Now, 99 is partially a symbolic number. The Quran actually has more than 99 names for God, and Sufis would say the names of God are infinite. And then ultimately, everything in the cosmos is a trace of a name of God.

But there are lists of 99, and Sufis do use them. And each name, kind of like a mantra, is thought to have a particular energy or power. So you can certainly use like the universal names, like Allah, which is a name that is thought to encompass all the other 99 names. So it's a name of totality. There's also the name of essence, which is who. Now, who in Arabic means he. And so the Quran will actually say there is no God, but he. La ilaha illahua.

And so Sufis have taken on that as a name of essence. One Sufi philosopher said, you know, when you say he, you mean somebody who isn't there. If somebody's there, you say you. But if they're not there, if they're absent, you say, well, he said. So he said, who is the name of the essence that is forever sought, but on some level never found? So that that would be one name that Sufis work with. And then also, you know, different names have maybe like healing. If one needs healing energy, if one is dealing with certain aspects of the ego, different names can be helpful depending on what you're dealing with.

So there are names of forgiveness, names of expansion, names of contraction. Even one of God's names is like the destroyer or the one who brings death. And I asked a Sufi teacher one time, you know, what would be, why would I want to sit around chanting the destroyer or the one who brings death? Like, what would be the spiritual purpose of that? And they said, well, you know, if there are certain patterns in your life, negative patterns, that it seems like you really, really have a hard time shaking, what happens is that needs to be destroyed. And so you can, you can use that energy of destruction, death finality to apply that to a really negative, a persistent negative pattern in your life. So different names have different purposes. and some are thought best used under the guidance of a teacher and with the recommendation of a teacher.

Other names are seen as being very accessible and anybody can use and you can use them lots. So even like, as I mentioned before, la ilaha illah, illah, which is there's no God but God. The Sufi interpretation of that is the ego is an illusion and only God is real or there's only one reality. So repeating that, you know, over and over helps orient oneself to the real and away from. from the illusion of the ego. So if we're talking about whether it's the whirling meditation, if we're talking about really any Sufi practice, it's all oriented towards Dikr,

or sometimes that's pronounced Zikr. And that is the remembrance of God, the remembrance of the real. Beautiful. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I guess the goddess Kali in the Hindu tradition also has those connotations of death, time, and the destroyer of illusion.

And she has to come into your life when, yeah, there are these patterns of behavior. that are holding you back and there's a sort of ruthlessness and all of these traditions there is that undercurrent of ruthlessness and destruction and annihilation that takes place

throughout these processes and I recently just was able to kick a really long-term habit of mine, a bad behavioral pattern I got into as a teenager as a way to cope you know, it's basically I can be honest it's cannabis use

where as a late teen, just the suffering mental health issues, my own personal tragedies and stuff, and just the harshness of life. It became a safety blanket for me and something I relied on to modulate my mood and to uplift me and to de-stress and to tune out. And that stuck with me. It's very sticky. It sticks with you for a long time. And now I'm entering my 36th year on this planet. And I figured that I had cultivated this resilience within me through my meditation practice and other practices that I've engaged in, and that it was acting now as a hindrance on my ability to move forward and develop, and so it needed to be destroyed. And it took a year of tapering down and kind of

oscillating back and forth. Am I really ready? Can I really go without it? And I've, you know, cut the rope this year. And I've had nothing but positive benefits from doing so, not the least of which has been an overall mood stabilization. I didn't quite understand how much daily use of any substance disregulates your mood and your nervous system. And there's this constant oscillation between ups and downs and ups and downs. And I just thought that's a natural product of my brain chemistry. And I think it's becoming more and more clear to me that that was because I was sort of hitting the gong of my neurochemistry every day. And so, you know, that's just one little tiny, you know, rather petty example. But I think this process is this sort of purging of these

these limited and self-constraining and really coping mechanisms that we sometimes develop throughout life that at some point in your maturation, it's time to let go of it and move beyond. And that's not true for everybody. Other people have different relationships to substances, and I'm not here to judge anybody else, but on my path, that was necessary. And, you know, I had to sort of summon the goddess collie to get past that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a great example, though, of how, you know, we need to work with different

energies on the path for sure. Well, the next question I have, I might also be betraying some of my ignorance. So, again, don't hesitate to correct me. But I think that it's fair to say that Rumi's magnum opus was the Masnavi. And it's sometimes, if I'm right, referred to as the Persian Quran because of its depth and its scope. So what makes that work so unique? And how does his storytelling sort of function as a vehicle for transmitting this mystical

wisdom? Yeah. I mean, it's a really, and it is called the Persian, Quran and, you know, it's seen as being a very special book. And I've shared a few quotes from it throughout our discussion. And hopefully your listeners can, can through some of those appreciate, you know, why it is such a profound book, or at least start to. And so it's really an epic poem about 25,000 verses. And really, you know, one of the ways I think about it, it's a little bit like jazz improvisation. Like I think of, I'm somebody who is

gained something of an appreciation of jazz and still, you know, very much I wouldn't call myself by any sense an expert connoisseur, but I've really come to appreciate hearing some of Miles Davis playing the trumpet. And there's something about it that is totally free. And yet somehow nails structure at the same time. It's almost like dancing over structure playfully, but somehow also nailing it. And there's something really cool about that. Like you feel like there are no rules and yet he's satisfying every rule by, I don't even quite have the words for, but it's very, very cool. And I think that that's kind of what the Massanabe is like. It's like this really profound expression of the entire spiritual path of Sufi philosophy in all of its

dimensions and yet somehow expressed in this effervescent, playful rhyme with like pop culture references, even crude jokes, which also is not always appreciated in the West. You know, you hear of celebrity getting like tattoos of Rumi and they're definitely not talking about like his insults to his scholarly enemies like a thousand dog farts in your beard or something like that I don't think Brad Kitt's going to get that tattooed on his side or something right it's like there's this earthiness and it's like weaving every aspect of life you know from from the most mundane and silly and yet always somehow hitting this this theme and somehow expressing this this deep and realization and teaching.

So it's really remarkable. I mean, again, I think, you know, jazz improvisation does come to mind because it seems like he's just writing so freely and skipping and dancing over all kinds of things and yet nailing something in the midst of that. It's like, or, you know, seeing a cat hop, you know, all over things and not knocking things over and somehow landing on its feet despite looking like it's going to totally crash. It's that some kind of freedom but also precision that is really beautiful. And so, yeah, I mean, I think that's – and one thing I'll say about it, too, is just that, you know, Rumi was pickled in the Islamic sciences, so to speak.

You know, he was pickled in the Quran and the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad and Islamic traditions and philosophy more generally. And so, you know, he just kind of is always suddenly referring to those throughout the book. And it is one of the issues. And if you don't mind, I'll maybe just jump to this because I suspect we might want to talk about it, you know, of how Rumi is understood in the West. Yes, please. And there is a challenge in translating Rumi because certainly I think there's a very universal message as we talked about this, you know, tracing back the meaning, you know, like the grapes, you know, getting to what everybody's trying to say and express. So there's a profound universalism and an openness in Rumi's teachings, but it's also so deeply grounded in the Islamic tradition. And so translating Rumi for the West, this has been one of the issues is, you know, some of those references just aren't going to be easily comprehensible for folks who are not themselves grounded in that.

And so that can lead to efforts by translators and interpreters to kind of change some of those references or edit out certain explicitly Islamic references to make it more comprehensible. But of course, one of the problems with that is then you lose something of, you know, who Rumi was as a historical. Muslim Sufi person, you know, again, profoundly universal, but also grounded in a particular boat. So, yeah. Yeah, and there's an analogy with Buddhism where as meditation and mindfulness come to the West, there's this secular Western sometimes attempt to sort of deculturize it and just take out the practice and sort of disregard the centuries and millennia of, you know, Asian and Buddhist and Indian and Chinese and Zen culture.

that comes with it and I do always think that something is lost and if I really love Buddhism I have to engage with the cultures that it came out of and that it were shaped by and that gives me a much deeper understanding of the thing I'm actually engaging with and something is profoundly lost when when you know these figures and their teachings or their art is stripped away from that from that context so I highly you know worn against trying to do that and it's sort of you know on some level repulsive to me when I see that happening to Buddhism and I'm sure you have a similar sort of sensation when that happens to Rumi or Sufi figures but I'm saying

my question is beyond just the Islamic and Sufi elements that are sometimes stripped out of his work in translation is there something lost when we get outside of the you know the of Arabic as a language because you know there are some languages and I know this with like German for example German philosophy that the language itself is so intricately connected with what is produced within it, that it is hard and something might be lost when we shift over to another language world, as it were. So I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on that or if there are some translators that are just really, really, really good at doing that.

Yeah, I think it is a perpetual issue. I've done some translation work myself from Arabic with this book that I've just written on Sufi philosophy. and it is really, really challenging. It's an exquisite challenge. You know, how do you capture meaning or capture spirit, but also have some integrity with the form? And so translation, especially translating poetry, is very, very difficult.

And this has been a big problem actually with the Quran, the Quran being an Arabic text, and it actually frequently refers to itself as an Arabic text. It's a very self-referential text. about itself a lot. It will say this is an Arabic revelation. This is the Arabic Quran. And so knowing Arabic is really important to understand it. And just to give you an example of what can be lost in translation is, you know, there's this word that shows up a lot in the Quran, Kufur or Kaffir, and it means, it's translated as like unbeliever, non-believer, infidel, something like

this. But what's so interesting is the Quran actually frequently pairs these words associated with kufur with shukur. And shukar means gratitude. thankfulness. And so in many cases, Kufor actually means ingratitude. And if you look at the linguistic root of the word, it means to cover up or hide a good that has been done. And so what's interesting is you could also read the Quran in a lot of cases, not talking about belief and unbelief, but talking about gratitude and gratitude. And I also think of, it was cool, I was on a Sufi center it was in upstate New York I don't think I think they moved but they were in an old shaker village in upstate New York

a really beautiful place and there was this elderly woman who is living there and I met with her after dinner and she was in like the library I think at the center and she said to me something like happiness is a synonym for gratitude and the more I thought about that I was like yeah yeah that's kind of a nice way of putting it But, you know, that's just one example of where, when we're looking at language, you know, and especially with Arabic and Persian and Rumi, you know, was fluent really in both, but he really primarily wrote in Persian. But both really wonderful languages, but ones that I think they are in some cases, and especially the poetry, difficult to translate because of the multiple meanings that can be in a single word. That's one of the main things I find is that you've got these sort of several meanings and then you have to kind of pick, which one you want a foreground. And in doing so, you're kind of inevitably erasing some of those

other meanings. So it's a really, really challenging thing. And I think with Rumi's poetry, I can see the challenge because there is such a universal spirit, a profundity. And you want to capture that and you want to convey that. And of course, the beauty, the effervescence, the playfulness. You want to do that, but you also still want to, again, keep to the integrity of what he was saying and how he wrote. And so doing that, look, I just think it's a real big challenge and I don't think I have an answer other than I think we need to be as conscientious about engaging with texts in different languages as possible. And there certainly are better or worse translations, but inevitably there's just this inherent issue with that that I think it's worth being aware of. Yeah, I think that's fascinating and on point and thoughtful and people should always kind of be aware of that in the background when they engage with these things. And then there's also this other paradox with any of these traditions that they are so located within a specific culture and a specific historical context, but they're also immensely universalizable, right?

What Rumi was talking about, what Jesus was talking about, what Buddha was talking about. These are universalized human truths about the deepest aspects of the human condition. And so there is this element in which they are inexorably and inevitably intertwined with their culture and their history and the language world that they were using at that time, as well as. this, it has to be held in tension with the universalizable aspects of what they're actually saying. And I think, you know, just kind of being aware of that tension and going into these traditions with respect for both sides of that puzzle, I think that's kind of the balance that one has to strike when they become interested in these things. Well, I'll give you just one example of this, you know, so one of the most famous interpreters of Rumi in the English language

is an individual named Coleman Barks, who's really himself a wonderful poet and also a practitioner of Sufism, he has received some critique for, I think, translating or interpreting Rumi, probably more fair to say interpreting Rumi, in a kind of Walt Whitman-esque free versus American style. And I'll just read one example of sort of his translation versus a more close translation of the original. So there's a saying that we find, well, here's how he translates it. Out beyond ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing, there is a field. I will meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about ideas, language,

and even the phrase each other doesn't make any sense. Now, apparently Brad Pitt does have the first part of this tattooed on his arm. Out beyond ideas of right-doing and wrongdoing. And, yeah, it's beautifully put. Now, if we look at the original Persian, this is a much closer translation to what Rumi was saying. out beyond Islam and Kufr, out beyond Islam in unbelief or in gratitude, there is a desert. For us, there is a passion in the midst of that space. The knower who reaches there will bow in prayer, for there is neither Islam nor unbelief nor anywhere in that place.

So it's interesting. I mean, I think Barks is capturing something of the spirit of what's being said, but also, of course, we're losing a lot. And we're also losing some of Rumi's context, speaking about Islam and unbelief and bowing in prayer. You know, I think there's still an essential message that's being captured. But again, it's just a great example of seeing what can also be lost. Yeah, and both versions have their own beauty. And I just don't envy the work of the translator to have to try to communicate that and maintain the essence and try to, you know, put it in terms that can be understood while keeping the rhythm of the poetry alive in a different language. it's a very monumental task. So just hats off to anybody who engages with that with

sincerity because it's not easy. Precisely, yeah. Well, Rory, we're at two hours here. This has been an absolutely fascinating conversation. I knew when I listened to you on another podcast that you would fit in perfectly with this one and that we would have an amazing conversation and I was not disappointed. You have a wonderful way of articulating these things and making them accessible to people who might not know much even about the Islamic tradition or certainly about Sufism, et cetera. So I'm just really blown away by your ability to communicate so effectively.

And I really feel a kindred spirit between you and I. And so I would love to have you back on maybe to discuss your book dissolving into being or anything else in any realm at all that you want to talk about. Open invite to come back on, and I mean that. But for listeners who feel drawn to Rumi's words but don't have a background in Sufism or mysticism or would just like to begin to explore all of these things, Do you have any recommendations that they could start with? And also, where can listeners find you and your work online?

Yeah, well, thank you. First of all, for the very kind words. And I really appreciate your generosity of spirit and also sharpness of mind. So I think that's really facilitated a wonderful conversation. I'm very open to having more. So thank you, again, for the invitation and for your work and what you're offering through this. So when it comes to, if listeners want to dive into this question of, you know, Sufism or Rumi's work in particular. There are some books that I will recommend.

You know, if you want to just know a bit about his life and kind of an overview, there is a scholar named Anne-Marie Schimmel, a German scholar. There's actually a street named after her in Pakistan. She was really beloved in a lot of Muslim cultures for the wonderful work she did. Speaking of translation, things like that, and really articulation. I think she really is just a profound and beautiful scholar. and so she wrote a book called Rumi's World, the life and work of the great Sufi poet, so that Schimmel, S-C-H-I-M-M-E-L. So that's a wonderful place to start, if you want to know a bit more about Rumi's life and his work.

And then if you want to kind of dive a bit deeper, there's another scholar, William Chittick, C-H-I-T-I-C-K, really, I mean, in terms of translator, wow. I mean, he translates from Arabic and Persian, I mean, and huge amounts. I'm kind of in awe of his scholarship, truly. And he wrote a really beautiful book that I wish was more well known. It's called The Sufi Path of Love, The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi.

And there he really translates a lot of beautiful passages from several of Rumi's works. So if listeners want to, you know, dive deeper into the Sufi path and into Rumi's teachings, I think that's a very, very good place to go. And then finally, if anyone's interested more in my work, as you mentioned, I mean, you can just kind of Google me and I'll show up in a few you know YouTube interviews things like that but but really this this latest book and maybe we we can talk about it in the future is again called dissolving into being the wisdom of Sufi philosophy and that was just published out in October November of 2024 with Anka that's A NQA Anka press a British press that specializes in Sufi philosophy so yeah if you're interested that's

a book I've written that I hope is also accessible to folks I was thinking you know if friends and family are asking me, like, what is Sufi philosophy anyways? I thought, well, here's a book I can at least hand to them and go, you know, hopefully this is accessible and interesting. And that was the effort anyway. Wonderful. Yeah, well, I'll link to all of those in the show notes so people can quickly and easily find them and dive deeper. And of course, on this show, we have our episode with my good friend, Adnan Hussein, on Sufism more broadly. If people want to dive deeper into that direction. And another episode with Adnan on the life of St. Francis, that was very much

structured similarly to how this conversation was with using an individual figure in a mystical tradition to kind of dive into that tradition more broadly. So if you like this episode, you'll probably like the one on St. Francis of Assisi as well. But yes, thank you so much, Rory. I can't wait to have you back on the episode. This is automatically already one of my favorite episodes we've ever done. So I look forward to connecting with you again. And in the meantime, keep up the amazing work. Well, thank you so much. Does my heart good to hear that. And really, it's been an honor and a pleasure. So, inshallah, in the future. It's a scene in January

I've got a vision Forget my name Forget my place Forget my face There's no position I'm empty space Hello moon I'm a witness

I'm collecting my perspective now Time stops for a moment I think something I think something's out there. I think something's out there. I had a vision. Distinction's fate No separation

I'm out of range Ooh I think I think something's out there and you know and you're

and the I'm I'm and you're I'm you're

I'm I'm It's seen a different way. Thank you. Thank you.