"There is No Longer A Journey to Undertake, No Longer A Destination to Reach"

Sultan Bahu

Alif Allah chambe di booti, Murshid man wich laaee hoo
Nafee asbaat da pane milia, Har rage harjae hoo.
Andar booti mushk machaya, Jaan phullan te aae hoo
Jeeve Murshid Kaamil Bahu, Jain eh booti laee hoo

My Master Has Planted in My Heart the Jasmine of Allah’s Name.
Both My Denial That the Creation is Real and My Embracing of God, the Only Reality, Have Nourished the Seedling Down to its Core.
-When the Buds of Mystery Unfolded Into the Blossoms of Revelation, My Entire Being Was Filled with God’s Fragrance.
-May the Perfect Master Who Planted this Jasmine in My Heart Be Ever Blessed, O Bahu!-

Allaah parhion hafiz hoion, Na giaa hijabon pardaa hoo
Parhh parhh aalim faazil hoion, Taalib hoion zar daa hoo
Lakh hazar kitabaan parhiaan, Zaalim nafs na mardaa hoo
Baajh Faqeraan kise na mareya, Eho chor andar daa hoo

-You Have Read the Name of God Over and Over, You Have Stored the Holy Qur’an in Your Memory, But this Has Still Not Unveiled the Hidden Mystery.
-Instead, Your Learning and Scholarship Have Sharpened Your Greed for Worldly Things,
-None of the Countless Books You’ve Read in Your Life Has Destroyed Your Brutal Ego.
-Indeed, None But the Saints Can Kill this Inner Thief, for it Ravages the Very House in Which it Lives.

Alif-aihad jad dittee wiskaalee, Az khud hoiaa fane hoo
Qurb, Wisaal, Maqaam na Manzil, Na uth jism na jaanee hoo
Na uth Ishq Muhabbat kaee, Na uth kaun makanee hoo
Aino-ain theeose Bahu, Sirr Wahadat Subhanee hoo

-When the One Lord Revealed Himself to Me, I Lost Myself in Him.
-Now There is Neither Nearness Nor Union. There is No Longer A Journey to Undertake, No Longer A Destination to Reach.
-Love Attachment, My Body and Soul and Even the Very Limits of Time and Space Have All Dropped From My Consciousness.
-My Separate Self Has Merged in the Whole: in That, O Bahu, Lies the Secret of the Unity That is God!

Allaah sahee keetose jis dam, Chamkiaa Ishq agohaan hoo
Raat dihaan de taa tikhere, Kare agohaan soohaan hoo
Andae bhaaheen, Andar baalan, Andar de wch dhoohaan hoo
‘Shaah Rag’ theen Raab nerhe laddhaa, Ishq keetaa jad soohaan hoo-

-The Moment I Realized the Oneness of God, the Flame of His Love Shone Within, to Lead Me On.
-Constantly it Burns in My Heart with Intense Heat, Revealing the Mysteries Along My Path.
-This Fire of Love Burns Inside Me with No Smoke, Fuelled by My Intense Longing for the Beloved.
-Following the Royal Vein, I Found the Lord Close By. My Love Has Brought Me Face to Face with Him.

-Alif alast suniaa dil mere, Jind balaa kookendee hoo
Hubb watan dee haalib hoee, Hik pal saun na dendee hoo
Qaihar pave is raazan duneeaa, Haq daa raah marendee hoo
Aashiq mool qabool na Bahu, Zaaro zaar ruvendee hoo

-When, At the Time of Creation, God Separated Me From Himself, I Heard Him Say: “am I Not Your God?” , “indeed You Are,” Cried My Soul, Reassured. Since Then Has My Heart Flowered.
-With the Inner Urge to Return Home, Giving Me Not A Moment of Calm Here on Earth.
-May Doom Strike this World! it Robs Souls on Their Way to God.
-The World Has Never Accepted His Lovers; They Are Persecuted and Left to Cry in Pain.

http://sufipoetry.wordpress.com/poets/sultan-bahu/

Hadrat Sultan Bahu is one of the most renowned sufi saints of the later Mughal Period in the history of Indo Pakistan subcontinent. He is often called Sultanul Arifin ( the Sultan of gnostics) in the Sufi circles. His ancestors belonging to the tribe of Alvids called Awan and coming from Arabia via Hirat (Afghanistan ) had settled in the soon Sakesar Valley of Khushab District in Punjab.

His mother taught him the essential sufi exercises of dhikr (invocation of Allah and His Names ) and he probably needed no more guidance after that. He was initiated to walk the path of Sufis intuitively.  He died in 1691 A.D. at Shorkot where he was buried close to the bank of the river. His body had, however, to be transferred twice to other nearby places due to the floods. Now the place he lies buried under a beautiful tomb is called Darbar Hazrat Sultan Bahu ( District Jhang, Punjab).
 He wrote many books in Persian. He also wrote ghazals and poems in Persian as a well as Abyaat in Punjabi. His Punjabi poetry contains spiritual fervour and passionate expression of the exalted state of Divine Love. 
He was the greatest teacher and propagator of Faqr ( spiritual poverty ) which is the shining guiding star in his teachings. He may be considered one of the greatest Revealers in the history of Sufism.
His dargah has always been supervised by the Sajjadah Nashins of his own family.

http://www.ummah.com/Al_adaab/biography/sultanbahu.html

Q& A with Seyyed Hossein Nasr: Others Try To Divorce Rumi from his God Consciousness

Wajahat Ali: Even though Coleman Barks and others try to divorce Rumi from his God consciousness, it nonetheless emanates in his poetry. Rumi is the best selling poet in America today. What is it about his work, which is thoroughly rooted in Islam and Islamic sciences, that appeals to mainstream audiences?

Seyyed Hossein Nasr: 

The question I think should be put the other way around. 


First of all, Jalaluddin Rumi is completely rooted in Islamic teachings of the Quran. He was a great scholar, he belonged to a madrassa, and he knew Islamic theology and jurisprudence very well. He knew Persian, Arabic and Turkish, which was coming into Anatolia at that time, very well. He was a remarkable, remarkable scholar, besides being a great saint. He was completely rooted in Islamic tradition. I’m totally opposed to those who try to pull Rumi out of his Islamic foundations by ignoring that element. I have written about this quite a bit and in fact I have a recent book of poetry which is called “Life is a pilgrimage: In conversation with Rumi” in which I translated the first part of his Mathanvi [Rumi’s most beloved work].

It complements what I said about Rumi being rooted completely in the Sufi Islamic tradition.


Now what is it that appeals universally of Rumi to the West today? Several things. 


First of all, Rumi is one of the great spokesmen for the Quranic instruction teaching that all prophets come from God and God does not create one religion, but many religions. The verse of the Quran that mentions we have created for each of you, for all of you, your own path, your own Sharia [Religious law], so that you will vie for each other in goodness and mindfulness of God. And a very famous Quranic verse: “To every people we have sent a messenger.” And many of the verses of the Quran which represent a universal perspective of Islamic fiqh(jurisprudence). Abraham is called a Muslim, Christ is called Muslim. Now, there were a large number of Muslims throughout history who brought out the meanings of this especially when it was necessary; when Islam met Hinduism in India and in Anatolia for example, and when Islam met Christianity and to an extent Judaism. But Rumi is one of the great masters who brought out this universal teaching.

As of today, one of the greatest problems of humanity is how to live in a multi religious society without losing one’s religion - without relativising everything. Which is why perhaps with the greatest spiritual problem of today, Rumi is a great master who is able to provide a way. Secondly, Rumi is also perhaps the greatest mystical poet who ever lived, one of the greatest poets of the Persian language. He was able to express practically all aspects of the spiritual life and our existential situation in the world today as human beings in beautiful Persian poetry.

Now, Coleman Barks and these other translators who are very famous now, they do not know Persian. They work with a Persian speaker. The translations are not exact. They are not like the translations of Reynald A. Nicholson, who translated the whole of the Mathnavi, a remarkable feat; a few mistakes in it, but really a remarkable feat. These people have adapted the teachings of Rumi often based on the Nicholson translation often with the help of a Persian speaker to a kind of contemporary, American medium of poetry. This is quite an art, although it’s not exact from the point of scholarship, it brings out something of the taste for this combination of truth and beauty that Rumi represents: an expression of the deepest truths of spiritual life in God and beauty.


Here’s a criticism that many critics of spirituality ask: If the spiritual seeker must be like a subservient “corpse” in the hand of his “washer”, his spiritual guide, then doesn’t Islam and the spiritual path rob one of their individuality? Isn’t this proof Islam is a machine that requires assimilation and creates mindless automons? How is this a path towards individuality?

I wish someone could get rid of individuality so easily; one never gets rid of one’s individuality completely. One gets rid of one’s egotism, which is a very different matter. In your room, you can have two paintings on your wall; one that is a Persian miniature and the other which is a Dutch painting by Rembrandt. They are very distinct characters, yet they have their own individual traits, but they are inanimate, they don’t have a will of their own. When one talks about being like a dead corpse in the hands of a spiritual teacher it means being able to surrender one’s will, specially one’s nafs al ammarah, that is a part of our soul which is again a Quranic term, which commands us to evil – we must surrender that. That’s what it means. It doesn’t make you become part of a cog of a machine.

In fact, the machine doesn’t have the consciousness we have, the free will that we have, and to surrender one’s free will, not in every matter but in spiritual matters, to a spiritual teacher is in a sense a lower level of surrendering one’s will to God. Many people have criticized Islam for being just automatic, having no individuality, just surrendering your will to God, but we Muslims know very well that every moment of the day we have to practice the fact that to surrender one’s self to God is an act of free will.


Read full interview:
http://www.altmuslim.com/a/a/n/2750

Wajahat Ali is a Muslim American of Pakistani descent. He is a writer and attorney, whose work, The Domestic Crusaders is the first major play about Muslims living in a post 9/11 America. He is the Associate Editor of Altmuslim.com.