[Poetry Chaikhana] Umar Ibn al-Farid - In truth, I led my prayer leader in prayer (from The Poem of the Sufi Way)

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In truth, I led my prayer leader in prayer (from The Poem of the Sufi Way) By Umar Ibn al-Farid (1181 - 1235) English version by Th. Emil Homerin   In truth, I led my prayer leader in prayer           with all of humanity behind me;                     wherever I turned                               was my way, And my eye saw her before me           in my prayer,                     my heart witnessing me                               leading all my leaders. It is no wonder           the prayer leader prayed toward me                     since she had settled in my heart                               as niche of my prayer niche. All six directions faced me           with all there was                     of piety and pilgrimage                               both great and small. To her I prayed my prayers           at Abraham's Station,                     and I witnessed in them                               her prayer to me, Both of us one worshipper           bowing to his reality                     in union                               in every prostration. For no one prayed to me but I           nor were my prayers performed                     to other than me                               in each genuflection. How long must I be brother to the veil?           I have rent it,                     and its clasps were loosened                               in the bond of my pledge!   -- from Umar Ibn al-Farid: Sufi Verses, Saintly Life, Translated by Th. Emil Homerin Amazon.com / Photo by Amy /

============ Thought for the Day: A courageous prayer: God, use me in any way you want for the healing of the world. ============

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Hi Omss -

Recovering from >sniff< a mild flu... and processing the intense energies in Egypt and the planet in general this week. Sending blessings out...

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Ibn al-Farid has so totally merged with "her" -- the Beloved -- that she is alive in him. In recognizing this, he has become like the living Kaaba, the the great focal point at the heart of Mecca toward which Muslims pray. Everyone, everything, the six directions themselves, turn and pray to him, for it is there, within him, that the Divine is found.

Is this blasphemy, an inflated sense of spiritual self-importance? Or is it precisely the opposite, the supreme humility of recognizing no self at all, just the radiant Reality at one's core and seeing how everything naturally turns in that direction? This is the question Umar Ibn al-Farid keeps forcing on us throughout The Poem of the Sufi Way.

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The poetry of Shaykh Umar Ibn al-Farid is considered by many to be the pinnacle of Arabic mystical verse, though surprisingly he is not widely known in the West. (Rumi and Hafiz, probably the best known in the West among the great Sufi poets, both wrote primarily in Persian, not Arabic.) Ibn al-Farid's two masterpieces are The Wine Ode, a beautiful meditation on the "wine" of divine bliss, and The Poem of the Sufi Way, a profound exploration of spiritual experience along the Sufi Path and perhaps the longest mystical poem composed in Arabic. Both poems have inspired in-depth spiritual commentaries throughout the centuries, and they are still reverently memorized by Sufis and other devout Muslims today.

Ibn al-Farid's father was a judge and important government official in Cairo.

When he was a young man Ibn al-Farid would go on extended spiritual retreats among the oases outside of Cairo, but he eventually felt that he was not making deep enough spiritual progress. He abandoned his spiritual wanderings and entered law school.

One day Ibn al-Farid saw a greengrocer performing the ritual Muslim ablutions outside the door of the law school, but the man was doing them out of the prescribed order. When Ibn al-Farid tried to correct him, the man looked at him and said, "Umar! You will not be enlightened in Egypt. You will be enlightened only in Mecca..."

Umar Ibn al-Farid was stunned by this statement, seeing that this simple greengrocer was no ordinary man. But he argued that he couldn't possibly make the trip to Mecca right away. Then the man gave Ibn al-Farid a vision, in that very moment, of Mecca. Ibn al-Farid was so transfixed by this experience that he left immediately for Mecca and, in his own words, "Then as I entered it, enlightenment came to me wave after wave and never left."

Shaykh Umar Ibn al-Farid stayed many years in Mecca, but eventually returned to Cairo. He became a scholar of Muslim law, a teacher of the hadith (the traditions surrounding the sayings and life of the prophet Muhammed), and a teacher of poetry. Unlike many other respected poets of the age, Ibn al-Farid refused the patronage of wealthy governmental figures which would have required him to produce poetry for propaganda, preferring the relatively humble life of a teacher that allowed him to compose his poetry of enlightenment unhampered.

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Have a beautiful weekend!

Ivan

 

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