Here's your Daily Poem from the Poetry Chaikhana --
 | One Thread Only By Bulleh Shah English version by Ivan M. Granger
One thread, one thread only!
 / Photo by barb.howe / |
| ============ Thought for the Day: The agitations of the mind ============ | Here's your Daily Music selection --  Vishwa Mohan Bhatt Samadhi |
Hi Omss -
Mir Bulleh Shah Qadiri Shatari, often referred to simply as Bulleh Shah (a shortened form of Abdullah Shah) lived in what is today Pakistan. His family was very religious and had a long tradition of association with Sufis. Bulleh Shah's father was especially known for his learning and devotion to God, raising both Bulleh Shah and his sister in a life of prayer and meditation.
Bulleh Shah himself became a respected scholar, but he longed for true inner realization. Against the objections of his peers, he became a disciple of Inayat Shah, a famous master of the Qadiri Sufi lineage, who ultimately guided his student to deep mystical awakening.
The nature of Bulleh Shah's realization led to such a profound egolessness and non-concern for social convention that it has been the source of many popular comical stories -- calling to mind stories of St. Francis or Ramakrishna. For example, one day Bulleh Shah saw a young woman eagerly waiting for her husband to return home. Seeing how, in her anticipation, she braided her hair, Bulleh Shah deeply identified with the devoted way she prepared herself for her beloved. So Bulleh Shah dressed himself as a woman and braided his own hair, before rushing to see his teacher, Inayat Shah.
Bulleh Shah is considered to be one of the greatest mystic poets of the Punjab region. (You may not know this, but his page on the Poetry Chaikhana is consistently the most visited of the entire site!)
His tomb in the Qasur region of Pakistan is greatly revered today.
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Think about this image Bulleh Shah has given us: I imagine a great loom, with colored yarn feeding into it from all direction, the shuttle shooting back and forth, producing a highway of cloth in dazzling patterns and colors.
But obviously Bulleh Shah is talking about more than cloth. When he refers to "ten thousand names / ten thousand places," we recognize he is actually talking about the entire world, the whole universe. Bulleh Shah is telling us that, underlying the endless variety and design of the universe, it is all fundamentally one, made of the same single material.
We look at a multicolored cloth and see green in one part and red in another, and we see them as different. The mind names them "green" and "red," and separates them into different categories. We've mentally taken our shears and cut up the cloth -- and we then see two where there is, in fact, only one.
It requires a delicate balance of perception to appreciate the endless variety of existence, but without mentally losing sight of the whole. Most of us learn to pull it apart into separate swatches. It is only in the interrelated patterns spread wide across the whole cloth that we witness the grand beauty of the design.
Sending much love!
Ivan
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Ivan M. Granger's original poetry, stories and commentaries are Copyright © 2002 - 2011 by Ivan M. Granger.
All other material is copyrighted by the respective authors, translators and/or publishers.
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