[Poetry Chaikhana] Javad Nurbakhsh - The Pain of Love

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The Pain of Love By Javad Nurbakhsh (1926 - 2008)   Leave behind your cleverness, O lover of God:           go crazy instead Become a moth: enter the flame!                     - Rumi For one who sees truly,           love's pain is itself the remedy: But this mystery is revealed           only to those who are afflicted. That lover who has left the realm of "I and you"           is a stranger to all: How then could he ever           be clever? Love is an attraction           drawing multiplicity from the heart: The spirit of Unity it bestows           is free of all desires. Love is a ladder           on the path toward God: A ladder to that place where           "wherever you look is God." Only "I am God" is ever uttered           at the stage of love, For this secret is unknown           to "other than God." Do not conceive of love           as a "pain without cure." Love is a snare set by God -           a consolation, not calamity. O Nurbakhsh, since the lover           has no awareness of self, To attribute cleverness to him           would be a grave mistake.   / Photo by The Wandering Angel /

============ Thought for the Day: What the heart recognizes as liberation, the ego sees as theft. ============

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Hi Omss -

I received several emails asking why there was no poetry last week. Well, the universe decided it was time for me to enter a deep meditation on the nature of pain: I went through a dental ordeal, culminating in three to four hours in the dentist's chair over a period of two days.

It's amazing how much pain the body is capable of experiencing and, in a strange way, gets used to. Pain, in a convoluted sort of way, is meditative; it forces you to narrow your attention down to a single point in order to come through. Another interesting thing about pain: It's only pain when you resist it. If you relax and accept it -- not an easy thing, I know -- you find that pain isn't really pain, it is just intensity of sensation.

I emerged from the week wearied but immensely relieved. Naturally, it got me thinking of the theme of pain that often occurs in sacred poetry.

Many mystics experience a sense of pain or wounding as an essential and desired part of their path to union with the Divine. It is a sacred pain. The pain experienced is the perception of one's separation from God. But that pain itself is the doorway to reunion. By allowing oneself to become completely vulnerable to that pain, to surrender to it, the mystic finds the pain transformed into the blissful touch of the Beloved.

For one who sees truly,
love's pain is itself the remedy:
But this mystery is revealed
only to those who are afflicted.

It is the pain of the pierced ego. For one with inner balance, where the protective but limiting shell of the ego is no longer necessary, that pain points the way to freedom.

For this reason, mystics and saints describe the pain as being "sweet" or joyful or beautiful.

Love is a snare set by God -
a consolation, not calamity.

==

Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh was the head of the Nimatullahi Sufi Order, a very large and respected Sufi order especially centered in Iran.

Dr. Nurbakhsh was born in Kerman, Iran. As a young man, he became a medical doctor. He later received a psychiatric degree from the Sorbonne and helped to establish modern psychiatric practices in Iran.

While still a young man, Dr. Nurbakhsh was named the master of the Nimatullahi Sufi Order. He eventually took up residence in Tehran, where he led a revival of both the Nimatullahi Sufi Order and interest in Sufi practice in general. During the 1950s and 1960s, many western seekers and scholars traveled to Tehran to partake in the Sufi revival inspired by Dr. Nurbakhsh.

In 1979, because of the fundamentalist Islamic Revolution in Iran, Dr. Nurbakhsh went into voluntary exile in the West. Although he settled in England, he traveled and taught throughout the United States and Europe, establishing many Sufi centers in the West (as he had done before throughout Iran).

He died in October, 2008 and is buried in Banbury, Oxfordshire in England.

Ivan

 

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