Shabeer Ahmed Lone
The modern predicament is in difficulty of finding a harmonious balance or meditative blissful internal alchemy among all the vast and various consequence of science, technology, social sciences, democracy, mass literacy, various decisive eras in literature and movements, etc.Modernism on one side an ensemble of changes in intellectual, political, economic, social, cultural, technological, aesthetic and other forms of modern progress but on the other side for many people it also has costs: isolation, loneliness, psychological depression, purposelessness, powerlessness, hyperstimulation, amorality, meaninglessness, absurdism etc.
The world is seeing an unremitting increase in global communication among political and economic philosophies, physical sciences, social sciences and inevitably among religious and mystical philosophies.This has also therefore forced the different world religions to come together, which has lead to arise in the overwhelming sentiment that favours increased comprehension and understanding, if not unity,of the religions which serves as a ray of hope.The inner dimension of the religion constitutes mysticism or sufism-the central of which is love, light, wisdom and peace which illumine us towards the meaning and purpose of life to a far greater extent by gain of ontological, social and psychological embeddedness.
The Sufi way is not a path of retreat from the world but a way of seeking the Divine wisdom and love while still actively engaged in the world.Engagement in the world provides opportunities for spiritual growth, opportunities to practice love, awareness, generosity, and non attachment.The sufi approach is summarized by Sheikh Muzzaffer, a modern Sufi teacher: “Keep your hands busy with your duties in this world, and your heart busy with God. “The Sufi is he whose thought keeps pace with his foot-Hujwiri.
Just as Ibni Arabi, Rainer Maria Rilke, Adrienne Rich, Suzuki, Meister Eckhart tell us, diving deep and also surfacing. Moving inward and outward, but always deeply. Deep where the joy resides; where the darkness, pain, and grief cry to us; where creativity is unearthed; where the passion for justice and compassion return-the absolutely rich constantly renewed.
Sufism develops a spirit of comprehension which will breakdown prejudice and misunderstanding and bind us together as a varied expression of a single truth.It is feeling the limitless horizons opening up to the vision, the feeling of being simultaneously powerful ever before, the feeling of ecstasy and wonder and awe, the loss of placement in space and time and finally the conviction that the extremely feel important and value had happened, so that the subject was to some extent transformed and strengthened even in his daily life by such experience towards which sufi classics come to rejuvenate us in many ways.
Sufism has a distinctive advantage todaybecause it is an expression of the universal wisdom tradition while still offering a living tradition that is grounded in centuries of practice a sophisticated methodology, a vast literature and culture, and a coherent metaphysics of divine origin.Sufism is capable of integrating the postmodern appreciation for the uniqueness and freedom of the individual with the spiritual demands of traditional wisdom.
Today I am exploring the great and popular sufi classic ,”Hadiqat-ul-Haqiqat(The Walled Garden of Truth)and its author Hakim Sanai by revealing the insightful illumination with universal divine love and wisdom from his classic text and his journey of arrival at it.
Sanai wrote an enormous quantity of mystical verse, of which, The Walled Garden of Truth or The Hadiqat al Haqiqa is his master work and the first Persian mystical epic of Sufism. Dedicated to Bahram Shah, the work expresses the poet’s ideas on God, love, philosophy and reason. For close to 900 years, The Walled Garden of Truth has been consistently read as a classic and employed as a Sufi textbook.
Author(Abdul Majd Majdud b Adam Sanai 1080-1131AD)is one of the most popular and the great Persian sufi mystical love poet who influenced Rumi, Hafiz and virtually all successive Persian sufi poets,great poets such as Khaqani in composing Tuhfat al-Iraqayn and Nizami Ganjavi in composing Makhzan al-Asrar were under the direct influence of Hadiqat al Haqiqa , but often less quoted compared to Rumi.This may be due to the ambigual beauty or obscure nature of his works.
Sanai’s poetry had a tremendous influence upon Persian literature.He is considered the first poet to use the qasida(ode), ghazal(lyric) and the masnavi(rhymed couplet) to express the philosophical, mystical and ethical ideas of sufism.
Sanai taught that lust, greed and emotional excitement stood between humankind and divine knowledge, which was the only true reality.Love(Ishq)and social conscience are for him the foundation of religion; mankind is asleep, living in a desolate world.
The Sufis book is not composed of ink and letters;
It is enough but a heart as white as snow.
The scholar’s provision is pen-marks(written letters and words):
What is the Sufi’s provision?
Footmarks.
( Rumi,mathnawi,vol IV,p366)
Hakim Sanai (popularly known)was born at Ghazni(Afghanistan),12th century sufi poet, lived in the reign of Bahram shah(A.H-512-548;AD:1118-1152).William Ousely says of him that he “while yet young become one of the most learned, devout and excellent man of the age which he adored.His praise was on every tongue; for in addition to his accomplishments in the sufi philosophy, he possessed a kind and benevolent heart, delighted manners & a fine taste for poetry.
Osho writes in ,”Unio Mystica”that Hakim Sanai is a sweet to me as honey, as sweet as nectar.He is unique, unique in the world of sufism.No other sufi has been able to reach to such heights of expression and such depths of penetration.Hakim Sanai has been able to do almost the impossible.Osho further says, if I were to save only two books from the world of the mystics, then these two books would be, one of Hakim Sanai’s,”Hadiqatul Haqiqat(The Walled Garden of Truth).The other would be from the world of Zen,”the path of awareness(Sosan’s Hsin Hisn Ming).It contains the quintessence of Zen,of the path of awareness and meditation.
Rumi acknowledges Hakim Sanai Attar as his two primary inspiration, saying ,”Attar is the soul & Sanai is its two eyes”.I came after Sanai and Attar. On the passing of Sanai in 1131A.D.,Rumi acknowledges him cordially as;
“Look!Master Sanai is dead!”
Ah, such a man’s death is no small affair!
He was a golden treasure.
He cast the dusk into the dust,He carried heavenward both soul & mind.
The dregs were mixed here with the purest wine,
The wine then rose; the dregs were setting down.
The second soul, which people do not know-
By God!He gave it to the friend,
To God, they all meet during travel,
O my friend-From Marw and Rayy, and Kurds, and Byzantin,
But every one returns to his own home-why should fine silk become a friend of wool?
Be quiet, quiet :For the king of speech erased your name now from the book of speech!”
Allama Iqbal on visiting Ghazni offered reverence to Hakim Sanai as:
Alas!Ghazni, in it resting in eternal sleep the Ghaznavid sage too,
by whose voice the heart of men grew strong.
That seer of unseen, man of high station by whose iteration Rumi’s Passion rose to a climax.
I exulted in the Present, he exulted in the Hidden,
He speaks of God while I speak of Godly folk.
I felt fire in the tomb’s atmosphere
to such an extent that I became appalled by the cry.
I said to him “O you seer of the secrets of life,
both this world and the other luminous to you.
Whatever is there hidden behind the veil, let me know,
may the wave once past come back in stream.
The Mysterious birth story of this great book-The Hadiqa(The garden), is tremendously beautiful.
Hakim Sanai was originally a 12th century court poet who engaged in wrting praises for the sultan of Ghazni and celebrated their virtues and generous actions.When sultan Bahram Shah of Ghazni determined upon attacking the infidel idolators of India.Hakim Sanai composed a poem in his praise, and was hurrying to the court to present it before the sultan.There was at that time in Ghazni a great sufi mystic, but known to masses only drunkard & madman.He was known as Lai Khur(the ox-eater); the lowerself-animalic or basal self eater, who aften in his incoherent wanderings uttered sentiments and obervations worthy of a sounder head-piece.It so happened that Sanai,in passing through a near by garden, heard the notes of a song, strange, strong, irresistible with magnetism in sound.Hakim Sanai stopped to listen near enclosed garden.As Sanai was passing by, he heard Laikhur loudly.Laikhur was available to the chosen few, because very few people can rise to such height where he lived.He lived on Everest.The Everest of conciousness, beyond the clouds.Only those who were fortunate enough and courgeous enough climb to the mountain were able to understand what he was saying.To the knowers he was just a vehicle of God, and all was coming through him was pure truth, truth and only truth.As Sanai was passing by, he heard Laikhur loudly proclaim toast to the blindness of the sultan for greedily choosing to attack Indians where there was so much beauty in Ghazni.Laikhur then proposed a toast to the blindness of the famous young poet Sanai.Who, with his gifts of insight and expression couldnt see the pointlessness of his existence as a poet praising such a foolish Sultan.
These words were like an earthquake to Hakim Sanai, because he knew they were true.He abandoned his profession as a pampered court poet, even declining marriage to sultans only daughter and his kingdom offered by sultan and began to study with a sufi master named Yousuf Hamadani(whose cell was called the kaabah of khorasan).
Sanai soon went on pilgrimage to Mecca.When he returned he composed his master work and the first persian mystical epic of sufism,”The Hadiqat-ul-Haqiqat(The walled garden of Truth).The work expresses the poets ideas on God, love, knowledge, philosophy, understanding and reason, the revolution of the heavens, the concerns of Universal soul, stars, unity in diversity etc.It has been constantly read as a classic and employed as a sufi text book.There was a double meaning in this title for,in persia, the word for a ” Walled garden “is the word for “paradise” but it was also from within a walled garden that Lai Khur uttered the harsh truths that set Hakim Sanai on the path of love.Hakim Sanai has been able to catch the very soul of sufism.Such books are not written, they are born.No body can compose them.They are not manufactured in the mind, by the mind, they come from beyond.They are gift.They are born as a child is born, or a bird or a rose flower come to us.
The Hadiqatul Haqiqat commonly called Hadiqa,is a poem of about 11500 lines, each line consists of two hemistiches, each of ten or eleven syllables, the bulk ; therefore is equal to about 23,000 lines of English ten syllabled verse.
The chapters of which the Hadiqa consists treat, according a few lines of verse at the end of the contents in Lucknow edition, of the following; The first on the the praise of God, and especially on His unity ; the second, in the praise of Muhammad(SAW) ; the third on the understanding; the fourth, on knowledge; the fifth on love, the lover and Beloved; the sixth on Heedlessness; the seventh on friends and enemies, the eight on the revolution of the Heavens ; the ninth, in praise of emperor Shahjahan; the tenth on the characters or qualities of the whole work, eleventh on the concerns of the universal soul; twelfth on stars.However Prof.Brown(Lit.History Of Persia Vol II p318)gives still another order, apparently that of an edition lithographed at Bombay in (1859A.D).
Shah Abdul Latif, in his preface of the The Miratul Hadaiq enters in to a somewhat lengthy comparison between Sanai and Rumi, in which he asserts the greater length of the Mathnawi as compared with the Hadiqa.Sanais work is the more compressed ; he expresses in two or three verses what the Rumi expresses in twenty or thirty.
With regard to style, some suppose that the verse of Hadiqa is more elevated & dignified than the elegently ordered language of Mathnavi.The Hadiqa does indeed contain poetry of which one verse is a knapsack of a hundred diwans ; nor, on account of its great height, can hand of any intelligent beings ability reach pinnacles of its rampart ; the saying:
“I have spoken a saying which is whole work;
I have uttered a sentence which is a complete diwan.
Who possesses the power of dividing and discriminating between milk and sugar intermingled in one vessel?Shah Abdul Latif (commentator of Hadiqa)Sumsup in “Lataifi-Hadiqa”.
However, Prof.Brown, says that Hadiqa seldom rises to the level of Martin Tupper’s proverbial philosophy, inferior to the Mathnavi of Rumi as Robert Montgomer’ys Satan to Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Prof.Seyyed Hossein Nasr, one the the leading scholars of Islam, contends that sufism is simply the name for the inner or esoteric dimension of Islam.The sufi teachings are based on individual understanding and experiences, not just on knowledge of texts and rote learning.The central concept of sufism is sacred love, which they believe is a propagation of God on the universe.Sufism has to be experienced to be understood says Dr.NurBakhsh.
A sufi transmutes evil into goodness through the alchemy of love.He sees the face of Beloved.He sees the face of beloved in even the ugliest of things(for him iblis too is a sort of intensely jealous lover of God, he is Khawja ahli firaq in Rumi’s phrase.He celebrates the goodness of life and existence.He aspires for the life that is in heaven, or eternal bliss, life that has finally defeated death and sorrow. He makes no complaints and despair never overcomes him.He is drunk with the soul of love. No paganism(e.g, that of Camus and Gide)can see life’s eternal dominion, its heavenly kingdom.
Yet I can’t but I think that Prof.Brown’s opinion, which is shared by other scholars as well is neglect to which the Hadiqa has been exposed in the west, is due not the demerits of the original text so much to the repellent & confused state which the text has fallen ; and I would venture to hope that the present attempt at a restoration of the form and meaning of portion of work, imperfect in degree as i can but acknowledge it to be, may still be of some slight service to its author’s reputation among orientalists and occidentalism as greater part of the book is really concerned with the life and experiences of sufi poet.
Excerpts from ,”Hadiqatul Haqiqat(The Walled Garden Of Truth) of Hakim Sanai translated & edited by M.J Stephenson(1910):
“We tried reasoning,
our way to Him.
it did not work;
but the moment we gave up,
no obstacle remained.
While reason is still tracking down the secret,
you end quest on the open field of love.”
“He introduced himself to us
out of kindness:how else could we have known him?
Reason took us as far as the door
but it was his presence that let us in.”
“Once one is one,
no more, no less;
error begins with duality;
unity knows no error.”
“For the wise man
evil and good,
are both exceeding good.
No evil ever comes from God;
Whenever proceeding from him,
You were better to look on it as good.”
“Don’t start preaching to me,
I feel fortunate to live the life of a rogue lover who is always in love!
What good would your preaching possibly do,
If I feel so blessed and lucky to be born this way.”
“Melt yourself down in his search;
Venture your life and your soul
in the path of sincerity;
Strive to pass from nothingness to being,
and make yourself drunk with the wine of God.”
“He heals our nature from within,
Kinder to us than we ourselves are,
A mother does not love her child
with half the love he bestows.
Bring all of yourself to his door;
bring only a part,
and you have brought nothing at all.”
“When the eye is pure
it sees purity,
Unself yourself…
Until you see yourself as a speak of dust,
you cannot possibly reach that palace;
Self could never breath that air,
so went you way these without self.
Why should darkness grieve the heart?
for night is pregnant with new day.”
“A ruby there is just a piece of stone:
and spiritual excellence the height of folly.
Silence is praise-have done with speech;
Your Chatter will only bring you harm and sorrow-have done!
The dumb find tongues,
when the scent of life reaches them from his soul.”
“O satan,” said Moses ,”do you love God?”
He replied,”Every time his love increases towards some one else,
my love and devotion increases towards him.”
I am pledged to loving and yearning.I am in heaven and hell.”
“O Moses, said satan,”do you know why God has caused me to be separated?So that I would not mix with the sincere ones and worship Him out of passion or fear or hope or craving.”
“The wise man listen to the Quran with his soul, and abandons the letter and the outward elegance; his soul takes its delight in it and sets to work afresh on all its duties.The contents of the Quran are scattered pearls.
Fortunate is one whose guide is wisdom.”
“Glorified is the choicest and the best of our last messenger of God.”
“The death of soul is the destruction of life; but death of life is the soul’s salvation.”
“And if my friend, you ask me the way.
I’ll tell you plainly, it is this;
to turn your face towards the world of life,
and turn your back on rank and reputation;
and spurning outward prosperity, to bend
Your back double in his service;
The way is not far from you to afraid:
You yourself are that way:
So set out along.”
—– Hakim Sanai
The great 20th century metaphysical philosopher, poet, artist Frithjof Schuon (Sheikh Noor-ud-in)wrote, to be human being means to be connected with God; life has no meaning without this.The human vocation means that until we find connection with God we are not able to connect with the innermost being that lies locked up within the human heart.Schuon’s simplest solution to all people of all religious persuasion: you must pray, always pray, towards which Iqbal has already stressed in the Reconstruction.Here H.Sanai seeks purity of heart, the surrendered self in His magnification as the guided path for the Ascent. The esoteric find the Absolute within the sufi classic traditions bearing timeless wisdom, beauty and love, as poets and poetry with in poems.
Author can be mailed at shabirahmed.lone003@gmail.com
