Of The Conference of the Birds,Reason and Love,Excuses and Deliverance

drawing/ collage by marguerita

The Valley Of Love

Love's valley is the next, and here desire

Will plunge the pilgrim into seas of fire,

Until his very being is enflamed

And those whom fire rejects turn back ashamed.

The lover is a man who flares and burns ,

Whose face is fevered , who in frenzy yearns ,

Who knows no prudence , who will gladly send

A hundred worlds toward their blazing end,

Who knows of neither faith nor blasphemy,

Who has no time for doubt or certainty,

To whom both good and evil are the same,

And who is neither , but a living flame.

But you ! Lukewarm all you say or do,

Backsliding, weak - O, no, this is not you!

True lovers give up everything they own

To steal one moment with the Friend alone -

They make no vague , procrastinating vow,

But risk their livelihood and risk it now.

Until their hearts are burnt , how can they flee

From their desire's incessant misery ?

They are the falcon when it flies distressed

In circles, searching for its absent nest -

They are the fish cast up upon the land

That seeks the sea and shudders on the sand.

Love here is fire; its thick smoke clouds the head-

When love has come the intellect has fled;

It cannot tutor love, and all its care

Supplies no remedy for love's despair.

If you could seek the unseen you would find

Love's home, which is not reason or the mind,

And love's intoxication tumbles down

The world's designs for glory and renown-

If you could penetrate their passing show

And see the world's atoms, you would know

That reason' eyes will never glimpse one spark

Of shining love to mitigate the dark.

Love leads whoever starts along our Way;

The noblest bow to love and must obey-

But you, unwilling both to love and tread

The pilgrim's path, you might as well be dead!

The lover chafes, impatient to depart,

And longs to sacrifice his life and heart.

by Farid Ud-Din Attar

The Conference of the Birds metaphorically maps out the journey of the human spirit in its quest for truth. We could stay the “Stormy Search for the Self”. The story begins when the birds of the world gather together to seek out their King. Their leader, the hoopoe, tells them that they have a King whose name is the Simorgh but that he lives far away and the journey to him is fraught with dangers. The birds, each of whom symbolize different parts of us (patterns of behaviour or sub-personalities as Assagioli called them), are at first anxious to begin their search, but when they realize how difficult the journey is, they begin to make excuses. How often do we procrastinate and choose not to follow our heart’s desire through fears and false assumptions. The nightingale, that aspect of ourselves that is caught up in the purely physical world, cannot leave the rose, the hawk is happy with his position in court serving earthly Kings, the sparrow is too afraid even to begin. The hoopoe, representing inspiration, persuades them to continue their search although it will be difficult. The group formally appoints the hoopoe as its leader. Once the journey has begun the birds ask questions about its course, like the pupil asking the teacher (Hoopoe) questions. The Hoopoe answers using illustrative anecdotes and stories. The birds then cross seven valleys: • Search • Love • Insight into Mystery • Detachment/Independence • Unity • Bewilderment • Fulfillment in Annihilation. At the end of the quest, the birds find that the Simorgh has been with them, guiding them from within throughout the whole journey. The King they sought was non other than themselves. The goal of the Quest is the Self or the Soul. The moment that they discover this depends on the word play: thirty (si) birds (morgh) are left at the end of the Way and the si morgh meet the Simorgh, the goal of the quest. 'Attar began The Conference of the Birds (Mantiq al-tair) with an invocation praising the holy Creator in which he suggested that one must live a hundred lives to know oneself. But you must know God by the deity, not by yourself, for God opens the way, not human wisdom. 'Attar believed that God is beyond all human logic. The soul will manifest itself when the body is laid aside. One cannot gain spiritual knowledge without dying to all things. Not necessarily physical dying, but the letting go of false assumptions, negative emotions and fears.

Farid ud-Din Attar was born in Nishapur, in north-east Iran. There is disagreement over the exact dates of his birth and death but several sources confirm that he lived about 100 years. He is traditionally said to have been killed by Mongol invaders. His tomb can be seen today in Nishapur.

As a younger man, Attar went on pilgrimage to Mecca and traveled extensively throughout the region, seeking wisdom in Egypt, Damascus, India, and other areas, before finally returning to his home city of Nishapur.

The name Attar means herbalist or druggist, which was his profession. It is said that he saw as many as 500 patients a day in his shop, prescribing herbal remedies which he prepared himself, and he wrote his poetry while attending to his patients.

About thirty works by Attar survive, but his masterpiece is the Mantic at-Tayr (The Conference of the Birds). In this collection, he describes a group of birds (individual human souls) under the leadership of a hoopoe (spiritual master) who determine to search for the legendary Simurgh bird (God). The birds must confront their own individual limitations and fears while journeying through seven valleys before they ultimately find the Simurgh and complete their quest.

The 30 birds who ultimately complete the quest discover that they themselves are the Simurgh they sought, playing on a pun in Persian (si and murgh can translate as 30 birds) while giving us an esoteric teaching on the presence of the Divine within us.

Attar's poetry inspired Rumi and many other Sufi poets. It is said that Rumi actually met Attar when Attar was an old man and Rumi was a boy, though some scholars dispute this possibility.

Farid ud-Din Attar was apparently tried at one point for heresy and exiled from Nishapur, but he eventually returned to his home city and that is where he died.

A traditional story is told about Attar's death. He was taken prisoner by a Mongol during the invasion of Nishapur. Someone soon came and tried to ransom Attar with a thousand pieces of silver. Attar advised the Mongol not to sell him for that price. The Mongol, thinking to gain an even greater sum of money, refused the silver. Later, another person came, this time offering only a sack of straw to free Attar. Attar then told the Mongol to sell him for that was all he was worth. Outraged at being made a fool, the Mongol cut off Attar's head.

Whether or not this is literally true isn't the point. This story is used to teach the mystical insight that the personal self isn't of much real worth. What is valuable is the Beloved's presence within us -- and that presence isn't threatened by the death of the body.

Haiti and Me -II :Someone To Watch Over Me

drawing/collage by marguerita

Traveling through this life,embattled since a little girl,nearing my sixtieth year , I dare look back, as I am always doing. Facing obstacles beyond one's imagination,somehow scary and devastating. For the one who will lend his or her ear, or reading my words here ,seems to them and even to me fiction.

Watching Haiti's tragedy and the ones with their wonderful faith,I see them as looking in my mirror.

I can imagine that for many as, I myself,are in disbelief of one being so strong and looking at reality with no fear.I was maybe,fortunate to learn from my two parents,my mother out of Auschwitz and my father out from Siberia, both from cultured and prominent backgrounds,wealthy,to have lost all,but face the remains of their lives with an incredible joie de vivre,looking for Beauty and securing my mind to stand up for justice,never to harbor anger, see life through humor and colors,carpe diem,as I could hear my father's tick tack,writing on his typewriter,always in pursuit of his passion,Chemistry and Innovation in Textiles.

He was also an inventor.

My mother was an artist.

She loved to paint watercolors and always reading Chinese writers and philosophers.

Both,my parents ,intellectuals, believed to look at life with passion, having an interior monologue, to be au courant of what is happening around, reminding themselves, about what they were taught by their ancestors.

Life is not about material things. They had it all,and lost it all.

Not by their actions, but by human calamity.

By Hitler and Company.

My mother,on the other hand,despite our chaotic finances,we never felt or saw ourselves as poor. When I was ten years old, witnessing

my father collapse in the street,he contracted malaria,in the gulag

during the II WW, I realized at that moment that I had to jump into

adulthood.

My mother had dreams of me being a concert pianist.

She wanted me to be beautiful dressed,soigne.

Until her last moment,my mother herself

was always very elegant ,

exuberant,humorous and a good sport.

The number A-26.427 was

always there on her arm.

She had no wrinkles at seventy seven.

My drawing prevailed. I looked at my hands and thought to myself.

That is how I am going to earn my living and take care of myself and my parents.

Even now, facing to be once again, homeless and destitute,despite my past successes,I have faith that my

art,will be my passport and secure me to stand up on my feet.

Today is a good day to remember that in Haiti, nobody ever really dies. The many thousands who've had the breath crushed out of their bodies in the earthquake, and the thousands more who will not physically survive the aftermath, will undergo instead a translation of state, according to the precepts of Haitian Vodou, some form of which is practiced by much of the population. Spirits of the Haitian dead — sa nou pa we yo, those we don’t see — do not depart as in other religions but remain extremely close to the living, invisible but tangible, inhabiting a parallel universe on the other side of any mirror, beneath the surface of all water, just behind the veil that divides us from our dreams.

That extraordinary spiritual reservoir is the source of the Haitian religious view of the world — as powerful as any today. As often as it is misunderstood and misrepresented, Haitian Vodou, with all it carries out of the cradle of humankind’s birth in Africa and combines with Roman Catholicism, has enabled Haitians to laugh at death, as they have too often needed to do.

During the decade-long Haitian revolution that began in 1791 — the only event in human history where African slaves won freedom for themselves by force of arms — a prisoner of the French was awaiting execution by burning. Come, he is supposed to have said to his companions, let us show these people how to die. He climbed onto the pyre himself and stayed there, without uttering another sound, until the fire consumed him.

The energy of souls not lost springs back into the living world, not only through one of the few surviving religions that allow believers to converse face to face with the gods, but also in an extraordinarily rich, fertile and (in spite of everything) optimistic culture. Haiti offers, keeps on offering, a shimmering panorama of visual art and a wealth of seductive and hypnotic music, much of it rooted in the rhythms of ceremonial drumming. For the past 50 years a remarkably vivid and sophisticated Haitian literature has been flowing out of Creole, an ever-evolving language as fecund as the English of Shakespeare’s time. The Haitian world is not all suffering; it is full of treasure. Here are a few of the many voices, native and not, inspired by Haiti. —Madison Smartt Bell

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/weekinreview/17bell.html?ref=global-home

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/opinion/21kristof.html