THE DROWNED BOOK
BAHAUDDIN THE FATHER OF Rumi
Colman Barks & John Moyne
Bahauddin Valad (1152-1231)
Annemarie Schimmel refers to “the bizarre
sensual imagery” of Bahauddin’s diary.
The Rumi scholar Franklin Lewis calls some of the entries “psychedelic.” We would see this strangeness as a sign of
Bahauddin’s radical health. Rumi says
that form itself is ecstatic, that just having a shape and sentience is a state
of pure rapture. Bahauddin says that
being conscious in all the ways we have—in our transcendent mystical visions as
well as in our fears of authority, in ecstatic prayer as well as in anger and
annoyance, even in epileptic fits—every form of awareness gives a taste of
God’s presence. We would call Bahauddin
a juicy mystic, by which we mean he loves the various intensities of a loving
human awareness. Bahauddin loves the
juiciness of the body and through that, union with God. He loves the flavor of human exchange, and
the radiance of anything that happens.
He is up early one morning, and a dog’s barking interrupts his
contemplation. A dog barks in the
thirteenth century, and we hear it (1:381—382).
The small tastes he gives of village life from seven hundred years back
are exquisite and palpable.
For Bahauddin, having a clarity of being
and strong desires is important because they make possible a richer
manifestation of the divine. The
vibrancy of the life-force allows God’s presence to be more strikingly vivid
inside form. I was a hidden treasure and I desired to be known, says one Islamic
hadith. Bahauddin says that the desire
of the divine for self-knowledge comes through the vitality of our desiring.
One of the most startling examples of this
is in the Maarif, Bahauddin’s account
of the morning he woke up wanting the daughter of Judge Sharaf. She is one of Bahauddin’s wives, as is Bibi
Alawi in a similar account, but nevertheless these are daringly libidinal notes
for their time and perhaps even for ours.
Professor Furuzanfar, editing the Maarif in the 1950s, loves the
boldness of the intimate revelations, their honesty and strength, but he also
implies that these comments of the great mystic may have been irresponsible for
his position. “We must remember that
Baha Valad [Bahauddin] was a prominent leader of the Muslims. He was engaged in teaching and preaching, as
well as being the chief jurist and arbiter of religious cases. His responsibility was in the direction and
refinement of the outward and moral behavior of numerous disciples.” We hear in his sexual openness rather the
force of sincerity before God that overcomes any conventional standards. Bahauddin is naked in the expression of his
faith, and in his living. His
authenticity is his magnificence.
1:381—382
Early
morning. My thoughts are interrupted by
a dog barking. Then Bibi Alawi walks
into my room, dazed, just up from her bed.
My desire for her kindles. It
occurs to be that all this is grace. The
barking interruption, and Bibi Alawi too.
Why be ashamed of feeling desire?
A
revelation comes: My work is to elevate
as well as humiliate. One moment I make
some dear to you; another, despised. So
when you feel anxiety, remember God, because the anxiety comes from there. If you feel pain over what is happening to
you, pray that it be taken away. If you
are delighted and those around you are prospering, ask that this keep
happening. However, if your soul is
conscious enough to live as I have just said, you are the next prophet.
I was
standing next to Haji Seddiq in the prayer line with these mumblings in my
head. I continued, The soul’s
understanding is that everything comes from the presence. That’s how we know God, through the awareness
that the soul has. If everyone could
know this all the time, everyone would be a prophet. But that is not the case. Prophets have been given the power to
renounce tasty food and drink, to relinquish pleasure in order to dissolve
their attention more completely in to the divine. Very few can do this. Most of us rejoice in desire, in sex. We relish food, the savor of this world, and
we also delight in the prophetic line and what comes to us through that. We are blessed differently than the prophets.
THE YOUNG WOMAN ON THE STEPS 1:383--384
I was trying to invent a new
parable about a person in a difficult job that has only material results, some
work with no soulgrowth involved. I
thought, an ironworker; a blacksmith pounding in a forge surely has no
spiritual purpose. Then I wondered what
value to the soul this business is that I do.
None I know of.
Someone
said once that one who takes no pleasure in desire or in having secular power
doesn’t really appreciate the gift of this world, where lust and dominion are
staples.
Yes, I
replied, but there is an infinite variety of pleasures that you’re
forgetting. When God closes one door,
many others open. Angels take delight in
ways we can’t know. Demons do what
pleases them. Each animal has its own
strange dance.
One day,
feeling lethargic and half-alive, I come upon this scene: A young woman sitting outside on the steps of
a building. She is surrounded by young
men and totally in command of the moment, teasing each in turn in a way that
piques his peculiar personality. Their
mouths hang open at the spectacle of her attraction, and her vitality visibly
brightens with their attention.
It occurs
to me then that the secret of feeling vibrant may lie in having an audience
around that you can tease and flirt with and lead along the way of slowly
falling in love with you.
So I
prayed, Dear God, you created me. Some
of your essence lives inside me. Show
yourself as a group of admirers. I will
tease you; you will accept my advances.
I will pause. You will eagerly
wait what comes next. I will invent new
stories, and you will listen, rapt with my charisma.
LUST ALONE DOES NOT CREATE 1:419—420
Men are
deeply attracted to women, to stacks of gold and silver coins, to horses and
the beauty of plowed fields. These are
the worldly pleasures of wanting and having.
God’s grace brings in through them another beauty. The lesson is that we should look to the
outcome and not be so occupied with the attraction. You have noticed how a beautiful child can
sometimes derive from a diseased, repulsive woman? Lust alone did not create the child’s
handsomeness. God comes in through our
pleasures and through our suffering.
Without the
divine enhancement that arrives in the urgency of human desiring, people might
look like mud-colored camels lying on bare ground. Basically people are donkeys concerned only
with the straw and barley they’re eating, until the presence of grace makes
them otherwise (32:5). With faith a
grandeur embellishes humanity, as when with a little work by you, God enters a
dry seem and makes a fresh living plant.
Every action becomes part of this gift.
Look around at the sky and the earth.
Don’t be inert like a wooden bench.
Watch the sky moving, and see how every motion in creation connects with
the creator. Stars, these natural
impulses, our very selves.
Shams Amir
Dad and other Persian students of mine often see Muhammad in their dreams. I do not.
They have listened to me so attentively and with such open hearts that
God rewards them with these dreams.
Grief is
better than happiness, because in grief a person draws close to God. Your wings open. A tent is set up in the desert where God can
visit you. Wealth that arrives in grief
is what we spend in joy. The soul is
greater than anything you ever lost.
NAKEDNESS 2:141—142
I am afraid
for anyone to see my faults, my baldness, my privates, the body flaws I hide
with clothes. But bridge and
bridge-groom see everything about one another.
They can be many ways with each other, tender and mocking, playfully
rough, any way at all, because they have no fear with each other.
Likewise,
the mystery of God knows everything about me.
Here, out in the open in front of that, I say, Do whatever you want with
this body. Every part of me stands naked
in front of you, like a new bride ready for whatever will happen—love, fear,
service, difficulties, humiliation, delight.
THE PIVOT 2:23—24
The pivot of delight and praise is
friendship. Consider how when you are
working in a garden or in an orchard, or singing a song, or just sitting beside
swift-running water, how each of these improves immensely if you are with a
friend. In companionship pain begins to
heal, and joy intensifies.
Two enemies
or two strangers will not recognize each other when they move into spirit. From this point on in your life resolve to
find more friends. God is pleased when
you are together with friends sharing something, anything.
One person
meets someone and sees a lover. Another
meets the same and turns away. These
differences in attraction do not come from your bodies or from your culture. They live innate within creation as secret
inclinations. One person loves horses
much more than pigs, but pigs have their admirers too. Pigs have lovers.
THE KHOTAN CEREMONEY
I have
heard of an old ceremony in Khotan, a region of China where Turkic tribes
settled. Men and young unmarried women—their
heads uncovered and wearing disreputable clothing—would walk through the
marketplace hand in hand. This is how
the ritual started, with everyone drunk and dancing, passing cups of wine
around. The party would straggle and
stagger in before the Khan under the great mosque dome, where the women would
partly disrobe, showing their breasts to the men. Lovemaking began there in the open. They did things in public that we do only in
private inside our homes. It was part of
the annual clitorectomy initiation for the women of those tribes.
It makes me
faint to imagine what came next, with the young women passed out drunk. Is God part of everything human beings do,
even this? Qur’an 11:6 says, Every creatures….This world we watch is
strange and disturbing. Here, for
instance, are my desires at the moment:
I want a beautiful woman. I want
wine, music, and laughter. I want
everyone to see the sacredness of life.
I want wide recognition for myself.
I want my wants intensified, and I want to feel the divine being pouring
through me every moment.
Answers
come for this declaration. Watch bees sipping juice from flowers. Do that with the mystery of presence. Let your body become honey made from that
sipping. We are the unlimited wine you
dream of, the reviving light. As you
restore that in yourself, you will find fulfillment for every pleasure you
puruse.
Drink
zikr. The blessed cave-sleep of that
will give you peace(18:9).
ONE HOUR 1:172—173
Alif Lam
Mim
If God says
We, meaning I AM, then any pronoun I use becomes superfluous. Designations fall like petals. Wisdom comes, and I feel such pleasure
flooding me that I fear loosing my sense of it.
I tell myself, Inquire into how lover, beloved, and the other ways of
loving exist as one thing.
As it is
with God’s qualities and human beings, so there is a unity with love. In the heart there is no room for
differentiation, only oneness and the beloved.
I would give away books, land, my virtues my reputation, everything, for
one hour inside that presence.
LOVEMAKING 2:117
Sex is a
fire kindling at two points: in the
tree-green sap-wet semen of a man and in the smoldering womb of a woman. If love for the man is not deep inside her
there, no lovemaking flame will rise.
GRACE AND THE CURVE OF A HIP 2:35—36
I heard someone talking about the beauty of saints and those
who live in seclusion, tending the inner life.
I said, This love of yours for those beings enriches the soil of your
soul. It is a fertilizer that improves
the vitality of what grows there.
Likewise,
as we look at women, the curve of a hip and beautiful legs are sure signs of
grace. As you grow more absorbed with
that, you start to see the nymphs of paradise.
Drink the wine of women until eventually you pass out. That’s a good time to begin your prayers.
In the
afternoon human beings feel lost, and they are, except for those who are
discussing with each other the nature of truth and good action.
FEELING RAINED ON WITH BLESSINGS 2:21—22
When I was
sick, my body chilled and feverish in intimate conversation with the one who
brings well-being, I felt dazzled like a virgin girl in her first sexual
trembling, breathing like a bridge. No
one will hear our whispering.
In the
ocean of elements—wind, water, fire, and earth—we have planted a garden for you
to walk. We will tend this world as you
search for what you love. We will keep
the vigor of desire strong in you. As
summer heat ripens fruit, we expand your heart to perfection and burn clean
whatever needs emptying. This generosity
and compassion come into me like the glow I saw in the convent. I feel rained on with blessings like a
handsome king with his new brides, one biting his shoulder, one kissing his
neck, another pressing close as though her body were becoming his, or like a
young father playing with his children crawling and rolling over him like
pigeons and sparrows and squirrels chirping and jumping around the one feeding
them seed.
A WILD MADMAN-LOVER
"As I was saying
Allahu Akbar, God is great, a truth came. The
continents and the oceans, and whatever lives and happens in or on them, all
are held inside that presence. If those beings and events should disappear, God
will be visible.
"My prayer is: Give me such craving for pastures, for the greenery
beside a fast-moving creek, that straw and piles of rubbish will look like
fresh vegetables. Fill me so with bright enthusiasm that any street person will
seem like an angel coming toward me.
"Make me hungry enough so a crust of millet bread will taste like fine
pastry. This is all one prayer: Give me the same longing that drives a
wild-madman-lover out to look for what cannot be found.
"That naked need lives in me as a certainty where I know that whatever
I've done wrong is covered by the larger compassion we move inside. That is the
meaning of
Allahu Akbar.”
THE CALL TO PLEASURE
From the
minaret the call to prayer comes to us from the outside in. Other callings come from inside us, the
animal energies, the various wantings, even our attraction to the purity of
angels. I notice that every part of my
body and my awareness is ready to receive each of these cravings. I have more of them than most because I ask
for more. They come as gifts. When my sexual desire gets satisfied, my
entire body feels pleased and peaceful.
And looking at beautiful women delights me greatly. Why are people so agitated about these
things, when all they have ot do is live in the love of the presence? I am faithful to that, and the way of
pleasure and satisfaction has been opened ot me. There are many different ways. Some have nothing in common with others. Mine is unique to me, and I enjoy it
tremendously. The world I see is even
more beautiful and pleasurable than the one we accept in common. Many people want to be like me, but I have no
desire to be like them. Which proves
that I have been given more delicious life than the one they live. God knows best.
