HOW AWARE ARE YOU? (SOME SUFI WISDOM)

There once was a famous Persian Sufi mystic of the 9th century named Bayazid Bastami (pictured left). It is said that before he passed away he was asked about his age. ‘I am 4 years old,’ Bastami purportedly said. ‘For 70 years I was veiled. I got rid of my veils only 4 fours years ago.’ So, there is hope for you and me.

Bastami would often talk about the importance of awareness. On one particular occasion, after he had been asked the question, ‘Well, what exactly is awareness?’, it is said that Bastami led the questioner and those with him to a river. Now, on the near side of the river was a small hill, and on the other side there was also a small hill. Bastami said, ‘We are going to put up a long wooden bridge---just one foot (0.305 m) wide---from this end to the other, and you will have to walk on it. And then you will know what awareness is.’

The person who asked the question of Bastami as to what was awareness was not exactly happy with Bastami’s response. He said, ‘But we have been walking our whole life, and we have never come to know.’

Bastami said, ‘Wait,’ and he did the experiment. Many of them started feeling very afraid, and they said, ‘We cannot walk. Just one foot wide?’

‘But how much do you need to walk on?’, asked Bastami. ‘When you are walking on the earth, you can walk on a one-foot wide strip easily. Why, then, can’t you walk on a one-foot wide strip hanging between two hills? What is holding you back?’

A few people tried the experiment. Well, they ventured along the bridge a couple of feet, but no more than that. They quickly returned to the near side of the river. ‘It is too dangerous,’ they said to Bastami.

A man walks over a plank bridge between the towers of the
cathedral in Bremen, Germany. Photograph: Joerg Sarbach/AP.

Then Bastami walked and a few followed him. When they reached the other side of the river, they said to Bastami, ‘Master, now we know what awareness is. The danger was such that we could not afford to walk in unawareness. We had to be alert. At any moment we could have been gone forever, so we had to keep alert.’

Fortunately, we are not called upon to undergo ‘experiments’ of that kind all that often, but the degree of awareness required for such an experiment is nevertheless the intensity of awareness that we ought to possess and use in our ordinary, daily lives. I kid you not. The awareness of which I speak is not concentration as that word is ordinarily used. No, true awareness is conscious wakefulness that is ‘choiceless’ and unadorned. That means a pure, unadulterated awareness and observation where the cognitive mind is totally at rest, that is, not thinking, analysing, judging, interpreting or comparing. It is pure consciousness without any thought. As Krishnamurti used to say, you and the object of awareness become one.

Now, why not try this experiment. No, I am not talking about you walking a tightrope or anything as dangerous as that. You can do this experiment anywhere. So, when to walk along the sidewalk, or down the hall of your home, walk as if each moment there is danger. Don’t try to visualize any particular danger ahead or around you---that is thinking---just focus your undivided, unadorned attention and awareness on what you are doing and the path you are walking step by step.

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MINDFULNESS AND ISLAM

Now, lest there be any confusion about the matter, let me say this right at the outset: I am not a Muslim, and Islam is certainly not my favourite religion. No, not by a long shot---but that’s for another day. Actually, I have no favourite religion at all. Having said that, I can find some good---and, yes, plenty of bad---things to say about every religion. Today, I will say some positive things about Islam. It’s high time that somebody did.

I’m ‘into’ mindfulness---which is all about health and wellness---and the essence of mindfulness (which, by the way, is not a religion) is this---unconditional surrender to what is. Such surrender is the result of a choiceless awareness to life as it unfolds from one moment to the next. In essence, the word ‘Islam’ means voluntary and total submission---in peace---to the will of the Almighty (Allah) together with a striving after Truth so as to do the will of Allah. Submission and surrender are essentially the same thing, for both involve a letting-be and a calm acceptance of whatever is. The word ‘Islam’ refers to that total peace that comes from such submission or surrender.

In Islam this submission is anything but fatalism. It is often said in Islam that the Almighty does not change the fate of a person, or a people, unless that person or people changes what is in themselves. Also, the notion of insha’Allah (‘God willing’) embodies qualities such as patience, resoluteness, wisdom, compassion, equanimity and non-reactivity---all qualities that are otherwise embodied in mindfulness. The Arabic word sabr denotes a calm and unconditional acceptance of what is---that is, there here-and-now---manifesting itself in an imperturbability that refuses to succumb to worry and anxiety. Such equanimity can only arise when there is a calm acceptance of reality or life---on life’s own terms.

The monotheism in Islam may appear to some to be overly strict and remote but at least it avoids the anthropomorphism of traditional Christianity and embraces an ‘all-Encompassing’ Reality (Qur’an 2:115). Those words---‘all-Encompassing’---appear in many places throughout the Qur’an, which, it must be remembered, contains, among other things, the religious, civil, social, legal, and military codes of Islam. (You need to keep the latter especially in mind when reading portions that present as militant or aggressive in nature.) Now, Allah---‘the [sole] deity, God’---is ‘of all things, encompassing’ (Qur’an 4:126) and, as such, is not so much omnipresent but Omnipresence itself, for it is axiomatic in Islam that the Almighty Divine Life cannot be said to be ‘in’ any place nor be ‘everywhere.’ Nor can the Almighty Divine Life be said to be ‘nowhere.’ All such talk would limit the limitless.

In short, we are talking about an ‘all-Encompassing’ Reality---One Presence and One Power active in the universe. This is the true meaning of the statement, ‘There is no God but Allah’ (Qur’an 47:19). This uncreated and unmanifest Presence is not ‘transcendent’ in the Judeo-Christian sense---at least not in the sense of some supposed anthropomorphic deity in the ‘upper regions’ (whatever that means). No, we are talking about a Reality that is truly limitless, encompassing all things including all of space---and yet beyond all space as well. Nor is this Presence ‘immanent’ in the Christian sense, for the Presence cannot be said to be contained ‘in’ anything. Nor can this Presence be said to be in any way ‘separate’ from the universe (that is, the sum total of all that is) for the notion of separateness denotes divisibility whereas this Presence is indivisible. All in all, it is a mature concept of deity.

Now, you need not call this Omnipresence 'God' or ‘Allah’---I generally don’t---but you can if you wish. The really important thing, as I see it, is this---this boundless and limitless presence and power of life fills all, is all, and empowers all, for everything is truly an individualised expression of life.  This presence and power---this All-in-All---is most fully and personally experienced in the silence. It is experienced as peace, calmness, tranquility, equanimity, wisdom, love and compassion---indeed, as all those things ordinarily associates with the sacred or the divine. The regular practice of mindfulness affords a unique opportunity to cultivate these qualities---simply by a calm, choiceless awareness of whatever is.

This post would not be complete without at least some albeit brief mention of Sufism. Every religion has its ‘inner’ or esoteric side, and Islam is no exception. Like all mystics, the Sufis assert that it is possible to fully embrace the Divine Presence in this life. Almost every religion looks with suspicion upon the mystical tradition, the main reason being that if it be possible to embrace this Divine Life in some direct, immediate and unmediated fashion, then there is a loss of control, authority and dependency. How terrible! Bring it on.

Well, Divine Life or nothing, the ‘good news’ I have for each of you is this---Muslim or non-Muslim, believer or infidel, theist or non-theist, you can never be less than life, you can never be separate from life, and you are always---I repeat, always---in direct and immediate ‘contact’ (for want of a better word) with life in all its fullness. I don’t care if some call that heresy---and they will, because they want you to be in submission (that is, bondage) to them and their authority. Reject all such nonsense. Choose to be a heretic, for the word ‘heretic’ refers to one who chooses. As truth/reality/life is dynamic and never for one moment static, those who refuse to choose----and instead remain statically wedded and glued to some fixed, rigid and ‘authoritative’ view of reality---are simply not on the side of life. Simple as that.

So, why not choose to affirm your oneness with all that is---the ‘is’ being nothing less than the ever-dynamic, all-encompassing life as it unfolds incessantly from one moment to the next. Here’s some more good advice---‘Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others,’ wrote the Sufi mystic and poet Rumi (pictured), ‘Unfold your own myth.’

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OMAR KHAYYAM AND LIVING MINDFULLY

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám (for copies, click here) is said to be one of the ten best known poems in the world. At any rate it is doubtful whether any other piece of Oriental literature has been as widely read, and as much loved, in the Western world as The Rubaiyat.

When I was growing up as a kind we had two copies of The Rubaiyat in our home – one which had been my late mother’s (bought, I think, before her marriage to my father), and one which was my late father’s (similarly bought before their marriage). Nothing was ever thrown out in our household. My wife would say, “Nothing has changed there, unfortunately.”

I still have my mother’s copy of The Rubaiyat (see copy of its cover below) but my Dad gave his copy away to a very dear friend of his - a devout Catholic - not long before his (Dad’s) death, with the remark, “This book makes more sense to me than what your Church teaches.”

My father was not a formally religious man, but he was the most honest person, and one of the wisest, I’ve ever known. He often said that there was more wisdom in The Rubaiyat than in The Bible. I won’t go into that. All I’ll say is this ... there is, in my view, much less that is culture-bound, and thus irrelevant to our times, in The Rubaiyat than in The Bible.

The question of whether or not the Persian poet and astronomer Omar Khayyam (pictured below) was a Sufi mystic is a hotly contested issue. My view is that of Edward J FitzGerald, The Rubaiyat’s most famous English translator and interpreter, who wrote: “No doubt many of these Quatrains seem unaccountable unless mystically interpreted; but many more as unaccountable unless literally. Were the Wine spiritual, for instance, how wash the Body with it when dead? Why make cups of the dead clay to be filled with—‘La Divinité’ by some succeeding Mystic?”

I don’t think that Khayyám was either a Sufi mystic or a promoter of Epicurean hedonism. To me, he was an early exponent of, and apologist for, Mindfulness and, in particular, the practice of mindful living, that is, living mindfully and consciously in the present moment - in other words, simply being aware of the fact that each moment spent wisely, and with awareness, is to live in the now, and to be truly present in and fully engaged in the moment. Take, for example, this well-known quatrain:

The caravan of life shall always pass
Beware that is fresh as sweet young grass
Let’s not worry about what tomorrow will amass
Fill my cup again, this night will pass, alas.

Note those words ... “fresh as sweet young grass”. You can almost smell the grass, yet how ephemeral it is. Then we have this:

Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring

The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:

The Bird of Time has but a little way

To fly—and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.

The bird is “on the Wing”. Watch it fly away ... it will, of course! Further, as is written in another quatrain, “The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.” Observe them both, without judgment, condemnation or fear, for is it not the case that ...

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

So, what are we to do? How are we to live? Here, in my view, is some good advice:

Look to the Rose that blows about us—"Lo,

Laughing," she says, "into the World I blow:

At once the silken Tassel of my Purse

Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw."

Living mindfully means that we accept the fact that everything is in the process of becoming a dissolution ... yes, everything is in a state of flux. All is transitory and will eventually vanish from view. So, as the American Unitarian Universalist minister and former head of Amnesty International, Dr William Schulz, points out, “the paradox of life is to love it all the more even though we ultimately lose it.”

That is what makes this present moment so very special. So let us engage with it ... with a whole-body-and-mind awareness. When we do that, and interfere with nothing, strangely our minds become free from all limitations, fetters and bonds.

So, in the words of Omar Khayyám, "Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life."

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