Rumi and the 'Clash of Civilisations'
 

Thanks for that, Paul.

As Aldous Huxley and many others have pointed out, the "Perennial Philosophy" of mysticism is the most consistent cross-cultural experience we humans share.

Mysticism has many expressions, of course, but there really is, as Frithjof Schoun says, a "Transcendental Unity of Religion" - at the esoteric level.

Given such a universal there is hope that it might help bridge culture gaps.

Unfortunately, mysticism is frowned upon or actually suppressed and persecuted in many religions, since it concerns practical religion, as distinct from the orthodoxies of exoteric, theological religion.

Many Sufis, like Mansur el-Hallaj, were executed for sayings which were judged as blasphemous to the exoteric Mullahs. And if Rumi were living today in Afghanistan, he would be a target for the Taliban for sure.

I have taught adult ed courses on Sufi mysticism, and I can testify to the compatibility of experience in that tradition with the other major world religions.

I would still love to see a verse translation of Rumi - maybe I should try it myself, since I share Coleman Barks' ignorance of the original language.

Paul, interestingly, the true "clash of cultures" is not between Islam and Christianity, which have proved that they can live together in peace (with Judaism also) during many historical periods.

There is really only one world religion today which is utterly incompatible with the “Perennial Philosophy”, and that is the contemporary de facto Western religion called “Scientism.” As Houston Smith writes:

“Twenty years ago I wrote a book, The Religions of Man, which presented the world's enduring traditions in their individuality and variety. It has taken me until now to see how they converge. The outlooks of individual men and women ... are too varied even to classify, but when they gather in collectivities--the outlooks of tribes, societies, civilizations, and at deepest the world's great religions--these collective outlooks admit of overview. What then emerges is a remarkable unity underlying the surface variety. When we look at human bodies, what we normally notice is their surface features, which of course differ markedly. Meanwhile on the insides the spines that support these motley physiognomies are structurally very much alike. It is the same with human outlooks. Outwardly they differ, but inwardly it is as if an ’invisible geometry’ has everywhere been working to shape them to a single truth.

The sole notable exception is ourselves; our contemporary Western outlook differs in its very soul from what might otherwise be called ‘the human unanimity’. But there is an explanation for this: modern science and its misreading. If the cause were science itself, our deviation might be taken [as the Dawkins-people assert] as a breakthrough: a new departure for mankind, the dawning of an age of reason after a long night of ignorance and superstition. But since it derives from a misreading of science, it is an aberration. If we succeed in correcting it, we can rejoin the human race. "

– Houston Smith, Forgotten Truth: The Primordial Tradition, p ix, x.

Modern secular rationalist materialist culture is a true anomaly in the history of cultures, and it opposes ALL other religions, true to its intolerant, fundamentalist nature.

I believe it is crucial for those of us in the West with the will to find our shared common experiences with people who live in the Islamic world.

During the first invasion of Iraq I made an index of all the wonderful Arab dishes in my collection. It helped me to stay sane.

Rumi contains what most of us recognise, for want of better words, as the divine spark.

Good article, Paul. Thanks for posting it. Whatever the literary value of Barks's translations, it's a wonder how much they have given to people. And to bridging gaps, as the author of the article says. I got drunk with Coleman Barks once, and enjoyed listening to him slur his Rumi.

The best book I have seen that explains Islam to Westerners is by the Iranian scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Heart of Islam (2002). Nasr has lived in the U.S. since the fall of the Shah in 1979, and currently teaches in Washington, D.C. His introduction says:

"The past few decades have witnessed a growing interest in Islam in the West, increasing with each global event involving the name of Islam: from the Lebanese civil war to the Iranian Revolution of 1979 to the rise of Islamic movements among Palestinians. This rising interest now stands at unprecedented levels since the tragic events of September 11, 2001. The world is thirsty for information about Islam, especially in America, yet this thirst has generally not been quenched with healthy water. In fact, a torrent of 'knowledge' has flooded the media, from books to journals, radios, and television, much of which is based on ignorance, misinformation, and even disinformation. Not only has this torrent failed the cause of understanding, it has too frequently rendered the greatest disservice to the Western public in order to further particular ideological and political goals."

This may be a good place to insert a favorite medieval Arabic poem by an unknown author:

I used to shun my companion
if his religion was not like mine;
but now my heart accepts every form.
It is a pasturage for gazelles, a monastery for monks,
a temple of idols, a Ka'ba for the pilgrim,
the tables of the Torah, the holy book of the Qu'ran.
Love alone is my religion, and whichever way
its horses turn, that is my faith and creed.

I'd recommend a close reading not only of Dick Davis's translations from the Persian as a wonderful alternative to the banality of Barks, but also Davis's prefaces, introductions and interviews on poetry. He's a wise, lucid mind on these and so many other subjects.
Dave

I've just started reading a book by the Dalai Lama titled The Universe In A Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality (Broadway Books 2005). Thus far it's a fascinating read. This topic in general, and the mention of Huston Smith in particular, spurred me to post.

The Dalai Lama met Smith in the early 1960s and continued meetings and discussions with him from time to time through the years.

Here's what the Dalai Lama writes in one passage:

I heard about the theory of evolution when I made my first trip to India in 1956 . . . Ironically, the first person to help me understand the theory more fully was not a scientist but a scholar of religion. Huston Smith came to see me in Dharamsala in the 1960s. We spoke about the world religions, the need for greater pluralism among their followers, and the role of spirituality in an increasingly materialistic world . . . However, the topic that struck me most was modern biology, especially our discussion of DNA and the fact that so many secrets of life appear to lie in the mystery of this beautiful biological string. When I count my teachers of science, I include Huston Smith among them, although I am not sure whether he would himself approve of this.

Although I'm only early into the book, I find it marvelously compelling.

Richard

That sounds fascinating, Richard.

Houston Smith sees no fundamental problem between science and religion. But the conversion of science to the fundamentalist religion of materialist “scientism” is another story.

“Whereas science is positive, contenting itself with reporting what it discovers, scientism is negative. It goes beyond the actual findings of science to deny that other approaches to knowledge are valid and other truths true. In doing so it deserts science in favor of metaphysics – bad metaphysics, as it happens, for the contention that there are no truths save those of science is not itself a scientific truth, in affirming it scientism contradicts itself. It also carries marks of a religion – a secular religion … Since reality exceeds what science registers, we must look for other antennae to catch the wavebands it misses.” Forgotten Truth, p 16/17.

And a very limiting fundamentalist religion it is. Scientism is a full-blown belief-system, whereas true science is observational and objective.

This makes me wonder, Dave. Obviously Davis’s translations are better than Barks’s, and his books of more intrinsic value. I can’t get past a couple of pages of Barks, whereas I’ve really enjoyed Davis’s translation of Attar’s Conference of the Birds and some others of his I've seen in the magazines.

But does the popularity of Barks suggest that people’s imaginations can be fired up by bad poetry? Or is it that the bad free verse offers a brand of Sufism Lite for consumers, not really challenging them and so ultimately not really doing any good?

I tend to think it’s a combination of both, but I wonder what other people think about this.