I searched for God and found only myself. I searched for myself and found only God. ― Rumi.
What becomes clear upon examination of Sufi writings, Rumi or in translations of the Qur’an is that if we look closely at conventional definitions, what Buddhists mean by natural mind, emptiness, or timeless awareness is aligned with the meaning of the word Allah. Natural mind is the condition of unity and openness, the ego-less non-dual nature of reality, the spontaneous non-source of phenomena and the inclusion of everything within it. The world is timeless awareness awakening to itself.
Allah is similarly without beginning or end, timeless, omniscient, the divine creator and destroyer, Divine Presence, Divine Love, including all existence and non-existence, the identical vast space at the heart of reality. But also, at least for the mystics, Allah is the heart of passionate love and the ecstatic expression of non-duality as an endless source of creation.
Reading Andrew Harvey’s 1994 book, The Way of Passion, about Rumi’s relationship with his teacher Shams i-Tabriz, is a riveting and enlightening dive into the awakened nature of the poetry Rumi produced from that time. Why would I read this? (Why wouldn’t anyone read this?) Because as devoted to my Buddhist niche as I may be, the ecstatic and explosive passion of Sufism awakens the heart like no other.
In Arabic, Al is an affirmation, a definitive article (‘the’). Lah is a negation. Making the sound of both the affirmation and negation together is disruptive to rationality. Conceptual mind cannot hold this paradox. Like a zen koan, it points to something beyond comprehension, beyond expression. Presence and Absence. The ineffable. Allah both affirms and negates. When addition and subtraction cancel each other out, what are we left with? Zero. Or infinity. It frames a cognitive quandary that defies definition. It is more than merely paradoxical, leading one into strange territory where we cannot find words to express the full meaning, where they do not behave, where reality cannot be captured. The automatic fixation and convenient reliance on things as they appear to be, is arrested.
When spoken, the name Allah cancels itself out. It invites us into the still point of emptiness, transcending both being and non-being. God neither is nor is not. ‘This still point is an invitation, a portal into the divine’ (Physicians of the Heart). Coming face to face with these opposites, according to Sheikh ibn Arabi (1165-1240), leads to integration and transcendence. The ‘h’ sound at the end of the name Allah is the beginning of the sacred syllable hu. Allahu transcends both positive and negative as well. Pronouncing the name of Allah leads not only to a glottal quandary, but to the still point, the essence of the essence, what we can never truly know about God—that is, how God knows God, God’s self-knowing; surely the same self-knowing spoken of as Natural Mind, Buddha Mind, the self-knowing quality of Buddha Nature, the way things really are. Dzogchen.
Referring further to the root syllable hu, I am reminded of the Hebrew word Eliyahu, a reference to the Prophet (Elijah), again, to the one who transcends positive and negative, who heralds the messianic age, the time of ultimate redemption. The first syllable, El in Hebrew is the definite article as is the Arabic syllable al. El is the Hebrew word for God. El-Elyon. Allah: God, the Most High, the unified state of existence and non-existence, the Two Truths embodied, emptiness. To arrive at self-knowing awareness is to become one’s own messiah.
Even the very expression of Allah, the sound of it, the origin and the shape of the throat, all these characteristics forming the expression suggest a deep and ironically, even a soundless origin, what exists before words, shapes or even thought, somewhere beneath the root of intention, preceding language. Is this some fantasy or wishful thinking? Why do I even mention these things? What does this have to do with anything?
Beyond the enticement of today’s many competing versions of fundamentalism, beyond conventional binaries such as progressive or reactionary, in the desert beyond the last swimming pool of Las Vegas, beyond the greed, excess and consumption of the Industrial Growth Society, looking into the face of extinction–-if that’s not overstating the case—however we revive ourselves, regenerate intimacy, re-inhabit our primal nature, rewrite the human story, tell ourselves the comforting tales of our ancestors, however we open the windows and doors of cross-cultural awakening, for all our talk of the sacred, and even with all the love we generate along the way, there is still a roof to be blown away, revealing the uncontainable, mysterious arresting magnetic appeal of timeless truth, what no language can capture, the unfathomable silence contained in the sound of ancient words.
There are yet more ways for us to be annihilated and awakened to the blindness of our pathetic little egos, to the repeated revelation of our clever and tenacious self-deceptions, the endlessly inventive ways we shore up our misguided presumptions of permanence. There’s still space to be shattered and swept into a storm of reckless, unconditional love emanating from hearts broken open. This is the unspoken transformation beyond what we typically imagine transformation to be.
Transformation is not a destination. There is no there, there. It is an ongoing event, everywhere and always, the ethic of radical impermanence itself. It is the vibratory essence of positive and negative perpetually disappearing into something indescribable, beyond all qualities. Radical impermanence is the essence of emergence. There is no end to it, just as there is no end to creation and renewal. Real change is messy, disruptive, and unpredictable. If we are to engage with life as emergence, we must live radical impermanence and renewal in our bones.
The lamps are different,
But the Light is the same.
So many garish lamps
in the dying brain’s lamp shop,
Forget about them.Concentrate on essence, concentrate on Light
In lucid bliss, calmly smoking off its own holy fire,
The light streams toward you from all things,all people, all possible permutations of good,
evil, thought, passion.
The Lamps are different,
But the Light is the same.
One matter, one energy, one Light, one Light-mind.
Endlessly emanating all things.
One turning burning diamond.One, one, one.
Ground yourself, strip yourself down,
To blind loving silence.
Stay there, until you see
You are gazing at the Light
With its own ageless eyes.--Jalal-u-din Rumi
We imagine this time on earth to be the most desperate, the most dangerous, the most insecure. We peer over the precipice of climate change and resource depletion, pandemics, pollution, and deepening confusion, desperation, and conflict. We imagine this is a time like no other. But Rumi’s time was no different, as have been many times since. There have always been those holding apocalyptic visions. The earth has always been dying—and living. And there have always been those driven by imminent loss, real or imagined. Humanity has always been astray from the Divine, always seeking re-union with the timeless source regardless of how lost we may become. Brahma, Allah, Yahweh, the titans of Olympus, all the gods of creation are always at work, creating the world anew. Has this not been the impulse of all sacred practice, whether institutional or improvised?
Sufis, perhaps even all of Islam, hold close the idea that everything we know or ever could know can be taken away at any moment. The world could end in an instant and only exists now by the benevolent and merciful, guiding and forgiving hand of the Divine Source. That’s why there’s no time to lose. This fervent adherence to radical impermanence is perhaps unique in the world. Yes, it is fully aligned with the fundamental intent of Buddhism’s mindfulness of impermanence, though driven by an even greater longing for union; indeed, for the Sufis, longing itself is our essence. Longing is our grace. It is what humans are made of, an intrinsic engine fueling the fire of faith.
Such longing is born of bewilderment. From our first breath, we are found and lost. I have already affirmed that bewilderment remains at the core of being human, a perpetual recovery from the instant of separation enacted at birth, the engine of longing to reunite with the spirit that bore us into this life, this body. The essential experience of loss and the wish to recover from it motivates much of what we do and think.
There are many guises for intelligence.
One part of you is gliding in a high wind stream,
while your more ordinary notions
take little steps and peck at the ground.Conventional knowledge is death to our souls,
and it is not really ours. It is laid on.
Yet we keep saying we find ‘rest’ in these ‘beliefs.’We must become ignorant of what we have been taught
and be instead bewildered.
Run from what is profitable and comfortable.Distrust anyone who praises you.
Give your investment money, and the interest
on the capital, to those who are actually destitute.Forget safety. Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation. Be notorious.
I have tried prudent planning long enough.
From now on, I’ll be mad.--Jalal-u-din Rumi
One need only look around to see how lost we are and why apocalyptic visions abound. Both Rumi and the Buddhists would say it’s because we deny our essential nature and because we are ignorant of reality. Instead of burying our bewilderment with rash self-limiting decisions, making myriad excuses for our alienation, building ever more complex, garish, and violent castles of denial, Rumi says we must return to bewilderment. Go mad. Let that roof be blown away.
Give up everything, reunite with the loss and bewilderment secretly driving self-destructive behavior. Get your dervish on. Dance to the ever-whirling edge of destruction and renewal with me, he says. There we will be liberated and transformed by the eternal process of living and dying we know as Allah, Buddha, Elohim, Christ, Shiva, the un-nameable. God.
Walking on a path, I slipped on a leaf, ended up in a tree, fell and broke my head. I cried out and it started to rain, and all of creation began to dance, quenching its thirst for Grace. I sobbed with head broken and heart flooded.