The Sufi Book of Life
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Introduction
Setting Out on the Journey
0. The Yes and No of Existence
1. The Sun of Love
2. The Moon of Love
3. The “I Can” Power of the Cosmos
4. Sacred Space
5. Peace at the Beginning
6. Support
7. Protection
8. The Strength of Form
9. Repair and Restoration
10. Concentration
11. Carving and Forming
12. Radiating Creativity
13. Designing and Training
14. Burning Away Tension and Hurt
15. Natural Power
16. Flowing Blessings
17. Sustenance
18. Opening to Unity’s Breath
19. Understanding Names and Forms
20. Contracting Boundaries
21. Expanding Boundaries
22. Diminishment
23. Exaltation
24. High “Self” Esteem
25. Low “Self” Esteem
26. Awakened Hearing
27. Awakened Sight
28. The Sacred Sixth Sense
29. Putting Things in Order
30. Subtle Mystery
31. The Seed of Potential
32. Dissolving Chains
33. Flexible Strength
34. The Forgiveness of Light
35. Gratitude, Giving Back
36. Experiencing Life at Its Peak
37. Outward Creative Power
38. Remembrance and Preservation
39. Embodying a Steady State
40. Feeling Divinity in the Details
41. Pooling Strength
42. Abundant Expression
43. Watching with Presence
44. Reflective Listening
45. The Heart Has No Limits
46. Discriminating Wisdom
47. Love Is a Give and Take
48. Dazzling Energy
49. The Return of What Passes Away
50. Experiencing a Universe of Unity
51. The Truth in Each Moment
52. Meeting Challenges
53. Winds of Change
54. Step-by-Step Persistence
55. Friendship
56. The Gift of Purpose
57. Assessing What Is
58. Individuated Creation
59. Reviving What Is Worn Down
60. Personal Life Energy
61. Transition
62. Universal Life Energy
63. Rebounding
64. Extraordinary Sensing
65. Channeling Extraordinary Power
66. Counting to One
67. Uniquely One
68. Refuge for Every Need
69. Holding the Center
70. Embodying Power in Action
71. Preparing the Way
72. Doubling Back on the Path
73. Sacred Surprise
74. Completion
75. The Star
76. The Hidden Traveler
77. Mastering Life
78. Inhabiting an Expanded Consciousness
79. Burnishing
80. Returning to Rhythm
81. Sweeping Out
82. Blowing Away the Ashes
83. Healing Wings
84. Passionate Vision
85. Overwhelming Power and Beauty
86. New Roots, New Foundation
87. Gathering Gems
88. Tending Your Garden
89. Life’s Larger Garden
90. The Gift of Resistance
91. Pain and Loss
92. Immediately Useful Blessing
93. The Light of Intelligence
94. Most Direct Guidance
95. Unexpected Wonder
96. The Real That Remains
97. Reclaiming a Forgotten Inheritance
98. Illuminating the Path of Growth
99. Perseverance
Biographies of Sufis Cited
Contacts for Sufi Teachings
Formal Transliterations of the Pathways of the Heart
Acknowledgements
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Praise for The Sufi Book of Life
“A teacher once told me, ‘You want to be wise too quickly. Take small sips.’ This book reminds us of the small-sip practice of inner patience. Slow down. Open at random once a day. Read three pages. Wait for insight. Breathe.”
—Coleman Barks, editor of The Essential Rumi and co-author of The Drowned Book
“At the present time understanding Islam and familiarizing oneself with the treasure of the Qur’an are becoming important pursuits in the western societies. There are few books written by western writers and scholars seeking to familiarize the reader with the treasure of Islam as a way of life. This book is one of them.”
—Nahid Angha, codirector, International Association of Sufism
“With warmth, wisdom, humor and common sense The Sufi Book of Life makes accessible the Sufi path of inner transformation. This valuable book brings alive an ancient tradition of mystical love that is much needed today. Here is practical guidance for any spiritual traveler, pathways to help us uncover the real wonder of our divine nature.”
—Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, author of Sufism, the Transformation of the Heart
“Written simply, tenderly, and with great wisdom, The Sufi Book of Life helps you open your heart, find ease in a stressful world, and gain perspective on the daily challenges of life. The message of love, honesty, and kindness is deeply embedded in the clarity and warmth of the prose. To read it is to be changed.”
—Charlotte Kasl, author of If the Buddha Dated and If the Buddha Got Stuck
“Highly inspiring . . . Neil Douglas-Klotz has accomplished the great task of drawing esoteric wonders into our daily lives, so that honest seekers on the path of truth may discover the magic jewels which are spread before them.”
—Hidayat Inayat Khan, representative, International Sufi Movement
THE SUFI BOOK OF LIFE
Neil Douglas-Klotz, Ph.D. (Saadi Shakur Chishti), is a world-renowned scholar in religious studies, spirituality, and psychology, and a leader in the International Association of Sufism. An American living in Edinburgh, Scotland, he is codirector of the Edinburgh Institute for Advanced Learning and cochair of the Mysticism Group of the American Academy of Religion. He is also a founder of the worldwide network of the Dances of Universal Peace. A frequent speaker and workshop leader, he is the author of several books, including The Genesis Meditations and Prayers of the Cosmos.
PENGUIN COMPASS
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First published in Penguin Compass 2005
Copyright © Neil Douglas-Klotz, 2005
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Douglas-Klotz, Neil.
The Sufi book of life : 99 pathways of the heart for the modern dervish /
Douglas-Klotz Neil.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
eISBN : 978-1-440-68424-1
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For
Hazrat Pir Moineddin Jablonski (1942-2001), friend and teacher—
a “comrade of the tulip and the rose”
Quick-Start Guide
NINETY-NINE PATHWAYS OF THE HEART FOR THE MODERN DERVISH
Don’t start by reading this book from the beginning. Instead, open it at random a few times and read what you find. If something strikes you, stay with it. You will likely discover some things you can identify with immediately and others that seem like they are from another planet. If you first try to read the book from start to finish, you may not be able to face so many seemingly paradoxical corners of your heart all at once.
Don’t worry about “getting the point.” The Sufi teaching stories scattered throughout the book work on many different levels. The obvious meaning or moral shows only the surface level. The rest of the story works “below ground,” so to speak, in your subconscious. If you get a chuckle or even a “humph!” from a story, it’s probably having its effect.
Browse consciously. Read the preface, “Setting Out on the Journey.” Then take some time each day, perhaps before bed, to familiarize yourself with some of the pathways. Each one presents a quality of feeling, sensation, or experience. Some may be familiar to you, some may not. Some pathways seem to contradict others. Some pathways connect to others, as I have indicated in the Roots and Branches section of each chapter (for instance, themes of work, love, power, relationships, and so forth). Do any of the qualities or challenges speak to your situation in life right now?
Forage. When confronted by a situation in life in which you would like some guidance, take a breath or two with your hand placed lightly over your heart to calm yourself, then open the book at random, as you would an oracle. This may be the best way for the new user to experience the pathways. If you use the book this way, you might also want to read the pathways immediately before and after the one to which you’ve opened. The Sufis have used lists of the pathways of the heart in this way for more than a thousand years. The Meditation section of each pathway suggests ways to contemplate or experience the quality. The default meditation is simply to breathe in your heart with the feeling of what you have read.
Cut up the book. Or you can photocopy and enlarge the table of contents, cut the list of pathways apart, and place the pieces in a bowl. Take a breath and pick one. This is another way to use the pathways as an oracle, as mentioned above. Alternatively, a list of pathways that you can easily cut up is posted at www.sufibookoflife.com. This site will also link you to other sites where you can hear various traditional pronunciations of the practices.
Hunt. Perhaps you are consciously working on an issue in your life or psyche, or supporting other inner work such as counseling or psychotherapy. Check the table of contents or index for a topic that seems relevant and, still breathing in the heart, find what you need.
Read this book. After you have done all of the above for a while, begin to read the book from the beginning to the end. Take a break and put the book aside occasionally, so you don’t get indigestion from meeting too many different facets of yourself. Just as wine tasters need to frequently clear their palates, you may need space from tasting the wines of your soul. To help you create this space, you will find several unnumbered chapters titled “Bathing in Unity” interspersed throughout the book. Use these to dive into the pure ocean of the Beloved before looking down another pathway.
A Note About “Bugs.” The book’s “program” has not been debugged. Actually, it has been re-bugged. Paradox and foolishness are built in, as is what is deeply serious. Sufism is a living twenty-first-century tradition with many different approaches. Expressions in the book such as “a Sufi would say . . .” or “the Sufis . . .” should not be taken to imply that there is one unified Sufi way of being or acting. The program is incompatible with any attempts to use it to find a consistent philosophy, metaphysic, or history that can be called “Sufi.” The programmers take no responsibility for your rational system crashing under these circumstances.
Your heart is the browser.
The pathways are the search engine.
The universe is the real Internet.
And there are many addresses to the Beloved,
whose server is always online.
Introduction
ACCORDING TO A NUMBER of news sources, the bestselling poet in the English language today is Jelaluddin Rumi, a thirteenth-century Persian Sufi. Is this good news for Sufism, or bad news for the state of English poetry?
Both Rumi and Hafiz (who lived a generation later) have entranced readers because they emphasize passionate love. We are all looking for love, and while we may not know what the word means, we know love when we feel it. Sufi poetry speaks eloquently and passionately about the Beloved, and about intoxication, longing, lust, misunderstanding, and mistaken identity (of both lover and beloved). That is, all the stuff of life and soap opera. What makes Sufi poetry and story different from soap opera, however, is that they take place in a kind of magical universe of long ago and far away, a universe in which some greater, benign Reality encloses everything.
Most contemporary English poets would reject the whole context of Sufi poetry as romantic and idealistic. What matters today is today’s world, one in which we construct our own meaning. We can’t be anywhere but here, slogging along in the bleak reality of postmodern life.
Try telling that to the millions of people who are reading Sufi poetry. Their response is the good news for Sufism.
The bad news is that most people reading Rumi and Hafiz would like to bridge the gap between reading about divine love and actually experiencing it, but don’t know how. They have been led to believe (often by some academic or scholarly source) that Sufis only lived long ago and far away, where they wore robes and turbans and spoke with foreign accents. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Sufism is a living twenty-first-century tradition, with many different approaches and practices. Authentic Sufis speak in all languages, and may wear completely ordinary clothing. The word dervish means one who sits in the doorway, or on the threshold of something, ready to move on and transform him- or herself. This book is for modern dervishes, people who want to start living the Sufi poetry of love. It is based on this writer’s experience following the Sufi path for the past thirty years and applying it to everyday life.
If Sufism is a living spiritual path today, why isn’t it better known?
The twelfth-century Sufi Saadi once said, “You can get ten dervishes under a blanket, but you can’t get two kings to share the same continent.” However, in the modern era it has seemed more like wherever you have two Sufis together, you have three opinions. Since the Indian Sufi Inayat Khan brought a form of Sufism to the West in 1910, many different groups and teachers have arrived.
Most Sufi books have presented academic, historical, or philosophical information on the tradition, designed to appeal to the intellect. Some contemporary t
eachers have presented their own work and approaches, which often seem contradictory to the work of others. This has actually been a blessing, since unlike some other traditions, Sufism has not been organized to the extent that its wild character has been tamed.
Historically, diversity has been Sufism’s strength. It is ultimately a nomadic tradition, one that has constantly deconstructed and transplanted itself rather than settle and build gigantic shrines, institutions, monolithic rituals, or organizations. There is no Sufi Vatican or Potala. Rumi, for instance, was well positioned to take over his father’s business, being the main Sufi preacher of Konya, but along came his spiritual soulmate Shams-i-Tabriz. Rumi gave up his ordered way of life, spent all his time with Shams, and ultimately became a broken-hearted dervish who created the greatest oriental poetry in history. Ibn Arabi could have remained in Spain and built up a large following, but instead he chose to spend most of his life moving from place to place. On the other hand, when the Sufis have been co-opted by the establishment (as in the late Ottoman Empire), they have usually experienced serious problems. We Sufis are itinerant and like our freedom, which is probably also why we usually agree to disagree.
Who (or What) Is a Sufi?
Sufism is, first of all, a series of “not’s”—not a religion, not a philosophy, not even a mysticism, as that word is usually conceived. It’s best to call Sufism a way of experiencing reality as love itself. The modern Sufi writer Massud Farzan said it well and succinctly:
Sufism is a unique phenomenology of Reality. The psychology of Sufism is Sufism itself; the art and science of Sufism is the very practice of Sufism.1
Given such a slippery definition, is it possible to talk about any kind of “pure Sufism” today? A person with common sense would say no, but this has not stopped scholars and Sufis themselves from attempting to answer this question. Even the relationship of Sufism to Islam is fraught and may be another reason why Sufism as a path is not more popular today in the West. Is Sufism, as the more simplistic dictionary definitions maintain, the “mystical side of Islam”? Does Sufism (or its philosophy or practices) predate Islam? Is Sufism “the real Islam” (just as some people would maintain that such Christian mystics as Meister Eckhart or St. Francis of Assisi represent the real teachings of Jesus, more than any form of the institutional church)? Here is a typically Sufi answer, again given by Massud Farzan: