A bit of Attar
16/06/2008 22:48:00
People fear You.
I fear myself.
If you have patience for literary + spiritual bites, then this post is for you. =) inshaAllah
I’ve been passing my Sunday reading a translation of The Speech of the Birds (Mantiqu’t Tair), a work considered one of the masterpieces of Persian literature composed by Faridu’d-Din Attar’s. An apothecary who lived around the time of medieval Islam (i.e. he lived from 1145-1221), Attar’s poetry mainly concerns about the wayfarers path to seeking closeness with God.
Alas…because Persian happens not to be the language taught during my secondary school years, not that STPRI would have thought of teaching me Farsi anyways (love the school!) =) for now, inshaAllah, this ambitious literature student shall just stick and make wonderful do with Peter Avery’s translation, and a superb translation it is.
Consider this beautiful imagery framed in the English language.
Ocean’s lip He parched with thirst,
SubhanaAllah. Poetic I tell you. Right there and then, if I had a pencil/highlighter/pen I would have marked, underscored and scribbled in enthusiastic appreciation ‘NICE!’. In fact, I’m sure I had all those writing/marking instruments within reach, however being captivated by the beauty of Attar’s poetry I continued reading on, savoring the words, the description so moving and strong with spiritual meaning.
‘He’ here of course alludes to Allah swt, the Creator of the Alameen. And it doesn’t take a genius to comprehend that Attar is describing the beginning of creation. It’s interesting don’t you think? He opens the book with the story of beginning itself, the story of man’s and the world’s first lease into life, the story’s of God’s breathtaking Majesty. Unrivalled. Sole and Supreme Creator. Fashioner of the worlds.
In the name of God The Merciful And Compassionate
Praise to life’s Perfect Creator,
He who gave the dust soul and faith;
He founded the Throne on water,
For the creatures of dust, life on wind.
He held the heavens above;
Earth he kept in utmost lowliness.
On one He conferred unstilled motion.
To the other he gave perpetual repose.
The heavens he pitched like a tent,
Raised without pillars, but he made earth their floor.
In six days he made the Seven Stars appear,
And with two letters made visible the Nine Spheres.
To the snare of the body He gave shifting states:
Put dust on the tail of the bird of the soul.
He poised the ocean in submission to Himself;
In fear of Him He petrified the mountains.
Ocean’s lip He parched with thirst…(3)
SubhanaAllah ~ Glory be to Allah ~
Notice Attar’s consistent emphasis on the world’s humble submission before Allah, the contrast of words, particularly for example in alluding to the widespread earth, the very earth in which Attar points out as yet ‘kept in utmost lowliness’. Physically and visually , indeed we see this. The earth that many a haughty or mighty human treads upon is still positioned beneath the heavens. This reminds me of a proverb that says, and it goes something along this line : No matter how high a throne a person sits on, he still sits on his bottom. Brilliant. No matter how grandly the earth unfolds, it is still one that submits in all ways before its true King.
Notice again the language of God’s active hand in creation : ‘The heaven he pitched like a tent’, ‘To the snare of the body’; and of creation’s humility and submission ‘He poised the ocean in submission to Himself/ In fear of Him He petrified the mountains’.
The ocean that we know, never conquered by man, the deep unknown as we tend to think of it…that vast, lawless and massively mysterious body of water and life…the ocean ultimately submitting itself to God. I don’t know if you have stood by yourself before the open sea and watch the waves coming and going, the volumes of water, heaving and gracefully climbing on top one another, rolling, rolling and then crashing into the shore. A frantic mixture of white foam, sand and blue. They do this, the waves starting as far as the eye could see, from the far horizon. And when you look into the middle part of the sea, you see the disgruntled kind of rumbling, more water, water endlessly pushing and rolling again into the shore. The sea, the ocean is a majestic creation. But to have this natural subject indeed a loyal subject of God…
And of the majestic mountains whose tops pierces into the high clouds, prostrating, weakened before God. These imposing emblems of God’s servants, coming from the natural world, arranged and bowing as if in prayer and shame before their Lord.
Reading this makes me think : And what about me? What about us humans? Compared to the mountains, earth, skies and ocean…humans appear like mere waifs of the world. And yet indeed, many of us, would strut on the earth so proudly, forgetting, not fearing, not minding that God is watching…like this moment right now. And finding us behaving in a way that is not pleasing to Him, and finding us absent in places where He expects us to be.
Can you imagine that?
Let’s illustrate. Late this afternoon, around 5 plus or so pm, I poked my curious head outside the window of my Brunei Hall room, 3 floors above the ground, quite high in the air is my head found. Not too long in this odd activity, my attention was arrested by a man sitting in his car parallel-parked across the Brunei Hall building. Lo and behold, I saw him rudely toss out what seems to be a finished meal, a sizeable McD paper bag- into the fenced public garden next to him!!! I was appalled. Ok, you say. Big deal. It’s not like he shot a cat.
But really..it is just so so so rude and uncaring of this man to commit such a mindless, unnecessary act. I wasn’t very impressed. I am sure if this man knew that someone was around and watching him, he would definitely have not done what he did. That is to litter so unapologetically. He would have in fact, kept his rubbish to himself in his car and dispose of them in the appropriate way.
A few seconds later, he took out what seems to be…I dunno..tabacco like powder. He held them in his hands, and started sniffing them, and from which he then unconsciously proceed to minutely arrange and separate in his hand. More sniffing follows. First thing careening into my head ‘OMG! That guy is on crack!’
Two lessons to be found here:
1) I should have not jumped to conclusions. For all I know, irregardless of the dodgy nature of his actions, they were probably sunflower seeds. In fact, I shouldn’t have even been engaging in espionage of that sort. (Another ‘in fact’, is that I should probably up my knowledge on how dubious substances are ACTUALLY consumed. But this is beside the point.)
2) Most importantly I started musing, ‘SubhanaAllah, this man doesn’t know that I can see what he is doing.’ And watching him from above gave me a ‘sense of looking down into the world’, like I could see and catch anything in my view, an authoritative, knowing ‘I know what you are doing…but you can’t see me’ kind of feel.
By this time, my eyes have focused out of this man, musing even more : ‘But God is watching me watching Him…and God has always watched OVER me..in a way where oftentimes I am unconscious of Him watching me , and then I do something that is displeasing to Him, and He SAW all that…’
The self shudders. My head retreated back into the room. SubhanaAllah. This servant is ever in need of reminders.
I have done what the man in the anecdote has done. I know I have thrown and acted out the metaphorical rubbish of life, forgetting that God saw it and was not impressed by what I did. I was frowning disapprovingly when I saw the man litter. I don’t know what God would do when I ‘litter’. But I know I as a servant who has professed fealty and love to him, upon reflection feel this: Malu.
Attar has caught the spirit of my feeling further in The Speech of the Birds. I have been haunted by feelings of spiritual inadequacy these past few days.
My carnal self’s enwrapped me from head to foot.
If you do not save me, woe is me.
My soul is sullied by vanity.
I cannot bear the sullying.
Either cleanse me of this corruption,
Or cease to bloody me, but make me dust.
People fear You.
I fear myself…(7)
Every word, every scenario inscribed here by Attar is true, the very same uttering of one’s heart.
I have often read a good sister repeating ‘And the self is weak, the nafs is strong’, and that it is only with Allah’s guidance can the servant prevail. How true.
I find myself in this state. Doing, thinking, intentioning something other than what should purely be for God. ‘Sullying’ myself. Yes, it is a test for us to fight our nafs. That is the grand jihad our beloved Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him alluded to.
Attar also reminds us that this jihad is over only once our life ceases, and we return back to the humble substance that we arose from- dust.
My favorite line so far has to be this :
People fear You.
I fear myself…
Attar captures in such clever brevity the servant who fears his ownself, articulating both the truth and wisdom of fearing the very self who serves to insidiously betray the servant. And it is indeed a relevant fear. And to compare one’s fear for God, a fear that we know should be incomparable to anything else (and which I believe is a kind of fear that remains incomparable) is a literary technique that is just pure genius. Ultimately of course, I think when ‘I fear myself’, this fear is still nonetheless rooted to the fear of God. I fear myself influencing myself into evil because I fear God’s displeasure.
These two lines thus read ‘I fear myself’ for the sake of God.
There is also of course another kind of reading, I believe rooted in the Sufistic tradition. From the little that I know, I understand that there exists in Sufi belief about the ‘annihilation of the self’, in knowing and loving God. Between the lover (i.e. the servant) and the Beloved (God), inevitably there is only room for one –God. It is when everything, everything is from God, when the servant understands that everything is from God, everything is about God…then ‘myself’ is no longer, ‘myself’ is gone, only God remains, and thus the exaltation of Him. The servant has humble himself so severely into nothingness, glorifying only His Raab. Thus, ‘I fear myself’ finally and cleverly double backs to ‘I fear God’.
Complicated idea perhaps and I seriously say that I am the worst to expound them, but I thought of sharing a little of what I learned, though perhaps an unwise thing to do. I thought hopefully, I haven’t detracted from the mainstream Islamic teachings at all and have in fact only took a tiny fraction of the vast field of Sufism, just to share some interesting food for thought.
From You I experience good;
From myself, evil…
~‘Know yourself and you know God’
