From tariqas-digest-approval@europe.std.com Sun Jul 7 07:24:54 1996 Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 12:54:28 -0400 (EDT) From: tariqas-digest-approval@europe.std.com Reply-To: tariqas-digest@world.std.com To: tariqas-digest@world.std.com Subject: tariqas-digest V1 #36 tariqas-digest Saturday, 29 June 1996 Volume 01 : Number 036 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Keeper of the Dragon Flagon Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 14:36:58 Subject: Re: Sufi chist? >Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 09:25:03 -0700 >From: informe@best.com >But since the question was asked, and there has been so much poetry posted >here, I thought I would add an idea about what sufis and sufism are/is, by >way of a song from Shaykh Peter Murphy. It's a look at the more painful >aspects of the path, contrasted to the dancing and the light. Don't you think al-Hallaj might appreciate this? - --------------------------------------- Brett W. McCoy "Unix was never designed to keep Istvan Dragosani people from doing stupid things, istvan@gnn.com because that policy would also keep Disciple of the Eastern Mysteries them from doing clever things." of both Love and War -- Doug Gwyn ------------------------------ From: Well333@turbonet.com (Jacquie Weller) Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 16:12:48 +0100 Subject: Re: Judging (was: relationships) >Hamza said >Astagfirullah, we all fall short of the Prophet's example. > >Alhamduillah, there is Mercy. > - ------------- What a neat word ASTAGFIRRULLAH! What does it mean? How is it pronounced.:} I know Alhamduillah, Praise God I think? I say the seccond word a lot. Bust ASTAGFIRRULLAH, that is a word that could change the world, at least me if I knew what it meant ... I like the word even if I don't know what it means. I think I'll say it when ever I want AS TAG FIR RULL AH...Great word. I hope it is!! Please translate. Kaffea Lall >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ------------------------------ From: Well333@turbonet.com (Jacquie Weller) Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 16:20:07 +0100 Subject: RE: Judging, Lalla Corrections >Hamza said >Astagfirullah, we all fall short of the Prophet's example. > >Alhamduillah, there is Mercy. > - ------------- What a neat word ASTAGFIRRULLAH! What does it mean? How is it pronounced.:} I know Alhamduillah, Praise God I think? I say the second word a lot. But ASTAGFIRRULLAH, that is a word that could change the world, at least me if I knew what it meant ... I like the word even if I don't know what it means. I think I'll say it when ever I want AS TAG FIR RULL AH...Great word. I hope it is!! Please translate. Kaffea Lalla >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ------------------------------ From: JHulvey@aol.com Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 20:15:20 -0400 Subject: Recent jabs, corrections To Jabriel, I wonder if you are getting Lilyan confused with me? To Kaffea Lalla: Quit being such a sweetie -- you are making the rest of us women look bad! Yours, Jul ------------------------------ From: Fred Rice Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 11:58:24 +1000 (EST) Subject: YUNUS EMRE: Love is my sect and religion Love is my sect and religion. When my eyes saw the face of the Friend, all sorrows became joys. Here, my King, I give myself to You. >From beginning to end all my treasure and richness is You. The source of this mind and soul, the origin of space are with You. You are the end and everything between. I can only go toward You. My way is from You to You. My tongue speaks of You within You. And yet my hand can't touch You. This knowledge amazes me. I can no longer call myself "I". I can't call anybody "you" anymore. I can't say this one is a servant and that one is a king. It doesn't make any sense. Since I found the love of the friend this world and the next world are one. If you ask about the infinite beginning and the infinite end, they are my night and day. No longer do I mourn or cloud my heart, because truth's voice is heard and I'm at my own wedding. Don't let me wander from Your love, don't let me leave Your door, and if I lose myself let me find myself with You. The Friend sent me here. Go and see the world, he said. I have come and seen how beautifully it's arranged. But those who love You don't stay here. He tells His servants, Tomorrow I will give you paradise. That tomorrow is my today. Who else knows this wisdom and this pain? And if it is ever known, it cannot be said. I turn my face to You. You are the soul of the universe, the secret treasure. All gain and loss is from You. My acts are no longer my own. Yunus turns his face to You forgetting himself. He speaks every word to You. It is You who makes him speak. [From "The Drop That Became The Sea: Lyric Poems of Yunus Emre," translated by Kabir Helminski and Refik Algan (Threshold Books, 1989), poem # 40.] Yunus Emre is a Sufi who is especially well known among the Turkish people. He lived in the 14th century, and his song-poems were written in Turkish. Yunus Emre's song-poems are often sung and chanted by Turkish Sufis even today, during "zikr," the Remembrance of God. ------------------------------ From: Well333@turbonet.com (Jacquie Weller) Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 19:25:34 +0100 Subject: Re: Sufi I am in a strange crazy mood right now so here goes. Nobody really knows what a sufi is. I'm a sufi and I don't know what i think i know. Ha I love being a sufi, because you can say that to most anyone and they say Huh! Before i called myself a sufi, i was still a sufi. But a new thing happened. I found out one and one is not two, but one. Does anyone know what I'm talking about. If you do, then you are a sufi too, whatever it is. It isn't a religion, or a creed, or any one particular thing. it's falling in love and dying and rising and being in love, and cutting and burning up, and being foolish and wise and silly like now. Oh well so much for my ignorance. Anyway i think sufi's are just God lovers who see God everywhere, in every face, leaf, clot of earth, and just breath it with every breath. What is a sufi, I don't know...maybe it's just everyone that gets out of bed today. Who knows. Anyway i am glad about the silliest things, like polident, gummybears, friends on the net, new beautiful words, coffee and cigarettes. love kaffea lalla. ------------------------------ From: jabriel@peoples.net (Jabreil Hanafi) Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 22:01:04 -0500 Subject: Relationships and Thou wa aleikum asalaam Lily said:>>Jabreil, all I have to say is that you are way out of line. >If something I said offended you in some way, I would expect you to >let me know in a civil manner. I expect no less from my 8 year old >son. My question is how can you and I use this conversation in a way which will serve both of us and the rest of the group? Now to re-cap I believe the conversation began with you questioning in what I interpreted a tongue and cheek mode that one choosing a mate who did not have similar spiritual values, or to be more specific, was engaged with Sufism was a male thing? And then is my horrendous attempt to be subtle I suggested that the author of that statement might be run by idiocy, ruled by some desire to dominate, and that essentially if memory serves me that the comments were of an odorous nature. Clearly this form of communication and/or lack of it is what each individual on this server has been both (in their lives, from time to time)the server of as well as the receiver. But what is it that is arguing. Lily though you and I have never met I think the soul Lily and I think friend. (So how does the guy treat his enemies huh)? Somewhere I suggest I got baited, hooked, and my ego took the lead.. Somewhere I interpreted the comments which were made as bait and felt threatened. Or perhaps that is but yet one more interpretation. You see what really occurred distinct from what we made up occurred is the distinction between our fantasy and the beginning of reality. And we do make up stories about everything and will fight to the death because those stories, those dramas become our beliefs, our rituals, and the icons which we give up the sacred for in the name of righteous indignation. A simple example is the distinction between the relationship which Tennyson has with a rose as he plucks it from a cranny, holding it roots and all in his hand, and as it withers he bemoans that if he knew the rose he would know God. While Boshi walks along a dirt path sits down by a weed and just sits. A breeze is felt by both. The two simultaneously say Ah! Now I am looking at how can I call you Thou. How can my sister and I notice something which has us say Ah! Perhaps first of all with the word Astarafellah! I am so run by this machine these nafs. From time to time I think that there is a sense of humanity outside of the mechanical nature of survival, but only if I can in fact both accept and even forgive this alien which has strapped itself to my face so as to smother away my very life. I ask you to pardon the gross dramatic example, it is just that I cannot help but to feel most of the time that the slaughter, bickering, rage filled, raping and looting which has always gone on in the planet is something that I have to stand accountable for. I mean after all Lily you and I are the leading edge of humanity. With all the history and evolution this is what has turned out, you and me, my Sister, bickering away as we try to learn what it is we need to learn in the sand box of life. And we pretend we know something, that we are illuminated beings, that there is something on this planet which is actually more base than the horrendous dream we have cooked up this time around. Does not the Qu ran speak to all of our hearts when it speaks to hypocrisy? Astarifaulah! Does not the Qu'ran speak to all of hearts when it speaks to lovers of self? Astarifalah? Does not the Qu'ran speak to all of our hearts when even each Prophet has at least one sin? Astarifalaugh: not to mention our Shaykes. And I fear Lily that god realization is not the answer. What god's we have created have been anthropomorphic which is why I hang out in the caravan of the of the heretic who says come, come no matter how many times you have broken your vows? Obviously our Beloved lends something very intimate. Here perhaps than is where relationship begins and ends. If I look upon my reflection and chastise her for (in my mind) watching television, or for not praying with me, or for not anything else .... am I not gossiping even if the conversation is between me and myself. Astarifalah! And don't get me wrong I think that Hamaza's question was vulnerable and beautiful. And it opened up the potential for a dialogue which will ultimately prove meaningful. But my Beloved is unknowable. My Beloved has no partners. My Beloved has no form. I am intimate with nothing, and I am nothing. And yet what A privilege there is this nothing to have a wedding partner, a beloved called Truth, called Allah, called Quddus, called Ya Hay! Let no one put a finger on my Beloved. My Beloved is veiled. The relationship is sealed. My Beloved will not become another idol. It is impossible to be liken my Beloved to anything for my Beloved has no similatudes. And may the woman who I love never be known by me either. May I never map her out in my mind and love the map rather then the reality. May I be like Boshi and sit with her. May she always be a mystery. And may we each say Ah. Love to you my Sister. If your reply exists at all I will receive it in joy. If it is haughty it will a tulip. If it will be forgiving it will be a tulip. If it will be engaging it will be a tulip. Who is this creature from our species honored the way we have been honored? Who is this creature from our spices who has been given an eye of certainty? Who is this creature and how do they relate after the continual reminder of Bismalah i Rahman i Rahim. Ya Ghaffur. Astarifalah! My Deepest Respect. Your brother. Jabriel - ----------------------------------------- Jabriel Hanafi Pivotal Point Dynamics ------------------------------ From: Well333@turbonet.com (Jacquie Weller) Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 21:01:20 +0100 Subject: Recent jabs, corrections To Kaffea Lalla: Quit being such a sweetie -- you are making the rest of us women look bad! Yours, Jul - ------------- Well actually I hate being called a sweetie. If you really could look in my living room, have some coffee times with me, you will find I'm actually a human being. BTW, I drink coffee black, no surgar. Perhaps I need to develope a few barbs and more fire huh. Well,, hmmm, pass the vinegar please. :} Lalla. ------------------------------ From: CWoodsong@aol.com Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 01:01:34 -0400 Subject: Re: Sufi >I am in a strange crazy mood right now so here goes. Nobody really knows >what a sufi is. I'm a sufi and I don't know what i think i know. Ha >I love being a sufi, because you can say that to most anyone and they say >Huh! >Before i called myself a sufi, i was still a sufi. But a new thing happened. >I found out one and one is not two, but one. Does anyone know what I'm >talking about. If you do, then you are a sufi too, whatever it is. It >isn't a religion, or a creed, or any one particular thing. it's falling in >love and dying and rising and being in love, and cutting and burning up, and >being foolish and wise and silly like now. Oh well so much for my ignorance. >Anyway i think sufi's are just God lovers who see God everywhere, in every >face, >leaf, clot of earth, and just breath it with every breath. What is a sufi, >I don't know...maybe it's just everyone that gets out of bed today. Who >knows. >Anyway i am glad about the silliest things, like polident, gummybears, >friends on the net, new beautiful words, coffee and cigarettes. love kaffea >lalla. Forgive my 'overquoting'... this is too good to cut! :) God! My Coffee Sister! wow!! This is about the silliest, 'bestest', most Beautifully 'ignorant' /something/ i've ever heard! <> Is it those waxing moonbeams making you so full of IT tonight?! :) My son Aaron and i were 'dancing' around the supermarket late, late last night... no one believes it's not drugs! <> If i may... <> love you! carol ------------------------------ From: CWoodsong@aol.com Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 01:00:27 -0400 Subject: Re: YUNUS EMRE: Love is my sect and religion >Love is my sect and religion. thank you, thank you, thank you!! :)(: ------------------------------ From: tony@charm.net (Anthony Teelucksingh) Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 00:15:28 -0400 Subject: digest option Asalaam Alaikum, Sorry to bother the list with a housekeeping matter (my own, that is), but I've deleted the recent email about the digest option now available for this list. Could brother Rose or someone else post it again? Thank you. anthony v. teelucksingh ------------------------------ From: maarof@pc.jaring.my Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 16:30:54 +0800 Subject: Khidr's advice to Moses Imam Ghazzali said Ihya: Moses said to Khidr: Give me advice. He said: Walk with a smiling face and don't walk with an angry face. Be benefactor and not an injurious man. Give up disputation and walk not without necessity, don't laugh without being satisfied and don't accuse sinners without sharing in their sins. O son of Imran, weep for your faults. ------------------------------ From: maarof@pc.jaring.my Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 17:36:40 +0800 Subject: fools and mad Hazrat Ata stated that when he came out one day for praying for rain, he saw a mad man near a burial gound. The mad man prayed and owing to his prayer there was profuse rain. Then the mad man recited these poem:- The ascetics and worshippers have found guidance For their Lord, they keep their bellies hungry Their eyes keep awake being pressed by love They spend the whole night without sleep In meditation and divine servces of their Lord But people think them fools and mad. - --(A passage from Ihya, chapter on zikr & invocation) ------------------------------ From: informe@best.com Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 02:45:08 -0700 Subject: Re: Relationships and Thou Jabreil wrote: >If I look upon my reflection and >chastise her for (in my mind) watching television, or for not praying with >me, or for not anything else .... am I not gossiping even if the >conversation is between me and myself. Astarifalah! And don't get me wrong >I think that Hamaza's question was vulnerable and beautiful. And it opened >up the potential for a dialogue which will ultimately prove meaningful. If true, it was backbiting; if untrue, slander, as the Prophet teaches. I realize that I need to take it up with the Boss rather than the other servants, but I felt like I needed an immediate reality check. Not that that makes it OK, of course. *Sigh* Just add it to my sin account... Hamza ------------------------------ From: Frank Gaude Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 05:48:04 -0700 Subject: Saturday's RUMI I DON'T NEED a companion who is nasty sad and sour the one who is like a grave dark depressing and bitter a sweetheart is a mirror a friend a delicious cake it isn't worth spending an hour with anyone else a companion who is in love only with the self has five distinct characters stone hearted unsure of every step lazy and disinterested keeping a poisonous face the more this companion waits around the more bitter everything will get just like a vinegar getting more sour with time enough is said about sour and bitter faces a heart filled with desire for sweetness and tender souls must not waste itself with unsavory matters ghazal number 119, translated May 3, 1992, by Nader Khalili. tanzen ------------------------------ From: Bob King Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 09:07:19 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: relationships Hello all! It's been a while since I've offered two cents (I've been lots of busy lately. . .) and here goes (hopefully, but I can't guarantee, it will be *worth* two cents!). . . Lots of times it seems to me that people "report on" their spiritual paths. For me, what Jabriel and Lily have been doing *is* spiritual path. Thanks to both of you. Bob King ------------------------------ From: Frank Gaude Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 06:49:53 -0700 Subject: Re: What is a Sufi? Hello, everybody! Jacquie Weller wrote: [...] > I found out one and one is not two, but one. Does anyone know what I'm > talking about. "Not by bread (intellect, reason) alone do you enter the kingdom but by every Word from the mouth of God." Said by a wise person some years back. Zero side-by-side with zero is infinity. Out of nothing comes something! [...] > Anyway i think sufi's are just God lovers who see God everywhere, in every face, > leaf, clot of earth, and just breath it with every breath. Yep, sufis are lovers with a great sense of humor... for they have found out the "name of the game", know who started it, and who will end it. And you know such knowledge is called the Adamic Crack, and is and has been available to all since the beginning of consciousness. kaffea, you are some kind of sufi! Here, have a taste from this bowl of poison; not so bad, huh? Have another... love, love, love, tanzen ------------------------------ From: Frank Gaude Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 07:47:01 -0700 Subject: A Story of Moses A STORY OF MOSES Once Moses was asking God to show him one of God's friends and a voice answered: "Go to a certain valley and there you will find one who loves, one of the chosen, who treads the Path." Moses went and found this man, dressed in rags, plagued by every kind of insect and crawling thing. He said: "Can I do anything for you?" The man asnwered: "Emissary of God, bring me a cup of water, for I am thirsty." When Moses returned with the water he found the man lying dead. He went away to look for a piece of cloth for a winding-sheet. When he came back he found that the body had been all but devoured by a desert lion. Moses was distressed beyond measure, and cried out: "All-Powerful and All-Knowing One, you convert mud into human beings. Some are carried to paradise, others driven through tortures; one is happy, another in misery. This is the paradox which none can understand." Then an inner voice spoke to Moses, saying: "This man had relied upon Us for drink and then turned back from that trust. He relied upon Moses for his sustenance, trusting in an intermediary. His was the fault in asking for help from another after having been content with Us..." Your heart attaches itself again and again to objects. You have to know how to keep the connection with your origins... Ilahi-Nama "... trusing in an intermediary." is the lesson? "objects", i.e., theories, beliefs, people? Pray, let us keep connected to "origins"! tanzen ------------------------------ From: CWoodsong@aol.com Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 11:12:03 -0400 Subject: Sufi Wow! You guys are so Beautiful! :) I got to thinking <>... i think a sufi is someone who LIVES! ... someone who really, really lives! ...not always on the 'straight and narrow' path... but we do the best we can... and have this burning desire to ... < .. well, just to Be, i guess! I'm reminded of the movie /Harold and Maude/... Maude was a sufi. :) and Harold too... so full of IT! :)(: not removed from emotion... and humanity... but deeply, deeply immersed within it... to experience it fully! "God getting to know self!" :) .. it's about being an adult.... about not taking things tooo seriously... just being responsible! For those unfamiliar with the movie... Maude is a rather eccentric 80 year old... who enjoys going to funerals (they remind her of the Great Circle of Life! :) and gives people "gentle reminders" of the impermanent nature of things (she simply 'borrows' a car when she needs one)... who sings and dances and gets down to the business of really living... and learning... constantly.... how to love! Harold is a young man who has perfected the craft of 'fake suicides', the only way he knows to get 'attention' from his mother... and then meets Maude... thus 'beginning' his remembrance of who he really is! "Don't be shy... just let your feelings roll on by don't wear fear, or nobody will know you're there just lift your head and let your feelings out instead... Y'know love is better than a song Love is where all of us belong... " <>><>><>><>><>><>> If you wanna sing out, sing out! If you wanna be free, be free! There's a million ways to be, you know that there are! <>><>><>><>><>><>> Oh, yeah! I wish I knew, I wish I knew what makes me, me, what makes you, you. It's just another point of view oooh! a state of mind I'm going through so what I see is never true... <>><>><>><>><>><>> from Cat Stevens' songs from the movie... Thank you all, for being! :) Such rich, beautiful tapestries are woven... it's amazing what happens here! ... each and every one a beautiful thread in the fabric... WOW!! :) perhaps we're all on "the road to find out"... love, smiles and joyous song to all! woodsong ------------------------------ From: AMBER K WILLIAMS <102064.3531@CompuServe.COM> Date: 29 Jun 96 12:53:18 EDT Subject: Re: relationships Thank you Bob, I also agree and think the staying with the problem helped to solve it somewhat. No one ran away from it. I feel like Lily. I would write something that I felt was benign or prehaps thought provoking and someone would get provoked on a level that made them want to show me something by striking at me with words(flaming) and then I would want to show them, etc, etc, etc, Expressing ourselves with unkind words just seems to lead to more unkind words. Are we really saying, "I can't deal with that now" or "I don't like what you said" or "that brings up painful memories", etc. I would think that when someone says something just plain"stupid" on the e-mail, most of us ignore it tolerantly--however --when we get aroused by the words, it speaks about us. Name-callings and chararter devaluing doesn't help-as we have seen in this fine example. The original issue was GENDER--a really hot topic-that thousands of years of living with it, we haven't gotten very far--I guess because behind GENDER is SEX--a really hot topic(pun intended) and very much a part of life although it is difficult to write about, etc. Musing is the morning, Iram ------------------------------ End of tariqas-digest V1 #36 ****************************