Part 13 (2/2)

5 Literally, ”of the type of.” Since Findiriski was primarily trained as a philosopher, the mention of the term ”jins” (”type” or ”genus”) is probably deliberate, the idea being that the genus or ”philosophical category” itself is fleeting, while the ”categorized Object”-which ultimately transcends all categories-endures eternally. See, for example, Abd al-Raman al-Jami's (d. 1492) multifaceted and subtle exploration of this theme in his Lawa'i (Flashes of Light).

6 The word is ”al,” the same term that I have translated as ”root” in the prose section above. The translation of al as ”root” expresses the idea of origin or source while simultaneously implying that the product is somehow continuous with, of the same essence as, and principially contained in that source, which is Findiriski's main point here. As for the poem, however, the translation of ”root” would sound somewhat odd in the context of a drop springing from the ocean, so I have opted for ”source” instead.

7 Along with Mir Damad and Shaykh Baha'i. Findiriski was most renowned for his knowledge and teaching of the Peripatetic (mashsha'i) philosophy of Ibn Sina.

8 The Yoga-Vasiha takes the form of a dialogue between the Hindu epic hero Rama and the famous Indian sage, Vasiha. In over 29,000 Sanskrit verses, Vasiha instructs Rama, through stories and didactic discussion, on the nature of reality, realization, and enlightened life in the world. The date of composition of the Yoga-Vasiha-as well as its abridged version, the Laghu-Yoga-Vasiha-has been the locus of much debate among scholars, who place the text from anywhere between the sixth and fourteenth centuries CE.

9 In this period alone, Muslim intellectuals in India had produced no fewer than ten works relating to the Yoga-Vasiha. Even Prince Salim, the soon-to-be emperor Jahangir, once remarked that the Yoga-Vasiha ”contains Sufism (taawwuf) and provides commentary on realities, diverse morals, and remarkable advice” (Carl W. Ernst, ”Muslim Studies of Hinduism? A Reconsideration of Persian and Arabic Translations from Sanskrit”, IranianStudies 36 (2003): p. 185).

10 Findiriski cites, among others, Farid al-Din Aar (d. 1220), Jalal al-Din Rumi (d. 1273), Mamud Shabistari (d. 1320), Rukn al-Din Awadi (d. 1337), Muammad Shams al-Din afi (d. 1389), Nimat Allah Vali (d. 1431), and Qasim-i Anvar (d. 1433).

11 Though philosophically very akin to the perspective of Advaita-Vedanta, the Yoga-Vasiha belongs to its own text-tradition and is thus historically distinct from the former. Nevertheless, it is clear that the two traditions were in close contact historically, exerting influence over one another at various levels.

12 See note 2 above, and note Findiriski's comments in another of his works, the Risalah-i anaiyyah: ”all the Greek philosophers before Aristotle were saying the same thing in different languages . . . if one is instructed in the secrets (rumuz) of ikmat, Hindu wisdom, and the Theology of Aristotle (i.e., the Arabic edition of Plotinus' Enneads), all the different expressions will have the same meaning for him” (Seyyed Hossein Nasr ”The School of Ipahan”, A History of Muslim Philosophy, edited by M.M. Sharif [Wiesbaden: Otto Harra.s.sowitz, 1966], vol. 2, p. 925).

13 No doubt included among these ”ignorant fools” were the dogmatic s.h.i.+ jurists who, back west in Findiriski's homeland of afavid Persia, were repressing and persecuting philosophers and mystics like himself. Such conditions may help explain why Findiriski chose to be so allusive in this ”commentary,” rather than plainly expressing his views.

14 These notions of exoteric forms manifesting or expressing the higher, universal esoteric principles to which they are ontologically connected, as well as the ”fools” of limited vision who mistake those forms for the essence, are echoed in various of Findiriski's other compositions, particularly in his famous qaidah (translated by Nasr): ”Whatever is there above has below it a form. The form below, if by the ladder of gnosis, is trodden upward, becomes the same as its principle. No outward apprehension can understand this saying . . . whatever is an accident must first have a substance. . . . Only he who is wise can discover the meaning of these mysteries. . . . In this world and the next, with the world and without it, we can say all these of Him, yet He is above all that. . . . The jewel is hidden in the mysteries of the ancient sages...Pa.s.s beyond these words...How good it would be if the sages before us had said everything completely, so that the opposition of those who are not complete would be removed” (Nasr, ”The School of Ipahan”, p. 923). Such a.s.sertions also recall, for example, Rumi's rendition of the famous story of the elephant in the dark room in the Mathnavi.

15 See note 3 above.

16 Again, Findiriski was a trained philosopher who did not use words lightly. To provide a more simple example, we can compare the sentence ”he is a fool because he eats apples” with the sentence ”he is a fool because he eats only apples.” In the first sentence, the very act of eating apples is deemed foolish, which implies that apples are bad. In the second sentence, in contrast, it is the act of eating only apples that is shunned, which does not vilify apples per se, but rather, simply suggests that a person should eat other things along with apples.

17 Looking back at a line from Findiriski's aforementioned qaidah-”the form below, if by the ladder of gnosis, is trodden upward, becomes the same as the principle”-we see that, in Findiriski's view, the external form is necessary as the basis and starting point from which the aspirant may ”climb” to gain access to the corresponding esoteric principles. Thus, even if apparent forms cannot fully describe absolute Truth, a person nevertheless needs them in order ultimately to know the Truth.

18 See, for example, the various works of Jalal al-Din Rumi (d. 1273), who, Annemarie Schimmel writes, often discusses ”'the ocean of inner meaning' and the external world . . . Rumi uses the image of the foam on the sea to express this very idea . . . [as] the ocean is hidden behind this veil of foam” (The Triumphal Sun: A Study of theWorks of Jalaloddin Rumi [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993], p. 77). Elsewhere, Rumi, as well as other Sufi poets such as Ibn al-Arabi, speak of water which has been frozen in the form of ice or snow, requiring the warmth of the sun (i.e., the transformative grace of G.o.d) to escape from the limiting cage of its frozen form (see Schimmel, Triumphal Sun, pp. 80-81).

19 ”[In Rumi's poetry,] outward manifestations and all forms visible to the eyes are nothing but straw and chaff which cover the surface of this divine sea . . . the outward material forms are always conceived as something . . . which hides the fathomless depths of this ocean” (Schimmel, Triumphal Sun, p.77).

20 Mathnavi, VI:3172-78, quoted in William C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983), p. 43.

21 Schimmel, Triumphal Sun, pp. 83, 89.

22 Annemarie Schimmel, A Two-Colored Brocade: The Imagery of Persian Poetry (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), p. 164.

23 Annemarie Schimmel, And Muhammad is His Messenger: The Veneration of the Prophet in Islamic Piety(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), p. 203.

24 Annemarie Schimmel, As Through a Veil: Mystical Poetry in Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), p. 286 (Bustan, p. 5). Here Sadi is utilizing a trope in which, when the true beloved ”enters the garden, the real cypress becomes crooked and bends from envy,” for it cannot compare with the real beloved, Muammad (Schimmel, Two-Colored Brocade, p. 164).

25 ”Ibn al-Arabi makes the clearest connection between the full manifestation of wujud [Being] and the human role in the cosmos in his famous doctrine of the 'perfect man' (al-insan al-kamil), the complete and total human being who has actualized all the potentialities latent in the form of G.o.d. . . . They act as the Real's representatives in society, leading people to supreme happiness in the next world. In their human manifestations they are found as the prophets and the great friends of G.o.d . . . only through them does He manifest the totality of His attributes-in them alone doeswujud reach its full unfoldment. No creature other than a perfect human being possesses the requisite preparedness to display all G.o.d's attributes” (William C. Chittick, Imaginal Worlds: Ibn al-'Arabi and the Problem of Religious Diversity [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994], p. 23).

26 Schimmel, Two-Colored Brocade, p. 164.

27 In the thought of Ibn al-Arabi, at least, not all ”perfect beings” are created equal, as some are more perfect than others in respect of being a more balanced, harmonious synthesis (see Chittick, Imaginal Worlds, pp. 8-9, 23). Given the paucity of Findiriski's words in the Muntakhab, however, we simply cannot be certain whether he perceives a hierarchy, or rather a stricter equality, between Islamic and Vasihan wisdom.

28 This Persian pa.s.sage corresponds to a section about halfway through the Nirvaa-prakaraa (”Book of Extinction”), the sixth and final book of the original Sanskrit Laghu-Yoga-Vasiha (see Gaua Abhinanda, Laghu-Yoga-Vasiha [Bombay: Nirnaya Sagar Press, 1937]). It is unfortunately beyond the scope of this essay to discuss the nature and quality of the Persian translation from the original Sanskrit.

29 As is stated elsewhere in the larger Sanskrit Yoga-Vasiha (III, 61: 3-5): ”only the infinite consciousness or Brahman exists. Just as there is no division between a bracelet and gold . . . [so] there is no division between the universe and the infinite consciousness. The latter alone is the universe; the universe as such is not the infinite consciousness, just as the bracelet is made of gold but gold is not made of bracelet” (quoted in Swami Venkatesananda (tr.), Vasiha's Yoga [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993], p. 87) [more literally: ”just as the quality of being a bracelet is not distinct from the gold (itself) . . . in the same way, the universe is not distinct from G.o.d. G.o.d is the universe, though the universe is not (inherent) in G.o.d; the gold is the bracelet-state, though the bracelet-state is not (inherent) in the gold”]. The Absolute is the only reality; It alone exists. Therefore, the universe, insofar as it actually exists, is Brahman and, insofar as it merely consists of fleeting forms, is transient and unreal.

30 The wider Indian intellectual tradition makes frequent use of this image to ill.u.s.trate this point. akaracarya, for example, writing in the Advaita-Vedanta tradition, a.s.serts that ”Brahman [the Absolute], like the sun, appears to be affected when the nature of the reflecting medium changes-when, for example, it becomes dirty and the light becomes pallid-but neither Brahman nor the sun are really affected” (Potter's paraphrase of akara'sBrahmasutrabhaya, III.2.11 21, in Karl H. Potter (ed.), Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies: Advaita Vedanta up to akara and His Pupils [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981], vol. 3, p. 85). The following line from Findiriski's qaidah is also interesting in this regard: ”The sun is itself light and s.h.i.+nes upon all things while keeping its unity” (Nasr, ”The School of Ipahan”, p. 923).

31 This notion directly echoes the ”in the world like water” imagery of Findiriski's prefatory verses. B. L. Atreya summarizes the c.u.mulative message of the a.n.a.logies in this pa.s.sage of the Laghu-Yoga-Vasiha: ”One form may be separate from another form as such, but they can never be separate and distinct from the Reality of which it is a form. An ornament of gold is never separate from gold with which it is ever one and identical. Bubbles, ripples, waves, etc., are never different from water of which they are forms, and abstracted from which they will cease to be anything at all. Everything, in the same way, in this universe . . . is identical with the Reality. . . . Everything in this universe, thus, isBrahman” (Yogavasistha and Its Philosophy [Moradabad: Darshana Printers, 1966], p. 45).

32 This poem is part of a larger ghazal ent.i.tled Har gada'i mard-i sulan kay shavad.

33 Maniq al-ayr (The Conference of the Birds), p. 147, verses 3690-93, quoted in h.e.l.lmut Ritter, The Ocean of the Soul: Man, the World and G.o.d in the Stories of Farid al-Din Aar, translated by John O'Kane, edited by Bernd Radtke (Boston: Brill, 2003), p. 591.

34 Maniq al-ayr, p. 3, verses 52-54, quoted in Ritter, Ocean of the Soul, p. 625.

35 Ritter, Ocean of the Soul, p. 631.

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