What is Sufism?

There are as many views and definitions about Sufism as there are the commentators, so I take this history into perspective and offer my understanding to this term Sufism. The beauty of this term allows the bystanders to see outward and explore the visual abundance of Sufism and likewise it also allows the indulger to see inward and reflect the hidden manifestations.

To me Sufism is the meeting point of body and spiritual desires. This is the point where lust converts into love, desires becomes generosity, envy becomes sympathy, anger becomes compassion and body becomes as important as soul, matter becomes as holy as spirit, physical world seems as sacred as metaphysical believes. Each person, each life, everything in this temporal biosphere becomes my responsibility as vicegerent and I become responsible and accountable for all that is around. This is my understanding of Sufism, without any brand, any dogma and of course any silsila.

The Undivided Wholeness of All Things

To see a world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
--WILLIAM BLAKE


The physicist David Bohm and his idea of a Holographic universe has fascinated me for years and I refer him as a SUFI SCIENTIST. His Book WHOLENESS AND IMPLICATE ORDER, I read as sacred text. Since I do not have a scientific academic background but the fascination provides ample motivation to striving and enduring.
Most interesting of his idea is about wholeness. As everything in the cosmos is made out of seamless holographic fabric of implicate order, Bohm believes it is meaningless to view the universe as composed of parts, as it is to view different geysers in a fountain as separate from the water out of which they flow. Everything in the universe is part of a continuum.

He also believes that dividing the universe up into living and non living things also has no meaning. Animate and inanimate matters are inseparably interwoven and life too is enfolded throughout the totality of the universe. Even a rock is in same way alive, for life and intelligence are present not only in matter but in energy, space and time.

The idea that consciousness and life and indeed all things are ensembles enfolded throughout the universe has an equally dazzling flip side. Just as every portion of the hologram contains the image of the whole or a single DNA possess he complete blueprint of a person, every portion of the universe enfolds whole. This means that if we knew how to access it we could find the Andromeda galaxy in the thumbnail of our left hand. Every cell in our body enfolds the entire cosmos, so does every leaf, every raindrop and every dust mote.

PS: this is inspired from David Bohm’s “Wholeness and Implicate Order” and Michael Talbots “The Holographic Universe”

Woman of Substance

Today is international Day for Women, and a perfect time to remember our Woman of substance Parveen Shakir(1952-1994) a poetess of extreme caliber, style, passion and talent. A woman petite and fragile in looks but like a rock in her principle stands towards life and the values she stood for. Living in a society where women were still fighting for their basic rights, her femininity was not a limiting factor when it came to express her point of view in poetry or prose. She was popular both with critics and public because of ingenuity of her words and the skill that tuned the right chords.

Her poetics works Khushboo(Fragrance)
Sudburg(Marsh Marigold)
Khudkalami(Monologue)
Inkar(Refusal) is a journey of a young idealist girl to a woman of substance.

ADVICE TO A FRIEND
by Parveen Shakir

Listen, Girl, These moments are clouds:
You let them Pass and they are gone .
Soak up their moist touch .
Get drenched .
Don’t waste a single drop.
Listen, Downpours don’t remember streets ,
And sunshine Can’t read Road signs