The New Year 2005 and the 'Urs of Dr Sharib.

Because of the differences between the lunar and solar calenders this year
the occasion of the solar New Year is a doubly joyful occasion for those
associated with the founder of this site - Dr Zahurul Hasan Sharib. His death
anniversary this year falls on New Years Day. Its seems like yesterday that
the long vigil in Ajmer and later in the hospital in Jaipur came to an end and
we watched as the shrouded body of our 'friend, philosopher, and guide'
was lowered into a deep hole in the earth adjacent to the shrine of his own
guide Nawob Saheb. I have described the events in more detail elsewhere
on the web site so let us rather concentrate on his legacy or at least on one
aspect of his legacy - that is the awakening of the spirit. To awaken the
spirit - which lies deeper than the heart, intellect or bodily souls is the
hallmark of a true Sufi Sheykh. It is no easy task to bring the errant, willful
disciple to such a state of grace.

It was his way and custom to deliver short 'lectures' for the society of
mystics, at the turn of the year -  so as an expression of the gratitude and
love which eternally binds us I have tried to emulate this in my own way. I
dedicate this not to his memory but to his continued living presence not in
hope of the blessings that flow therefrom but of increased awareness of
that presence.

2005

The New Year looms large in front of us – and the old year begins to fade.
Some hopes and aspirations have been realised and some disappointments
have also occurred. There have been triumphs and disasters but it is better
to 'treat those two imposters just the same'. It is the way of things. Hazrat
Ali said he came to know God’s Will by the things in which he did not
succeed. Let us take heart from this and renew our aspirations for a better  
world – in which justice and peace prevail, in which the meek and humble
are given the respect they deserve and the help they need, in which hard
hearts become softened by thoughts and feelings of amity and goodwill to
all irrespective of caste, colour, or creed. In which the subtlety of good
human relationships triumph over brute force and ignorance.

This year, that is now passing, I was granted the gift to attend the death
anniversary of Khawaja Muinuddin Hasan Chishti in Ajmer and then later that
of Mevlana Rumi in Konya. These occasions lighten the load and cause the
heart to be revived anew – indeed cause it to dance with joy. In the case of
Mevlana Rumi I attended the joyful occasion following on from attending a
large Indian family wedding. Both were celebrations  of weddings. The first
was a conventionally happy occasion the second celebrated a union of a
different kind - the union of the soul of the saint to his Beloved.

There is a famous verse of Khawaja Uthman Harooni translated by
Zahurmian – it runs thus:

I do not know why at last to have a longing look I dance,
But I feel proud of the fondness that before the Friend I dance.
Thou strike the musical instrument and lo every time I dance,
In whatever way Thou cause me to dance, O Friend, I dance.

Come, O Beloved! See the spectacle that in the crowd of the intrepid and
daring,
With a hundred ignominies, in the heart of the market I dance.
Blessed is recklessness, that I trample underfoot the very many acts of
virtue.
Hail to piety that with the robe and the turban I dance!

I am Uthman–i-Haruni and a friend of Sheikh Mansur,
They revile and rebuke and on the gallows I dance.

Both weddings provoked feelings of elation which were in some way
expressed through dance. But whilst the one was a conventional celebration
of happiness the other was due to the awakening of the spirit. As Mevlana
Rumi puts it – ‘the earthly body soared to the skies’.

The bride and groom are sincerely wished happiness and prosperity but if it
lasts for seventy years, still it will be a transient thing. The other has about it
the flavour of eternity.

It is the eternal joy of the saints in union with the Beloved that inspires in us
the recollection of God - that enlivens the heart and brings the transient into
alignment with the eternal. The spirits of Sheikh Mansur and Khawaja
Uthman Haruni may be said to dance in eternity to the divine music of Life. It
is an expression  in a different mode of the simple philosophy of Khawaja
Uthman that we should not consider life as merely breathing in the
conventional sense but as being responsive to the spirit within.

I think very few people will be granted so full a sense of Life as such saints,
but still from their joyful union with the Divine comes inspiration for us all in
our everyday life. May it be granted to us all in the New Year to find in our
every day toil some flavour of that divine joy that we may catch something of
the hidden music of life and dance, inwardly at least, to the subtle rhythms
of existence.

Al-Latif is one of the beautiful names of God. It means subtlety. To detect
the subtle nuances of the Divine in the mundane is indeed a fine gift to which
we should aspire that our spirit may soar. That we may share with Shelley in
his ‘Ode to the Skylark’:

Hail to thee, blithe spirit,
Bird thou never wert,
That from heaven or near it,
Pourest thy full heart,
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Words that inspire inevitably evoke a dual response; whilst they speak to
our spirit they also bring a reaction of our lower nature that says in effect
‘this is all very well but the realities of everyday life how they press upon us
– these sentiments may be very fine in their place but really they are so
much hot air and romantic nonsense compared with the struggle for daily
survival’. Let us acknowledge such a response, it is part of our nature. It is
the same response we may have to Lord Jesus when he says,

‘Observe the birds in the air they do not sow or reap or store away in barns
and yet your heavenly father feeds them.’

If we identify with the grumbling of our ‘human nature’ rather than our
humanity, which is the elevation of our nature to the divine; if we ignore the
call of the spirit;  then we are destined to remain bound within the temporal
prison we call life; but which is really merely existing. If we listen to the call
of the spirit and respond – putting aside our worries and woes – then we
may hear the divine music and participate in the divine dance of life and may
realise the eternal in the temporal. At all events our grumbling nature does
not require reinforcement from our paying it attention – it will continue to
grumble on. Whilst our goal must remain to make ‘the earthly body soar’ our
attention must be on the potential of the spirit within to soar for it is the
awakening of this that so enlivens us within that even the body responds.

The Whirling Dervishes of Konya first remove their black cloaks and then
having received the blessing of the Sheikh they begin to turn in their long
white dresses. Like spirits soaring they turn and turn in patterns of
breathtaking beauty – however the Sheikh remains quite still. It is only at the
last that he moves slowly forward and he himself turns – but very slowly and
with great dignity – not at all in the relatively rapid motions of the dancers. It
appears as if, finally the earthly body has become inspired and moved.
From this we take the lesson that by concentrating our attention on the call
of our spirit at last even our bodily nature participates in the divine dance.
They bring the occasion to a close with a beautiful recital of a sura of the
holy Qur'an and blessings on the holy Prophet.

In Ajmer at the 'Urs of Khawaja Muinuddin Hasan Chishti, the same principle
is seen.  There the musicians reach great heights of inspirational singing but
the Sufis remain resolutely still in body allowing only the spirit or heart (there
is a difference) to soar with the musicians until at last someone  becomes
so overwhelmed that the spirit grabs his body and turns him, helplessly
around until, as Mevlana Rumi puts it,  ‘Moses fell in a swoon’. Here too the
exaltation is rounded out with Qur'an recitation.

The application of this to our daily lives may not at first seem too evident but
think it over. To dance around our office or work place ‘moved by the spirit’
in the sense described would be a nonsense but to deny the spirit within
would be a kind of death. To sense even in apparently mundane activity the
breathing of the spirit is to Live. Let us aspire to it. But God knows best.

I wish you a Happy New Year. May it fulfil the best of your hopes and
aspirations.  May the mercy of Allah be ever upon Hazrat Dr Zahurul Hasan
Sharib Gudri Shah Baba.

Jamiluddin Morris Zahuri