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Poetry Chaikhana
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Meditation
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by Hakim Sanai
(1044? - 1150?) Timeline
English version by Peter Lamborn Wilson and Nasrollah Pourjavady
Original Language Persian/Farsi
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Collect your mind's fragments that you may fill yourself bit by bit with Meaning: the slave who meditates on the mysteries of Creation for sixty minutes gains more merit than from sixty years of fasting and prayer. Meditation: high-soaring hawk of Intellect's wrist resting at last on the flowering branch of the Heart: this world and the next are hidden beneath its folded wing. Now perched before the mud hut which is Earth now clasping with its talons a branch of the Tree of Paradise soaring here striking there -- each moment fresh prey gobbling a mouthful of moonlight wheeling away beyond the sun darting between the Great Wheel's star-set spokes, it rips to shreds the Footstool and the Throne a Pigeon's feather in its beak -- or a comet -- till finally free of everything it alights, silent on a topmost bough. Hunting is king's sport, not just anyone's pastime but you? you've hooded the falcon -- what can I say? -- clipped its pinions broken its wings... alas.
 / Photo by Hello, I'm Chuck /
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Commentary by Ivan M. Granger
This is such an interesting poem to me on several levels. Sometimes Persian poets will make reference to a king's hunting hawk. It is an image of noble bearing, heights of vision, and fierce service. But here Sanai compares meditation itself to a hunting hawk.
Meditation:
high-soaring hawk
of Intellect's wrist
resting at last
on the flowering branch
of the Heart:
That's a great element of the metaphor to contemplate: meditation begins with the intellect, but leaves the intellect behind. It then soars high into the heavens, before coming to rest in the wild, naturally flowering heart. That right there is worth its thinking about more deeply.
soaring here
striking there -- each moment
fresh prey...
But the lines that describe meditation as a hunter are what most grab my attention. Meditation boldly hunts all of existence, vanquishing everything between earth and heaven. Every single instant is prey for meditation. "Each moment fresh prey..."
For meditation, everything is prey, everything is food. And, as meditation hunts, the meditator sits still, watching in wonder, as this fierce hawk clears away the multiplicities of existence in the vision of unity.
But hawking is the game of kings. Here's our challenge: Do we sport with the world as kings, or do we clip meditation's wings?
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M. Granger's original poetry, stories and commentaries are Copyright ©
2002 - 2011 by Ivan M. Granger.
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