{"id":8083,"date":"2022-06-17T11:07:45","date_gmt":"2022-06-17T18:07:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/?p=8083"},"modified":"2022-06-17T11:07:45","modified_gmt":"2022-06-17T18:07:45","slug":"mahmud-shabistari-the-beloved-guest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/2022\/06\/17\/mahmud-shabistari-the-beloved-guest\/","title":{"rendered":"Mahmud Shabistari – The Beloved Guest"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Beloved Guest
\nby Mahmud Shabistari<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

English version by Florence Lederer<\/font><\/p>\n

Cast away your existence entirely,
\nfor it is nothing but weeds and refuse.
\nGo, clear out your heart\u2019s chamber;
\narrange it as the abiding-place of the Beloved.
\nWhen you go forth, He will come in,
\nand to you, with self discarded,
\nHe will unveil His beauty.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a> \u2014 from The Secret Rose Garden: Mahmud Shabistari<\/a>, Translated by Florence Lederer \/ Edited by David Fideler<\/font><\/p>\n


\/ Image by Aziz Acharki<\/a> \/<\/em><\/font><\/p>\n

Again and again the great mystics and saints remind us to \u201ccast away your existence entirely.\u201d This is expressed in many ways in the various world traditions: to die in order to live, to lose yourself in order to be found.<\/p>\n

Why all this morbid insistence in every tradition on self-negation? It is important to understand which \u201cself\u201d is being negated. The self that must be \u201ccast away\u201d is the false self, the little self, the ego \u2014 the nafs in Sufi terminology.<\/p>\n

Until the ego is truly dropped, it rules our perception of reality like a miser. That ego has a secret it desperately must hide from our everyday awareness: it doesn\u2019t really exist. At best we can say the ego is like a tension in the psyche, but it isn\u2019t a real thing in and of itself. <\/p>\n

So long as a person believes in the reality of that phantom ego, so long as we identify with that nagging cramp of the \u201cme\u201d-sense, then seeing its inherent unreality is inconceivable, terrifying. The absence of ego is mistakenly assumed to be one\u2019s own death. Recoiling in fear, the psyche reflexively limits our perception of everything around us, crippling the consciousness, all in order to perpetuate the illusion of the ego and so protect us against \u201cdeath.\u201d The result, however, is that the simple truth remains hidden: The ego does not exist, and we are not the ego; we survive the loss of ego.<\/p>\n

The way out of this trap is to \u2014 with deep love, infinite patience, elegant balance, and unshakable determination \u2014 loosen the ego\u2019s bindings until it falls away naturally.<\/p>\n

When we accomplish that, we stand in mute amazement. For, when the ego \u201cyou\u201d has left, the Divine One \u201cwill come in,\u201d and \u201cunveil His beauty\u201d to us. And, although that radiant beauty reveals itself to be everywhere, it is also recognized as contentedly abiding in the \u201cheart\u2019s chamber.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/a>Recommended Books: Mahmud Shabistari<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n\n

<\/p>\n

\n\n\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

<\/center>
\n<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/td>\n<\/a><\/td>\n<\/a><\/td>\n<\/a><\/td>\n<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
The Longing in Between: Sacred Poetry from Around the World (A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology)<\/a><\/small><\/td>\nPerfume of the Desert: Inspirations from Sufi Wisdom<\/a><\/small><\/td>\nThe Secret Rose Garden: Mahmud Shabistari<\/a><\/small><\/td>\nBeyond Faith and Infidelity: The Sufi Poetry and Teachings of Mahmud Shabistari<\/a><\/small><\/td>\n<\/a><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\n\n
\n\"Mahmud<\/a>\n<\/td>\n\nMahmud Shabistari<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Iran\/Persia (1250? \u2013 1340) Timeline<\/a>
\nMuslim \/ Sufi<\/a><\/a>
\n<\/a><\/a><\/em>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

<\/p>\n

Mahmud Shabistari lived in Persia (Iran) during the time of the Mongol invasions of the region. It was a terrible time of massacres by the invading armies, exacerbating internal strife and religious sectarianism. Yet it is also during this time that the Golden Age of Persian Sufism emerged.<\/p>\n

Shabistari\u2019s Secret Rose Garden (the Gulistan-i Raz<\/i>, which can also be translated as The Rose Garden of Mystery) is considered to be one of the greatest works of Persian Sufism.<\/p>\n

In the Secret Rose Garden, Shabistari expresses a viewpoint of Sufi realization similar to the perspective of the great Sufi philosopher Ibn Arabi, but expressed through elegant Persian poetic language.<\/p>\n

The value of Shabistari\u2019s work was recognized almost immediately. Many commentaries on the work by other Sufi mystics soon began to appear. The Secret Rose Garden quickly was regarded as one of the central works of Sufism.<\/p>\n

More poetry by Mahmud Shabistari<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Beloved Guest by Mahmud Shabistari English version by Florence Lederer Cast away your existence entirely, for it is nothing but weeds and refuse. Go, clear out your heart\u2019s chamber; arrange it as the abiding-place of the Beloved. When you go forth, He will come in, and to you, with self discarded, He will unveil […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[473,3],"tags":[503,893,57,193,56,19],"class_list":["post-8083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lover_and_beloved","category-poetry","tag-ego","tag-heart","tag-mahmud-shabistari","tag-muslim-poetry","tag-shabistari","tag-sufi-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8083"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8084,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8083\/revisions\/8084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}