ISLAMABAD: The challenge for all humans is to reflect the divine by becoming an embodiment of love and compassion, for which we have to educate and purify our hearts.

Speaking at a session titled Awakening to Rumi on Tuesday, which was hosted by the Asian Study Group, a student of Sufism, Shazreh Hussain said Rumi unveiled the mystery of love in his book, the Masnavi.

Ms Hussain said she was anxious before the presentation and had prepared a 15-page lecture initially. She said she gave some friends the presentations, but they said it did not reflect her own feelings.

“So I put my books aside and looked into my own heart. I will speak today as an admirer of Rumi,” she said.

Ms Hussain talked about the first encounter between Rumi and Shams. She said Maulana Rumi was sitting near a pool and teaching some students when the two first met. Shams pointed to the books and asked the Maulana what they were to which he said Shams will not understand.

Shams is said to have flung the books into the water and when he retrieved them, they were not wet.

Rumi asked what had happened to which Shams had replied he would not understand.

She said the encounter conveys an important truth about the relationship between Shams and Rumi.

Shams literally and metaphorically took away the maulana’s book and showed him the path of love.

She quoted Sufi teacher Khadim Chishti as saying that the Maulana had to let go of his identity as a scholar and jurist to become close to God.

“It was the encounter with Shams, an uncompromising, intense, wandering dervish which made 37-year-old Rumi, a well-travelled, well-educated and well-respected Islamic scholar close to God whirl to music and poetry,” she said.

Ms Hussain added that after meeting Shams, Rumi composed over 60,000 lines of verses, lyrical poems, ghazals, qasidas and the epic Masnavi.

Rumi’s poetry reflected his devastation at losing his beloved spiritual companion as they spent less than three years after which Shams left, never to return.She said Rumi called the Masnavi, the heart’s paradise.

“I found it fascinating to learn that Hindu Brahmins in the 1500s were reciting the Masnavi in Bengal,” she said.

She recited Rumi’s books throughout the lecture and concluded with verses from the Masnavi, which say that the heart knows the reality that we are all interconnected. But there is also an angry, greedy and self-interested part of us which insists on separateness and which thinks it can shatter the other and preserve itself.

Published in Dawn, October 24th, 2018

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