***

Receive Love’s letters and let go of the pigeons
And your heart will fly higher with Love.
Wherever you look,
You will see the Face of the Beloved
For He is with you wherever you are
And is never absent!
You will always live in love with the Truly Real (al-Haqq)!
And you will never lose Love when the pigeons fly away!
O Soul, do not then lose sight of the Beloved

***

Everything reminds the lover of his Beloved
And for that he loves everything
There is no loss in that Love
There is always a new letter;
For the Beloved is swift in sending
And is always Creative!
Thus, the lover cannot think but in the Beloved
His actions are to please the Beloved
He worries to displease the Beloved
He cannot eat or drink but with the Beloved
Every chanting reminds Him of the Beloved
He sleeps with his lips praising the Beloved
And wakes with his lips glorifying the Beloved

***

He calls the Beloved
And attentively awaits the answer
And the Beloved keeps writing
For even if all the trees were pens
And all oceans were ink
They would cease
but the words of the Beloved will forever continue

***

The amazing reality of Love
Is that no matter how the lover is brought near to the Beloved
He wishes to draw even nearer
For the Beloved’s expressions are eternal
So, O soul: Read!

The lover pursues more and more knowledge of God, for every new Divine gift increases his or her desire. As this desire increases, new gifts pour into the lover’s heart. He or she embroiders the acquired knowledge of God with the feelings and thoughts traveling between his or her heart and things. Like a honeybee collecting nectar from flowers and thus making flowers the source of honey, the lover collects the nectar of the knowledge of God from the manifestations of Divine Names and Attributes that open like flowers in the garden of the universe. He or she distills the collected nectar through the filter of his or her appreciative, grateful conscience, and feels as if his or her sight has reached the rays of the Attributes themselves. Then the dream of reaching the Divine Being is realized, and the lover is stricken with the utter astonishment.

Sa’di, The writer of Gulistan (The Rose Garden) expresses the traveler’s feelings of astonishment and amazement while burning and drinking:

At times You show Your Beautiful Face,
but It is veiled without being completely seen,
thus You incite us to compete to be able to see You
and increase our fire.
When I see unveiled the Beloved
with Whom I have fallen in love,
something occurs to me
and I am bewildered on my way.
The Beloved lights a fire in my breast
and then puts it out with a drizzle.
That is why you find me burnt away
and drowned in an ocean.
Ismail Haqqi Bursavi presents travelers as incessantly intoxicated:
All saintly ones are intoxicated
with the pure water their Lord offers them (76:21);
seven, five, and four are intoxicated
with His Beautiful “Face.”

If the traveler has not prepared his or her heart according to the requirements of the spiritual journey and the commandments of the Shari’a, that is, if one does not think and reason in the light of the Prophethood while one’s feelings fly in the boundless realm of the achieved spiritual state, he or she will inevitably fall, be confused and bewildered, and speak and act contrary to the spirit of the Shari’a.

Mulla Jami’ expresses astonishment and amazement in his vivid language:
The women of Egypt were astounded and cut their hands when
they saw the beauty of Joseph. O Master, the light of my eyes,
if they had seen Your Beauty, they would have thrust the daggers
in their hands into their breasts. Speaking of Joseph’s
beauty where Your Beauty is mentioned, is no more than making
up stories.

In other words, if transient, worldly beauty and perfection that only reflect the Infinitely Perfect and Beautiful One through many veils can seduce us, how great will be our inability to perceive the dazzling awe and amazement produced by beholding and gazing upon that Beauty.

Those who prefer to serve Islam and the Qur’an at this point in time should not aim at all the pleasures, whether bodily or spiritual. Rather, they should continue their service, assisted by God, in awe of and with amazement at the extent to which God comes to their aid and makes them successful. They should never conceive of anything other than serving Islam. This is a special gift of amazement to the army of light from God’s special treasury of: We make the distribution among them (43:32).

O God! Create a light in my heart, a light in my tongue, a light in my sight, a light in my hearing, a light on my right, a light on my left, a light before me, a light after me, a light above me, and a light below me. And bestow blessing and peace on the one whom You sent as a light, on his Family and Companions, all of them.

Literally meaning strong desire, excessive yearning, joy issuing from knowing, delight, and longing, shawq (joyful zeal) is used by Sufis to express the heart’s overwhelming desire to meet with the Beloved, Who cannot be comprehended and “vanishes” after being “observed.” Some have described this as joyful desire, excitement, and a lover’s excessive heartfelt longing to see the Face of the Beloved. Others have regarded it as a fire that reduces to ashes all desires, wishes, yearnings, and inclinations other than the love for and inclination toward the Beloved.

Joyful zeal originates in love. The remedy of a heart burning with such a longing to meet with the Beloved is meeting with Him, and shawq is the wing of light that carries the lover to this meeting. Zeal disappears when a lover finds the Beloved, while the yearning for Him (ishtiyaq) continues to increase. One who yearns for Him never stops yearning and, whenever favored with a special manifestation of His Essence, wishes for more. This is why the prince of the Prophets and the greatest of humanity, upon him be peace and blessings, who, equipped at each moment with a new radiance of knowledge, love of God, and spiritual delight, incessantly traveled between the summits of love, joyful zeal, and yearning, and used to pray: O God! I ask You for zeal to observe Your perfectly beautiful “Face” and to meet with You.

Some interpreters of the Qur’an, when writing about: Those who believe are firmer in love of God (2:265) remark that joyful zeal is felt toward things that are partly perceivable and partly unperceivable, partly comprehensible and partly incomprehensible. One feels no zeal toward that which he or she has never seen or heard of, or about which he or she knows nothing. Nor does he or she feel interest in that which he or she completely comprehends or perceives.

Zeal and yearning can be divided into two categories. The first is the yearning produced by separation from the Beloved after meeting with and gazing upon Him in the past eternity. The sighs uttered by the flute of Rumi, and the creaking, painful sounds heard by Yunus Emre from the revolving water-wheel express such a separation. These sighs will continue until the final union or meeting with Him. The second category is when a lover sees the Beloved from behind a veil, and thus cannot completely comprehend Him. The believer feels His presence, but cannot see Him; he or she dips a finger into the honey of love but is not allowed to take a further step. Consumed with thirst, the believer cries: I am being consumed with thirst! Give me some water! but receives no answer.

The spirit of all men and women observed Him in an assembly of past eternity, where God asked them: Am I not your Lord? and they answered: Yes, assuredly. We testify! After this assembly, either because humanity’s very humanness required it or because humanity had to be tested, to believe in Him without seeing Him, humanity was thrown into the pangs of temporary separation. This is why people always dream of Him in a conscious or unconscious longing for Him, and burn with a yearning to re-unite with Him. What is more significant than this is the yearning which the All-Sacred Being has toward pure, innocent, and unadulterated souls, but only in a way that is appropriate for His essential independence of all being. This Divine eagerness may be the real source of the yearning that enters one’s heart.

Zeal means turning to the Beloved with all inner and outer feelings, and locking out all appetites other than those one feels to meet with Him. In the context of yearning, it means one is overflowing with desires and wishes related to Him. Both zeal and yearning feed the spirit. Both are painful but exhilarating, and distressing but promising.

No individual experiences more anguish, nor is none happier, than the one who burns with love and groans with zeal. Such people become so spiritualized when enraptured with the thought and hope of meeting with God that they would not agree to enter Paradise at that moment, even if allowed to do so. They burn inwardly with the pangs of separation to such a degree that even the waters of Paradise cannot extinguish the fire in their hearts. Only meeting with the Friend can extinguish such a fire. Paradoxically, they never think of escaping that fire, for even if they were offered the sanctuary of the palaces of Paradise to prevent them from burning with the fire of zeal to meet with the Friend, such people would scream out like the inhabitants of Hell who seek to be rescued from Hellfire.

Worldly people cannot know what that zeal means or the state of those who possess it, while people of zeal are amazed at worldly people, so engrossed in their worldly affairs and pleasures.

Their amazement is quite natural, for God Almighty told Prophet David, upon him be peace:

O David! If those who love and show inclination to the world knew how much I care about them, want them to resist against sins, and how I expect to meet with human beings, they would be dying with the zeal to meet with Me.

When the zeal to meet with God invades a lover’s being, the result is an overflow of feelings of pain and delight and cries of:

Zeal has bewildered me, zeal has burnt me.
Zeal has intervened between sleep and my eyes.
Zeal has invaded me, zeal has engrossed me.
Zeal has overwhelmed me, zeal has stricken me with awe.

This degree of zeal sometimes incites the lover to stand up and dance or spin. The lover should be excused for such movements, as he or she cannot resist such a spiritual state:

Say to him who wants to prevent a man of ecstasies from going into ecstasies:

You have not tasted the wine of love together with us, so leave us.
When souls overflow with the zeal to meet with the Beloved,
know, O you unaware of spirituality, that bodies begin to dance.
O guide who incites lovers, stand up and move us
with the name of the Beloved, and breathe life into us.

In our own day, some prefer to serve the Qur’an and faith by the way based on acknowledging one’s poverty or destitution and impotence or helplessness before God’s Wealth and Power, and on thankfulness and zeal. In this context, zeal means constant hope and continuing to serve without becoming dispirited or losing one’s energy. It also means seeking an aspect of Divine mercy even in the most distressing conditions, and then relying upon Him alone for His help and victory.

O God! I ask You for zeal and yearning to meet with You, and bestow blessing and peace on our master Muhammad, the master of those full of this zeal and yearning.

While a lover who transcends his or her self with the wings of love and reaches the Lord in the horizon of passion and enthusiasm, and carries out his or her responsibilities toward the King of his or her with his or her inner and outer senses and faculties, the heart of that lover is set on His vision. Such a believer’s nature is “burned” with the light of Divine Grandeur or the Divine “Facial” Light, and lost in wonder and amazement. With the cup of love on one’s lips, while the veils of the Unseen are lifted one after the other, he or she becomes intoxicated with studying the meanings that come in rays from behind those veils, and is enraptured with the pleasure of watching the scenes behind them. One’s walking and stopping occur at the command of God, speech is no more than the inspiration that comes from Him, and silence, when observed, is done in His name. At various times, he or she journeys toward Him or is in His “company,” or is occupied with communicating His message to others. Some have defined love, in the context of God’s love of His distinguished servants, as bestowing favors, and as obedience, devotion, and unconditional submission in the context of a servant’s love of God. The following couplets of Rabi‘atu’l-‘Adawiya are significant in expressing this meaning:

You talk about loving God while you disobey Him;
I swear by my life that this is something very strange.
If you were truthful in your love, you would obey Him,
for a lover obeys whom he loves.

Love is based on two important pillars: that which is manifested by the lover’s acts (a lover tries to comply with the Beloved’s will), and the lover’s inner world (a lover should inwardly be closed to anything not related to Him). Heroes of love mean this when they talk about love. According to them, emotional concern with or love of any kind of pleasure, including spiritual, cannot be called “ love” in its true sense. It can only be figurative love.

Every lover cannot feel the same degree of love for the Beloved, for love varies according to the lover’s spiritual and emotional depth, the degree of consciousness of and care in obedience to the Beloved. For example, the love felt by those beginning the way is not established and constant. They dream of acquiring the rank of perfect goodness in the shade of the Truth of Muhammad as Ahmad and, at times, receive signs of knowledge of God, thrill at the twinkle of the “light” appearing on their horizon, and vaguely feel amazement and wonder. On the other hand, those who have made great progress fly in the heaven of love toward the highest point. They live in the bright climate of the Qur’an as embodiments and examples of the good morals of Prophet Muhammad, upon him be peace and blessings. While trying to represent his good morals, they expect no material or spiritual reward and demand no pleasure. Even at the summit of this holy representation, like fruit-bearing trees whose branches bend with the weight of their fruit, they lower their wings of humility and always mention the Beloved. If they are shaken with a fault or error, they severely criticize and fight with themselves. And finally, those most advanced in the love of God are like rain clouds in the “heaven” of Islam. They feel all existence with Him, live with Him, and see and breathe with Him. In a neverending cycle, they are filled with pangs of separation (from Him) and a desire to meet Him; when relieved or emptied, they mount on a beam of light and descend to the earth to embrace the whole of existence.

One who turns to Him with heartfelt desire and sincere enthusiasm, regardless of the degree of love, receives a reward according to the depth of feeling and concern for Him. The first group of people mentioned above receive special favor and mercy. The second group of people reach the horizon of perceiving the Attributes of Grace and Majesty, and are freed from defects of character. Those of the third group are illumined by the light of His Being, awakened to the reality of things, and are in touch with the dimension of existence behind veils. That is, the Almighty manifests the light of His Grandeur or “Face” to burn up the corporeal attributes of those whom He loves and elevates them to the realm of Divine Attributes, such as the All-Seeing and All-Hearing. He awakens them fully to the fact that they are poor and helpless before Him, and fills their hearts with the light of His existence.

One whose love has reached this degree, and who is rewarded with so much Divine favor, attains an eternal life beyond existence or non-existence. Like a bar of iron put into fire and thus appearing as a bar of fire, such a lover may be unable to distinguish the Divine Being and His manifestations, and therefore expresses feelings and experiences in terms associated with such false beliefs as incarnation and union (with God). In such circumstances, one must consider the Sunna’s established criteria. The expressions uttered by profoundly spiritual individuals lost in and intoxicated with love of God cannot be used as the criteria by which to judge them. Otherwise, we may feel enmity toward such friends of God, who are favored with His continuous company according to the Prophetic Tradition: A man is with him whom he loves, and, as declared in the hadith qudsi: Whoever becomes an enemy of My friends has waged war on Me.

O God! Endear belief to us and made it appealing to our hearts, and make unbelief, transgression, and rebellion hateful to us; and include us among those with right conduct and sound thinking. And bestow blessings and peace on our master Muhammad, the master the Messengers.

The best place to begin this discussion is with the Qur’an. There are numerous verses that mention love, but whenever the word love is used “the quality is always ascribed to God and human beings, and nothing else; and God’s love is always directed at human beings.” Not only does this mean that the relationship between God and human beings is unique, but love defines that unique relationship. In the verses that mention love for God, the Qur’an makes two important points. Firstly, God wants people to love him, and secondly, their love for God follows upon His love for them. The verse of the Qur’an most cited for this is “…whom He loves, and who love Him” (5:54). The inferences that Sufi mystics have drawn from this verse is that love cannot be learned, it is the result of divine grace, and the initiative comes from God. This feeling of God’s desire “to love and to be loved” inspired Rumi to suggest:

Not a single lover would seek union if the beloved were not seeking it.

The message of the Qur’an compelled Muslims to understand their relationship with God as one requiring reciprocated love. Sufi poets then searched for a vocabulary to describe their love for God, including words not found in the Qur’an or Hadiths.

In the early period of Sufism “the majority of teachings on love are contained in poems and brief statements that focus upon the human love for God, wherein there is always a duality between the human lover and the Divine Beloved.” This developed into a trend within Sufi thought in which “all aspects of creation and spiritual aspiration are presented in an imaginal language fired by love.” An important development in this trend was the use of the word for passionate love, ishq, rather than the more accepted vocabulary of the Qur’an. The Qur’anic terms for love are hubb and mahabba that describe the measured affection of God. Ishq came into the lexicon of Sufi poetry to describe “the essential desire for God and the love of God as an essential attribute, which fills the heart of the mystic.” Using the word ishq in a religious context means that:

Love is no longer merely an expression of gratitude for the blessings of God; it is no longer content with rigorous asceticism and meticulous ritual observance. It becomes an absolute necessity, entailing neither enjoyment nor alleviation, but intensifying as the reciprocity of the lover and the loved comes into effect.

By redefining their love for God as ishq, the early Sufi poets extended their vocabulary, and by doing this they could more accurately describe their inner response to the revelation of the Qur’an. The recognition of two types of love is expressed by Rabia in the following quatrain:

Two loves I give thee, love that yearns.
And love because thy due is love.
My yearning, my remembrance turns
To Thee, nor lets it from thee rove.

Here, Rabia identifies the spontaneous love for God she feels within herself – and the dutiful love she is obliged to give to God in the performance of her religious responsibilities. As Chittick wrote, “Love pertains to the experiential dimension of Sufism, not the theoretical; it must be experienced to be understood.” Sufism connects experiential knowledge to the belief that “nothing is dearer to God than that man loves him.” A mystic and poet who lived in Anatolia in the same period as Rumi, Yunus Emre, described the intensifying experience of love for God:

Your love has wrested me away from me
You’re the one I need, you’re the one I crave.
Day and night I burn, gripped by agony,
You’re the one I need, you’re the one I crave.
For Yunus Emre, “love is the most powerful of everything.”

When love for God is described in terms of passion then the language of romantic love is readily accessible to be adapted as the metaphoric language of the spiritual journey. In Sufi poetry there is a convention of the spiritual supplicant being called the lover of God, while God is referred to as the Beloved. Throughout Sufi poetry we read verses that elaborate ideas about the relationship of the lover and the Beloved. A good example of this is seen in this verse by Rumi:

Lovers share a sacred decree –
to seek the Beloved.
They roll head over heels
rushing toward the Beautiful One
like a torrent of water.

Here God has two titles, the Beloved and the Beautiful One, but this poem could easily be read as secular love poetry. In this verse Rumi includes the beliefs that the impetus to love comes from God, as it is a sacred decree, and doing so is as unstoppable as the rush of water.

Another poem of Rumi that can be read as secular love poetry uses less recognizable references to God:

In one sweet moment
She burst from my heart.
There we sat on the floor,
drinking ruby wine.
Trapped by her beauty,
I saw and I touched –
My whole face became eyes,
All my eyes became hands.

Through the use of the conventional poetic symbols of his era, for example, drinking wine as a symbol for spiritual intoxication, the poet again express both secular and spiritual meanings simultaneously. As one of the translators of the above piece comments in his introduction to the selection of Rumi’s poems:

Nothing with Rumi can be taken literally: One must always be aware of the meaning behind the meaning, and the veils behind veils.

The translator Jonathon Star, says that Rumi, like other Sufi poets, at “the deepest level” of his poetry “tells only one story: the soul’s search for the Beloved.”

For Rumi, passionate love, ishq, has two expressions. The first is love in the material world, “like the love between male and female”, and the second is the “real love,” which is the “love felt toward God.” These couplets of Rumi’s explain how the poet signified both aspects of ishq:

Love is the attribute of God, who has no need of anyone. To be in love with other than Him is metaphorical love.
And
Love, be it real or metaphorical,
Ultimately takes humans to God.

These two couplets express two fundamental beliefs of Sufism. In the first couplet we read that love is an attribute of God – as stated in the Qur’an. In the second we see that love “takes humans to God.”

While the Qur’an shows that love is an attribute of God, for many adherents of the Sufi tradition love is God’s most important attribute because for the spiritual journey of the wayfarer, love provides the path that takes them to reunion with God. In Rumi’s “spiritual masterpiece,” the Masnavi, the poet seeks to show that “God is known primarily through love.” The significance given to love in this part of the Islamic tradition has allowed some to suggest simply that “God is Love.” However, it is important to note that love is not the only attribute of God:

…He is Mercy, Knowledge, Life, Power and Will. He possesses all these qualities; His Being is the same as their Being; but we may not say that God is Mercy and nothing else, or that He is Knowledge and nothing else… He possesses all His Attributes absolutely, yet in His Essence He is beyond them all.

More than a generation before Rumi the mystic Farid al-Din Attar (d.1220) wrote a variation of the shahada (testimony of faith) as la ilaha illa ishq – No God but Love. In his Divan Rumi shows that he did not believe God could be defined as such. In fact, this excerpt from the Divan could be commenting on the above phrase of Attar:

Others call Thee Love, but I call Thee the Sultan of Love – oh Thou who are beyond the concept of this or that, do not go without me!

Rumi’s poetry not only shows that God cannot be defined but He can only be described with symbol, metaphor or analogy, which eventually also proves to be inadequate:

All of these are symbols – I mean that the other
world keeps coming into this world.
Like cream hidden in the soul of milk, No place
keeps coming into this place.
Like intellect concealed in blood and skin, the
Traceless keeps entering into traces.
And from beyond the intellect, beautiful Love
comes dragging its skirts, a cup of wine in its hand.
And from beyond Love, that Indescribable One
who can only be called “That” keeps coming.

In this piece of sublime verse Rumi uses analogy to communicate a sense of God. We also see an explanation of the variance of love and intellect, but most importantly, embedded in the poetry, Rumi presents the difference between love as an attribute of God, and “the Indescribable One who can only be called ‘That'” which is God.

As we saw in one of the couplets quoted above, Rumi believed that love, “real or metaphorical, ultimately takes humans to God.” The journey to reunion with God was made by “constant purification and, in exchange, qualification with God’s attributes.” For the Sufi mystic, “the qualities of the Beloved enter in the place of the qualities of the lover.” This is a heightened sense of jihad, when jihad is thought of as “the personal struggle against one’s own shortcomings that is required of all Muslims so that they can perfect their submission.”

For the Sufi mystic, however, the demand of reunion with God was to “qualify yourself with the qualities of God,” which was achieved by constant mental struggle to exchange the base qualities of the mystic for the praiseworthy qualities by which God has described himself in the Qur’anic revelation. The Mevlevi Sufi, Sefik Can, suggests this is achieved when “The goal of the Sufi mystic is to understand and love The One who has created humankind.” The connection of love to reunion with God is explained when Sefik Can says “In the Sufi tradition, love is described as annihilation in the Beloved.” Again, the poetry of Rumi makes a vivid representation of this teaching:

Love came and it made me empty.
Love came and it filled me with the Beloved.
It became the blood in my body
It became my arms and my legs.
It became everything!
Now all I have is a name,
The rest belongs to the Beloved.

The verse describes the progressive, experiential knowledge of love. First came abandonment of the ego. Then, came submission whereby one no longer acts according to the ego, but in submission to the Beloved who now becomes “… his hearing with which he hears, his seeing with which he sees, his hand with which he strikes and his foot with which he walks…” as in the well-known hadith qudsi. The Sufi understanding of the annihilation of the self in the Beloved can be regarded as an expression of the ultimate understanding of tawhid – asserting God’s unity. Annemarie Schimmel suggests that “to declare that God is One is the goal of religious life for the Muslim in general and the Sufi in particular.” An elaboration of this idea leads to the assertion that only God has real existence and hence only God has the right to say “I,” for “God is the only true subject.”

It is the tawhid that underpins the expression of love in Sufi poetry because “the true lover sees everything as pertaining to his beloved.” This is a teaching that Rumi sought to convey in the Masnavi-ye Ma’navi, for he intended

… to coax out of his readers the misapprehension that the world is made up of a multitude of separate selves apart from God and into the knowledge that all reality subsists only in relation to God.

It is a state of mind whereby “the poets recognized God everywhere,” as Annemarie Schimmel said, citing the verse of the Qur’an that inspired this awareness: “Withersoever ye turn, there is the face of God” (Surah 2/109). Two couplets quoted by Schimmel use the above-mentioned symbolism of wine to begin their explanation of tawhid:

The glass is all and the wine is naught,
Or the glass is naught and the wine is all –
but the vocabulary of religion concludes the realization:
That all that is, is He indeed:
Soul and loved one and heart and creed.

Because “love is desire and need,” it is stated that God, at the level of His attributes, created the world because He desired (or “loved”) to be known. Furthermore, God’s love for the Prophet is evident in this saying, “But for thee I would not have made the celestial spheres.” Ultimately, God’s desire to be revealed through the prophets and the saints “was the motivating force in His creation of the universe,” and all the world’s forms, movements and activities result from that original love. On this Rumi wrote:

The creatures are set in motion by Love, Love by Eternity-without-beginning; the wind dances because of the spheres, the trees because of the wind.

When we use the metaphor of the spiritual journey, we know from Sufi poetry that love is the vehicle par excellence for the traveller.

Bibliography

• Can, Sefik. 2005. The Fundamentals of Rumi’s Thought: A Mevlevi Sufi Perspective. Translated by Cuneyt Eroglu and Zeki Saritoprak, New Jersey: The Light Inc.
• Chittick, William C. 1983. The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi, Albany: State University of New York Press.
• Lumbard, J.E.B. 2007. “From Hubb to Ishq: The Development of Love in Early Sufism.” Journal of Islamic Studies, 18:3, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Murata, S. and Chittick, W.C. 1994. The Vision of Islam, London: I.B. TAURIS.
• Rumi. 1992. A Garden Beyond Paradise: The Mystical Poetry of Rumi, translated by Jonathon Star and Shahram Shiva, New York: Bantam Books.
• Rumi. 2006. Spiritual Verses: The First Book of the Masnavi-ye Ma’navi, translated by Alan Williams, London: Penguin,.
• Schimmel, A. 1975. Mystical Dimensions of Islam. University of North Carolina Press.
• Schimmel, A. 1982. As Through a Veil, Mystical Poetry in Islam. New York: Columbia University Press.
• von Donzel, E., Lewis, B., and Pellat, C. (eds). 1978. The Encyclopedia of Islam, New Edition, Vol. 4, Leidin, Netherlands: E.J. Brill.
• Yunus Emre, trans. Turgut Durduran. http://www.stwing.upenn.edu. Accessed 17/5/08.

Day and night I burn gripped by agony, You are the One I need

I find no great joy in being alive; if I cease to exist, I would not grieve,

The only solace I have is your love; You are the One I need

Your love slays lovers; makes them dive into the sea of love

Fills them with the image of God; You are the One I need

Let me drink the wine of love; like Majnun, live in the mountain of hardship,

Day and night, You are my sole concern; You are the one I need

The Sufis seek for friendly conversation; the Akhis look for the hereafter

Majnuns (lovers) seek for their Leylas (beloved); You are the One I need

Even if, at the end, they make me die; And scatter my ashes up to the sky,

My soil would break into this outcry; You are the one I need.

Yunus Emre, the mystic, is my name; Each passing day rouses my flame,

What I desire in both worlds is the same; You are the one I need.

Yunus Emre is a famous sufi poet who lived in Asia Minor in the thirteenth century.

As love is an innate need, we love delicious foods and fruits; our parents, spouse, children, friends, and companions; pious people, Prophets, and saints; life and youth; the season of spring, beautiful things, and the world. When all of these things and people either abandon us, due to their absence, whether temporary or permanent, or cause us to suffer, due to their own sufferings (e.g., illness, death, old age) that touch our hearts, we cannot help but ask: “Since I cannot stop myself from loving them, can I love them in a way that will not cause me any pain?” Is there a recipe for painless love?

By means of the will, love’s face may turn from one object of love to another. For example, when a beloved displays some ugliness or shows that he or she is a veil or mirror to another beloved, who is truly worthy of love, then love’s face may be turned from the metaphorical beloved to the true beloved.

Recipe for painless love

Love may cause pain due to one’s separation from the beloved, the beloved’s decline, or the beloved’s lack of response. In order to experience painless love, then, the subject of our love must be everlasting, immune to decline, and sure to respond. Only God, Who is eternal and everlasting, does not decline, and always answers our love for Him, has these attributes.

Therefore, the recipe for painless love is to dedicate our true love to God and to love everything for His sake. It is unreasonable to expect a person not to love that which he or she loves. But it is possible to love them for God Almighty’s sake and in the name of His Love? Let’s consider some examples:

Love of delicious food

The love of delicious food and luscious fruit can be changed to a love for God’s sake by seeing them as the bounties of God Almighty, the All-Merciful and Compassionate One. In this way, our love for them becomes a love of His Names, the All-Merciful and the Bestower of Bounties. Moreover, it takes on the meaning of thanks. Such love seeks gain contentedly within the sphere what is permissible, thereby showing that it is both for the sake of the instinctual soul and in the name of the All-Merciful One. It is to enjoy something thoughtfully and with gratitude.

Love of parents

Love and respect for one’s parents, for the sake of the Divine Wisdom and Mercy that compassionately entrusted you to them and caused them to bring you up with tender care, pertain to God Almighty’s love. The sign that this love, respect, and compassion are for God’s sake is that when they are old, useless, and troublesome, we become even more loving, kind, and compassionate toward them. The Qur’anic verse: Your Lord has enjoined you to worship none but Him, and to show kindness to your parents. Should one of them, or both, attain to old age in your care, never say to them a single word of contempt, nor rebuke them, but speak to them kind words (17:23), exemplifies this attitude. Being kind to parents also is mentioned in Qur’an 2:83, 2:215, 4:36, 6:151, 17:23-24, 19:14, 19:32, 29:8, 31:14, 46:15, and 71:28.

God’s Unity and not associating any partners with Him is the Qur’an’s most important message. Yet in the Qur’an 2:83, 6:151, 17:23, 31:14, treating one’s parents with kindness is ordered right after this most important principle. This demonstrates how important our parents’ rights are, and how ugly it would be to show any ingratitude to them.

Parents deserve their children’s utmost love and compassion. A father desires that his children, more than anyone else, be much better than himself. Furthermore, the children cannot claim any rights over their father. In other words, there is no inherent cause for dispute between parents and children, for disputes arise from envy and jealousy, neither of which the father feels toward his children. Or they arise from an abuse of rights, and the children are not in a position to claim any rights against their father. If a father does not fulfill his responsibilities or if he abuses his children it may not be reasonable to expect the children to be respectful of his behavior. But this does not necessitate rebellion in other affairs nor does it justify showing disrespect. Under such circumstances, the children can still obey their father in manners approved by God and pray for him.

Even more importantly, the mother deserves the highest degree of everyone’s love and respect. In an authenticated prophetic tradition, Prophet Muhammad says: “Paradise lies beneath the feet of mothers” (Ahmad, Nasai). It is also reported in the prophetic tradition that a man came to the Prophet and said, ‘O Messenger of God! Who among the people is the most worthy of my good companionship?’ The Prophet said: ‘Your mother.’ The man said, ‘Then who?’ The Prophet said: ‘Then your mother.’ The man further asked, ‘Then who?’ The Prophet said: ‘Then your mother.’ The man asked again, ‘Then who?’ The Prophet said: ‘Then your father.’ (Bukhari, Muslim).

Love of children

The love and protection of children with complete compassion and tenderness pertain to God when we see them as gifts of the All-Compassionate and Generous One. The sign indicating that this love is for Almighty God’s sake is the display of patience and thankfulness when they die, rather than crying out in despair. It is to say: “He/she was a lovable little person created and owned by my Creator, Who entrusted him/her to my supervision. Now that His wisdom requires it to be thus, He has taken him/her from me … to a better place. If I had one apparent share in that little person, 1,000 true shares belonged to his/her Creator.” It is to submit by saying: “All authority is with God.”

Love of friends

As for friends and acquaintances, if they are friends of God Almighty due to their belief and good works, according to the meaning of “love for God’s sake,” that love also pertains to God.

Love of spouse

Love between spouses is for God’s sake when it is not conditioned on transient attributes. A husband loves and cherishes his wife as a companionable and gracious gift of Divine Mercy. He does not fasten his love to her physical beauty, which swiftly fades. Rather, a woman’s most attractive and agreeable beauty is her fine character, which accompanies her unique delicacy and refinement.

Her most precious and sweet beauty is her earnest, sincere, sublime, and luminous compassion. This beautiful tenderness and fine character continues and increases until the end of her life. Moreover, that weak and delicate person’s rights of respect are protected by that love. Otherwise, she will lose her rights when her superficial beauty fades, a time when she most needs them.

Similarly, a wife loves her husband not for his looks, strength, or wealth, as these are only transient things. Instead she loves him as her everlasting companion in the garden of Paradise, and as a compassionate partner in this world who sacrifices his time, energy, and wealth for his family’s well-being.

Love of pious people

Our love of the Prophets and saints as God Almighty’s most esteemed servants is for His sake and in His Name, and not for their persons. In this form, it pertains to Him. Such love, if not done for God’s sake, may cause us to turn them into idols.

Love of life and youth

Our love of life is for God’s sake when we love and preserve life as the most precious wealth and capital that will gain us a happy eternal life. We see life as a comprehensive treasury yielding eternal perfections, something that Almighty God has given to us and to all humanity. When we employ our time, which is what life is made of, in His service, our love of life pertains to the True Object of Worship. Similarly, our love of youth becomes a painless love when we see it as a fine, sweet, and beautiful bounty of Almighty God and put it to proper use in God’s guidance.

Love of the spring and this world

Our love of the spring turns into a love of His Names when we love it thoughtfully as being the page of the subtlest and most beautiful inscriptions of Almighty God’s luminous Names. In this perspective, we see the spring as the most finely adorned and glittering exhibition of the All-Wise Maker’s supreme art. Similarly, our love of this world can be for God’s sake when we love it as the tillage for the Hereafter, as a mirror of the Divine Names, and a missive of God Almighty. We see it as a temporary guesthouse in which we train our souls to reach spiritual heights by struggling against the carnal self’s evil commands.

In short, loving for God’s sake requires that we love this world and its inhabitants as indicating, like words, a meaning beyond themselves, rather than loving them just for themselves. When we see a beautiful member of creation we say: “How beautifully it has been made” instead of “How beautiful it is.”

True love for God’s sake does not give any opportunity for other loves to enter one’s inner heart, because the inner heart is the mirror of God, the Eternally Besought One, and pertains only to Him. This love is crystallized in the following prayer: “O God, grant us love for You, and love for that which will draw us closer to You.”

When it assumes this form, each type of love enumerated above gives a painless pleasure, and, in one respect, leads to an unending union. Moreover, all of them increase our love of God. Due to their connection with the Eternal One, these forms of love are feelings of gratitude and a source of pure pleasure and joy.

The parable of the apple

To understand the difference between loving something for its own sake, as opposed to loving it for its giver’s sake, consider the following parable: If a mighty king were to give you an apple, there would be two types of love for that apple and two types of pleasure in it. First, you would love the apple because it is beautiful and delicious. The pleasure associated with this love is specific to, and is concerned only with the existence of, the apple. This love does not concern the king. Those who feel this kind of love, who eat the apple in the king’s presence, love the apple itself and their own souls rather than the king. The king is not pleased with the type of love that nourishes the instinctual soul; in fact, he detests it. Moreover, the pleasure that the apple gives is very limited and passes quickly. After it has been eaten, only the regret of its departure remains.

The second type of love, however, acknowledges the king’s favor. Those who consider the apple to be something precious, as if it were the sample and embodiment of a royal favor, show their love for their king. Moreover, the pleasure in that fruit, which is a sort of container for the favor, is far greater than the pleasure obtained from 1,000 apples. This pleasure, then, is the essence of thankfulness, and this love is a respectful love for the king.

Conclusion

If we love all bounties and fruits for themselves and delight in them only for the material pleasures that they yield, our love is merely love of self. Also, such pleasures are transient and bring pain. But if they are loved as favors proceeding from God’s Mercy and as fruits of His Munificence, then they always remind us of their source.

When the pleasure is obtained from them with a good appetite, appreciating the degree of kindness in that Divine Munificence and Favor, then it has both the meaning of gratitude and is a pain-free pleasure. The taste of the fruit may vanish, but the Giver of the gift of fruit is eternal. The beloved may die, but the Creator and the Sustainer of every being is eternally alive. The apparent beauty may decay, but the Source of true beauty is not subject to decay.

The recipe for painless love, then, is to direct our love away from transient things and toward the Eternal One, and to love everything else in His sake. The thirteenth-century Turkish mystic poet Yunus Emre expressed this paradigm concisely in his poem: “We love the creation because of the Creator.”

References

‘ Ali, A. Y. An English Interpretation of the Holy Qur’an with Full Arabic Text. Kazi Publications: 1995.

‘ Emre, Y., K. Helminski, R. Algan, E. Helminski trans. The Drop That Became the Sea: Lyric Poems of Yunus Emre. Shambhala Publications: 1999.

‘ Khan, M., trans. Sahih Al-Bukhari: The Translation of the Meanings. Darussalam Publishers: 1997.

‘ Siddiqi, A. H., trans. Sahih Muslim. Kitab Bhavan: 2000.

‘ Harf Information Technology. Hadith Encyclopedia. Egypt: 1996.

‘ Nursi, S. “The 32nd Word,” The Words. Kaynak A.S.: 1997.

Regardless of the modern mockery of these foolish lovers, one can find a deeper meaning in some of these stories. The mystic interpretation of Leyla and Mejnun, a well-known seventh-century Arab love tale, brings a different shade to the unforgettable theme: love. This story is quite original. As usual, they fall in love, are separated by their families, and continue to love each other. There is even a happy ending. The originality comes from the Sufi (mystical) interpretation of this love, a love that transforms love for a person into love for the Divine.

Many interpretations and versions of this story have come from Arab, Persian, and Turkish poets. The Turkish poet Fuzuli writes: Leyla and Qays (later called Mejnun) meet in childhood at school. As they grow up, their love becomes obvious. Leyla’s father forbids her to attend school and see Qays, for their obvious love is a very inconvenient situation in Bedouin culture. Leyla’s father rejects Qays when the latter’s father seeks permission for his son to marry Leyla. Overcome by grief, Qays goes mad. Nicknamed Mejnun (the obsessed, mad one), he leaves home and roams the desert.

His father takes him on a pilgrimage to the Kabah, hoping for a cure. Mejnun does not pray for a cure, but for his love to so increase that he will mention his beloved until the end of time:

Wherever in the world Thou findest pain,
To that sweet pain my aching heart enchain,
And banish from me every show of sense,
And closely bind me to a love intense,
For Leyla let me burn in fiercest fire,
That Thou in her I see is my desire.(1)

His wish was granted, and his love grew. He returned to the desert, leaving his family and worldly pleasure. Sympathizers brought him food and clothes; others scolded his uncontrollable passion. He was considered a madman and unfit for this world. Surely there were other women he could marry. What was this burning desire that only ceased in the cold desert night’s caress? People said:

This flame which is the reboiling
of the affections cometh from fire of
youth. When youth departeth from man
that boil of fire cooleth down.(2)

 Mejnun replied:

I am His majesty the Emperor of Love.
I have not been ashamed of lust.
became immune to the lechery provoked by
terrestrial flatterings by means of a bath of purity.
I have freed myself from the impurity of my lust.
I have destroyed the market of the passions.(3)

Mejnun’s love was neither worldly nor the passion of youthful excitement; rather, it was something far deeper-an existing emotion waiting for a spark. Kindled by Leyla, this love was now out of control:

Love for thee cannot be removed from the heart;
this mystery cannot ever be revealed to anyone.
This mystery came into my body with my mother’s milk
and it will go out again with my soul.
I feed on love; if love dies, I die too.
My nature hath been brought up on love;
my destiny must only be love.(4)

This great ability to love was not to perish in lifelong separation, but rather to flourish, for it was placed in him for a reason: Mejnun’s love was also seen as a preparation for Divine love. Earthly beauty is like a curtain which hides Divine beauty, whose brilliance could not be borne by the human eye. By practising earthly love, man prepares himself for the divine. According to the Persian mystic Aynulqudat, executed at Hamadan in 1132, Providence wanted Mejnun to practise with the love of Leyla in order to dedicate him later to Divine Love, as if he were a steed destined for a king and first ridden by others until he was tamed and trained.(5)

In that vast empty desert, Mejnun thinks only of love’s meaning and why it was given to humanity. He scorns people, unworthy of true love:

Love which is not eternal
is a toy of youthful lechery.
Love is that which doth not diminish,
which goeth back not one step
as long as it lasteth.
This love is not amusing fantasy
destined to disappear for ever.(6)

Love is a mystery. Many have said what it is not or should not be, but it is harder to say what it is, for its source is unknown. Sufis are those who try to understand the source of love. Gulen illuminates this mystery of love:

Ashq (passion or intense, ecstatic love), which the spirit feels without the intervention of free will, cannot be controlled by the person so affected, for its real source is God, Who loves Himself in a way special to His Sacred Essence and is essentially different from the love felt by the created for the created or the Creator. This sacred, essential love of God for Himself, including His Attributes and Names, is the reason why he created the world. It is also this love that manifests itself in human beings as love of God, as the most essential center of humanity’s relationship with God.(7)

Mejnun lost himself in Leyla and no longer existed as Mejnun. Roaming the desert, a realm as vast as the human heart and mind, he reflected on life, love, and separation. He found meaning in his grief:

I treated my passion for Leyla with Leyla as a drunkard treats himself with wine.(8)

This deep, mysterious love was a frequent topic in mystic circles. Mejnun was given as an example to Sufis who desired to feel true love. Sibli (1861-1945) proclaimed in a sermon: O people! This Mejnun of the Banu Amir! If one should ask him about Layla (Leyla) he would say: I am Layla!’ He for Layla (spiritual) would abstain himself from Layla (physical) in order to remain forever in her presence. This made him abstract from every idea except Layla, and he saw everything only for Layla. On another occasion Sibli said: Like Mejnun of the Banu Amir who when he beheld the wild animals said: Layla’ and when he beheld the mountains said: Layla’ and when he beheld men said: Layla.’ In fact when he was asked his name and how he was, he replied: Layla’.(9)

Here, one sees that Mejnun’s love for Leyla has been transformed into another kind of love. It has grown higher and rooted deeper than any worldly love could:

Whoever am I? And what is my name?
How do they recognize me
if not as thy shadow?
I reckon myself as nothing,
for I come from nothing and remain nothing.

The greatest barrier to true love is the self (ego). To be one with the beloved, the lover must sacrifice himself or herself. In most fairy tales, this sacrifice is symbolized by a hero facing a fire-breathing dragon or performing a dangerous task for the beloved. The hero risks his or her life to please or reach the beloved. Defeating one’s ego is just as difficult. Once people acquire control over the ego (passions), they may continue on the path toward true love. Mejnun reached the level of understanding, which Sufis call the state of knowing God. The Sufi understanding of true love is based on the Islamic tradition: [God said:] I was a hidden treasure. I willed to be known.

According to Stoddart: God can only be known, however, when the human ego, which instinctively regards itself as a self-sufficient centre”a kind of divinity’ in addition to the Divinity”is extinguished before the infinitude of God, in accordance with the words: There is no divinity but God.’ This does not mean that the immortal essence of the soul has to be annihilated; what must be dissolved is that mental morass, compounded of ego-determined passions and imaginings, the constant tendency of which is to restrict consciousness to the level of ephemeral appearances. When this veil’ of selfishness is lifted from the Spirit which is hidden underneath”the Spirit which sees through to the essences of things”then for the first time things are seen as they really are. God is seen in His all-embracing Presence, and the creature as a pure possibility contained in the Divine Being.(10)

Desert dwellers accepted Mejnun, and he roamed with deer and wild birds. He no longer looked or acted like a normal human being. According to one version, once he came upon a deer caught in a hunter’s trap. He released it, saying that he did so only because it reminded him of Leyla. The deer is loved for it reminds one of the beloved’s attributes, just as all beauty in the world is loved because it reflects the All Beautiful One. Mejnun felt sympathy for the deer because he could see Leyla’s image in it. The deer carried signs that reminded him of Leyla. Everything around him, all that was material and created, had no significance in its own right. They could not be loved if that urge to love was not planted in Mejnun’s heart.

One day Leyla comes across Mejnun in the desert. She bursts into tears and offers him her love. In one version, Mejnun’s gives a short and stunning answer, when she says: It is I, Leyla! He looks at her blankly and asks: Who is Leyla? This is the peak of the story.

Mejnun, named so after his heart-breaking experience of being without Leyla, has now reached a higher level of love and can no longer recognize the one who he once thought he could not live without:

To talk of being I or being you is out of place here.
In our faith there is no Duality.
Here I am. The other is but a beautiful portrait.
Here you are. The other is dust.(11)

In Nizami’s version, this stunning last meeting shows Mejnun’s condition as an ascetic:

Since the love for thee is fixed in me,
what is the use of thy image?
Since the love for thee appeared,
it is well that thy face should disappear.(12)

According to one reading, he had repeated Leyla so much that the words came out as Mevla (Creator). The joyous love felt by Sufis is fed constantly by the beloved’s brilliant reflections, which they witness night and day. They see life in another way, and those who do not see what they see surely may consider them mejnun.

Let us complete our words with the words of this wise, madman:

What use to me is a mortal Leyla?
I need a Leyla who will stay alive.
Behold, you see why I have broken with the world saying: Leyla, Leyla!
I shall break with Leyla too,
and then only the Lord remains.(13)

Footnotes

1. Sofi Huri (trans.), Leyla and Mecnun by Fuzuli (London: Gresham Press, 1970), 191.
2. Ibid., 68.
3. Ibid
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., 62.
6. Ibid., 68.
7. Gulen, M. Fethullah, Key Concepts in the Practice of Sufism (Virginia: The Fountain, 2000).
8. Huri, Leyla and Mecnun, 55.
9. Ibid., 61.
10. William Stoddart, Sufism (New York: Paragon, 1986), 45.
11. Huri, Leyla and Mecnun, 72.
12. Ibid., 71.
13. Ibid., 63. 

And so absorbs us we can hardly tell spring from summer;

The enchanting song of faith is on our tongues,

And in our hearts a love as deep as Majnun’s…

All who partake of our feast from us glowing like emeralds;

From all directions, downpouring Light enters our souls;

Do not suppose such blessings come from us but from the Eternal

Transcendent, in whose garden abide both lover and beloved:

Faces looking up to Him are like flowers turning toward the sun;

By virtue of that gaze, they open and grow as in springtime.

It little matters that their colour is that of silver or of rose:

What their radiance reflects is the Tincture of the Infinite.