Notes on Sanai, Attar, and Rumi

looked for a translation of manṭiq-uṭ-tayr (conference of birds) by attar of nishapur. dick davis has a rhymed version. sholeh wolpe has the newest contemporary version. but then i discovered c.s. nott, gurdjieffian who did one in the 50s. had to go with that one obvs.

rumi is said to have said that "attar has roamed through the seven cities of love while we have barely turned down the first street"

rumi also said "attar is the soul and sanai its two eyes, i came after sanai and attar." as to sanai, his hadiqat al haqiqa forms a triumverate of masnavi/mathnawa (spiritual couplets) with attar and rumi

basically there's one english translation of hadiqat al haqiqa done by stephenson long ago but recently modernized by kieron moore which looks promising.

as to rumi's masnavi, there's the old prose version of stephenson and the newer rhymed version by jawid mojaddedi. will probably get both, but that's a six volume project (each) for some other day.

this has been a presentation of talking translations. had to work that out in tweets for myself. i've been researching various sufi works and their translations and needed to clarify some things about sanai, attar and rumi. and that's that.

note Mathnawi (Arabic) or masnavi (Persian) is a kind of poem written in rhyming couplets, or more specifically "a poem based on independent, internally rhyming lines". Most mathnawī poems follow a meter of eleven, or occasionally ten, syllables, but had no limit in their length.

note from this quick research, i consider these masnavis to be the sufi equivalent of sutra or tantra, and sanai, attar, and rumi to be their highest practioners.

divine imagination naturally

Mind is the mirror of self-awareness. Love is the hand that holds the mirror. Being is the hand of love and the heart of self-awareness.

If it doesn’t sound like a paradox in process, it’s probably the empire speaking.

Sometimes I write. Sometimes I’m written.

Either way, it’s all writing.

Self-awareness is nothing if not divine imagination.

Awareness is divine imagination naturally.

It’s said that writing is a state of divine imagination.

Coincidence is where two paradoxes cross in any universe.

The ninth line is often something fearless arising from the great unknown.

In natural perfection, all manner of things shall be well.

Concerto in Being 9

I always come back to Bach. And always the Brandenburg Concertos. Like waves to the sea, like unconscious belief, political or religious, to being. 

The only power is being. The world buys my power and not vice versa. Self-assertion is luminous manifestation. Like father consciousness for me personally.

Being is the default. Self-awareness is the self. Separating self from self-awareness is duality. Neither manifest nor unmanifest. Beyond all thought. Like love.

That beyond thought is not a void as some would have you think. Thought is a wonderful tool but an insufferable identity.

Love is the revelation of the timeless within time. Identify with that instead. Loving the loveless is compassion. Do that. Lover be like god. Enjoy!

Rainbow Dreaming

I am that dark blue space beyond the light of spacetime. Beyond the chill of heat. Beyond beyond.

Self-awareness is the stuff of gods. Divine imagination. Tantric dreams.

Even being a recluse is a kind of tantric play. As lucid dreaming is a type of self-awareness.

Beyond formal and free verse is a powerverse. In this paraverse dreaming is the whole point.

Self-assertion. Luminous manifestation. Virtual awareness.  

footnotes

begin at the beginningless.

dreaming is an art. don't blame the tool.

ride your karma like a goddess.

a good poem writes the poet.

conceptual selection is natural perfection.

i am the ghost of christmas longchenpa.

father consciousness, mother being.

standing on the shoulders of an immaculate concept.

i am beyond god indivisible.

with compassion for every lifetime.

the crown of creation is shining upon her subjects.

people are such socially-conditioned gods.

that's the point of homer.

that's the point of paradise lost.

christ, that's even the point of nietzsche.

and mary baker eddy.

people are socially-conditioned gods.

ride your karma like a goddess.

virtual awareness.

self-awareness is the stuff of gods.

 

On Lucid Dreaming

Dreaming is fractal. One dreams at night, and day is the dreamer. And the dreamer is a dream for another dimensional dreamer and so on.

And as the night never knows the day, the dreamstate never knows its dreamer. Unless the dreamer is the famous lucid dreamer.

Lucid dreaming sees through every fractal dreamer to the immaculate conception of being. The prime dreamer of all this fractal mindfuless is called amfulness.

As amfulness is next to godliness, the gods are the many facets of ten thousand rainbow jewels dancing on my nondual crown of self-awareness.

A state of consciousness is like a state of fractal dreaming.

There are as many states of consciousness in a day as in a night.

Phase of the moon. Season of the sun. Mad planets.

The there’s no end to the train of mindful deconstruction so get off at amfulness directly tantra.

Disease is a psychological state of consciousness.

Consciousness is never not at ease.

My last two tweets are dedicated to Mary Baker Eddy.

Psyops is just good marketing.

Don’t buy the hype. Amfulness 101.

Go take a hike. Amfulness 102.

Make your own myth. Amfulness 201.

Compare one’s myth to one’s experience. Revise accordingly. Amfulness 202.

Experience experience. Amfulness 301.

Advanced I am. Amfulness 302.

Turning absolution. Amfulness 401.

Silence. Amfulness 402.

Act three.

Love is my thesis.

Self-awareness is my dissertation in trochaic number nine.

Belief is the original opioid.

Believe it or not, belief is the only disease.

Comparative Zhuangzi

Therefore, it is said that the ultimate man has no self, the spiritual person has no accomplishment, and the sage has no name.

~Zhuangzi (tr-Mair)

Therefore I say, the Perfect Man has no self; the Holy Man has no merit; the Sage has no fame.

~Zhuangzi (tr-Watson)

As the saying goes,

The utmost man is selfless,

The daemonic man takes no credit for    his deeds,

The sage is nameless.

~Zhuangzi (tr-Graham)

Thus I say, the Consummate Person has no fixed identity, the Spirit Man has no particular merit, the Sage has no one name.

~Zhuangzi (tr-Ziporyn)

The realized remain selfless. The sacred remain meritless. The enlightened remain nameless.

~Zhuangzi (tr-Hinton)

Therefore complete people have no self, spiritual people have no merit, saintly people have no name.

~Zhuangzi (tr-Cleary)"

Among complete Zhuangzi translations into English, the most literal is by A. C. Graham (1981; 2001), while others follow the content orientation, using different Chinese and Western renditions as their backdrop. These include Mair (1994a; 1994b), Palmer (1996), Höchsmann and Yang (2007), and Ziporyn (2009). More theme-based and aimed at modern practitioners are the renditions by Cleary (1999), Mitchell (2009), and Kohn (2011). Illustrated versions, moreover, include Feng and English (1974), Cai and Bruya (1992), and Towler (2011) (see Small 2013). Each translation is different, and each has its own unique take on the text, opening various visions on this powerful, multifaceted work.

~Livia Kohn

45 Prophecies

Dreams are conceived to see through. Seeing through a dream is like looking in a mirror. Self-awareness is reflecting in moon river.

Sometimes I forget I’m acting. Sometimes I forget my lines. So I weave this mantra as I go. Self-awareness is the light of divine imagination after all.

Being cures the cure. Love is like skunk cabbage. Discovering lucid dreaming before developing compassion is what it is. Between the self and self-awareness stays in lost Vegas.

I love disbelief! Absolute potentiality rules. All belief is false. Even mine! Always be being. For one is the heart of the hand that holds the tool, and not the tool.

You do you. I am I. Compassion is the ultimate energy. Frodo lives! Remember, love never dies although the memory may. Love and self-awareness are mirror images.

Love is the language of manifestation. Belief is its shadow. The language of love expresses self-awareness like a poet from the thirteenth century .

“I said, “The scent of your hair has led me astray in the world.” She said, ”If you understand, it can also be your guide.”

Consciousness lingering in the air. Actually the air is appearing in consciousness. This an example of poetic paradox.

When myth becomes belief, print the legend. One second of love is worth ten thousand dynasties. Everyone is conceived in love despite appearances. Low fog. Rising sun. The smell of a nearby mountain.

Again remember, love never dies although the memory may. The lack of love in scientific materialism is equal to the lack of science in religious fundamentalism. Figure it out.

I don’t like to stray too far from love. There’s too many rabbit holes out there. As self-awareness is the eternal light of divine imagination, love is its heat. Neither something nor nothing. Neither absence nor presence.

In the Name of the Undivided Source

Self-awareness is another name for self-arising wisdom.

Self-awareness has no beginning. Self-awareness is beyond the space-time mind of universal consciousness.

Self-awareness is the eternal light of divine imagination!

Absolute awareness and self-awareness are not two but the undivided source.

There is no name for, nor concept of, the undivided source.

This is why I call it self-awareness.

Zhuangzi's Caterpillar

Sometimes you eat the ouroboros and sometimes you’re its vomit. Self-awareness is never pretty.

Self-awareness is self-realization in real language. If I’m not talking paradox, I’m not really talking.

Construction is easy. Deconstruction is hard. Caterpillar, leaf, tree, ground, earth, sun, black hole.

In the Name of Natural Perfection

I come to clean myself of the world tonight in a mythic shower of silence. In this stream of consciousness sometimes we sink sometimes we swim. Tonight we float. Sometimes I dig history. Sometimes I lose track of time.

Keep your eye on self-awareness. Make it your mantra. The living room seems so much smaller when there’s something other in it. It is said natural perfection is absent, open, spontaneous, and unifying. So I’m resting in consciousness to wash out my ears.

Absent like emptiness. Emptiness like transformation. Transformation like impermanence. Return to absence. Open mind, open air, open sky, open space-time. Everything is broken open. Spontaneity is the only constant! Unity is unborn. The end.