On Sanai and English Translations

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completer review at Radha Soami Satsang Beas blog

 https://www.rssb.org/2018-01-13.html 

(Stephenson, and Kieron D. Moore and David Pendlebury are the "two more recent books" mentioned)

First Quarter Overture: Thunderbird Fantasia

like the reflection of the moon in a whitewater river seeing it's the full wolf moon in a winter sky seeing true the sun inside the black whole


One is individually universal. Two is setting imaginary boundaries. Three is dreaming them away.

See it's an esoteric fact that self-awareness requires physical memory and divine imagination, or mirror and masquerade. Dust is optional.

In the Process of Omnipotent Absolute Self-awareness, not a single phenomenon isn't integral despite the calamity of its story.

Once I said it's said a bodhisattva saves by knowing there is nothing to be saved or said,

but one can also say the universe collapses knowing I'm the universe and all is absolutely fine and well unknown.


Divine imagination is not superfluous to the process of enlightenment as seen from a free-thinking mind. Mythology is a tool and not identity.

A crescent moon surrounding earthshine in last swans of twilight—this is my mythology. Pure awareness is omnipresently self-aware.

As samara is the absolute forgetting, and revelations is divine imagination, so consciousness only is nirvana.

So thinking is a fantastic tool but a very sorry identity. Crow caws the cause is crow but the chorus is walking on the wild side.

Listen, between concept and being, I am. Follow the energy. Thoughts are just the stuff of dreams.


If dreaming is for seeing through the dream, and awaking doesn't mean to do the dreaming better, then I'm resting here in consciousness.

It is difficult to disbelieve in the universality of consciousness but people die miserably each day or hang to some conspiracy.

Mythologies point to consciousness only. Religion is like the waiting room. The great awakening is being unborn. Enlightenment is absolute.

It's not so much about the dreaming as it is the dreaming lucidly instead of dreaming as conditioned.

Basic conditioning is believing consciousness depends upon material economy. But consciousness is goddess!


Listen, looking at the sun is just like talking Icarus but feeling the sun is being the sun is what science calls a black hole.

Consciousness appears to arise from the material world but that world is what consciousness descends to on its reflexive way to self-awareness.

The material world is made out of mind being dreamt by consciousness like thunder is to the lightning of omnipresent self-awareness.

When mind is looking into fire, pain. When love is looking through that looking glass of Tao, self-awareness. So here's the story—

lucid dreaming is all about the love of looking. And lucid dreaming is not about me flying but divine imagination is a thunderbird.


True mindfulness is dreaming from this absolute perspective. Call that creator consciousness.

If awareness is the parent and self-awareness is the child, then being is this holy maya.

For awareness is the ground, infinite and eternal, spaceless and timeless. Consciousness is being, evolutionary and intentional in space-time.

And self-awareness is sudden and spontaneous, non-abiding or abiding, kensho to samadhi.

Likewise amplified consciousness appears to be a product of the body-mind. Call this, I Am. But resting there, the I is suddenly absolute.


And this is the genius of resting in consciousness—such natural knowledge informs the I in I-Am who the I really is.

Consciousness descends into matter via subatomic, atomic, and molecular ways. Consciousness ascends into apocalyptic self-awareness.

There are ten thousand omnipotent universes in the Buddha. This is the story of that one of self-awareness and its grand unified mythology.

One deconstructs what's in the mind and not the process of the mind itself. For that process is dreaming, as it reminds me every night.

If consciousness is all, and the absolute is unknown by the knowledge of the mind, then my third gravitational body is a butterfly.

Project Z

The universe is like amnesia and the mind is that first remembering I am. This process of self-awareness is another name for space-time. Getting lost in such a universe is

another name for personality disorder. But seeing through this virtual reality is understanding there's no process—only absolute omnipresent awareness being self-aware.

Look, it's all projection. Love is looking lovingly to find some way through material conditioning as the world is seeing all of that as undesirable desire.

Listen, do not hurt another is the golden rule simplified. If consciousness is all, and the absolute is unknown by the knowledge of the mind, then my third gravitational body is a butterfly.

Processing Mind

The mind is not an obstacle nor a dead end but identifying with that focal point of mind is like a long hard detour on the way. As if any part of the whole could be separate from the holy spirit of the ground.

In other words, one deconstructs what's in the mind and not the process of the mind itself. For the process of the mind is dreaming, as it reminds me every night.

There are as many gods within a shaman as are universes in the buddha as are thoughts in mind. That said, my mythology has always been self-awareness. The nineteenth koan is saying mind is mirror

and the world is like the dust of a dream. Every picture tells a story written in psychedelic ink. Early April and the window is open—winter doesn't kill but deconstructs, my loving satori of the wetlands.
 

On Best Translations of Hafiz—and a Controversy

Gray

Avery

Davis

Bell

note: Amazon no longer allow images but the link on the broken image still works.

From what I've determined, these are the best contemporary English translations of Hafiz to date: Peter Avery, Elizabeth Gray (my favorite selected), and Dick Davis. The 1892 translations of Gertrude Bell are still considered worthwhile although a little dated in style.

I'm currently reading the Peter Avery 30 poem selection which I am really really enjoying. He published a collected version of 400 poems but it seems to be out of print and the used copies start at like $90 so that one's on my wish list.

And here's what I'm wishing. First, Archetype should do a second printing of the Collected Lyrics of Hafiz. Second, there shall appear one used book seller not price-gouging such numinous words.

(jan 2021 update. avery's book is now available. paid $30 for a new copy.)

Meanwhile it appears Daniel Ladinsky is not a translator of Hafiz, nor even a transcreator, but offers his original poetry under the name of Hafiz, as if it were transmitted or guided correspondence. Unfortunately, many many many think this poetry is original Hafiz. Very not cool.

Here is Daniel Ladinsky's own defense published as a review of 'The Gift' on Amazon titled 'My Portrait of Hafiz:’ "based on my study of thousands of pages of stories and poems that are attributed to Hafiz...first offered to Penguin with the word VERSIONS on the cover rather than the word translations, for i have never claimed my work with Hafiz is a traditional -- scholarly -- translation"

As someone who has transcreated versions of Lal Ded and Han Shan based on others' translations, I understand his basic gist of trying to do justice to the poet's intent. Honestly, I feel Lalla and Cold Mountain both have not been completely understood by their translators.

This is not to say I necessarily do, but obviously I thought some nondual something was missing in the translations. Still, to take one's own writing and pass it on as the poet's is going down a slippery slope. Such is not a version, but at best an inspired writing, and at worst, a fraud.

Gray

Avery

Davis

Bell

More on Hafiz and other Sufi poets here:

The Best Translations of Sufi Poetry

But let’s end on a positive note. Here’s a translation of Hafiz by Peter Avery:

VII

Again the garden has got the glitter of Spring:

The nightingale hears good news, for the rose is come.

Soft wind returning to the young plants of the meadow, Greet for us the rose, the cypress and the sweet basil.

They are spread for the wedding-feast of the wine-seller's son, And I'd sweep his floor with my eyelashes to win such grace.

For that amber-scented strand you draw across a moonlight brow

Has made a shuttlecock of my heart, and set it spinning.

I can't trust those who sneer at us drinking down to the lees: That is the kind of thing which gets a bad name for religion.

Let them learn to be friends with God's true friends; remember that Noah in his ark,

A speck of dust himself, cared not a drop for the deluge.

(a lowercase version of this review was first published spontaneously as tweets on @aumdada)

note: Amazon no longer allow images in the links, but the link on the broken image still works.

Grand Unified Mythology

Consciousness descends into the darkness of matter via subatomic, atomic, and molecular ways. And consciousness ascends into apocalyptic self-awareness through the holy trinity of gravity, identity, and relativity.

There are ten thousand omnipotent universes in the Buddha. This is the story of that one of self-awareness and its grand unified mythology of pure awareness being self-aware.

Thought is carbon-based material but belief is diamond-hard. Big bang is another name for western civilization or an eastern sunrise. April is the holy month of plants and pollen.

Death is all about appearances. My mother wasn't ever anywhere but here, god bless her. Dreaming is the paint and waking is the canvas. Deconstruct the bath water. Release the baby!

Fountain of Being, Fountain of Self-Awareness

Where consciousness appears to arise from the material body-mind is the fountain called I-Am. Be there and be lifted to the sea of self-awareness.

And it doesn't really matter if you think that consciousness grows from matter—one knows better. (Money doesn't grow on trees; neither do you.)

So it appears consciousness ascends from body-mind, but body-mind is where consciousness descended before its focusing resurrection.

And this is the genius of resting in consciousness—such natural knowledge informs the I in I-Am who the I really is.

For I is absolute, am is consciousness, and the universal dream of body-mind is the reflexive process of self-awareness.

But don’t believe these metaphysical words when you can rest there for yourself.