SUFI TRAVEL ACCOUNTS:
IN THE DARKNESS I WAS GIVEN THE WATER OF
LIFE
Sa’di
has written: “I have travelled in
many lands, I have visited many peoples
and plucked an ear of corn from every cornfield,
for it is better to go barefoot than to
wear tight boots, better to endure the hardships
of travel than to stay at home… And
I would add: with every returning spring
one needs must choose a new love –
for last year’s calendar, my friend,
is of no use today!” Sufis have travelled
a lot. For them travelling is a spiritual
practice. Here is an account of such a travel.
A Chishti shaykh
made a travel and arrived in the house of
one of his mureeds. A small ceremony was
taking place starting with the recitation
of parts of the Qur’an. Thereafter
a certain poem of Hafez, picked out by the
shaykh, was recited in Persian by an Iranian
mureed. The shaykh, in turn, was asked to
give an English translation. In the middle
thereof he was unable to proceed as a powerful
inner state took hold of him. The lines
referred to the help that you may get when
in difficulties on the spiritual path. After
some time he was able to continue and he
finished his translation with these lines:
Last night
they relieved me of all my sorrows.
In the darkness I was given the water of
life.
Several years
later the mureed visited his shaykh, without
knowing that it was the final meeting between
the two as the shaykh would die a short
time afterwards. The shaykh then told a
story wherein a Persian Sufi brotherhood
is settled in the midst of an Arab-speaking
town. The dervishes appear to keep themselves
aloof from the problems of the inhabitants
of this town. The only thing they share
are their songs. Everyone can hear the dervishes
sing, but the songs are in Persian, which
no one can understand. The dervishes never
open their door to the people, no matter
how pressing their problems. That is, until
the end of the story. One man who has lost
all his strength, but who has seized life
boldly, combining the innocence of a child
with the aspiration of an angel, sees the
door of the convent of the dervishes open.
The dervishes again sing their song in the
Persian language, but now his heart understands
the meaning:
Last
night they relieved me of all my sorrows.
In the darkness I was given the water of
life.
