The Gift Read online

  EARLYLIFE

  All is written within the mind

  To help and instruct the dervish

  In dance and romance and prayer.

  Hafiz did not have an easy or comfortable life. He was the youngest of three sons of poor parents. His father was a coal merchant who died when Hafiz was in his teens. To help support the family, Hafiz worked as a baker’s assistant by day and put himself through school at night, using part of his salary to pay his tuition. Over many years, he mastered the subjects of a “classical” medieval education: Quranic law and theology, grammar, mathematics, and astronomy. He also mastered calligraphy, which in the centuries before printing was a highly refined art form. Islamic calligraphy was originally developed as a sacred art to preserve and glorify the Quran, the message of God. Since representational art was forbidden by religious law, calligraphy reached a remarkable degree of subtlety and expressiveness. Hafiz was a skilled draftsman and occasionally worked as a professional copyist.

  His early education naturally included the great Persian poets: Saadi of Shiraz, Farid-ud-din Attar, Jalal-ud-din Rumi, and others. Poetry is a national art in Persia, somewhat like opera in Italy. Even in modern Iran, people at every social level know the great poets, argue passionately about their favorites, and quote them constantly in everyday conversation. In medieval Persia, the art of poetry was taken seriously and valued highly. Local princes and provincial governors employed court poets to create epic verses celebrating their greatness. When the ruler was especially pleased by a composition, the poet was sometimes placed on a scale and rewarded with his weight in gold.

  A POET

  A poet is someone

  Who can pour light into a cup,

  Then raise it to nourish

  Your beautiful parched, holy mouth.

  Hafiz had a natural poetic gift. Even as a child, he was able to improvise poems on any subject in any form and style. When he was in his early twenties, some of his love poems began to circulate in Shiraz, and he was soon invited to participate in poetry gatherings at court. He won the patronage of a succession of rulers and wealthy noblemen. One of his benefactors founded a religious college and offered Hafiz a position as a teacher. Thus, during his middle years, he served as a court poet and a college professor. He married and had at least one son.

  Hafiz’s livelihood depended solely on patronage. Everyone admired his literary brilliance, but his poetry boldly celebrated ideas that bordered on heresy, and he had enemies among the rigorously orthodox who “blacklisted” him whenever they came to power. Periodically, he would fall out of favor and lose his position, both at court and in the college. He would sometimes use his skills as a copyist to support his family until his fortunes improved. At least once, however, he was forced to leave Shiraz. For several years he lived as an exile, often in dire poverty. Finally a new, more tolerant regime allowed him to return home and resume his career. During the long, unsettled middle period of his life, first his son and later his wife passed away. Some scholars associate many of his deeply felt verses of grief, separation, and loss with these events.

  By the time he was sixty, Hafiz had become famous as a master poet. A circle of students and companions gathered around him, and he served them as a teacher and counselor until his quiet death at about the age of seventy. He was buried in one of his favorite spots, at the foot of a cypress tree he himself had planted in a rose garden near Shiraz. For five hundred years his tomb, surrounded by the rose garden, was a center of pilgrimage and refreshment for thousands. By the early twentieth century, however, the tomb had fallen into disrepair. Then, in 1925, arrangements were made with the Persian government to have a new structure built over the grave and to have the gardens gradually restored. These arrangements were initiated and partially funded by a contemporary spiritual figure from India who loved Hafiz, Avatar Meher Baba. This modern world teacher frequently quoted couplets of Hafiz to illustrate his own discussions of spiritual principles. Meher Baba explained that the love poetry of Hafiz contained all the secrets of the spiritual path—for the true subject matter of spirituality is Love.

  SPIRITUAL STUDENT

  We have been in love with God

  For so very, very long.

  Hafiz was, in fact, a spiritual student. As a young man, he became a disciple of a Sufi teacher who guided him through a difficult spiritual apprenticeship that lasted most of his adult life. Later, Hafiz himself became a Sufi master. His Divan (collected poems) is a classic in the literature of Sufism, an ancient spiritual tradition whose special emphasis is intense, often ecstatic, one-pointed devotion to God.

  In the West, Sufism is usually regarded as a form of Islamic mysticism. However, the Sufis themselves say their “way” has always existed, under many names, in many lands, associated with the mystical dimension of every spiritual system. In ancient Greece, for example, they were identified with the wisdom (sophia) schools of Pythagoras and Plato. At the time of Jesus, they were called Essenes or Gnostics. After Muhammad, they adopted many of the principles and formulations of Islam and became known in the Muslim world as “Sufis,” a word given various meanings, including “wisdom,” “purity,” and “wool” (for the coarse woolen habits of wandering dervishes).

  From about 800 to 1400 A.D., Sufi schools flourished under the guidance of master teachers such as Rumi and Ibn Arabi. As individual schools developed, their methods of teaching diversified according to the needs of each group. Some stressed formal meditation, others focused on selfless service to the world, and still others emphasized devotional practices: song, dance, and spiritual poetry celebrating love for God. The Sufis cherish the poetry of Hafiz as a perfect expression of the human experience of divine love.

  How Hafiz came to be a Sufi student is a famous and popular story told in many versions throughout the East:It is said that when he was twenty-one and working as a baker’s assistant, Hafiz delivered some bread to a mansion and happened to catch a fleeting glimpse of a beautiful girl on the terrace. That one glimpse captured his heart, and he fell madly in love with her, though she did not even notice him. She was from a wealthy noble family, and he was a poor baker’s assistant. She was beautiful, he was short and physically unattractive—the situation was hopeless.

  As months went by, Hafiz made up poems and love songs celebrating her beauty and his longing for her. People heard him singing his poems and began to repeat them; the poems were so touching that they became popular all over Shiraz.

  Hafiz was oblivious of his new fame as a poet; he thought only of his beloved. Desperate to win her, he undertook an arduous spiritual discipline that required him to keep a vigil at the tomb of a certain saint all night long for forty nights. It was said that anyone who could accomplish this near-impossible austerity would be granted his heart’s desire. Every day Hafiz went to work at the bakery. Every night he went to the saint’s tomb and willed himself to stay awake for love of this girl. His love was so strong that he succeeded in completing this vigil.

  At daybreak on the fortieth day, the archangel Gabriel appeared before Hafiz and told him to ask for whatever he wished. Hafiz had never seen such a glorious, radiant being as Gabriel. He found himself thinking, “If God’s messenger is so beautiful, how much more beautiful must God be!” Gazing on the unimaginable splendor of God’s angel, Hafiz forgot all about the girl, his wish, everything. He said, “I want God!”

  Gabriel then directed Hafiz to a spiritual teacher who lived in Shiraz. The angel told Hafiz to serve this teacher in every way and his wish would be fulfilled. Hafiz hurried to meet his teacher, and they began their work together that very day.

  HAFIZ AND HIS TEACHER

  Our Partner is notoriously difficult to follow,

  And even His best musicians are not always easy

  To hear.

  The teacher’s name was Muhammad Attar. Attar signifies a chemist or perfumer, and it is believed that Muhammad Attar owned a shop in Shiraz and lived a very ordinary public life. Only his small circle of
students knew him as a spiritual teacher.

  Hafiz visited Attar nearly every day for years. They sat together, sometimes dined together, sometimes talked, sometimes sang, sometimes went for quiet walks in the beautiful rose gardens of Shiraz. Attar opened Hafiz’s vision to fresh, ever deeper perceptions of the beauty and harmony of life and a much broader understanding of all the processes of love. It was natural for Hafiz to express these insights in the language of poetry. Muhammad Attar was also a poet, and he encouraged Hafiz in this direction. For many years, Hafiz created a poem a day for his teacher. Attar told his students to collect and study these poems, for they illustrated many of the central principles of spiritual unfolding.

  However, the relationship between Hafiz and his teacher was not always an easy one. In many accounts, Muhammad Attar is presented as a stern and demanding figure who sometimes appeared to show no compassion at all for Hafiz. Modern spiritual figures, notably Avatar Meher Baba, have used the example of Hafiz and Attar to illustrate how challenging and difficult it can be to serve an authentic spiritual teacher. In his discourses on the role of the master, Meher Baba explains that, regardless of external appearances, a teacher must always aid internal processes of growth that support increasingly broader designs of love. Along the way, the student’s limited ego is dissolved—or, as Hafiz says, ground to dust. Meher Baba described this process as “hell on earth” for Hafiz. He said, “Hafiz, so to speak, broke his head at the feet of his master,” day after day, year after year, for forty long years.

  Some stories about Hafiz and his teacher support this view. Often Hafiz is portrayed as running to Attar in despair, pleading for enlightenment or spiritual liberation after decades of frustration. Each time, Attar would tell Hafiz to be patient and wait, and all would be revealed. According to one account:One day, when Hafiz was well over sixty, he confronted his aged teacher and said, “Look at me! I’m old, my wife and son are long dead. What have I gained by being your obedient disciple for all these years?” Attar gently replied, “Be patient and one day you will know.” Hafiz shouted, “I knew I would get that answer from you!” In a fever of spiritual desperation, he began another form of forty-day vigil. This time he drew a circle on the ground and sat within it for forty days and nights, without leaving it for food, drink, or even to relieve himself. On the fortieth day, the angel again appeared to him and asked what he desired. Hafiz discovered that during the forty days all his desires had disappeared. He replied instantly that his only wish was to serve his teacher.

  Just before dawn Hafiz came out of the circle and went to his teacher’s house. Attar was waiting at the door. They embraced warmly, and Attar gave Hafiz a special cup of aged wine. As they drank together, the intoxicating joy of the wine opened his heart and dissolved every trace of separateness. With a great laugh of delight, Hafiz was forever drowned in love and united with God, his divine Beloved.

  It is said that Hafiz unknowingly began his vigil exactly forty days before the end of his fortieth year of service to his teacher and that the “moment of union” was exactly forty years to the day from the moment they first met.

  L E VELS OF LOVE

  All I know is Love,

  And I find my heart Infinite

  And Everywhere!

  Many of these vignettes about Hafiz have the charming symmetry and precision of symbolic teaching stories. The recurring number forty, for example, might not be meant literally. In spiritual literature, “forty” is often used to indicate a term of learning or change, such as the “forty days and forty nights” of Noah’s Flood. Forty is also called “the number of perseverance,” marking a period of growth through testing, trial, and purification. After the exodus from Egypt, the Israelites endured “forty years of wandering” in the wilderness before they were ready to enter the Promised Land. Jesus, following the ancient practice of the prophets, went into the desert for a great seclusion of forty days, which he described as a period of purification and preparation for the next stage of his work. The Buddha attained final enlightenment after forty days of continuous meditation. One can find many examples, East and West.

  These tales of Hafiz share other common symbols. There is the “mystic circle,” which is an image of completion or perfection. And there is the glass of wine Attar gives Hafiz. A glass or cup is a vessel, which can often represent the human heart, or even the human being as a vessel of love. “Wine” stands for love in many spiritual traditions. Aged wine, such as Attar shares with Hafiz, can represent the purified (distilled) essence of knowing or love.

  As teaching stories, these episodes can be seen to illustrate central stages of the Sufi “path of love” or inner unfolding: Hafiz begins his spiritual journey as nearly everyone does—he is awakened to love. An ideal of human beauty and perfection seizes his heart. Desperate to win his ideal, he fully explores the realm of human love (his poems and songs celebrate her beauty and his longing for her).

  Finally, he directs all the energies of his life to the pursuit of love (a forty-day vigil).

  When his longing reaches its highest pitch (dawn of the final day), a new and higher dimension of love reveals itself (Gabriel). He is able to respond to the beauty of this higher understanding (“I want God!”), and his response ushers him into a new phase of learning and a new relationship of love (with a spiritual teacher).

  This new term of growth (forty years) is exponentially longer than the first one. Attar leads Hafiz through a review of increasingly broader and more encompassing levels of love (a poem a day). Hafiz becomes restless as his love for God grows stronger. Attar constantly counsels “patience” to remind Hafiz that every stage of love must be fully explored, honored, and lived.

  As the term nears its end, Hafiz reaches a new height of desperation and longing for his Beloved. He again seeks to devote all his energies to love (another forty-day vigil). This time he binds himself within a circle (of perfection or completion), literally circumscribing all his thoughts and actions to a single focus—God. He strives to perfect his love for God until nothing else exists for him.

  When he has truly accomplished this (dawn of the final day), he finds that the force of love has consumed his limited personality and all its desires, even the desire for God. He has realized that one cannot “master” love, one can only serve as a vessel of love (a glass of wine).

  Emerging from the circle, Hafiz is now able to approach and embrace every experience of life with the unlimited wisdom of love (he and his teacher embrace). He and Attar now share the same perfect knowing (the aged wine of love’s maturity). The “glass of aged wine” now becomes a symbol for “the embodiment of perfect love”—Hafiz himself.

  PERFECTION

  I hear the voice

  Of every creature and plant,

  Every world and sun and galaxy—

  Singing the Beloved’s Name!

  The idea that a human being can achieve “perfect love” or “perfect knowing” may seem extraordinary, yet it is a belief shared by most spiritual systems. It is called by many names—union with the Father, nirvikalpa samadhi, the highest development of consciousness, God-realization, Qutubiyat, or simply Perfection. One who attains it can be called a Perfect Master, someone who embodies a perfect understanding of the beauty and harmony of the universe.

  A Perfect Master experiences life as an infinite and continuous flow of divine love, swirling in, around and through all forms of life and all realms of creation. It is an experience of total unity with all life and all beings. A Perfect Master personifies perfect joy, perfect knowing, and perfect love and expresses these qualities in every activity of life.

  In the Western world, the most familiar example of such perfect love may be Francis of Assisi. In the East, there have been many—Rumi in Persia, Kabir and Ramakrishna in India, Milarepa in Tibet, Lao-tzu in China are all revered as Perfect Masters.1

  The teacher of Hafiz, Muhammad Attar, was a Perfect Master, and so was Hafiz himself. The poetry of Hafiz can be read as a record of a hum
an being’s journey to perfect joy, perfect knowing, and perfect love.

  MASTER POET

  Write a thousand luminous secrets

  Upon the wall of existence

  So that even a blind man will know

  Where we are,

  And join us in this love!

  Hafiz developed his poetry under the guidance of his teacher. Muhammad Attar reviewed and discussed the poems in his teaching circle, and many of them were set to music. This was a common practice in Sufi schools of the time, including Rumi’s order of “whirling dervishes” in Turkey. Poetry and song, easy to memorize and repeat, were used as teaching materials to encapsulate or summarize spiritual principles. With Attar’s encouragement, Hafiz perfected this teaching method using a popular form of love song, the ghazal. He wrote hundreds of ghazals, finding ways to bring new depth and meaning to the lyrics without losing the accustomed association of a love song.

  His poems expressed every nuance and stage of his growing understanding of love. He wrote of the game of love, the beauty of the Beloved, the sweet pain of longing, the agony of waiting, the ecstatic joy of union. He explored different forms and levels of love: his delight in nature’s beauty, his romantic courtship of that ideal unattainable girl, his sweet affection for his wife, his tender feelings for his child—and his terrible grief and loneliness when, later in his life, both his wife and his son passed away. He wrote of his relationship with his teacher and his adoration of God.