Fri, Jul 25 01:00 AM
"Someone who keeps aloof from suffering is not a lover. I choose your love above all else.
As for wealth, if that comes, or goes, so be it. Wealth and love inhabit separate worlds.
But as long as you live here inside me, I cannot say that I am suffering," wrote Hakim Sanai (translated by Coleman Barks). Sanai was a renowned Sufi poet, born in Ghazna around the 11th century.
He was the first poet to introduce Sufism into Persian poetry. His lyrics were an inspiration for later Sufi poets like Rumi, who called Attar "the soul" and Sanai "the two eyes", saying he himself came only after Sanai and Attar.
Sanai's verse is imbued with a passionate love for God but it is love that proceeds from kindness and love for human beings rather than as separate from them: Man az aatishe ishq hum naram gardam/Agarche ze polad sakht ast ladam. (I have become lighter than the fire of love/Even though I have endured pressure heavier than iron).
The reference is to the suffering he endured in the path of God, that even if someone hurt him, he would return goodness for evil. The fire of love had so kindled his soul that he saw God in everything and everywhere.
His belief that one can only reach God by serving humanity selflessly, and by giving up hatred, covetousness and desire resembles the teachings of other great ones like Buddha, Christ and Gandhiji. Realisation of God was for Sanai a purification of the soul so it could reflect divine light: Mera bar tan khu yash hikmat-e-nafiz/Man ustaad va farmabardare on nafadam.
(I have surrendered my self to God's all pervading influence and I have surpassed even that obedient teacher/I have reached the threshold of mystical truth). In sum, Sanai expressed the essential humanistic truth that God cannot be confined to any religion, creed or race and that love is the true path to God.
