Jalammudin, a character in one of
Rumi’s stories, lives in a prison of doubt, depression, and despair. His Mullah
advises him to pray. When he does, his depression and despair is lessened, but
then Iblis, the devil, says to him: “Stop this noisy babbling like the braying
of an ass. Do you hear anyone responding to you when you say “Allah! Allah!
Allah? Does your Allah ever say ‘here I am?”
Jalammudin admits Allah doesn’t
reply, and falls into a deep funk again.
Prayer, whatever the reason for it,
is a hot line to the Being, Guide of guides, our own Highest Self that comes
whenever we call, though it doesn’t always seem so. Sometime when we pray our
suffering miraculously ends and sometimes we continue to suffer because we have
not arrived at the softness and pliability needed for learning the lessons all
suffering teaches us. If we understand this, and pledge to suffer consciously,
humbly, trusting that our suffering is in fact a healing, we are given the
courage to endure. For on the Way, endurance is everything.
Endurance is
one of my favorite words. Its many Indo-European roots from the taproot, deru, from which comes deodar, tree of the gods, spread deep into the soil of our
souls. Many of my other favorite words bloom from the same root: wisdom, trust, firm, steadfast, true, Truth,
pledge. I especially like one European root from Old French, triste, waiting place: a “place where
one waits trustingly,” even as one suffers.
To be utterly honest, left to myself,
I am unable to endure. I falter, despair, panic. Though I speak about suffering
as the guides
speak of it, I must admit I do not like to suffer. My not
liking it does not keep it away from me, however. If anything, resisting it
prolongs it. When I am suffering I am helpless to do anything but suffer. No
prayer comes to my rescue. Though I often do not know the cause of my
suffering, my most recent experience of it was due to too much busy-ness, too
much being in the world. But a lifetime of observing my limits is teaching me
to stop, pull back, say ‘no’ to my many tasks and obligations, to make space
and time in which I can perform the most important of functions – turning my
gaze inward, turning towards the divine in me, and sing songs, however well or
badly, of humble prayer and praise.
Prayer and praise, through music and
song especially, connects one to the Being in an immediate way. The Sufis
delight in it as being the fastest shortcut on the Way. Singing is at the very
heart of Sikhism. “No one and nothing stands between You and me,” Kabir sings.
When we sing we tap into this connectedness, without any intermediaries,
directly, heart to precious heart. When we pray through song we address the
Godhood in the second person pronoun – not ‘he’ or ‘she,’ but You. Thou. In
Sikh sacred songs this pronoun appears in the familiar ‘tu’ or ‘tum,’ not an
excessively polite word, but with the intimacy one reserves for the closest of
relationships.
When we sing, listen to, or recite
prayers with an open heart, with faith and love, we turn to the very source,
the giver and fulfiller of our desires, the inflictor and soother of our
agitation and anxieties. Rumi knows that prayer moves and stirs, like a
vivifying force, the stagnant waters of our souls.
How often, like Jalammudin, the
character from Rumi’s tale, The Cup of
Praise, who is imprisoned in his own doubt, I feel the shackles of a lock
through my own lips! How often as I navigate my own depressions I am unable to
pray! Even the mouth of my heart that so often communes silently, speaks to its
Self, is sewn shut! Then I am reminded of something the Christian saint,
Theresa of Avila said – prayers are like money in the bank; we pray when we can
so that when we can’t, we have something to draw from. Sooner or later help is sent to remind us of what we must do,
how we must think, as Al Khadir, guide to lost souls, the spirit of water, is
sent to Jalammudin in his dream, materializing out of unseen air, to rescue
him.
Al Khadir comes to make Jalmmudin a
free man by the non-dual message that the two, our remembering and calling out
God’s name and God’s response are instantaneous, simultaneous, one. That is why
God’s name is so central to all the Eastern and Western religions. It is at the very heart of Sikhism. Name is
remembrance; Name is connection; Name is evocation, bringing into presence the
absent and forgotten; Name is help when we need it the most; Name, calling out
to our Beloved, is prayer; Name itself is aid, food, sustenance in the highest.
“Do not put musk on your body; rub it on your heart,” says Rumi. “What is musk?
The holy name of the Glorious God.”
Prayer is the key to
resurrection. As soon as Jalammudin whispers the name of his Beloved, the
chains, shackle, lock fall away from him. He awakes. It is morning and the
world is transformed. His senses, instruments and handmaidens of his soul, see
beauty, color, feel and hear the breeze that, like water, flows
everywhere. “Wings are restored to the
bird whose plumes were torn away,” and Jalammudin is free.
~
By
Kamla K. Kapur
Rumi: Tales to Live By.
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