Practical Mysticism in Islam and Christianity

A Comparative Study of Jalal al-Din Rumi and Meister Eckhart

Saeed Zarrabi-Zadeh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138100121
• eBook ISBN: 9781317329114
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Comparative Religion

Practical Mysticism in Islam and Christianity offers a comparative study of the works of the Sufi-poet Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207-1273) and the practical teachings of the German Dominican, Meister Eckhart (c1260-1327/8).

Rumi has remained an influential figure in Islamic mystical discourse since the thirteenth century, while also extending his impact to the Western spiritual arena. However, his ideas have frequently been interpreted within the framework of other mystical, philosophical, or religious systems. Through its novel approach, this book aims to reformulate Rumi's practical mysticism by employing four methodological principles: a) mysticism is a coherent structure with mutual interconnection between its parts; b) the imposition of alien structures to interpret any particular mysticism damages its inward coherency; c) practical mysticism consists of two main parts, namely practices and stages; and d) the proper use of comparative methodology enables a deeper understanding of each juxtaposed system. Eckhart's speculative mysticism, which differs from and enjoys similarities with the love-based mysticism of Rumi, provides a "mirror" that highlights the special features of Rumi's practical mysticism. Such comparison also allows a deeper comprehension of Eckhart's practical thought.

Offering a critical examination of practical mysticism, this book is a valuable resource for students and scholars of Islamic studies, comparative mysticism, and the intellectual history of Islam.

1
Introduction

On a pleasant day in the autumn of 2001 in Tehran, I began attending a course on the subject of practical mysticism with several of my classmates in the Islamic Mysticism program. It was a continuation of two successive courses we had taken in previous semesters on theoretical mysticism. In those preceding courses, our knowledgeable instructor had introduced us to the theoretical mysticism of Ibn ‘Arabi (d. 1240), the renowned Andalusian Sufi-philosopher of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the pre-eminent figure of speculative mysticism in Islam. The curricula had been based on extracts from his Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam (“The Bezels of Wisdom”)¹ along with one of its commentaries by Dawud Qaysari (d. c.1350). For this new course, however, the teacher had prepared selected readings from a commentary on the Manāzil al-sā’irīn (“Stations of the Travelers”) of ‘Abdullah Ansari of Herat (d. 1088),² a classic text from a Hanbali Sufi who was an ardent opponent of speculative theologians and a denouncer of both the Ash‘arite and Mu‘tazilite theological schools.³ Though the commentator on Ansari’s book, ‘Abd al-Razzaq Kashani (d. 1329), was himself a distinguished member of the Ibn ‘Arabi school and had made much effort to “interpret” Ansari’s book according to the perspectives of that school, the fundamental inconsistency between the practical mysticism of these two Sufis with such diverse theoretical backgrounds was scarcely reconcilable by mere interpretation.⁴ It seemed to me that the sound methodology in understanding Ibn ‘Arabi’s practical mysticism is to extract it from, and formulate it according to, his own texts and teachings. If there is insufficient textual evidence from which a systematic understanding of his practical mysticism can be developed, this shortage should be compensated for, at the very least, by texts from other mystics who enjoy similar theoretical foundations to his, and not from a Sufi as far from his mystical background as Ansari.

The second methodological issue to attract my attention regarding the formulation of the practical teachings of a specific Sufi arose when I began delving further into the works of the distinguished thirteenth century Sufi-poet Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207–73).⁵ My aim was to systematize Rumi’s practical mysticism based on an analysis of his masterpiece, the Mathnawī, the goal I am also pursuing here, though in a different manner and within the broader context of all original oeuvres of Rumi. What makes the practical aspect of his Sufism particularly important is the fact that for Rumi himself it is mystical practices, and not theoretical elaboration of mystical concepts and doctrines, that serve as a gateway to achieving mystical advancement.⁶ Furthermore, his enthusiastic reception by subsequent practical Sufi circles, who, following him, regarded his Mathnawī as a medium through which one might climb up to heaven instead of wading in speculation, adds both to the significance of his practical mysticism⁷ and to the justification for deeper investigation into this under-studied dimension of his Sufism.⁸ During that initial investigation, I observed how passages from the Mathnawī, including those dealing with practical teachings, were understood by several commentators within their own respective frameworks, which were particularly influenced by the metaphysics of Ibn ‘Arabi and his followers.⁹ Numerous old and new commentaries, written by non-Western and Western figures alike, have contributed to a process one might call the “Ibn ‘Arabization of Rumi,” an attitude that can even be found in recent scholarly monographs about him.¹⁰ Such a rendition of Rumi through the lens of Ibn ‘Arabi’s theosophy should be placed, indeed, in a wider background of imposing other mystical, philosophical, and religious systems on Rumi’s own Sufism. On the one hand, the unsystematic character of Rumi’s main works and the lack of clear structure therein have continued to allow commentators on his thought to borrow from other systems in order to bring his teachings into a coherent order.¹¹ On the other hand, Rumi’s increasing popularity and fame, not only in the Islamic world since the thirteenth century but also in the West during the last two centuries, has spawned numerous interpretations of his poetry, sometimes to the rather benign end of bringing fame to their authors but also occasionally coloring his works to serve ethnocentric, political, and nationalistic agendas.¹² Rumi has been classified, accordingly, in various categories, as a follower of Ibn ‘Arabi and an interpreter of his doctrine of waḥdat al-wujūd (“unity of being”),¹³ as a pre-eminent Turkish (versus Iranian) philosopher and mystic,¹⁴ and even as a New Age gurupoet par excellence.¹⁵

The application of other epistemological systems as an aid for understanding Rumi’s mysticism is certainly not wrong per se. Rumi himself was influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by different currents of thought that emerged both before and during his lifetime, and various threads of those trends can be identified in his words.¹⁶ However, the problem arises when such approaches result in the imposition of alien frameworks on his mysticism, thereby forcing his ideas to conform to the mold of structures not compatible with his own principles. It leads to the de-contextualization of Rumi’s mysticism from the intellectual setting to which it belongs and severs the links between his mysticism and its original environment.¹⁷ For example, considering Rumi to be some sort of New Age spiritual guide who eschews any form of established religion would mean that he deserves to be respected as a pioneer of modern unchurched spirituality, but at the cost of disconnecting him from the religious discourse in which his ideas developed. Likewise, regarding him as a purely Turkish Sufi involves separating him from the spiritual, linguistic, and cultural milieus of Khorasan, a vast region in the north-eastern parts of ancient Iran, which was highly significant in shaping Rumi’s Weltanschauung and rhetoric.¹⁸ In addition, the imposition of such frameworks disregards the interrelation between various aspects of Rumi’s mysticism, which, as with any other mystical system, intends to be an internally consistent entity made up of different parts interacting in a cohesive multidimensional structure, rather than being composed of separate and independent fragments.

Both of these methodological considerations, namely, considering the mutual interconnection between different aspects of mysticism and refraining from the imposition of other systems on a particular mystical system, are taken into account in the current work, which seeks to correct these past oversights in the study of Rumi’s practical mysticism. Here, Rumi’s practical teachings will be approached and systematized not independently but rather from the wider perspective of seeing his entire mystical system as a whole, in connection with the theoretical framework depicted in his works. Furthermore, an effort has been made to interpret Rumi’s words based on his own Sufi foundations rather than through a reductionist approach of reading his thought in the light of alien structures. These considerations, nevertheless, do not mean that the most suitable approach to understanding Rumi’s legacy and, critically for our study here, to systematizing his practical mysticism is to analyze his works independently without any consideration of other mystical traditions. On the contrary, a proper use of comparative study in the systematization of his practical mysticism, the third methodological point employed in this volume, can better underline its specific character, central themes, and focal points. It can shed light on certain aspects of his thought that can easily fade into the background without being juxtaposed with their parallels in other practical systems. In approaching the subject in such a way, the compared practical systems operate as two “mirrors” reflecting each other and revealing various aspects of one another, instead of one serving as a “mold” for the other. Comparison hence becomes a tool for clarification and comprehension rather than a device of reduction and imposition. Such comparison does not aim, as with phenomenologist and essentialist approaches to the study of religion, to concentrate on the affinities of the compared systems of practical mysticism in order to find universal structures and essential meanings, or to prepare the ground for a trans-historical or trans-geographical dialog.¹⁹ It also does not seek to focus on the differences between compared mystical systems, as is generally done by constructivist scholars²⁰ who give much prominence to the historical, cultural, religious, psychological, and other contextual aspects that may bring about such distinctions.²¹ The comparative methodology used here pays due attention to both the similarities and the differences between the respective systems of practical mysticism of Rumi and his counterpart, particularly utilizing these comparisons for a better comprehension and systematization of Rumi’s thought. Therefore, advocates of both phenomenologist/essentialist and constructivist approaches, i.e., those seeking commonalities and those searching for distinctions between mystical traditions, will each find evidence and material in the current study that are relevant to their own particular viewpoints.

In selecting a mystic whose practical mysticism can provide a useful mirror to that of Rumi, two main criteria must be taken into account. First, the two mystics should have, in addition to commonalities, noticeable differences and preferably belong to different schools of mysticism so that they can highlight various aspects and parts of one another. While phenomenologists and essentialists generally seek to compare mystics or mystical traditions on the basis of their similarities, here the differences are by no means less important. For instance, comparing Rumi’s teachings with those of the Sufi-poet Farid al-Din ‘Attar (d. c.1221) or juxtaposing them with the Minnemystik of the French abbot Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153), however valuable such an effort may be, cannot underscore Rumi’s mysticism of love or show the centrality of the concept of love in his mystical system. This aspect of his thought will only be cast sharply into relief when he is placed side by side with a mystic in whose mysticism love plays a secondary role. Likewise, if Rumi rejects all manner of philosophizing and reasoning in the field of mysticism, such idiosyncrasy will not receive due attention when he is juxtaposed with a mystic who shares the same principles, such as the Khorasani Sufi Abu Sa‘id Abu al-Khayr (d. 1049). By contrast, such a feature comes to the fore when Rumi is compared with a mystic who recognizes, rather than renounces, the significance of speculation and philosophy.

Second, a sufficient amount of textual materials should be available concerning not only the practical teachings of the mystic to be compared with Rumi, but also other aspects of his or her mysticism especially the theoretical one. There are many great mystics who have been highly influential in the history of mysticism, yet there are few reliable, extant sources on their teachings. One such example in Islamic tradition is the celebrated Sufi of the eighth and ninth centuries, Abu Yazid Bistami (d. 848 or 875). He wrote nothing himself, and the majority of the words that have been attributed to him survive only in fragmentary texts written more than a century after his death, the most significant of which is a collection of sayings in Arabic rather than in his own, native Persian.²² Similarly, there are some practice-oriented mystics with noticeable practical teachings, whose legacies lack substantial textual evidence for their theoretical ideas. Such limitations hinder the examination of their practical mysticism in connection with their own theoretical mysticism as well as any comparison of the theoretical context of their practical teachings with that of Rumi.²³

Meister Eckhart (c.1260–1327/8), a German Dominican of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and a writer and preacher of speculative mysticism,²⁴ satisfies both of these major criteria and is, therefore, a suitable mirror for the Muslim Meister²⁵ concerning their practical mysticism.²⁶ Regarding the first criterion, in spite of considerable similarities with Rumi’s mysticism, Eckhart belongs to a different school of mysticism than does Rumi, with the intellect and knowledge acting as pivotal concepts that play a crucial...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Notes on transliteration
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• PART I Eckhart’s practical mysticism
• PART II Rumi’s practical mysticism: a comparative reading
• Appendix 1: a chronology of Rumi
• Appendix 2: a chronology of Eckhart
• Bibliography
• Index