Jottings : Slice of life - 67 ( Coleman Barks - his inebriation with Rumi)
Jottings : Slice of life - 67 ( Coleman Barks - his inebriation with Rumi) I have in front of me three books : “Introduction to Zen Buddhism” by DT Suzuki published in 1934, Idries shah’s “Sufism” published in 1964, and Coleman Barks “The Soul of Rumi” published in 2002. The first two volumes are path breaking books of the last century. Suzuki interpreted the enigmatic and paradoxical mysticism of Zen buddhism to modern western readers in a manner that was scholastic enough, and at the same time easily accessible to serious readers. Idries shah, a Britisher, synthesized the beautiful tradition of Islamic mysticism in the form of Sufism, its dance of dervishes, making it sensible and meaningful to a world which thought of them as nothing more than nervous paroxysms of Mad men. That the depth of Sufism is essentially the same mystical reverberation of ages across traditions, was first realized in the English works of Idries shah. The love poems of Sufi mystics, the clownish stories o