Volume
Vol. 12, The Vision of God and Man
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The Life of the Sage in the East (2)
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Sufi Sages
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Vol. 12, The Vision of God and Man
The Life of the Sage in the East (2)
Sufi Sages
Lastly we come to speak of the Sufi sages. Here also we find two kinds, the Rind and the Salik. Those who are called fakirs all belong to the Rind. Their life consists in learning to disregard all worldly things. A person fears most being without such things, and this makes him a hypocrite all his life, for he fears missing the things of the world, so this is the first thing to learn to disregard. This is why wine is mentioned so often in the poetry of Rumi, Sa'di Jami, Hafiz, and Omar Khayyam. The country where they lived and died was Muslim, and wine was despised and abhorred, so they chose this word as well as other words abhorrent to the religion, and used them in their poetry to express the philosophy of human nature, while incurring the displeasure of the people in general. They hid the action of God and man within these words: wine, jar, glass, rose, etc.
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