Word: sufism
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Both Sunni and Shi'ite Islam include Sufism, a mystical movement whose adherents seek to serve God not simply through obedience to the law but by striving for union with him through meditation and ritual. Sufism is considered suspect by fundamentalist Muslims like the puritanical Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia, because it allows for the veneration of awliya-roughly the equivalent of Christianity's saints. Islam also has spawned a number of heretical offshoots. One is the Alawi sect, a Shi'ite minority group to which most of Syria's leaders belong. The Alawis believe...
...Cosmic Mass," performed last week at New York's Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The show (admission: $5) was conceived two years ago by Pir ("Elder") Vilayat Inayat Khan, 59, British son of an Indian mystic who founded the Sufi Order in the West (Sufism is the mystical movement within Islam). Pir Vilayat, a well-known guru in the spiritual counterculture, now heads the order, which has practically divorced itself from Islam. The message, one that Pir Vilayat implored his audience to spread, is "the unity of all religions...
...Sufism, Islam has preserved the way of knowing God in life. Attracted by the Persian example of linking spiritual and material progress, many Americans like myself have become dervishes and have discovered the miracle described by the 11th century Persian Sufi, Abu Sa'id, who said: "It is no miracle to walk on water or the air, for frogs and birds do that; the miracle is to go about your business and never for a moment forget...
However, with this book, Castaneda seems well on his way to creating a new mythology designed for the Western hemisphere. Don Juan's teachings can be analyzed as a melange of Zen, Sufism, the dream control of Tibetan Buddhism, and other disciplines. But this essentially Eastern message is transmitted by a member of the fierce Yaquis of northern Mexico, the only unconquered tribe of North America. Don Juan is no pacifist and no vegetarian--he is a warrior. The natural world of predator and prey is his pantheon: the cactus, rattlesnake, coyote, mountain lion--all of which are equal...
...13th century Persian poet Jalal al-din Rumi, the reed was a metaphor for man. Rumi was a follower of the ancient principles of Sufism, a mystical movement that is to Islam roughly what Hasidism is to Judaism. He believed that the soul and God are one and the same. The world, he taught the faithful, is but a tomb, temporarily separating the soul from its divine milieu. In order to release the imprisoned spirit, he taught the Sufi dervishes (Persian for beggars) to dance themselves into an ecstatic trance; all their movements were made in rhythm with the music...