"But is it really possible to
find beauty in the most imperfect of things" asked the novice Sufi to his Sufi
Master.
The Master smiled. In that smile, were images of years and years of memories, of joyful and sad experiences, of lost and re-found love, of hopeful desires and fearful reasons. The Master remembered his own time years back when he was young and asked the grandmaster a similar question on how to find true happiness when all things are so imperfect. He remembered his own disillusions and then the moments of epiphany where he finally realized, it’s not about finding happiness in life but creating it and often with most imperfect of things around. The Master wondered how long and far this new student of his, will travel and how easy or difficult his journey would be to understand and reach this simple conclusion.
The day was long for me. The long bus ride to Konya from eastern part of turkey was tiring, but the mere thought of walking on the streets where Rumi once walked and talked and smiled and dreamed and got awakened by shams, was worth all that visit to this small city again. There was something thing holy in that city, it always brought an unusual calm to my heart beats.
Dumping my bags in a small cheap Pansyion (turkish hotel) , and coming back to the reception I found her, going through the translated poems of Rumi by Coleman Barks. Japanese, with rough hairs and dirt all over the clothes, but there was this undeniable shine in her eyes (the ones you find in the main characters of Murakami books). Usual formalities, introductions, trust building , taking our guards off, and there we were, sitting like old friends in the Chai Baghche (tea garden) of Konya discussing Sufism and how it relates to the Japanese concept of Wabi-Sabi (wikipedia link)
A bit away from us, were a group of people listening to an old man. I heard the words, beauty, and imperfections and life and was intrigued to hear more....
The Master, instead of answering, asked the young boy to do the same, what his grandmaster asked him to do years ago, asking to find and bring the most beautiful shoe from the shoemaker’s shop. All these years were passing by the master’s mind in those moments like a silent black and white old movie. He thought if knowledge and enlightenment is also circular and karmic in nature and all that stories about evolution and technology and human progress is just an illusion, and if we humans are just reliving similar lives again and again, just with different colors. The old man continued with the story (We keep the story of the shoe and the shoemaker for a later time).
My thoughts were disrupted again… I found myself listening to the Japanese girl on phone talking to her mother in a strange language. I tried for sometime unsuccessfully, to decipher the emotions beneath these alien words… the stars were all over the sky... the Ramadan moon was about to disappear and the ghosts of Konya’s past started to appear slowly to start the ‘Sema’ (sufi whirling ceremony). Ordering another chai for us both, I, after a very long time, smiled and kept smiling, for no apparent reason…
The Master smiled. In that smile, were images of years and years of memories, of joyful and sad experiences, of lost and re-found love, of hopeful desires and fearful reasons. The Master remembered his own time years back when he was young and asked the grandmaster a similar question on how to find true happiness when all things are so imperfect. He remembered his own disillusions and then the moments of epiphany where he finally realized, it’s not about finding happiness in life but creating it and often with most imperfect of things around. The Master wondered how long and far this new student of his, will travel and how easy or difficult his journey would be to understand and reach this simple conclusion.
The day was long for me. The long bus ride to Konya from eastern part of turkey was tiring, but the mere thought of walking on the streets where Rumi once walked and talked and smiled and dreamed and got awakened by shams, was worth all that visit to this small city again. There was something thing holy in that city, it always brought an unusual calm to my heart beats.
Dumping my bags in a small cheap Pansyion (turkish hotel) , and coming back to the reception I found her, going through the translated poems of Rumi by Coleman Barks. Japanese, with rough hairs and dirt all over the clothes, but there was this undeniable shine in her eyes (the ones you find in the main characters of Murakami books). Usual formalities, introductions, trust building , taking our guards off, and there we were, sitting like old friends in the Chai Baghche (tea garden) of Konya discussing Sufism and how it relates to the Japanese concept of Wabi-Sabi (wikipedia link)
A bit away from us, were a group of people listening to an old man. I heard the words, beauty, and imperfections and life and was intrigued to hear more....
The Master, instead of answering, asked the young boy to do the same, what his grandmaster asked him to do years ago, asking to find and bring the most beautiful shoe from the shoemaker’s shop. All these years were passing by the master’s mind in those moments like a silent black and white old movie. He thought if knowledge and enlightenment is also circular and karmic in nature and all that stories about evolution and technology and human progress is just an illusion, and if we humans are just reliving similar lives again and again, just with different colors. The old man continued with the story (We keep the story of the shoe and the shoemaker for a later time).
My thoughts were disrupted again… I found myself listening to the Japanese girl on phone talking to her mother in a strange language. I tried for sometime unsuccessfully, to decipher the emotions beneath these alien words… the stars were all over the sky... the Ramadan moon was about to disappear and the ghosts of Konya’s past started to appear slowly to start the ‘Sema’ (sufi whirling ceremony). Ordering another chai for us both, I, after a very long time, smiled and kept smiling, for no apparent reason…
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