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Integral Islam; an experience

Posted October 13th, 2008 by Richard Munn
August, 2006
 
I arrive at my well-educated friends’ house in London and am greeted with a warm welcome and a tiny degree of nervousness. After a while we both settle into meeting each others’ being in the room and my friend says “Well, I’m not so sure about you staying here mate, if you’re going to hang out with a bunch of Muslims soon.” He is joking and we both laugh. I know he is a very loving, liberal and accepting man however I can’t help but notice the culturally conditioned response of my friend as he displays a very minor degree of Islamophobia, masked in a humour. 
 
It strikes me as we talk that as a liberal, Cambridge post-graduate educated man who believes strongly in empirical rationality he is unable to make a distinction between the perspective of the group I am attending - a contemplative group of Sufis who practice loving more deeply and clearly - and the perspective of the more dogmatic strains of Islamic religion that often harden people around a fixed, rigid, unforgiving and Manichean set of rules and dictates. This disparity between my friend and I makes me feel less engaged with him; I choose to keep a large part of myself in the closet because if the other part explicitly came out it would not be received, which is to say a meaningful part of me would not be recognized and appreciated. We do, however, spend the rest of the day and evening laughing, relating, playing and competing.
 
The next day I make my way from London by train down towards the south coast of England, where I am to be met by Omar, a relative of the late, well-known Sufi teacher Inayat Khan. Originally from India, Khan held Royal audiences, among others, captive with his rendition and transmission of songs of the Beloved. Khan later came to England and finally settled in France where he led a practice community. Omar, well schooled in his families’ lineage, greets me at the train station and we drive through beautiful countryside of fields and intricate roadways that previously flowed as riverbeds before drying up and leaving sunken natural transport routes lined with old trees. We arrive at his house and I take in the sight of a sumptuous cottage, standing in content solitude in a slow-tempo pastureland.  
 
We walk inside and I stoop slightly as I enter through the old doorway, built probably in the seventeenth century, when people and their life span were much shorter. I am greeted by the smell of richly aromatic, slowly simmering soup. After being introduced to the smiling faces of the practice community of eight people that have gathered together I am wonderfully surprised to learn that for the next few hours we will simply sit around this table, in this kitchen, on this old tiled floor, eating soup, sharing bread and reading each other parables. The stories will come largely from a collection of writings on the life and teaching of a well-loved Sufi wise-fool called Nasrudin. I have since learned that the art of narrating is a customary practice amongst many Sufis; the stories, savoured collectively like an old family recipe, offer a multi-layered and rich source of mutual analytical meditation. 
 
For example: A man comes to Mulla Nasrudin and asks if he can borrow his donkey. Nasrudin does not want to lend this particular man the donkey yet also he does not want to seem impolite so says “I am sorry, I have already lent it to someone else” at which point the donkey can be heard loudly braying from behind a wall. The man exclaims and gestures towards the yard with his hands “I can hear it! It’s right there!” In his defence Nasrudin replies “who would you rather believe, a donkey or your Mulla?” Omar finds the story amusing and offers only a smile and soft, knowing, belly-laugh while enjoying his soup as commentary and guidance. Noticing this and other subtle exchanges between Omar and the group I warm to him more as a teacher and man.     
 
After several more readings from the Tales of Nasrudin we move into another very receptive room furnished with soft couches and a bouncy and inviting warm carpeted floor. Omar sits down behind an instrument that looks like an immobile, single-hinge accordion.   We listen to Omar talk to the group about Zikr, meaning Remembrance. He speaks of both the lyrical dimension of the practice and also a ritualised, repetitive, movement of the body to be engaged in while chanting as one fluid phrase, in this particular Zikr, lei il la allah illallah hu – or, there is no god but God.  
 
The body motion involves a symbolic movement of the head, whereby for the first part of the chant – lei il la allah - the head raises upwards as if looking towards the Heavens with Eros-Ascent and a longing for The Higher. During the second part of the chant - illallah hu - the head releases and drops; descending belly-tender down into and becoming the Heart. When taken as a totality reflecting and intensifying the highs and lows of our life journey I seem to be being told, that this is God, this climbing and sinking, plunging and surfacing is the Divine Movement and Symphony. We would practice Zikr for one hour, comprised of three rounds of chanting interspersed with a period of silence between each round. 
 
On hearing the way Omar is giving instruction and on feeling the strong love-clear intention of the room I consider that the phrase “there is no god but God” has multiple possible interpretations, according to the degree of maturation within the practitioner and/or practice community. A mythic way to understand the statement “there is no god but God” often is “there is no god but My God” and, of course, we feel this all the time in our global culture. However I would open myself during this practice to the view-experience that this gorgeous Arabic phrase boldly declares that “there is no-thing Other than Love!” The soft sigh of lamp light and the burning of liquid butter on tender skin. 
 
Omar starts the Zikr by setting the tone and tempo through the vibrant, drone-like sound of the instrument, and chanting. We join in after the cue of a note hit just-so. Soon I am lifted up by our voices as we collectively give each other our devotion, openness, love and energetic-vocal praise. I am self-conscious that my singing is not benefiting the group but is instead rather a subtle - or not so subtle - burden to their practice. Yet the energetic container of communion carries me forward, into the next moment, into the next moment and now into this moment, this walkway too wide to have length . . . 
 
My eyes begin to well up as my heart fills to overflowing and tears of joy spill downwards and roll around my face as my head moves in Zikr, in Remembrance, and soon I start to dissolve into a responsive field of ease and spacious glowing that feels everywhere but is most alive in the very centre of my chest. This intense experience of the heart as luminous feeling awareness persists for the remainder of the practice in a stable and strong-overwhelmed fashion. 
 
I circle my head, raising my face to the Above, feeling the inside of my eyelids flood with colour as light bathes my face, singing the words “lei il la allah,” in harmony with the group. The chant allows me and supports me expressing this harmony in me, that is me in this moment, and the waves of us keep carrying me deeper to opening. I release my neck and my head falls forward so jawbone touches chest and the light disperses, my eyelids now seeing only black and me feeling the dark, mysterious nature of the body while praising in downward tone “illallah hu.” The heart still flooding outwards, sometimes like an expansive, pervading mist, other times like love was muscularly swimming out into the room as earthy curves of more dense and obviously potent becoming and grace; a sway and swirl between subtle and causal bodies of Beloved somehow coming and going in some other continuous experience of non-separate.  
 
The Zikr ends. We sit in silence. It is obvious to see, for both myself and others, that I was shaken awake by this time together. Omar’s wife Farida kindly takes care of me by offering water with the sage words “this will help to ground you before your train journey.” I leave, talk and hug goodbye to Omar and say a fond farewell to the others. Boarding alone the very British train to make a very average journey back to my very average home I remain somehow always touched by this day and called wordlessly in the days since to Remember.
 

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Awesome post...

Posted October 13th, 2008 by Corey deVos

...thank you for sharing Richard.  I enjoyed this a great deal.

You should think about uploading a member image, just so the piece feels a little more personal, and has some sort of gross-body correlate to your wonderfully embodied language....

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marvelous

Posted October 13th, 2008 by Ambo Suno

Richard, thank you for that very full wonderful story that I assume was/is true. It seemed to me that it was so directly and modestly told - yet was extravagant in it's sincere evocation.

As an aside, I was wondering if you wrote this piece for another occasion or is this written to introduce yourself to us. Regardless, it was/is marvelous. Ambo

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rememberance...

Posted October 13th, 2008 by Kerry Dugan

Richard,

What a priceless entry! It's clear that your fidelity to the spirit of Zikr lives in your recounting of Rememberance for us.

You gave me back a hundred nights with Lex Hixon, Shiekh Nur, (author of Coming Home: The Experience of Enlightenment in Sacred Traditions) and the Jerrahi Dervishes of Istanbul, as well as a memory of being your age and sleeping in Pir Vilayat Khan's (Hazrat Inayat's son) double dome cabin on the north side of Mt. Tremper, the south side of which holds the Zen monastery I was to practice in for the rest of my twenties.

Would you bring your paper on AQAL and Emptiness here, or a link to it? Or if that's in revision, I'll look forward to where it's gone since.

Al hum du li la,

Kerry, Kamal, Jikishin...

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Thank-you

Posted October 15th, 2008 by Richard Munn

Hey guys,

Thank-you sincerely for sharing with me. It touches me.

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Remembering the soup

Posted October 19th, 2008 by Malena Gamboa

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Richard, what a jeweled account of a treasured memory! Your observations, and the manner in which you tell of them, create a delicate vignette in my minds eye...  

Off I go on a London train toward the coast of England through a countryside of fields and intricate roadways lined with old trees... And to a sumptuous cottage in a low tempo pastureland. So perfectly described!   All of which lead me, your reader, to share in Zikr. My head joins you on the upward and downward motions as I softly whisper lei il la allah, and illallah hu along with each of you. Oh the beauty of such rituals! And through it all, I confess my mouth waters for that soup! What a sweet journey.   Thank you for sharing such an intense experience! Truly!
 
Malena