Announcing Seven Pillars’ Guiding Voices

Posted by Pir Zia Inayat-Khan on February 4, 2010

Seven Pillars has been in existence for a year and a half now, and with each passing season our “house with no walls” has taken fuller shape.

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The Order of Universal Sannyasa

Posted by Pir Zia Inayat-Khan on January 15, 2010

The late Brother Wayne Teasdale envisioned the creation of a loose-strung order of visionary activists committed to the ideals of interspirituality. Now Brother Wayne's friends are making his dream a reality.

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Wanting Like a God: Desire and Freedom in Thomas Traherne by Denise Inge

Posted by Pir Zia Inayat-Khan on December 16, 2009

But for a highly improbable string of discoveries, Thomas Traherne’s mystical masterpieces might have been irretrievably lost in the sands of time.

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Sharing the Temple

Posted by Pir Zia Inayat-Khan on October 27, 2009

Once again hostilities have shattered the fragile peace of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. As always, the issue is sovereignty. Muslims and Jews agree that the Temple Mount is a place of tremendous sacred significance. What is disagreed on is who ought to control it.

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Three Windows on Prophecy

Posted by Pir Zia Inayat-Khan on September 4, 2009

Every prophet is a mystic, but not every mystic is a prophet. The mystic ascends the cosmic mountain and descends with a secret. The prophet too ascends and descends the mountain. But what the prophet brings down is not a secret; it is a message.

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The New Knighthood

Posted by Pir Zia Inayat-Khan on August 7, 2009

The same restless yearning that drives the evolution of species likewise impels the transformation of human societies. In culture as in nature, the Earth is ever transcending itself. Nothing in human life is static.

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Facebook

Posted by Pir Zia Inayat-Khan on June 21, 2009

What I like about Facebook is that it is an apt metaphor for tawajjuh. Tawajjuh is an Arabic verbal noun derived from wajh, “face.” In Sufism, it denotes the practice of turning one’s spiritual face toward the face of another within the sphere of the heart.

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Wild Fruit

Posted by Pir Zia Inayat-Khan on May 29, 2009

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Hills and Dales of Columbia County

Posted by Pir Zia Inayat-Khan on May 6, 2009

What better way to celebrate the birthday of Novalis than to ramble over sun-dappled hillsides tracking the traffic of elementals, as we did last Saturday?

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Resurrecting Chivalry

Posted by Pir Zia Inayat-Khan on April 1, 2009

When asked to explain the mission of Seven Pillars, I generally begin by outlining the four core areas. As I invoke the words Cosmology, Revelation, and Mysticism, I am typically greeted with beaming approval. Then comes Chivalry. Now my listener has a furrowed brow. Peering through that brow I can almost read the thoughts it encloses: Chivalry is sexist, elitist, and violent. Chivalry is dead.

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Sacred Spaces

Posted by Pir Zia Inayat-Khan on March 4, 2009

Dargah is a Persian word meaning “royal court.” In the Indian subcontinent it commonly refers to the tombs of Sufi saints. For nearly a millennium these shrines have formed an integral part of the rural and urban landscapes of South Asia.

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Dante’s Pluralism Review

Posted by Pir Zia Inayat-Khan on January 28, 2009

Dante’s relationship with Islam and Islamic thought is something of a conundrum. On the one hand, Dante notoriously assigned Muhammad (peace be upon him) a miserable fate in the eighth circle of Hell. On the other hand, the entire structure of The Divine Comedy bears an unmistakable resemblance to Muhammad’s fabled mi’raj or ascension, as Miguel Asin Palacios demonstrated nearly a century ago.

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Stop the Violence

Posted by Pir Zia Inayat-Khan on January 19, 2009

Every time brother kills brother—as is happening right now in the Holy Land—it is an unspeakable violation of the beneficent order of creation, an outrage of cosmic proportions. But we hardly notice. Habituated as we are to a ceaseless flow of electronic entertainment jam-packed with murder and mayhem, violence has lost its edge for us.

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Meatless Days

Posted by Pir Zia Inayat-Khan on January 7, 2009

Though raised an omnivore, as a child I had little appetite for flesh foods. I wanted nothing on my plate that reminded me of the chipmunks and robins I was trying to befriend behind our house.

One day our Buddhist neighbors lent me a book by their teacher, the late Roshi Philip Kapleau, entitled To Cherish All Life. Reading Kapleau’s harrowing account of the horrors endured by animals in factory farms, the scales fell from my eyes and I have held to a bloodless diet ever since.

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The Wine of Creation

Posted by Pir Zia Inayat-Khan on December 25, 2008

Wine is the sole salvation,
Its worship and works sublime;
Be firm thy determination,
Hafiz be saved in time.

Life may be likened to a tavern in which we figure as thirsty customers. 

Tavern culture has its stages.  In the first stage, judgment is lacking.  Any mind-numbing inebriant will do.  The headache that follows is simply a prompt to drain another glass.

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A Call to Wisdom

Posted by Pir Zia Inayat-Khan on December 17, 2008

In respectful tribute to the author of A Letter to Hebrews.

And what is wisdom? Wisdom is seeing the whole in the parts, and in the whole, seeing the holy.

It is for their wisdom that the prophets and prophetesses of the past are remembered.

By wisdom we receive the universe as the revelation of the Eternal and Infinite inscribed on the scroll of time and space.

By wisdom Adam and Eve were led to taste the fruit of knowledge and to step from the narrow garden of innocence into the wide world of experience.

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‘Id al-Adha

Posted by Pir Zia Inayat-Khan on December 7, 2008

‘Id al-Adha is upon us!  For those who may not know, ‘Id al-Adha (“The Feast of the Sacrifice”) is the major sacred festival of the Islamic calendar.  The significance of ‘Id al-Adha turns on an event that is remembered with equal reverence by Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike: the story of Abraham’s (peace be upon him) intended sacrifice of his son.

The Torah (Genesis 22:1-18) relates that God instructed Abraham to offer up his favorite son as a burnt offering, to which the faithful prophet readily assented.  Just as Abraham was lifting the knife to his son’s throat a heavenly messenger intervened, declaring that he had sufficiently proven his devotion.  Hearing this, Abraham sacrificed a ram in place of his son, whereupon the angel announced God’s blessing upon the prophet and his descendents and all nations.

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Wolfram’s Lesson

Posted by Pir Zia Inayat-Khan on November 15, 2008

Politics aside, what is remarkable about Barack Obama’s victory is that, for the first time in history, it puts a “black” man in the White House.

Of course Obama is not black. I for one have never met a black person. Nor have I met a white person for that matter. Black and white might have served as useful descriptors in the era of monochrome television, but those days are gone.

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Introducing the Founder’s Blog

Posted by Pir Zia Inayat-Khan on November 12, 2008

Welcome to the Founder's Blog. I look forward to using this forum to share some of my ideas and impressions touching on the theme of world wisdom. The mode of writing will likely differ from entry to entry. One day it might be a poem or prayer, another day a book review or opinion piece. Periods of extended travel excepted, I hope to update the blog at least once a month. I welcome your comments, though I regret that I may not be able to write back. Thank you for your visit, and peace be with you.