The inner dimension of Islam
Sufism is to Islam what the contemplative tradition is to Christianity: the inward-facing current of a primarily outward-facing religion. Where the sharīʿa governs outer conduct, the Sufi path (ṭarīqa) governs inner transformation; where the mosque is the house of communal prayer, the Sufi lodge (tekke, khanqah, zawiya) is the workshop of the heart.
The distinction is a matter of emphasis, not of separation. Most great Sufi teachers were rigorous jurists. Al-Ghazālī, the eleventh-century theologian whose work shaped orthodox Sunni thought for centuries, was also a Sufi. The two streams have always run together, except in the periods — recurring across Islamic history — when reformist movements have tried to suppress the inner one.
Dhikr and the practice of remembrance
The central Sufi practice is dhikr — the repeated invocation of one of the names of God, sometimes silently, sometimes aloud, sometimes accompanied by movement and breath. The mechanism is identical to mantra practice in Hindu yoga and to the Jesus Prayer in Eastern Orthodox Christianity: a single phrase repeated until the mind, then the body, then the felt sense of self, are saturated with it. The fruit, in classical Sufi description, is fanāʾ — annihilation of the self in God — followed by baqāʾ — abiding in God.
Fanāʾ is the Sufi vocabulary's closest match to what non-duality calls the dissolution of the separate self, and what Buddhism calls the recognition of anattā. The vocabularies differ. The territory mapped is recognisably the same.
The poets
Sufism produced the largest body of mystical poetry in any tradition. Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (1207–1273), whose Masnavi runs to twenty-five thousand couplets, is the bestselling poet in the United States today — read more in Coleman Barks's loose translations than most American-born poets are read in the originals. Hafiz of Shiraz (c. 1320–1389) and Farīd al-Dīn ʿAttar (c. 1145–1221, author of The Conference of the Birds) are the other two whose work has crossed reliably into English. Ibn ʿArabī (1165–1240), more philosopher than poet, is the source of the doctrine of waḥdat al-wujūd — the unity of being — which is essentially advaita in Arabic.
Why it isn't yet in the index
The honest answer: this is a gap. The contemplative literatures of Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity are well-represented in English-language audio and video; Sufi material in English is scattered, often academic, and rarely in the lecture-and-podcast format the rest of the index gathers. Recommendations welcome.
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