Hafez: Mundane to Divine love

After keeping a vigil for 40 consecutive nights at the tomb of Baba Kuhi (an 11th C. AD Persian poet) the young man smitten by love was rewarded with a visit by angel Gabriel (some suggest the angel was Khizer).

Angel: So you are bestowed with immortality and poetic excellence as promised by Baba Kuhi, now for your third boon, what is your heart’s desire?

Stunned by the beauty of the angel the young man forgot the charms of his sweetheart whom he desired to possess and for winning whose heart he had kept the vigil. So enchanted was he by the grace and radiance of the former that He thought if Almighty’s angel is so intoxicatingly beautiful how beautiful would be the Lord himself. And in a fit of ecstasy these words escaped his mouth

Young man: I want God……..

The realization he was asking for was terribly difficult and required tremendous patience and true faith…he knew it…..it would have been so much simpler to have asked for his lady love…but then he would not have become Hafez, one of the most renowned and loved poets of Iran.

The moment he realized that the beauty of ‘Shakh-e-Nabat” (a lady whom he had seen in the elite part of the city and to whom he had lost his heart to) was merely a reflection of the beauty of the Almighty, he became restless and anxious to reach the all pervading Lord and to delve in mysteries of nature.Nothing else could quench his thirst for eternal knowledge

How can your face show such beauty
While here on Earth
You are the image of inconsistency and faithlessness

(From: “The Diwan of Hafez Shirazi” Ed. By Michael R Brown, Translated by Parham Noori Esfandiani and Alan Dean)

These lines clearly point out his disillusionment with the material world. He began yearning for divine love . Many a times Hafez’s poems are classified as love poems and their meaning taken literary. Though at the earlier stage he has written love poems solely dedicated to Shakh-e-Nabat but all his later poetry is dedicated to divine love.


Directed by the angel to go to Mohammad Attar and consider him as his Spiritual guru, Hafez spend forty years of his life serving his master secretly. The story of his vigil made him known throughout Shiraz and the poetry he now wrote in praise of his Lord were sung in lanes and bylanes of the city. These poems were written essentially as love poems sung in the praise of the beloved with deep spiritual meaning in them. One can understand the contents very well in Indian context as we have had many saint poets like Meera bai, Andal etc. who considered themselves as lovers of Lord.But in Persia of that time his works came under lot of criticism. He was openly called a ‘Kafir’ and his works were constantly scrutinized by religious leaders.
All the opposition did not deter him at all. He also saw the wisdom and mercy of God manifesting through his Master Attar, and he composed many poems praising his Master and begging Attar to fulfill the promise of Union of God. When Hafez went to visit Attar, Attar would ask Hafez to read his latest poem, then he would spiritually analyze it for the sake of Hafez and the other disciples, (this practice continued for forty years). Then the disciples would put tunes to the ghazals and the songs would soon be sung throughout Shiraz, with the fame of Hafez continuing to grow.
But by the end of forty years of serving Attar he became impatient to unravel the mysteries of unknown.That is when he decided to put himself to test again.


This time he entered a circle that he had drawn on the ground. He had made up his mind to enter self-imposed ‘Chehel Nashini’, in which the lover of God sits within a circle for forty days and it was believed that if the devotee was successful in this difficult deed, the lord would grant him his heart’s desire. Hafez managed to perform this difficult task too but by the end of the penance he realized he had no desire left. Thus he reached a stage of God realization where nothing mattered anymore and he wanted nothing. Feeling blissfully light and enlightened he came back to Atttar and during the last eight years of his life he just wrote about the ultimate union. He no longer was the seeker of the beloved but he was the beloved himself. In the poems written during this period one can often see traces of Advaita philosophy.

Only
That Illumined
One
Who keeps seducing the formless into form
Had the charm to win my heart

Only
A perfect one
Who is always
Laughing at the word ‘two’
Can make you know of love

(From ‘The Gift’ Translated by David Landinsky)



The lines…laughing at the word ‘two’ clearly points out his faith in monism as well as critiques the system where God is looked upon as someone or something to be feared. Hafez says he is in me, I am in him and this feeling underlines all his later poems.



In his final years Hafez gathered his disciples around him and began to teach them, using his poems to illustrate the various Spiritual points that he wanted them to understand. Because his fame had become so widespread and people were traveling from all parts of Persia and other countries to be in his presence, that he had to seclude himself to a degree to be able to continue to teach his chosen disciples, and to write his poems that were eagerly awaited by his many devotees, and his enemies who continued to plot against him.

At the age of sixty-nine due to a longtime sickness he left his earthly form to the chagrin of most of Shiraz.People from far and near came to pay their homage to the great poet. Hafez's body was carried towards the Muslim burial ground in the rose-bower of Musalla, on the banks of the Ruknabad, which he loved and praised in his poems, and to where he often walked and sat down to write many of his ghazals.
"The Ulama of Shiraz, with his fellow clergy, refused to allow for Hafez's body to be buried as a Muslim and claimed that his poetry was impious. The long knives that they had been trying to drive into his back were now fully on show, for he was no longer there to defend himself against them with his sharp wit and sense of irony.
"The followers of Hafez and the many citizens of Shiraz began to argue with those who followed the orthodox point of view, and in the heat of the argument, someone suggested that they should ask the poet himself for the solution. The clergy, by now afraid of the size and fervor of Hafez's supporters, reluctantly agreed to the suggestion of tearing up many of his poems into couplets and placing them into a large urn, and to call on a small boy in the crowd to select one couplet from it. The couplet that was selected was couplet no. 7 from ghazal 60:
""Don't you walk away from this graveside of Hafez, because, although buried in mistakes, he is traveling to Paradise."
"Even after death, Hafez had, with tongue in cheek, outwitted his bitter rivals, and this practice of consulting his Divan as an oracle has continued from this incident
To this day people ask the great philosopher poet:

Hafez to ro be Shakh I Nabat
Jawab e swalam ra bede

(Hafez, You are sworn by Shakh I nabat
Give answers to my queries

The deeper meaning in Idol worship

In the last century, the century when reason reigned supreme ,all oriental religiosity and modes of worship were relegated to the realm of superstition and were criticized by Western scholars as being barbaric ,evil and grotesque.The apparent polytheism which is one of the first things which strikes any outsider coming to India became a point of ridicule.Western scholars saw our multitude of gods and demigods as demonic beings, devils and creation of a barbaric mind and wrote profusely of their horror of seeing such images being worshipped .


But whosoever has ventured to penetrate deeper than the superficial appearance of Indian deities has been rewarded with the knowledge of beautiful philosophy and eventually the concept of Advaitvada.which underlines all polytheistic rituals and attitudes. Most ancient of the Vedas and a storehouse of information on Indian mythology and philosophy ,There is a shloka in Rik Veda which translates as …..MAY THIS RELIC BE YOUR PERSONIFICATION….


The highest,most comprehensive truth set forth in the Upanisads is nondual.But Vedantic sages recognized that gradations of philosophical truth was inevitable because Brahman, the absolute , non dual reality is only partially revealed to the vast majority of us. The experience of Brahman is so utterly impersonal , so devoid of anything describable in human terms, as to be suited only to the greatest saints and to those also only in their most strenuous moments. Hence devotees throughout the world have created images of the deities and saints in whom they feel a holy presence.The devotees are very much aware that the image is not the deity itself but just serves as a reminder of the all pervading one and as an object to concentrate ones devotion on.An image or an idol allows one to have a one to one relationship with the deity and worship Almighty in form of mother, friend, lover ,father and thus personalize their worship.Here one needs to understand the difference between idolatry and idol worship. While idolatory can lead to completely blind faith and result in devotee fearing the deity, the idol worship does no such thing. The idol worshippers have tremendous faith but they are conscious of the presence of Almight beyond the image.Thus it’s the symbolic representation of the all pervading one.


Realizing the importance of symbolic representation the German thinker Hegel has compared the images of deities to a set of symbols intelligible only to people who have placed their faith in them in a way which restof the world cannot make sense of. He says “Symbol is a sensuous object which must not be taken in itself such as it is presents itself immediately to us., butin a more extended and more general sense….we must pass beyond the sensuous form in order to penetrate its more extended and profound meaning”


It is often heard that the people who have profound faith in a deity get to see him/her as well. They are blessed with a darshana of their favorite deity in whose bhakti they have completely lost themselves. The formless Brahman appears to the true devotee in whatever form he/she has visualized it, it could be in the form of Lord Krishna, Goddess Kali, Lord Shiva and so on.In no matter what form Almighty appears to a devotee the essence is unique and the phenomenon leads to stronger faith and devotion. Thus idol or image worship can work as an important medium to reach or atleast an attemp to reach the all encompassing one.


Swami Vivekananda while explaining the concept of idol worship says “This poor hindu sits before the idol and tries to think that he is That, and then says , O,lord I cannot conceive Thee as spirit,so let me conceive Thee in this form and then he opens his eyes and sees this form and prostrating he repeats his prayers.And when his prayer is ended he says, O, Lord forgive me for this imperfect worship of Thee”.

A glimpse in Abhinavagupta’s ideas on aesthetics

Abhinavagupta a distinguished philosopher ,aesthete and saint was one of the most outstanding Acharyas of the Monistic Shaivism. His exact date of birth is not known but we learn from references about him in his works Tantraloka and Paratrimshika Vivarana that he lived in Kashmir about the end of the tenth and beginning of the eleventh century A.D. The earliest known ancestor of Abhinavagupta was a famous Brahmin Attrigupta a great Shaiva teacher and scholar of Kanauj, who had been invited to settle in Kashmir by King Lalitaditya.
Abhinava Gupta was thus born in a family which had a long tradition of scholarship and devoutness for Lord Siva. His father Narasimhagupta (Cukhulaka) and mother Vimalakala were great influence in his life and it is believed that they both underwent austerities to be bestowed with an extra ordinary son with spiritual powers.
Traditionally believed to have been a Yoginibhu (born of aYogini), he mastered subjects like metaphysics, poetry and aesthetics at a very young age. He possessed all the eight Yogic powers explained in Shastras. His biographers observed six great spiritual signs as explained in ‘Malinivijayotara Shastra’, in him. Kashmir Shaivism is classified by Abhinavagupta in four systems viz. Krama system, Spanda system, Kula system and Pratyabijnya system. ‘Krama’ deals with space and time, ‘Spanda’, with the movement, ‘Kula’ with the Science of Totality and ‘Pratyabijnya’ with the school of Recognition.(Ref G.T.Deshpande’s monogram on Abhinava Gupta for detailed explanation)
His two major works on Poetics , Dhavnyalokalocana and Abhinava Bharati point towards his quest into the nature of aesthetic experience. In both these works Abhinava Gupta suggests that Aesthetic experience is something beyond worldly experience and he has used the word ‘Alaukika’ to distinguish the former feeling from the mundane latter ones. He subscribed to the theory of Rasa Dhvani and thus entered the ongoing aesthetic debate on nature of Aesthetic pleasure.
Rasa--roughly translated: "as emotive aesthetics"--is one of the most important concept in classical Indian aesthetics, having pervasive influence in theories of painting, sculpture, dance, poetry, and drama. . Rasa theory argues that the presentation of emotions is the proper object and domain of poetic discourse. Bharata in Natyashastra his pioneering work on Indian dramatics mentions eight rasas and says Rasa is produced when ‘Vibhaava’, Anubhava and Vyabhichari bhava come together.
Vibhavanubhava-vyabhicari-samyogat Rasa nispattih (Rasa Sutra,Natyasastra)
Vibhava: A medium through which an emotion arises in an actor e.g. A child riding a stick and enjoying it as if he were actually riding a horse
Anubhava: All the physical changes arising due to the vibhavas e.g.changes in facial expression and body language
Vyahicari bhava:Transient emotions eg.weeping with joy
The language of feelings is not a private language; it is more a system of symbols, a language game that is understood by those who have learned its conventions and usages. Emotions treated in a poem are neither the projections of the reader's own mental states nor the private feelings of the poet; rather, they are the objective situations abiding in the poem as its cognitive content. Rasa is understood as residing in the situational factors presented in an appropriate language. A poet chooses a theme because he sees a certain promise for developing its emotional possibilities and exploits it by dramatizing its details.
The adherents of rasa theory believed rasa, to be the meaning of the poetic sentence but they had different ideas about the definition of art. Abhinavabharati a commentary on Bharata,s Natyasastra talks about these scholars and comments on their theories. Bhatta Lollata believed art to be an imitation of reality. His views were contested by Sri Sankuka who stated that art cannot be an imitation simply because it exists in a different place and time. Further he explained his point of view by giving the analogy of a pictorial horse (chitaraturaganyaya). He says when one sees a horse painted one doesn’t mistake it for the original horse but one sees it as the representation of the original horse and thus derives the aesthetic pleasure through this identification. Since art cannot imitate all the qualities of the original subject hence it is just an inference and not an imitation. BhattaTauta ,Abhinavagupta's teacher raised a valid question regarding the imitation of the mental state. According to him there is no way an actor can feel and react in exactly the same way as the original character. The actor presents his feelings i.e. How he would react if put in the original characters position. Hence art cannot be inferred but depends on the imagination of the spectator.
Abhinavagupta though agrees to many of the suggestions put forward by Rasa theory also points at its various limitations. According to him art is not just about evoking certain feelings but a real work of art in addition to possessing emotive charge needs to have a strong sense of suggestion and capacity to produce various meanings. This is where he refers to Dhvanivada . He says that for a work of art it is not enough to be having abhida(literal meaning) and laksana(metaphorical meaning ) but it should also possess Vyanjana the suggested meaning which has absolutely nothing to do with the other two levels of meaning. Thus an aesthetic experience cannot be experienced like any ordinary mundane experience. A true aesthetic object does not simply stimulate the senses but also stimulates the imagination of the spectator. Once the imagination is stimulated the spectator aesthete gets transported to a world of his own creation. This emotion deindividualises an individual by freeing him from those elements which constitute individuality such as place, time etc. and raises him to the level of universal. Thus art is otherworldly or Alaukika in its nature.

One of the major passage in which he dwells on alaukikatva is:
“When a man hears the words :’A son is born to you’ joy is produced (through the power of denotation-abhida).But the suggested sense (rasa and the like) is not produced the way joy is produced in the above case. Nor does it come about through the secondary usage (laksana,gunavrtti,bhakti).But it arises in a sensitive man (sahrdaya-a man who is sensitive to literature )through his knowledge of vibhavas and anubhava, because of his hrdaya-samvada (sympathetic response)and his tanmayibhava (identification). It is vilaksana (different)from ordinary awareness of happiness etc. and it is not an objective thing” Dhvaynalokalocana, p.79
In this passage he points out clearly that the vibhavas do not correspond to any karana(reason) in case of art like they do in everyday life. They make the relish of Rasa possible and hence exist at a different plane altogether.
Abhinavagupta turned his attention away from the linguistic and related abstractions which had preoccupied even Anandavardhana, focusing his attention instead on the human mind, specifically the mind of the reader or viewer of a literary work. The first step in Abhinavagupta's project involved the recognition that the theory of rasadhvani , could not be understood as a theory of abstract linguistic structure. Rather, it only made sense as a theory of the way people respond to literature. In other words, rasadhvani had to be conceived in psychological terms. According to this system the reader becomes the central focus of literary criticism. The aim of kavya is to give pleasure, but this pleasure must not bind the soul to the body.
Thus he attributed the state of divinity to arts and considered Shanta Rasa as the ultimate Rasa. According to him the pleasure one derives out of a real work of art is no less than divine pleasure. As one has to constantly struggle and detach oneself to reach the Almighty similarly a true connoisseur of arts has to learn to detach the work from its surroundings and happenings and view it independently e.g. the feeling that might bring pain in real life is capable of causing pleasure in an art form. The great success of Greek tragedies can be attributed to the pleasure it aroused in the spectators and brought about the emotional Catharsis (purging out)
In his Dhvanyaloka Anandavardhana observes: “In the province of poetry (creative literature) obviously standards of truth and falsity have no relevance. Any attempt to find out or discover whether a poem (or any literary composition) is true or false by employing means of valid cognition leads to ridicule alone” Abhinavagupta comments on it :”Such a person will be ridiculed as follows: He is not able or competent to appreciate aesthetic experience or his mind has become (truly) hard by indulging in dry logic.”
Thus he asserts that the “willful suspension of disbelief” is a prerequisite for enjoying any art form. The moment one starts questioning it or doubting it and looking at it objectively it loses its charm and status and becomes equivalent to any mundane object. One enjoys a play only when one can identify the character as the character from the drama and not as ones friend or associate. For the time that the drama goes on the character should take over the actor in a spectators mind i.e. The spectator should rise above the worldly connections and try to experience the supernatural aspect of art which has nothing to do with the worldly concerns.

Geetika Kaw Kher