739 years of love affair | Remembering Rumi

Bismillah.

We cannot afford to let 17th December passes us by without saying a word about Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi who died on this day 739 years ago.

This year, let's remember Rumi by quoting what Shaykh Kabir Helminski had to say about what zikir is and what love is from the teachings of Rumi.

Kabir Helminski was in 2009 named one of the 500 Most Influential Muslims in the World. He authored/translated quite a number of works by Rumi. One of them was 'Jewels of Remembrance' which I had been reading and re-visiting since 2001 but only yesterday had I seen how Kabir Helminski looked like mashaAllah. This is what he said in a video published on 'One Through Love' - a website dedicated to "lovers".

"Zikir is the foremost practice in Sufism and indeed in Islam. Zikir means remembrance. It is the awareness of the divine presence through the heart. The heart is the organ of perception by which we sense the divine, by which we sense the sacred and through which we feel gratitude and a sense of wonder."

"The state of zikir is contrasted with the state of heedlessness. We are absorbed in our own egos, when we are totally absorbed into life in the sense of striving to make a living and attain our various desires or we are caught up in the conflicts of life and be sad with the anxieties of life. This is heedlessness from the Sufi point of view."

Listen to Kabir Helminski speak on 'Zikir as a Way of Life' at:
http://www.onethroughlove.org/circle-of-lovers/

"This is a gathering of Lovers.

In this gathering there is no high, no low,

no smart, no ignorant, no special assembly,

no grand discourse, no proper schooling required.

There is no master, no disciple.

This gathering is more like a drunken party,

full of tricksters, fools, mad men and mad women.

This is a gathering of Lovers."

- Jalaluddin Rumi

(died 17 Dec 1273 CE)