Sacred Laughter of the Sufis: Awakening the Soul with the Mulla's Comic Teaching Stories and Other Islamic Wisdom

Praise for Sacred Laughter of the Sufis

Marvelous…. Lasers into the heart of the matter with delicious humor. Truly a lovely book for people of all faith traditions.

—Kay Lindahl, co-founder, Women of Spirit and Faith; co-editor, Women, Spirituality and Transformative Leadership: Where Grace Meets Power

There are many books on Sufism, but none like this! The wisdom presented here, made all the more sharp by the liberating humor that carries it, is a scalpel cutting away everything that distracts us from Truth.

—Rabbi Rami Shapiro, author, Perennial Wisdom for the Spiritually Independent: Sacred Teachings—Annotated and Explained

In case you were tempted to characterize Islam as dogmatic or somber, [here is] the Mulla, and his most eloquent spokesperson, Imam Jamal Rahman. Be prepared to laugh your head off and then … have a direct and transformational encounter with the wild wisdom of the Sufis.

—Mirabai Starr, author, Good of Love: A Guide to the Heart of Judaism, Christianity and Islam

Contents

Introduction

Our Human Condition

Searching for Our True Identity

Stuck in Patterns

Overlooking the Obvious

Some Shifts in Awareness

The Storms in Our Lives

Asking Deeper Questions

Spirituality Is an Experience

We Foolish Humans

Three Stages of Knowing Oneself

Foibles and Vulnerabilities

Seeking Approval from Others

Clinging to an Image

Slavish Dependence on Authorities and Experts

Swayed by Outer Forms

Appetite for Praise and Titles

Know and Laugh at Your Eccentricities

Excuse after Excuse

Truth of Convenience

Attached to the Familiar

Fear Is All You Need

Fear Has No Favorites

Wariness of Religious Institutions

Deferred Spiritual Maintenance

How Some Religious Customs Began

Belief, Faith, and Borrowed Certainty

Spiritual Practices

Honor the Present Moment

Strive to Be Grateful

Spirit of Prayer

Efficacy of Prayers of Supplication

Efficacy of Rituals and Spiritual Practices

Signs in Nature

Wisdom for the Inner Journey

Seeking in the Right Direction

Not All Tears Are Equal

Little by Little

Blessed Are the Flexible

A Sense of Balance

Web of Interconnection

Thank God for Diversity

Cultivate Hope through Patience and Faith

The True Teacher Kindles the Light

Knowing God

Connecting to Mystery

If God Wills

Be Engaged in the World

Do What Is Beautiful

Building Community

Justice and Conflict Resolution

Revere the Wombs That Bore You

Advice on Marriage

Honor the Children

Time to Return Home

It’s Later Than You Think

The End Is Coming!

It’s Not Like You Think It Is

Notes

Suggestions for Further Reading

About the Author

Copyright

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Introduction

This book is about spiritual insights conveyed through teaching stories and sacred verses or poetry. The profoundest truth is sometimes best expressed through a simple story or an illuminating verse. The ancients say that a precious gold coin is often recovered with the help of a penny candle.

Sufi teachers make prolific use of the technique of combining stories and relevant verses (from the Qur’an, sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, and sacred poetry) and asking the student to meditate on them. Hopefully a fresh insight will emerge. Hal in Sufism is a condition, mood, or receptivity in one’s being that stems from an insight that arises in the heart. Maqam is a station attained by the continuous process of reflecting on and living the higher awareness gained by the insight. Through this experiential process, something shifts within and one evolves into a higher station. Sufi teachers describe the higher station as follows: Once the blush of the Beloved graces you, there is no going back to becoming a green apple.

My hope in compiling this collection of stories and insights is that they will touch your heart with new insights of your own and inspire you to live those insights as you evolve spiritually into your higher self.

Sufi teachers know that humor is an especially effective teaching tool, for laughter opens our heart so that insights are able to penetrate more deeply. If you want special illumination, says the thirteenth-century mystic Rumi, look upon the human face; see clearly within laughter, the essence of ultimate truth. And the fourteenth-century sage Hafiz wrote, What is this precious love and laughter budding in our hearts? Listen … It is the glorious sound of a soul waking up! Of all the spiritual practices taught to me by my Sufi parents and other teachers, the most beneficial was the gift of laughter, thanks to these humorous teaching stories. The stories and verses in this book are my personal favorites. They have continued to yield their insights over many years of retelling and meditation.

The Sufis: Spirituality over Law

In general, Sufis are Muslims who prefer essence over form. A great majority of Sufis follow the same tenets of Islam as other Muslims do, but focus more on the spirit than on the letter of the law. Thus if they don’t manage to perform the five obligatory prayers every day, they make up for it by performing acts of charity or some other service. After all, the Holy Qur’an almost always presents a verse on service following a verse on prayer. Sufis are accused by conservative Muslims of being overly flexible, but Sufis smilingly reply, Blessed are the flexible for they will never be bent out of shape!

Sufism emerged at a time when seventh-century Islam was experiencing exponential growth and becoming a global empire. A growing number of people who called themselves Sufis were alarmed that the spirituality of Islam was being sullied and overshadowed by the needs of empire building. As early as the eighth century, commenting on the unholy alliance of powerful rulers, religious institutions, and clerics, a spiritual teacher named Hasan of Basra said that real Islam was in the books and real Muslims were in the tomb.¹ In contemporary times, when Muslim countries are beset by problems of economic deprivation and political violence, Sufis and other Muslims continue to struggle to preserve the spiritual teachings of Islam.

It is important to note that Sufism is not a denomination of Islam. The two main denominations are Sunni (85 percent) and Shia (15 percent); their differences can be traced to a dispute about the choice of a community leader after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 CE. Both denominations share the same teachings of Islam, but the historical conflict created emotional wounds that have been slow to heal, and the small theological differences between the two groups are often exploited by the unscrupulous for economic and political advantage.

There are both Sunni and Shia Sufis. In fact, there are also non-Muslim Sufis, primarily Christians, Jews, Buddhists, and Hindus who practice Sufi spirituality and call themselves Sufis. How is this dual citizenship possible? Sufis explain this with a metaphor. During prayer, Muslims bow and prostrate themselves in the direction of the symbolic house of God, the Kabah in Mecca. What happens if non-Muslims, following their chosen path, become enlightened? It is as if they are praying inside the Kabah. In that state, does it matter in what direction the prayer rug is pointing?

Mulla Nasruddin and His Philosophy

There are, of course, different kinds of Sufis, and some are more liberal than others. But overall, Sufis have one thing in common: They laugh a lot! Over the centuries, from this sustained laughter has emerged the mythical Mulla Nasruddin. The Mulla agrees with Sufi teachers that there is much to laugh about in the bewildering and hilarious mysteries that we encounter in our spiritual lives. For example:

If God wanted, He could have sent full-blown enlightened beings to Earth, but He chose to send imperfect beings like us.

How astonishing that God hides from humanity, creating wild speculations and crazy strife. As Rumi exclaims, The lover visible, the Beloved invisible: whose crazy idea was this?

All traditions that mention God proclaim that Divinity is genderless, yet the holy books and practitioners insist on calling God by a masculine pronoun.

No human being who has arrived here from the mysterious realms has ever come with a mandate or mission statement, yet some of us talk and argue as if we know why we are here, and others talk as if they don’t care.

None of our revealed holy books has ever been accompanied by footnotes, yet we argue as if we know the real meanings.

We are all afraid that one day we shall pass away into nonexistence. But if the truth be known, nonexistence is trembling in fear that it might be given human shape.

When we go over to the other side and look back at our dramas and melodramas, we shall laugh and laugh. So why don’t we laugh right now?

The Mulla is a village idiot and sage rolled into one. Although he has no formal education, he wears a turban, signaling that he is a person of learning. His wisdom appears to emanate from a source beyond book learning. The most popular image of the Mulla is the picture of him riding backward on his donkey, sometimes followed by adoring students. In this picture, many metaphors abound. The Mulla has tamed his donkey ego—it knows in which direction to go. The Mulla does not believe in hierarchy and faults religious institutions and clerics for their rigidity and lust for glory and power. Rather than turn his back on students, he prefers to face them. Most of all, he is happy to break conventional patterns of thinking and being. The Mulla does not care what you think of him; he does not seek your approval. Without a reputation or image to uphold, he laughs at his foibles and invites you to join him. He has a rare readiness to admit his mistakes. Because he does not aspire to be a teacher, he is a true teacher.

The Mulla is timeless and placeless. The earliest written accounts of him appeared in the thirteenth century and there is mention of him meeting Jelaluddin Rumi, but oral stories of him were being told as early as the eighth century. He is a Muslim of Middle Eastern origin, but because his insights are universal, he is accepted as a citizen of the world. The Mulla is a popular figure, for example, in contemporary China.

Most of the Mulla stories are fictional but are rooted in metaphors and images of the Qur’an and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. The Prophet asks us to go as far as China in search of knowledge, and, sure enough, the Mulla travels to that country. The Holy Book mentions ships, storms, stars, and the Moon, and the Mulla is often a ferry captain, navigating storms, rescuing the Moon from a well, and talking about how old Moons are scissored by God to become stars. Some stories are based on historical incidents. A Mulla story parallels a famous meeting between the fourteenth-century poet Hafiz and the most feared conqueror of his time, Timurlane. After sweeping through Persia, Timurlane summoned the aging Hafiz to answer for the offense of writing a few lines about offering Bokhara, the conqueror’s native town, in exchange for the mole on a girl’s cheek. You’re right, replied Hafiz bowing quickly. It’s by just such extravagant spending that I’ve come to the sorry position you find me in now. Timurlane was so pleased by Hafiz’s quick-thinking wit that he spared his life and sent him away with a gift, an outcome repeated in the Mulla story.

The Mulla stories convey a common thread of Sufi teachings, which can be summarized as follows:

Every human has a divine spark veiled by the layers of personality. Whether we call it Allah, Jesus, Elohim, Krishna, or any other name, that spark is the same and we are foolish not to realize our astounding potential.

An essential spiritual practice is to observe and witness oneself continuously and compassionately, acknowledging and laughing at foibles and weaknesses while working relentlessly to evolve into higher consciousness.

The light of persistent awareness is bound, little by little, to dissolve our false self and bring us closer to our authentic self. We may not become perfect human beings, but that is not the goal. The goal is to become more aligned with our higher self and expand our worldview as we learn to see the Face of God in everyone we meet.

Institutions and those who serve institutions cannot be trusted to acknowledge their weaknesses and serve the common good, and we would be wise to emulate the Mulla’s healthy skepticism about their moral leadership.

Our human understanding of divine verses, such as those in the Qur’an, can be less than divine.

With grace and courage we must work to change or eliminate religious customs and scriptural interpretations that do not meet the test of divine compassion and generosity.

This Spiritual Journey: Identity through Accountability

This book consists of forty-eight brief chapters running the gamut from our first spiritual inclinations to the completion of our spiritual journey. The section called Our Human Condition describes the search for our true identity. Some Shifts in Awareness delves into how crises in life cause us to ask deeper questions. In Foibles and Vulnerabilities we probe our longing for approval from others, our slavish dependence on experts, our hearty appetite for praise and titles, and our attachment to the familiar. Wariness of Religious Institutions examines the corruption of these institutions as a result of deferred spiritual maintenance, defunct religious customs, and faith in borrowed certainty. Spiritual Practices focuses on honoring the present moment, practicing gratitude, and engaging in prayers and rituals, among others. Wisdom for the Inner Journey offers timeless wisdom from spiritual sages to help us on our inner path. Topics include the art of searching in the right direction, doing