Zahra Rashid

In my paper, I will explore the web of meanings constructed through the poetics of air and breath in a 16th century text Haqā’iq-i Hindī. My approach will view the Sufi-Bhakti interaction in early modern South Asia through lateral processes of knowledge formation, which found common ground in the emphasis on embodied rituals. This dialogue for both traditions shared a common grammar of multivocal symbols but also heavily relied on identity differentiation. I will begin by specifically situating this grammar within the broader economy of early modern South Asian literary culture, politics, its social milieu and corresponding historical realities that shaped them and then move on to relevant samples from the text itself. My project aims to shed light for comparative philosophers and scholars studying cross-cultural interactions with Sufism on how the poetics of breath and air enable multi-cultural participation through a multivocal vocabulary that appeals to our embodied consciousness.

In my paper, I will explore the web of meanings constructed through the poeticsof air and breath in a 16th century text Haqā’iq-i Hindī. My approach will view the Sufi-Bhakti interaction in early modern South Asia through lateral processes of knowledge formation, which found common ground in the emphasis on embodied rituals. This dialogue for both traditions shared a common grammar of multivocal symbols but also heavily relied on identity differentiation. I will begin by specifically situating this grammar within the broader economy of early modern South Asian literary culture, politics, its social milieu and corresponding historical realities that shaped them and then move on to relevant samples from the text itself. My project aims to shed light for comparative philosophers and scholars studying cross-cultural interactions with Sufism on how the poetics of breath and air enable multi-cultural participation through a multivocal vocabulary that appeals to our em-bodied consciousness.

By interpreting Merleau-Ponty's “flesh” as the intertwining of dualities, my paper will show how metaphorical language reveals our non-dualistic and reversible reality by referring to the inter-related or confounding dualities of lover and beloved in the Sufi poetry of Rūmī. The metaphor lies between the writer’s expression of the real and the reader’s imaginal reception of it and mirrors the non-dualistic nature of reality. Using this conception, I will then move on to study the metaphor of lovers/beloveds alternating roles in Rūmī’s poetry, which is grounded in the soteriological and social aspects of Sufi ideas and praxis. Hence, I will essentially be showing how aesthetics and comparative philosophy can prove to be fertile ground for cross-pollination and a more nuanced study of ontology for scholars interested in Merleau-Ponty’s embodiment and Sufi poetry as a form of philosophical discourse.

The relationship between humans and nature has undergone much desecration in modern times. Nature is objectified, used and abused, without any moral limits. To counter such a devaluation of the living earth, we propose the concept of ‘being-with-nature’ by building on Heidegger’s work, and then deepen it through the philosophy and poetry of Rumi and Tagore. We emphasize the fundamental ontological connection between human beings and nature. The value of the latter also depends on how human beings understand the divine, and how much and in what way nature is connected to the divine. Thus, we highlight some traditions and perspectives — rooted in pantheism or panentheism — that uphold the sacredness of nature. Rumi seeks and sees the Divine Beloved everywhere in nature. Through exceptionally vibrant imagery, he evokes the energy and presence of the living natural world. Tagore reminds us of the kinship we share with nature. For him, transcendence is to be found in immanence, and in this connection. Both Rumi and Tagore emphasize the dynamism of nature, and they see the sacred in it. There is a power and beauty to nature that cannot be reduced to its material or useful dimensions. Such intellectual traditions hold a lot of promise for environmental ethics and praxis. They can counter objectifying and extractive attitudes that stem from anthropocentric en-framings of the earth, and therefore share an important link with contemporary movements that seek to restore the sanctity of the natural world.

For the sake of a respiratory philosophy, it makes sense to look to the East, since many Eastern traditions such as Sufism include breathwork in their somatic practices. In my paper, I aim to show how Rumi – a 13th century Muslim theologian and Sufi – used breath or nafas in his Persian poetry to outline how breathing is an originary phenomenon. My paper will take a few samples of his poetry to demonstrate how breath connotes a newness through the “gift” of life that it endows upon us, and how the creative, endowing, and primal nature of breath is linked to an openness to the Divine Other and to others. Furthermore, for Rumi, every passing breath ushers in a new existence, annihilating its older form and thus creating an ontological sense in the reader of both the finiteness of existence through what has passed and the infinite possibilities it holds when the newness arrives. Bridging the finite and infinite through breath enables us to develop a respiratory ontology that aims to conceive of dualities through an interrelated perspective. This, I wish to argue, is the true promise of Rumi’s poetry for a philosophy of breathing.

A major part of Ordinary Aesthetics has been to include the traditionally marginalized aesthetic categories excluded when studying beauty, truth, and goodness. These “negative aesthetics” are implicated in the construction, presentation, and sustenance of marginalized identities. For the purposes of my article, I will be focusing on the effort to incorporate the aforementioned in the study of aesthetics, essentially arguing for them to be inherently valuable and not for the sake of producing a “positive.” To this end and keeping up with the thrust to include other traditions within aesthetics, my article will explore certain strands of Sufi poetry, namely the tradition of Qalandariyat, which present marginalized social identities to our awareness and not for the sake of changing or improving them. I will present some samples from the Persian poetry of Hafez and Rumi, as well as Punjabi couplets of Bulleh Shah and Shah Hussain, for a hermeneutic study that grounds the aesthetics of their Qalandari-themed literature in the usage of “negative” aesthetic categories. This exercise contains the promise of expanding the horizons for our field of sensibilities, by engaging with those social identities that have remained outside them and that too on their own terms.