Tales of a Modern Sufi

RELIGION / SUFISM "The stories told in Sufism teach us that life is a journey, that every moment is worth living, every step is an achievement, every crossroad is an experience, and every experience is a teacher. Tales of Modern Sufi, compiled by one of the foremost translators of Rumi, offers us this valuable gift of storytelling and shares with us a taste of Sufism and its magnificent heritage." --Nahid Angha, codirector of the International Association of Sufism and executive director for Sufism Journal Sufi stories have traditionally been a means of opening a portal that allows us to advance from our basic perceptions into states of extraordinary awareness. This collection of deceptively simple stories by renowned Rumi translator and Sufi Nevit Ergin has the ability to remove readers' complacent sense of self and identity and to expand their ordinary awareness of reality in every possible direction. In these stories the primrose path we travel suddenly turns into a trickster's hall of mirrors where we learn that we are not children of Adam and Eve so much as children of our perceptions. The protagonists and antagonists of these tales are constantly morphing and exchanging places. They exist in a world where individuals are stalked by a cricket that is an "invisible monster with the face of a demon," confront the ambiguous burden of ridding oneself of one's own corpse, and discover the "invisible fence of reality" existing in the layers of a discarded piece of art. The symbols in these stories are booby traps designed to release the mind from the sense of its own importance and awaken the realization that "if you refuse to be born, you cannot die." Blind faith, the author says, has proved itself incapable of producing wisdom, tolerance, or world peace. This is because the answers to humanity's problems lie beyond our ordinary perception and require love and ecstasy to be made visible. Our thirst for wisdom and understanding must take us to the fountain of universal truth. These stories provide water from that fountain. NEVIT O. ERGIN is the original English translator of the complete Divan-i Kebir and is the coauthor, with Will Johnson, of The Forbidden Rumi and The Rubais of Rumi. Since 1955, he has been an initiate in the Itlaq ("total liberation") path of Sufism under the tutelage of Sufi master Hasan Lutfi Shushud. He lives in California.