Abstract
Before delving into studying the parallels among the philosophical outlooks of Rumi, Vedanta, and Buddhism, it is worth mentioning that social scientists—anthropologists in particular—have generally been more interested in studying the differences and cultural distances between human cultures. But today’s global circumstances have created a more compelling responsibility than ever before to study the similarities. This shift has brought with it the welcome possibility of better understanding the similarities and interactions of people and cross-influences among cultures. It is hoped that such studies will also further our understanding of the field of consciousness, by assessing the similarity of mystical experiences stemming from the underlying web of human universal consciousness, in the transcultural search for the ultimate reality. The interconnectedness of mystical-philosophical experiences also relates to new areas of scientific awareness in the fields of astronomy, theoretical physics, and parapsychology.
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Notes
Of course, among others, Abul Abbas Iranshahrī, Marvazī, Gardīzī, and Dārā Shokuh studied and praised Indian religious traditions (the first three authors wrote on Buddhism). See also Yohanan Friedmann, “Medieval Muslim Views of Indian Religions,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 95/2 (April–June 1975), 214–21. The seventeenth-century Safavid philosopher Mīr Findiriskī (d. 1640) also made some attempts to compare Vedic philosophy and Vedanta with Sufism in Isfahan, but received no attention.
See Bruce B. Lawrence, “The Use of Hindu Religious Texts in al-Bīrūnī’s India with Special Reference to Patanjali’s Yoga-sutra,” in The Scholar and the Saint: Studies in Commemoration of Abuʼl-Rayham al-Bīrūnī and Jalal al-Din Rūmī, ed. Peter J. Chelkowski (New York: NY University Press, 1975), 29–48.
Mojtabai, Hindu-Muslim Cultural Relations (Tehran: Iranian Institute of Philosophy, 2008), 52, 53, 56–58.
Bernd Ratke, “Theologen und Mystiker in Hurāsān und Transoxanien,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 136 (1986): 540, 542. Several other ascetics of Balkh are mentioned in Faḍāʼil-i Balkh as disciples of either Shaqīq or his contemporaries who had eccentric ideas. For an interesting account of Shaqīq, see Jürgen Paul, “Islamizing Sufis in Pre-Mongol Central Asia,” Islamisation de lʼAsie centrale: Processus locaux dʼacculturation du VIIeau XIesiècle, ed. Étienne de la Vaissière (Paris: Studia Iranica, Cahier 39, 2008), 310–14.
See Annemarie Schimmel, “The Martyr-Mystic Hallāj in Sindhi Folk-Poetry: Notes on a Mystical Symbol,” Numen 9, no. 3 (Nov. 1962), 162.
Joel P. Brereton, “‘Tat Tvam Asi’ in Context,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 136 (1986), 99–109.
R. C. Zaehner, Hindu and Muslim Mysticism (London: University of London, The Athlone Press, 1960), 8; Martino M. Moreno, “Mistica musulmana e mistica indiana,” Annali Lateranensi 10 (1946), 154; W. H. Siddiqi, “India’s Contribution to Arab Civilization,” in India’s Contribution to World Thought and Culture, ed. Lokesh Chandra, et al. (Madras: Vivekananda Rock Memorial Committee, 1970), 587; see also Majid Fakhry, A History of Islamic Philosophy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 250. As ʻAttār puts it, “Whatever exists is He, and whatever is He art thou. Thou art He, and He is thou, there is no duality.”
Abul Hassan Hujwīrī, The Kashf al-Mahjub, The Oldest Persian Treatise on Sufism, trans. and ed. Reynold A. Nicholson (Lahore Edition: Zaki Enterprises, 2002), 106.
See Jawid A. Mojaddedi, “Getting Drunk with Abū Yazīd or Staying Sober with Junayd: The Creation of Popular Typology of Sufism,” BSAOS 66, no. 1 (2003), 1–13.
Christopher Melchert, “The Transition from Asceticism to Mysticism at the Middle of the Ninth Century C.E.,” Studia Islamica 83 (1996), 66–67.
Schimmel, “The Martyr-Mystic Hallāj in Sindhi Folk-Poetry,” 162, 200. See another work on Hallāj by A. Schimmel, Al-Halladsch-“O Leute, rettet mich vor Gott”: Texte islamischer Mystik (Freiburg: Verlag Herder, 1995).
The Fihrist of al-Nadīm, vol. 1, trans. and ed. Bayard Dodge (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), 474–76.
Schimmel, “The Martyr-Mystic Hallaāj in Sindhi Folk-Poetry,” 177–78; B. M. Pande, “Indian Religions and the West: Historical Perspective,” in India’s Contribution to World Thought and Culture, ed. Lokesh Chandra, et al. (Madras: Vivekananda Rock Memorial Committee, 1970), 620.
Annemarie Schimmel. Mystische Dimensionen des Islam: Die Geschichte des Sufismus. 2. Auflage (München: Eugen Diederichs, 1992), 112, 192; see also A. Schimmel, Al-Halladsch Märtyrer der Gottesliebe (Köln: Jakob Hegner, 1968), 81.
Daryush Shayegan, Hindouisme et Soufisme: Une lecture du Confluent des Deux Océan le Majma ʻal-Bahrayn de Dârâ Shokûh (Paris: Édition Albin Michel, S.A., 1997; 1968 PhD dissertation; first published 1979), 23; see also Mojtabai, Hindu-Muslim Cultural Relations, 66–67.
See David Loy, “Enlightenment in Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta: Are Nirvana and Moksha the Same?” PhD diss., National University of Singapore.
There is a brief earlier attempt to connect Rumi with Vedanta, but only from the religious-scholastic point of view, by R. M. Chopra, “Rumi’s Tasawwuf and Vedantic Mysticism,” Indo-Iranica 61, nos. 1-2 (2008), 28–38.
Govinda Gopal Mukhopadhyaya, Studies in the Upanişads (Delhi: Pilgrims Book Pvt. Ltd., 1999), 26–27.
Hermann Oldenberg, The Doctrine of the Upanishads and the Early Buddhism (Die Lehre der Upanischaden und die Anfäng des Buddhismus), trans. Shridhar B. Shrotri (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1991, 1997), 57–58.
Swami Prabhavananda, The Spiritual Heritage of India (Chennai: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 2003), 284.
“This invisible and subtle essence is the Spirit of the whole universe. That is Reality. That is Truth. Thou are That” (The Upanishads, 118). See also Joel P. Brereton, “‘Tat Tvam Asi’ in Context,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 136 (1986), 99–109, and R. C. Zaehner, Hindu and Muslim Mysticism (London: University of London, The Athlone Press, 1960), 95.
Translation from M. Vaziri, The Guru of Rumi: The Teachings of Shams Tabrizi (Varanasi: Pilgrims Publishing, 2008), 53. It can be said that Rumi is neither an eternalist, interested in the next world, nor a nihilist, who believes only in this world. He is a transcendentalist, or, according to his poem, perhaps none of them.
Nāgārjuna was the prime architect of “non-self” and “emptiness” in Mahayana Buddhist philosophy: see David J. Kalupahana, Mūlamadhyamakakārikā of Nāgārjuna: The Philosophy of the Middle Way (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 2006, first published by the State University of New York, 1986).
Muso Kokushi, Dream Conversations: On Buddhism and Zen, trans. Thomas Cleary, (Boston and London: Shambhala, 1994), 61.
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Vaziri, M. (2015). Rumi, Vedanta, and Buddhism. In: Rumi and Shams’ Silent Rebellion. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137530806_7
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