Attar

What is the Absolute? Does God exist?

The Creator praised is also the mirror where the seeker is lost

Both personal and impersonalStated explicitly

Attar opens The Conference of the Birds by praising a personal Creator who gave soul to dust and granted it faith, and in the Memorial of the Saints he gathers prayers addressed to a Thou who answers. But the ending of the same poem shows another face of the divine. The Simurgh, the king the birds seek through seven valleys, turns out to be a mirror: the thirty birds who arrive — si murgh, in Persian — see that those thirty birds are the Simurgh, and the Presence explains to them, without tongue, that whoever arrives sees himself in it. Then they are lost in Him like a shadow in the sun. The Absolute is at once the King who is sought and entreated and the faceless unity in which the seeker is extinguished.

Who am I? Is there a true self?

The thirty birds discover that they are the Simurgh

The Self is the AbsoluteStated explicitly

Attar's answer lies in the ending of The Conference of the Birds. Thousands of birds set out in search of their king, the Simurgh; only thirty survive the seven valleys. On arriving, they see that those thirty birds, si murgh in Persian, are the Simurgh, and the Presence tells them it is a mirror in which whoever arrives sees himself, soul and body. What the seeker finds at the end of the path is not a different object but his own reality in God. To get there one must cross the valley of poverty and annihilation (fana), where the self is consumed like the moth in the flame. The self being sought is not the one that sets out on the journey: it is the one that appears when that one has been extinguished.

Why do we suffer?

The soul's unrest is longing for the King; its pain is already the path

Separation from GodStated explicitly

Attar wrote an entire book on affliction, the Musibat-nama: a restless wayfarer, guided by his master, questions angels, prophets, elements and creatures without anything calming his unrest, until he discovers that what he seeks lies in the ocean of the soul. The root of suffering is separation from the King: the birds of The Conference of the Birds live without a sovereign, scattered and busy with their attachments, and each makes an excuse not to set out. But Attar does not want to suppress this pain. The pain (dard) of the search is precious, because it is what sets one moving: whoever enters the valley of the quest meets a hundred hardships at every moment, and only through them advances. What is truly tragic is not to feel the lack.

What happens after death?

Dying to oneself in the valley of annihilation to subsist in God

Eternal life and resurrectionStated explicitly

Attar shares the eschatology of Islam, but his attention lies on another death: the one the seeker must pass through in life. The seventh valley of The Conference of the Birds is that of poverty and annihilation (fana), where the self is lost like a drop in the ocean or a moth in the flame; the poem adds that after this extinction the birds are returned to themselves and subsist in God. In the Memorial of the Saints he narrates the death of many masters as the culmination of their path, and his account of the execution of al-Hallaj is one of the most famous. Legend attributes to Attar himself a death at the hands of a Mongol soldier, with a last gesture of detachment, but it is a late account.

How is liberation or salvation attained?

Crossing seven valleys with a guide: of thousands of birds, thirty arrive

Through disciplined practiceStated explicitly

The Conference of the Birds is an itinerary. The hoopoe announces to the birds that there are seven valleys on the way: the quest, love, knowledge, detachment, unity, bewilderment and, finally, poverty and annihilation; after that lies the King's court. Before setting out, each bird presents its excuse — the nightingale its rose, the hawk its king, the duck its water — and the hoopoe answers each with a story that dismantles its attachment. Liberation thus requires sustained effort, a guide and the progressive renunciation of all that holds one back. Many die on the way or give up; only thirty arrive. What they find at the end, however, is not a reward earned: it is their own annihilation in the Simurgh.

Is a teacher necessary?

Without the hoopoe, no bird would have set out to seek the King

IndispensableStated explicitly

In The Conference of the Birds the birds do not set out on their own: they need the hoopoe, who knows the way, has been with Solomon and knows where the Simurgh lives. Before leaving they cast lots to choose a guide, and the lot falls on her; from then on they follow her, question her and confide their fears to her, and she answers each with a story. In The Book of Affliction the wayfarer also advances accompanied by a master who interprets what each creature tells him. For Attar, without a guide the soul gets lost in its excuses and in the dangers of the journey. The Memorial of the Saints is, at bottom, a gallery of masters whose lives and words serve as a guide to the reader.

Is the world real?

All the birds are the shadow of the Simurgh

Manifestation of the divineStated explicitly

In The Conference of the Birds the hoopoe tells that the Simurgh first manifested itself in China, at midnight, and let fall a feather; all the images and arts of the world arise from the attempt to reproduce it. Later she explains to the birds that when the Simurgh showed its face its shadow fell upon the earth, and from that shadow came the birds: each of them is a shadow of the King it seeks. The world, then, is neither illusion nor autonomous reality but manifestation: reflection, shadow or trace of a beauty that exceeds it. That is why it can lead the seeker to that beauty, and why it can also hold him back, when the shadow is mistaken for the one who casts it.

What is love?

Love is a fire that burns reason: the valley of love

Longing and unionStated explicitly

In The Conference of the Birds the second valley is that of love: whoever enters it must be all fire, and whoever is not cannot cross it. Love does not calculate, knows neither prudence nor reputation, and that is why Attar constantly sets it against reason, which stops at the threshold. His most famous story shows it to the point of scandal: Shaykh San'an, a venerated master, falls in love with a Christian girl, abandons his faith, tends pigs for her, and returns to Islam only through his disciples' intercession. The story does not approve of apostasy; it teaches that love drags one on to lose everything and that only such total detachment prepares for true Love, in which the lover is finally consumed.

Are we free, or is everything determined?

No theory of freedom: in the valley of independence, all is God's

Did not address it

Attar does not address free will as a theological problem. His poems presuppose both the seeker's decision and God's sovereignty. The birds of The Conference of the Birds choose to set out or to stay, and each is responsible for its excuses; but in the fourth valley, that of independence (istighna), the hoopoe describes a God who needs nothing and no one, before whom a hundred worlds may burn without its mattering. And in the valley of unity everything is discovered to be one, so that the distinction between the one who acts and what happens fades away. Attar lets effort and absolute divine self-sufficiency coexist without trying to reconcile them in a doctrine.

Why meditate or pray?

The prayer of the saints: intimate converse with God, without calculation

Friendship with GodInferred from their doctrine

Attar wrote no treatise on prayer, but his work is full of it. His masnavis open with praises and supplications to God, and the Memorial of the Saints gathers dozens of prayers of the Sufi masters, among them Rabia's famous one, which asks to be burned in hell if she worships from fear and not to be deprived of eternal beauty if she worships for God Himself. In the stories of his poems, the one who truly prays is often God's madman or the beggar, who speaks to the Lord with a frankness that would scandalise the pious. What Attar celebrates is that relationship without intermediaries or calculation, in which the soul addresses God as a Friend, with complaints, entreaties and love.

Can reason know the ultimate?

Reason stops at the threshold; love and bewilderment go on

The ultimate lies beyond the mindStated explicitly

Attar insistently sets love against reason. In the valley of love of The Conference of the Birds reason has no place: love is fire and reason, smoke. In the valley of knowledge each traveller sees according to his capacity, and no knowledge is the same for all. Further on, in the valley of bewilderment (hayrat), the seeker no longer knows anything, not even whether he exists or not, whether he is inside or outside; it is a perplexity worth more than all certainties. The stories of God's madmen that fill his masnavis say the same with humour: the one who has lost his mind sometimes sees more than the sage. For Attar the ultimate is not thought: it is suffered and loved.

Withdraw from the world or transform it?

He wrote his poems in the pharmacy, among hundreds of patients

Contemplation in actionInferred from their doctrine

Attar was neither a withdrawn ascetic nor the shaykh of an order, but a pharmacist of Nishapur. In the introduction to the Khusraw-nama he tells that he composed The Book of Affliction and The Divine Book in his pharmacy, where hundreds of patients consulted him every day. His doctrine, however, demands radical detachment: the birds of The Conference of the Birds must abandon wealth, affections and securities, and the fourth valley is that of independence from everything. Attar resolves the tension in a way characteristic of Persian Sufism: detachment is inward and does not require giving up one's trade. One can heal bodies, sell remedies and write verses while the heart travels the valleys of the path.