On the Garden of Truth

The first thing I had ever read by Seyyed Hossein Nasr was The Study Qur’an, of which he was the editor-in-chief. My understanding is that he wrote the bulk of the commentary, although many co-contributors worked alongside him. Moreover, his edition included a number of thematic essays, including some that he had written himself. The thing that struck me most about Nasr was his perennialism: the idea that all religious traditions come from one source. At the same time, he is not a relativist. On the contrary, he believes that God has given humanity a message, numerous times, and that the message is frequently corrupted. So, he welcomes Christianity, and Judaism, and Buddhism, and Hinduism, and even animism, but he does not think that all religious traditions are the same.

In my experience, many who seek out mystical traditions look to receive the benefits of the spiritual life without any of the obligations that come with it. That is, they’re willing to—perhaps—become an ascetic, spend their time reflecting and seeking out oneness with God, but leaving to the wayside various religious prohibitions and ethical demands. Once more, Nasr says, this is mistaken. Mystical traditions (the esoteric) without embodied engagement with God’s revealed world (the exoteric) is nothing at all.

These two stances define Nasr’s approach to Sufism, and the text is all the more powerful for it. In fact, Nasr is firm: one cannot be a dilettante playing with mystical traditions without digging and participating in the entire tradition.

To situate his book, Nasr argues that much of the world is currently in the midst of a spiritual crisis. While the West is particularly badly afflicted by it, it is by no means alone. In fact, the Islamic world also struggles under the weight of Western modernity and its two wings: secularism and reformism (which most of us today call “fundamentalism”). Western science has, ostensibly, done away with spiritual ontologies and metaphysics and, in the process, taken away the deeper spiritual values of meaning and ethics, which are best approached in relation to the divine. Reformism has responded to this challenge by seeking to wipe away entire religious traditions—whether Muslim (as in the case of Salafis) or Christian (as in the case of the many groups that we in the US do not name under one umbrella but persist all the same). Both are wrong, Nasr attests. There is immense benefit in the millennia-long religious traditions that we pretend no longer matter. The spirit of the age—scientistic secularism—is unable to answer questions of meaning and why we exist in the world at all.

However, a turn to the Bible, or the Qur’an, or any other religious text, leaves us wanting. This is because there is something deeper, the Divine, Ultimate Reality, which takes significant work to achieve. Nasr, like many Sufis, calls the Divine Reality “the Garden of Truth.” One does not just wake up one day in the Garden of Truth. On the contrary, it takes significant work with ethical behavior. It also requires adherence to shari’a, which often gets translated as “Islamic law” but is something I think is more sophisticated than that: it is all about ethics.

The reality hidden within the Garden of Truth can be stated simply: all is one, and all is God. However, this is not pantheism. God is not all things in some sort of pluralistic way. Instead, God emanates downward, transforming in the process. Yet, underneath it all, all is One: tawhid.

This all sounds very abstract, and it is. This is how I—as virtually all of my readers—know that I have not entered the Garden of Truth. This Divine Reality is not something to be known cognitively, it runs deeper than that, and there are three clusters of behaviors that must be taken to reach it: knowledge, love, and goodness.

The “knowledge” that Nasr speaks of is not something that can be learned in books. Instead, it can only be learned through an old-fashioned process that seems to have fallen entirely out of use: gnosis. I have trouble defining gnosis, but I do believe I understand the general sense of it. Take, for example, advice that you’ve heard all of your life, and that you know is good advice, but you are still unable to take it. It sounds like a cliché, as it’s repeated over and over again. However, eventually, after you make certain errors or learn certain lessons, it clicks. Now, it becomes learned as something experiential and affective. Now, imagine further, that the knowledge runs much deeper than the mundane: it is as if the veil over reality has been torn. This, according to my understanding, is gnosis. Early Christians wrote extensively about it, as did Neoplatonic pagans, and Muslims across the history of the tradition. It is something fundamental that we have happened to lose.

“Love” is the second component, and it refers to sincere, deep love of both those around you and God. In fact, these two cannot be separated, as those around you are God. By loving the world—not always the harms within, but creation itself—you express love of God. This is something that I find particularly challenging. It is also what I speak about, in various places on this website, when I refer to “attention as prayer” and “attention as love.” It is the direct pathway to God.

Finally, there is “goodness.” This is, once more, not something abstract. This refers to taking actions to help other people, charitably, without expecting anything in return. This is the deep, ethical life that we are asked to embody in every moment of what we do. Bring no harm, but do not bend where the Divine is at stake. God asks us to stand strong, be patient, be kind, be loving, and love—through action—those around us. This is what we are all called to do.

Sufism is a tradition that runs in stages, mirroring the emanation of God from oneness to plurality (which, of course, cannot really be separated). Where the Divine Reality emanates down to us, we are called to emanate upward to God to enter the Garden. Making things more challenging, it is incredibly hard to do so without being initiated into a chain of transmission that traces its way back to the Prophet Muhammad through Ali. These figures carry a divine power, baraka, that can be granted to sincere, faithful students in turn.

The final chapter deals with the persistence of Sufism and its challenges, namely secularism and reformism. But, Nasr also speaks positively of the cultural imprint that Sufism has made on the world, especially through poetry and music, all while shrines of saints—wali—continue to attract millions of followers per year.

To speak frankly, my first connections to Sufism took place precisely through these emanations. I first encountered it through a liberal arts course that I took in my first year of university: I had to read Rumi alongside Plato’s Symposium and reflect on the way the two texts dealt with beauty. While I hardly understood a thing, it was a tradition that I kept coming back to, regardless of my avowed religious stance at any given moment. My connection to Sufism deepened in Tunisia, where I listened to hadhra concerts, entered zaouia, and attended lectures on topics like the Shadhiliyya.

Before long, I began having strange dreams: the numinous (theophany?) through being confronted by rams atop Jebel Ennahli, a visit by Sidi Béchir (whose shrine is in Mateur) on a subway line, prayers where I repeat the fatiha over and over. I do not yet know what these signs mean, but I do feel called to this tradition. I would like to find a teacher, somehow, but I do not know how, or where. My understanding—which may be mistaken—is that adherents do not find teachers, the teachers find you.

So, I search. But, I also wait, as al-Khidr calls us to do.