Hafiz is pretty cool, for a religious'y guy. He's a Persian mystic poet who did his thing in the 14th century.
Daniel Ladinsky has written a book, "A Year With Hafiz," that contains 365 poems that are versions of Hafiz, in much the same sense that Coleman Barks has popularized Rumi. Meaning, liberties are taken. These aren't word for word translations.
Fine with me. I'd rather get the spirit of a poet, than the letter of what he or she said.
Here's the January 17 poem, "Watch Out for Spiritual La-La Land."
Watch out for spiritual la-la land, where you might wind up comatose.
Some early warning signs are:
A. You start wearing all orange or white and count your beads in public.
B. You chant something mysterious in Sanskrit or some language from another planet while burning incense that (unknown to you) is laced with potent hash, that makes you think you are on the right track when naked devas start appearing.
C. You start believing some basically regular guy or gal with drowsy eyes -- who parrots wisdom -- is a saint.
D. Even with those imaginary devas running around (who you would have thought might have stimulated your lower chakras), your wife or husband or lovers start to think: Gosh, what happened to my sweetheart? We used to do it in the car, in traffic jams, behind our tinted windows to pass the time constructively, and now look, yes, now just look...my sweetheart hasn't gone down on me in three months, and may never again.
E. Your high school graduating class pitches in for the best cult deprogrammer in the world for you, as a birthday present. Especially if you were a runner-up, or ever even remotely considered most likely to succeed.
Ooh, that last one hurt. I indeed was the male deemed "most likely to succeed" by my Woodlake Union High School class of 1966.
But I never got a cult deprogrammer birthday present from my classmates.
Probably should have, since I joined up with a crazed Christian-Hindu-Whatever yoga teacher in 1969 and had some pretty darn strange experiences with him. Yeah, I was off in spiritual la-la land. Stayed in that realm for many years.
Now I can say, reality is better.
Most likely to eventually commence!
Posted by: Catherine | December 17, 2011 at 03:45 AM
Big hug to ya brother. And thanks for sharing my Hafiz work.
Daniel Ladinsky
Posted by: Daniel Ladinsky | January 17, 2021 at 06:37 PM