Category: The Jewelled Garden

The poet and mystic Rasakhan (ca. 1548 – 1628 CE) was born to a Muslim Pashtun family, perhaps in Kabul, but came to India, and subsequently became a follower of Continue Reading →

Here the 16th c. Punjabi poet and mystic Mira-bai speaks of her love for Giridhar, ‘the one who holds up the mountain’, one of the epithets of Krishna. For more Continue Reading →

These words of Shaikh Abul Hassan Kharqani illustrate very aptly the thoughts of Hazrat Inayat Khan on the purity of life. For more about Abul Hassan, see this post. There Continue Reading →

The great Sufi poet Umar Ibn Al Farid (1181 – 1234 CE) was born in Egypt of Syrian parents, and in his “Adorned Proem to the Diwan” described his journey to Continue Reading →

The following excerpt from a discourse by Shaikh Abdul Qadir Jilani on patience, taken from his work ‘The Purificaiton of the Mind,’ seems fitting for a moment when Christians – Continue Reading →

This poem by the 17th C. CE Maharashtran poet Tukaram turns around the form of Panduranga, also known as Vithoba, an image of Krishna usually portrayed as a dark-skinned youth Continue Reading →

Nammalvar was a poet-mystic from the Tamil region of India, devoted to the worship of Vishnu. He is considered the greatest of the twelve Alvars, meaning one who dives deep Continue Reading →

Sant Tukaram (1608? – 1649 CE) was a low caste Hindu born in Maharashtra, and a follower of the Bhakt movement, devoted to Vithoba who was considered to be a Continue Reading →

Chiao Jan (730 – 700 CE) was a Tang dynasty Chinese student of Taoism, who became a Buddhist monk at the age of forty. He followed the Chan school, and Continue Reading →