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TRANSGRESSION AS ENLIGHTENMENT Longing and Union in Ikkyu and Rumi
L. Michael Spath, D.Min., Ph.D.
Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies and The Jordan Institute of Diplomacy Amman, Jordan July, 2005 |
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The thought, biographies, and poetry of the Zen Master, Ikkyu Sojun (1394-1481), and the Sufi mystic, Mevlana Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207-1273), although separated by geography, chronology, culture, and religion, share many common themes. Both reformed standing rituals within their traditions and elevated them as direct experiences of the transcendent, Rumi with the sama‘ turning dance of the dervishes, and Ikkyu with chado, the tea ceremony. Both had ecstatic and deeply intimate encounters with individuals that deepened their understanding of the power of the holy within the material and sensual universe, Rumi with his spiritual companion, Shams al-Tabrizi, and Ikkyu, in his old age, with his much younger and blind wife, Mori. Although both understood themselves as planted firmly within their respective traditions, Rumi as a devout Muslim and Ikkyu as a devoted Buddhist, both were harsh critics of their religious establishments, and, in turn, were themselves often, at best, ridiculed, and at worst, accused of blasphemy and heresy. And both had im-mediate experiences with the Transcendent as each understood it from within their own faith, but which drove them to the boundaries of their traditions, breaking sacred taboos in their lives and in their use of image and symbol, transgressing and violating rubrics and proprieties of their traditions because of their direct experience of the holy in their very earthly desire, longing, and union. The lecture introduces the hearers to these two seminal figures in the mystical traditions of East and West, of Zen and Sufism. Of particular interest is the conjunction of their lives, thoughts, and writing as they transgress the boundaries of the orthodoxies of their day in the longing for and intimate union with the Transcendent.
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