The Secret Garden,
*Paperback - 93 pages,
by Mahmud Shabistari,
Translated from Persian into English by Dr. Asadullah Yate.


Description :

This work is important in that it contains all the principles of the science of tasawwuf in a concise form. Furthermore, it is the first translation freed of the centuries-old baggage of christian and orientalist vocabulary which has often obscured the teachings of Islam. Thus, instead of the ‘mystic’ statements of a ‘Sufi Doctor’, we have Shaykh Mahmud Shabistari’s lucid exposition of the deen of Islam.


He demonstrates in his analysis of the lower self how a man or woman can gain access to his or her reality: the step by step description of the method of purification leads to a spirituality and light which issues from the normal actions of everyday life, in other words a spirituality which is not ‘ascetic’ but rather the product of right living.


Mahmud Shabistari (1288 – 1340) :  Shaykh Mahmud Shabistari lived in the Mughal capital of Tabriz from where issued the great flowering of the last period of Islam in which the balanced shariat was still the norm rather than the mongrel child of European law – applicable to the realm of ‘real life’ and trade – and ‘religious’ law – applicable to births, deaths, and family law.


Dr. Asadullah Yate :  Dr. Yate (Cantab.) has translated works from Arabic, Persian, German and French, and, in collaboration with others from Turkish. He teaches Arabic and Fiqh at the Weimar Institute, is a Founding fellow of The Muslim Faculty of Advanced Studies, and is active on the shari'at board of the World Islamic Mint.



Table of Contents :

---Translators Preface,

---The Secret Garden,
---Introduction,
---The reason for writing this book.

---The first Question,
---The Answer.

---A Question,
What kind of reflection is a condition of the path – why is it sometimes necessary and sometimes wrong?
---The Answer,
---An illustration,
---An illustration.

---A Question,
What am I? Give me an explanation of “I”. What is the meaning of travel into the self?
---The Answer.

---A Question,
What is the nature of the traveller? Who is this wayfarer? Who can we say is the perfected man?
---The Answer,
---An illustration,
---An illustration.

---Question,
Who is it who discovers the secret of tawhid? Who is the man of knowledge who becomes a gnostic?
---Answer.

---A Question,
If the knower and known are one pure essence, what use are the aspirations of this handful of dust?
---The Answer.

---A Question,
What is the point of the words ‘I am the Real?’ What do you mean by saying he was a fake?
---The Answer,
---On the evidence of non-existence.

---A Question,
Why do they say a man has arrived? What is the path, and the travelling, and how is arrival?
---The Answer,
---An illustration.

---A Question,
What is the meaning of the union of the transient-phenomenal and the Ever-Present – what is near and far, more and less?
---The Answer.

---A Question,
What is the sea whose coast is its speech and what is the pearl which is taken from its depths?
---An Answer,
---Illustration by Mithal,
---An illustration.

---A Question,
What is the part which is bigger than the whole? What is the path which leads to that part?
---The Answer,
---An illustration through metaphor.

---A Question,
How is it that the before-time and the in-time are separate, the one becoming the world and the other God?
---The Answer.

---A Question,
What does the man of inner understanding mean by those expressions which indicate the eye and the lip?
& What kind of person is the man of such stations and states?
---The Answer,
---Illustration through metaphor,
---An illustration through Mithal,
---An illustration through Mithal,
---An illustration through Mithal.

---A Question,
What is the meaning of wine, lamp and the beautiful Beloved? What is claimed by those whose path is ruin and abandonment?
---An Answer,
---The stations of the tavern of annihilation.

---A Question,
Idols and priestly belts are all kufr in this matter of ours. If this is not so, then say what they are!
---The Answer.
---Concerning Christianity.

---Glossary.

---

* High Quality UK Print.