Is there a Sufi? Is there Sufism?
There is no Sufi who knew he was a Sufi and said he was a Sufi.
There is no Sufi who knew Sufism and spoke of Sufism.
So there is no Sufism that a Sufi himself declared to be "this is Sufism."
There are no yardsticks by which to tell a Sufi and Sufism apart.
Many good people lived, and are still living, without making any claims.
Whether or not someone else, as an after-the-fact theory, calls them and their way of life "Sufi" and "Sufism," the matter is the same.
It happened as it happened, without justifications, rationalizations, or theories.
Say you hit a child in anger.
After hitting, you say things, knowingly or unknowingly, to hide or reduce your guilt: excuses and justifications. After-the-fact theories are like that.
They were people who had to throw everything aside and leave.
So, to escape cold and heat (and, speaking only symbolically, to escape the compulsions, definitions, and conditions imposed by society), they wrapped themselves in wool and ended up on the margins.
The literal meaning of "Sufi" is only "wool," or "one who wears wool," or "pure one."
So the romanticization, fables, and superstitions carried out in their name are after-the-fact theories. These are not, and must not be, the Sufi and Sufism.
At the same time, there are many people who talk endlessly and vaguely about the vague. So there are many such Sufis and Sufisms.
There are Sufis and Sufisms that live in vagueness, die in vagueness, and make people wander.
There are people who talk about such vague Sufis and Sufism, as mere claims and romanticizations.
One thing must be understood: the more vague and unknown a matter is, the more one can talk about it endlessly, adding a hundred thousand embellishments, in a way that sends listeners sleepwalking.
Because the vague and the unknown have no boundaries that can forbid or restrain you, no compulsions, no definitions.
Everything is as you say it, as your eloquence allows.
Confident that society cannot tell urine from holy water, you can even hand over urine and call it holy water.
The vague and the unknown will not restrain you by showing boundaries or stating definitions.
So there is a Sufi and a Sufism that speak vaguely about the vague.
Apart from that, there is no Sufi or Sufism except in imagination, mere romanticization, fabrication, a set of stories and characters.
There is no Sufi or Sufism that guides a society with clear responsibility, or is able to.
In practice and in reality, there is no Sufi or Sufism.
Nobody has created or defined such a thing as Sufism in that sense.
There is no Sufi or Sufism except in the form where anyone can load onto it whatever they feel like.
Know this: there are only people who live. There is only what is needed to live.
Everything is for living, everything is to make life smoother.
When that doesn't happen or isn't possible, what arises are the justifications and rationalizations one has to produce, the excuses of escape and helplessness. That is what philosophies, poems, Sufi, Sufism, and asceticism are.
Otherwise, life and living themselves are poetry and philosophy.
Because ultimately, it is thoughts and efforts to make life smoother (often also because one cannot easily manage it) that evolve into poetry and philosophy.
What people say and do, back and forth, what they have to say and do, is for living, to make life smoother.
Each person's particular predicament is the meaning and purpose of life, meant for meaning, meant for purpose.
All we can say is that each predicament will grow into and become a meaning and a purpose.
Uttered words cannot be without becoming themselves, without being given their meaning, without making the journey needed to give them meaning, without attaining the goal by giving meaning.
Meanwhile, there are those who can carry on a life of seeking, attaining, and bearing meaning, and those who cannot carry on life.
Those who cannot carry on life, who are helpless in life, who flee from life and from themselves because of helplessness: whether or not you romanticize them and call them Sufis…
Whether or not you romanticize the failure, helplessness, and escapist justifications of those who cannot carry on life and call it Sufism…
the matter does not change.
Nobody knows the meaning and the essence.
Nobody who spoke was one who knew.
Nobody who knew (since there are none who knew) has spoken.
There are those who stayed silent because they didn't know, and those who spoke a great deal, emboldened by the fact that nobody knows.
Those who spoke and those who listened and believed alike inflate ignorance and present it as knowledge.
Especially those who don't even know that they don't know mistake that inflated ignorance for profound knowledge, inflate it further, and romanticize it.
That is the Sufi we know by hearsay and word of mouth. That is how the Sufi we know by hearsay comes to exist.
That is Sufism. That is how Sufism comes to exist.
Also because no one who merely listens or looks from the outside can say who has succeeded in life and who has found the meaning of life.
That success and that finding of meaning in life are subjective. Unknown to anyone else, not objective.
That is, entirely personal.
It was meaningful to oneself, incomprehensible and irrelevant to anyone else.
Not something capable of leading a society.
Nobody has a yardstick to know that one has succeeded, or that what one knew is the meaning.
Therefore, the one with a glib tongue gets to turn even his fall into a feat. Everything considered spiritual or metaphysical became like that.
Mostly in claims, romanticizations, as stories, imaginings, fables. That's all there is to it.
There is only one thing we can know and say:
Those who were happy without falling into helplessness succeeded.
Those who felt "enough" without falling into helplessness became rich.
Beyond that, what many people produce from the situation they are stuck in, their justifications, rationalizations, and escapes, evolve into their philosophies and poems, and are portrayed as Sufi and Sufism.
What many have to say after setting out from this shore, hoping and imagining all sorts of things, but not reaching the other shore and stuck in the middle of the deep, evolves into their philosophies, poems, Sufi, and Sufism.
The statements "that is the Sufi" and "this is Sufism" are the romanticizations of a third party, listening from outside to these philosophies and poems.
They spoke while trapped in their philosophies and poems.
Even so, those who hear what they say wrapped in language think they speak after attaining some great state.
Language is deceptive; it is a garment. It can be as beautiful as you like.
But even then, the nakedness that has been covered and beautified by language and garment, and the deformity within that nakedness, remain exactly as they are.
The distance that language and garment give you deceives you.
Distance to anyone or anything deceives.
Language and distance are also a garment that hides the real nakedness, deformity, and helplessness, and displays what is not there.
Nobody has seen a Sufi directly.
Nobody has heard a Sufi define what Sufism is and how it is.
Nobody has seen a Sufi live out and show what Sufism is like.
What remains are hearsay, fables, and imaginings, prepared by garment and language. A bunch of images.
Hardship and those in hardship look beautiful from afar.
From a distance, it is easy to turn them into a lovely picture, to romanticize and theorize them.
The pictures each traveler captures on his camera are like that.
But reality, real life, has nothing to do with them.
That is how those who see self-trapped people from outside and from afar see them.
Like seeing a hill region from afar.
The view from afar has beauty.
Yet beyond the beautiful picture and the imagination, the people of the hills are self-trapped and struggling.
That is how tourist spots became merely tourist spots, because in practice they are not naturally livable.
Places where one cannot normally live naturally look beautiful from afar.
That is how the Sufi and Sufism, romanticized by being seen only from afar like tourist spots, exist. In reality, they are not like that.
Almost everyone has only what they hear from others and what they imagine from it: that is the Sufi and Sufism.
There has never been a Sufi who said he was a Sufi and lived by that statement, showing the way.
What the listener hears gets exaggerated with his own additions. Sufism is that kind of fable-philosophy, and the Sufi is merely a fable-character.
Apart from that, no Sufi has ever defined who a Sufi is and how, or what Sufism is and how.
To be precise, there are many kinds of people who, for various reasons, cannot cope with practical realities, challenges, and responsibilities.
Even you and I, at various stages of life, are like that sometimes: people who cannot cope.
Such people cover their failures with decoration, justifying them, finding justifications, and finding peace whether or not they voice those justifications.
Among them are those whom we regard and call madmen, poor people, paupers, poets, and Sufis.
Some get a market and publicity; the vast majority go unknown and ignored, with no market, becoming mere lives, flowing and ending.
In the final analysis, in effect, everyone becomes just a life, flowing and ending.
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Often, one's own misdeeds and the guilt they cause give rise to such escapist, self-justifying philosophies and poems, to hide and justify that guilt.
The only thing is that the listener, not knowing any of this, romanticizes, praises to the skies, and goes astray.
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"As for the poets, it is the deviators who follow them. Do you not see that they wander in every valley?" (Quran)
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People who understand nothing mistakenly believe that something exists somewhere.
Based on the expectations those misconceptions give, they go off to someone somewhere.
The perfect flattering line for exploiting all those expectations is "everything is right, right in everything."
The great trap of "everything is right, right in everything" is that anyone can make any claim or romanticization and exploit the people who walk around with such expectations.
"Allah is One, only One; there is nothing else, nothing else beside Him or between, nor may there be." This completely abolishes all possibilities of claims that exploit such misconceptions and the expectations they create.
It is something that leaves only you and the God who is the basis of the universe, face to face.
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I can't fit into many frameworks.
I can't maintain discipline.
I can't follow rules and regulations.
I often overflow my banks.
I end up a mere dreamer, substituting mere imagination for reality and practicality.
That I can't do the above, that I end up this way, must not become the justification for saying that no one needs banks.
It must not become the justification for saying that the whole world needs no rules and frameworks.
It must not become the justification for bringing in and defending the Sufi and Sufism.
It must not become the justification, the rationalization, for substituting vagueness for clarity.
If I can't, I can't; understand only that it is my limitation, my incapacity. Do not conclude that others can't either, or that no one needs it.
If I can't, investigate and ask my own conscience.
Present the helplessness of being unable as a confession. Be honest with your conscience.
Make sure, beyond doubt, that you are not subject to any kind of hidden or open whispering influence (the waswas of the khannas).
Beyond pretenses and claims in front of society, by reproaching yourself, questioning yourself, and putting yourself on trial.
What is influencing me?
Is it laziness?
Is it escapism?
Is it vested interests?
Am I just thought?
Is it worldly reputation and the pursuit of fame?
Or is it mere excuses turning into poetry and philosophy?
Is it a lack of spine and courage?
One thing is certain:
The Prophet Muhammad lived.
The Prophet Muhammad is the model.
The Prophet Muhammad is the final signpost and guiding lamp.
The Prophet Muhammad is the one to follow.
In spirituality and in the material world, there is nothing beyond the Prophet Muhammad.
The Prophet Muhammad was spiritual and worldly at the same time.
The Prophet Muhammad sat alone.
The Prophet Muhammad was at once a stranger and well known.
The Prophet Muhammad traded and was a husband.
The Prophet Muhammad migrated and fought wars.
The Prophet Muhammad ruled a state and led prayers.
The Prophet Muhammad enforced penal and social laws, and spoke on spiritual and philosophical matters.
The Prophet Muhammad was not someone who spoke partially.
The Prophet Muhammad spoke and acted completely, a full three hundred sixty degrees.
The Prophet Muhammad was not one who spoke half and acted half, left his followers midway, and left the rest to imagination and interpretation. He was not one who told people to wander aimlessly halfway.
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