Thanksgiving weekend

Latest artwork shared:

Thanksgiving in America is a great holiday. I love it. Shams was busy in Iran with work, so we didn't connect, and I decided after 50 minutes, I was too impatient for 60 minutes. I wanted to see family, my little nephew, who is really a cousin. I'm on the road with family in a different city so it's fun traveling for me. Looking back, I'm not traveling as much an I went to a family reunion, my cousin's wedding and this Thanksgiving, all the travel to see that half of my family, those parts of that half. So glorious to be included. 

My favorite part of the visit was Rock Creek Park, one of the oldest parks in America. 

Shams is going on a retreat in Türkiye, hopefully. He was going to go and then then the troubles in Israel grounded all flights and he didn't get to go. I'm sure that was crushing. He's going to try again and go on a retreat with Omid Safi.

He sent a video of Sharon Salzberg and Omid Safi. And here's another one of Omid Safi.

Shams corrected me. He's going on retreat with Amir Imani, who was also on the videos, who seems to be a Canadian MBSR teacher. 

The retreat is in Konya, Turkiye, where Rumi died. Rumi was born in Balkh Afghanistan, which is present day Tajikistan, and died in Konya Turkiye, which can be considered part of Greater Iran, when their empire was at it's peak. There's a Rumi festival in Konya. 

Shams found an shrine of Imam Reza video on YouTube. I like the kid singing. I asked Shams about women and he said they can go into the other side, they're separate but they have facilities. 

That got me thinking about Sangharakshita's seminar on Ihyā of Imām Al-Ghazāli (1058 – 1111) by Muhtar Holland. I like this quote, "as Buddhists we've been quite exasperated by non-Buddhists telling us what Buddhism really is." He is talking about reading Islam by insiders, presented by people who really delve into it. 

He seems to know a little about Islam: "Very broadly speaking, the Sunnis regard the Caliphs as inheriting the secular authority of Muhammad. They don't regard anyone as inheriting his spiritual authority. But the Shi'as regard Ali and his successors as having inherited the spiritual authority - the continuing spiritual authority - of Muhammad through his daughter Fatima. So the spiritual heirs of Ali are called Imams, though the Shi'as use the word Imam in a different sense from the Sunnis. In the Sunni tradition Imam means the prayer leader - the leader of the congregational prayer, but in the Shi'a school Imam means a spiritual successor of the Prophet. Then there are Twelve-Imamas, that is to say followers of Twelve-Imam Shi'a tradition, followers of Seven-Imam Shi'a tradition, and so on. Different schools have branched off depending on the number of successors they recognise."

Reading Al-Ghazali's wikipedia page there is an interesting incident:

"Much of Al-Ghazali's work stemmed around his spiritual crises following his appointment as the head of the Nizzamiyya University in Baghdad - which was the most prestigious academic position in the Muslim world at the time. This led to his eventual disappearance from the Muslim world for over 10 years, realising he chose the path of status and ego over God."

I love reading about things like this where people realize, and are not too ashamed to admit what they see. I think in modern times the struggle to attain positions are so hard that resigning would betray all your effort, why not have a crisis while in the job?

I skim about 20 pages of the seminar and then realize it's 120 pages, and I haven't read the text. If I ever read the text and seminar I will write more about it. 

By the way, Al-Ghazali was born near Mashhad in Tus, or Tous, which is north of Mashhad, about a third of the way to Golbahar where my friend Shams lives.