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'Persian Poetry; a Precious Tradition, a Necessity for Life'
The poetry that can help you lead a better life
Here's why we shouldn't give up on poetry
Here’s why we need daily doses of poetry to nourish our hearts and nurture our souls
Manuscript of Hafez Diwan, decorated with Persian Tazhib drawings
Poetry is loved, appreciated and practiced by the Persians for many thousands of years. People of Iran live with poetry, breath and dream with poetry in all they do. Almost all of Iranian customs, traditions and way of life include poetry in one way or the other. Be it the presence of a book of Persian poetry, most commonly the Diwan of Hafez or Shahnameh of Ferdowsi or the Masnavi of Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi on the Haft-Sin tables that Iranians set for their New Year, or gathering together on Shab-e-Yalda and reading the Poems of Sa’adi and Hafez, or about wondering what to do, what path they should take in life, and more.
Reading Persian poetry aloud, apart from being an enjoyable pastime is believed by many Iranians as like being in an inspirational classroom, in which you can learn about life and human beings, the natural world and the sacred earth, or indeed, what it means to be human, as most of the Persian poetry is highly didactic. (Iran; the Land of Poetry)*
I remember so clearly and fondly all those decades ago, going to school in Tehran and our weekly classes in persian poetry, where under the supervision of our teacher we all recited poetry and enjoyed storytelling.
I was also blessed that the tradition of poetry reciting was very much honoured in our household too. My late father recited Rumi, Hafez, Sa’adi, Ferdowsi, Khayyam and many others to me and my brothers and sister as we grew up.
Indeed, life works in mysterious ways, when many years later in England, when I needed to rediscover myself and to heal myself spiritually, I finally chose to listen to my father and take heart in what he had recited to me all those decades ago in Tehran.
My mum and dad, grandma Mofid, myself on the left and my younger brother Kambiz. Tehran, Circa 1957
How Persian Mystic Poets Have Changed My Life
I learnt my love of mysticism and appreciation of mystic poetry from my late father, a businessman by trade and a connoisseur of Sufi poetry by tradition. For my father, nothing was more sacred than poetry — specifically the Persian mystical poetry. To him the Persian poets were the true sages, the gems of humanity, the philosophers of love, beauty and wisdom.
I remember he used to tell me all the time that, Kamran ‘These mystical poets can help you lead a better life, I am sure when you get older you will discover that for yourself.’ Reflecting back now, I can only say how right he was.
A few years back, when I came to realise that there was something amiss with much of the things that I had learnt about Western modern economics, its lack of moral and spiritual values, it was Rumi and other Persian sages such as Sa'adi and Hafez who came to my assistance in founding Globalisation for the Common Good Initiative, to bridge the divide between East and West, and to enable me to connect my intellect and my humanity. They enabled me to discover life’s bigger picture, beyond profit maximisation, cost minimisation, the so-called market forces, privatisation, deregulation, and free trade and more.
All said and done, they have allowed me to rediscover myself, my spiritual roots, enabling me to heal myself spiritually. More importantly, they have empowered me to discover, learn and appreciate other mystic traditions and sages. For this discovery of beauty, wisdom and inner-peace I cannot be grateful enough.
And this is why Poetry helped me to remain hopeful and positive during the COVID-19 Lockdown
Below you can see a sample of the articles and Blogs that I have posted on the GCGI.INFO to celebrate and honour the wonders and beauty of Persian mysticism, poetry, literature, history, arts, culture and civilisation.
Photo: The BBC
Wisdom of the East: Love and Wisdom of Sufism, Rumi and Hafez
Rumi and Saint Francis of Assisi: Sages for Today
In search of beauty, wisdom and love? Then, come, come, whoever you are come
Shahnameh: The Epic of the Persian Kings
COVID-19, isolation, reflection, fear, hope, beauty and wisdom: “Feathers of Fire”
Zoroastrianism the ancient religion of Persia that has shaped the world
On the 1st Day of the New Year...A Poetic Pilgrimage to Wisdom
Happy Norouz: It's nature's time for renewal, rejuvenation and happiness
How to defeat hatred and fear: Don't Despair Walk On
The Art of Persia: The Everlasting Magnificent Story of Beauty, Wisdom and Love
Modern Iran: The Most Misunderstood Country
Happy Shab-e Yalda: When Light Shines and Where Goodness, Beauty and Wisdom Prevails
'Lioness of Iran’: Simin Behbahani- RIP
Modern Iran: The Most Misunderstood Country
The Cyrus Cylinder: Ancient Persia’s Gift to the World
Revisiting the Persian cosmopolis: The World Order and the Dialogue of Civilisations
Cradle of god: Spirituality in the Land of the Noble
* Iran; the Land of Poetry
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- Written by: Kamran Mofid
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Here's why we shouldn't give up on poetry
Here’s why we need daily doses of poetry to nourish our hearts and nurture our souls
‘I'm glad the sky is painted blue,
And the earth is painted green,
With such a lot of nice fresh air
All sandwiched in between.’- Anon.
‘When we bring forth the spirituality of teaching and learning, we help students honor life’s most meaningful questions.’- Parker J. Palmer, founder, the Center for Courage & Renewal
‘Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart…Try to love the questions themselves…Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given because you would not be able to live them—and the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answers.’- R.M. Rilke (1993). Letters to a young poet.
We become teachers for reasons of the heart.
But many of us lose heart as time goes by.
How can we take heart, alone and together,
So we can give heart to our students and our world,
Which is what good teachers do?-THE HEART OF A TEACHER: Identity and Integrity in Teaching
In the beginning were the words...They bacame languages...They became poetry...They became how we express and project love, goodness, commitment and more
Let the words sing to you, dance for you, empower you to become the person you envision yourself to be: This is the mystery of poetry
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Mirror, mirror, on the wall, Who’s the maddest of them all?
The Emperor has no clothes: The Madness of King Donald. Photo:Odyssey
But, first a bit on the Madness of King John!
'Imagine a nobleman with a magnificent estate and numerous servants, but hesitant in speech, unable to comprehend other people’s viewpoints, rather detached from everyday affairs, a bit vague about the facts of life and more interested in his livestock than in his family…’- Anne Crowther, ‘The madness of King John’
‘King John: the most evil monarch in Britain's history’
A lecherous traitor, a depraved tyrant and a hopeless leader in war –
it’s no wonder his subjects rose up and forced Magna Carta on him.
Photo: Via The Telegraph
“Mad World, Mad Kings…”
Thus begins Shakespeare’s King John, about the king of England.
John (24 December 1166 – 19 October 1216) was King of England from 1199 until his death in 1216. He lost the Duchy of Normandy and most of his other French lands to King Philip II of France, resulting in the collapse of the Angevin Empire and contributing to the subsequent growth in power of the French Capetian dynasty during the 13th century. The baronial revolt at the end of John's reign led to the sealing of Magna Carta, a document sometimes considered an early step in the evolution of the constitution of the United Kingdom...most of John's contemporaries seem to have held a poor opinion of his sexual behaviour...John was incensed about what he perceived as an abrogation of his customary right as monarch to influence the election...The more I read about the Mad John (Wikipedia), the more I am reminded of the Mad Donald!
The Emperor has no clothes: The Madness of King Donald
Nota bene
Like Hiroshima and Nagasaki before it, wars with Iran and China are a true sign of MADNESS
As this week we have been remembering the 75th anniversary of the tragic and egregious U.S. use of atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this is a timeless moment to get the world to do everything to highlight the possible Trump/ Pompeo war with Iran and also a war with China that would almost certainly turn into a nuclear war with huge losses and consequences for the entire world. It is with this in mind that I want to share the following with you.
Photo:Project Syndicate
America’s Unholy Crusade Against China*
Aug 5, 2020 JEFFREY D. SACHS
Last month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered an anti-China speech that was extremist, simplistic, and dangerous. If biblical literalists like Pompeo remain in power past November, they could well bring the world to the brink of a war that they expect and perhaps even seek.
NEW YORK – ‘Many white Christian evangelicals in the United States have long believed that America has a God-given mission to save the world. Under the influence of this crusading mentality, US foreign policy has often swerved from diplomacy to war. It is in danger of doing so again.
Last month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo launched yet another evangelical crusade, this time against China. His speech was extremist, simplistic, and dangerous – and may well put the US on a path to conflict with China.
According to Pompeo, Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party of China (CPC) harbor a “decades-long desire for global hegemony.” This is ironic. Only one country – the US – has a defense strategy calling for it to be the “preeminent military power in the world,” with “favorable regional balances of power in the Indo-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and the Western Hemisphere.”
China’s defense white paper, by contrast, states that “China will never follow the beaten track of big powers in seeking hegemony,” and that, “As economic globalization, the information society, and cultural diversification develop in an increasingly multi-polar world, peace, development, and win-win cooperation remain the irreversible trends of the times.”
One is reminded of Jesus’s own admonition: “Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:5). US military spending totaled $732 billion in 2019, nearly three times the $261 billion China spent.
The US, moreover, has around 800 overseas military bases, while China has just one (a small naval base in Djibouti). The US has many military bases close to China, which has none anywhere near the US. The US has 5,800 nuclear warheads; China has roughly 320. The US has 11 aircraft carriers; China has one. The US has launched many overseas wars in the past 40 years; China has launched none (though it has been criticized for border skirmishes, most recently with India, that stop short of war).
The US has repeatedly rejected or withdrawn from United Nations treaties and UN organizations in recent years, including UNESCO, the Paris climate agreement, and, most recently, the World Health Organization, while China supports UN processes and agencies. US President Donald Trump recently threatened the staff of the International Criminal Court with sanctions. Pompeo rails against China’s clampdown on its mainly Muslim Uighur population, but Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, claims that Trump privately gave China’s actions a pass, or even encouraged them.
The world took relatively little notice of Pompeo’s speech, which offered no evidence to back up his claims of China’s hegemonic ambition. China’s rejection of US hegemony does not mean that China itself seeks hegemony. Indeed, outside of the US, there is little belief that China aims for global dominance. China’s explicitly stated national goals are to be a “moderately prosperous society” by 2021 (the centenary of the CPC), and a “fully developed country” by 2049 (the centennial of the People’s Republic).
Moreover, at an estimated $10,098 in 2019, China’s GDP per capita was less than one-sixth that of the US ($65,112) – hardly the basis for global supremacy. China still has a lot of catching up to do to achieve even its basic economic development goals.
Assuming that Trump loses in November’s presidential election, Pompeo’s speech will likely receive no further notice. The Democrats will surely criticize China, but without Pompeo’s brazen exaggerations. Yet, if Trump wins, Pompeo’s speech could be a harbinger of chaos. Pompeo’s evangelism is real, and white evangelicals are the political base of today’s Republican Party.
Pompeo’s zealous excesses have deep roots in American history. As I recounted in my recent book A New Foreign Policy, English protestant settlers believed that they were founding a New Israel in the new promised land, with God’s providential blessings. In 1845, John O’Sullivan coined the phrase “Manifest Destiny” to justify and celebrate America’s violent annexation of North America. “All this will be our future history,” he wrote in 1839, “to establish on earth the moral dignity and salvation of man – the immutable truth and beneficence of God. For this blessed mission to the nations of the world, which are shut out from the life-giving light of truth, has America been chosen...”
On the basis of such exalted views of its own beneficence, the US engaged in mass enslavement until the Civil War and mass apartheid thereafter; slaughtered Native Americans throughout the nineteenth century and subjugated them thereafter; and, with the closure of the Western frontier, extended Manifest Destiny overseas. Later, with the onset of the Cold War, anti-communist fervor led the US to fight disastrous wars in Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) in the 1960s and 1970s, and brutal wars in Central America in the 1980s.
After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the evangelical ardor was directed against “radical Islam” or “Islamic fascism,” with four US wars of choice – in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya – all of which remain debacles to this day.
Suddenly, the supposed existential threat of radical Islam has been forgotten, and the new crusade targets the CPC.
Pompeo himself is a biblical literalist who believes that the end time, the apocalyptic battle between good and evil, is imminent. Pompeo described his beliefs in a 2015 speech while a Congressman from Kansas: America is a Judeo-Christian nation, the greatest in history, whose task is to fight God’s battles until the Rapture, when Christ’s born-again followers, like Pompeo, will be swept to heaven at the Last Judgment.
White evangelicals represent only around 17% of the US adult population, but comprise around 26% of voters. They vote overwhelmingly Republican (an estimated 81% in 2016), making them the party’s single most important voting bloc. That gives them powerful influence on Republican policy, and in particular on foreign policy when Republicans control the White House and Senate (with its treaty-ratifying powers). Fully 99% of Republican congressmen are Christian, of whom around 70% are Protestant, including a significant though unknown proportion of evangelicals.
Of course, the Democrats also harbor some politicians who proclaim American exceptionalism and launch crusading wars (for example, President Barack Obama’s interventions in Syria and Libya). On the whole, however, the Democratic Party is less wedded to claims of US hegemony than is the Republican Party’s evangelical base.
Pompeo’s inflammatory anti-China rhetoric could become even more apocalyptic in the coming weeks, if only to fire up the Republican base ahead of the election. If Trump is defeated, as seems likely, the risk of a US confrontation with China will recede. But if he remains in power, whether by a true electoral victory, vote fraud, or even a coup (anything is possible), Pompeo’s crusade would probably proceed, and could well bring the world to the brink of a war that he expects and perhaps even seeks.’- *This article was first published in Project Syndicate on 5 August 2020
Read more:
'When people start asking questions about a king's mental stability,
the story usually doesn't end well for the monarch.'
Photo: Foreign Policy
'Emperor has no clothes': man who helped make Trump myth says facade has fallen
The American Emperor Has No Clothes
The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed
The Myth of the ‘Promised’ Land
Donald Trump: The Face of the US’s Decline, in Five Epic Failures
Iran sanctions: nearly all UN security council unites against 'unpleasant' US
UN security council rejects US attempt to extend Iran sanctions
My dear Mr. Trump, You are no Cyrus the Great!
America's 'untouchables': the silent power of the caste system
'We're making it up as we go along': how Trump's America failed the Covid test
'Everyone tested positive': Covid devastates agriculture workers in California's heartland
Is this the way to make America great again?
Dear Mr. Trump This is How to Make America Great Again
And now watch Prof. Cornel West explaining the falsehood of the so-called America's 'Exceptionalism' and why the US is an empire in decline and much more!
......
And now a look at The Madness of King Boris!
We should not forget our own Mad king, our English Trump, the Mad Boris, who thinks he is exceptional too! Oh my God, as if one was not enough already!
Where do we go from here? For sure: BREXIT!!
Photo:Brexit: a totally mad day
The Most Compelling Story of Boris Johnson’s Madness and his Nonsensical Brexit
The fatal delusions of Boris Johnson
Photo: NewStatesman
Boris Johnson believes that post-Brexit Britain is an exceptional, “world-beating” power.
Yet it has proved itself incapable of fulfilling its most basic responsibility: keeping its citizens safe.
The fatal delusions of Boris Johnson
How a dangerous belief in British exceptionalism led the UK to ruin
British exceptionalism has reached the end of the road
Bastard Economics of Greedy Neoliberalism and the Killings of the Innocents in London Tower
People were abandoned': injustices of pandemic laid bare in Brent
The Broken Economic Model and the Inhumanity of the Lost Decade of Austerity
Britain today and the Bankruptcy of Ideas, Vision and Values-less Education
The Unwanted: The Secret Windrush Files review – who could feel proud of Britain after this?
And now watch George Monbiot explaining the falsehood of the so-called English 'Exceptionalism' and the lies of the British Empire
© Ingram Pinn Via Financial Times
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