I am reading Hafiz’s Little Book of Life, poetry by Hafiz-e Shirazi. He is challenging me to become more comfortable with ambiguity. I will share his poem and some of my thoughts on his poem (sometimes with the help of experts when the concepts are too hard for me), followed by a poem and some art inspired by his poem.

Hafiz’s Poem 29:

Along the Way of Love

Worldly rule is
A parasite

Some thoughts:

I had to ponder this one a while and use resources to check my ideas against. “Along the Way of Love” feels like it is talking about our path or spiritual journey throughout life. My husband’s martial art talks about “Budo,” which means roughly, “The Martial Way.” Some spiritual practices call it “The Walk” or “The Straight and Narrow Path” or “The Hero’s Journey.” Common threads in all of them are ideas of practice, movement, alignment, and surrender. In the Tao Te Ching, Dao is “The Way” and is the underlying current shaping our reality or the natural flow of our existence. The Bible depicts Jesus as “The Way” and a life patterned after his love, sacrifice, and humility is the ideal for Christians. In Hinduism, Marga is the path and Dharma is “cosmic order, right action, and duty aligned with one’s nature.” In Buddhism, The Noble Eightfold Path includes right speech, right action, right livelihood, and right mindfulness. Many Indigenous traditions speak of “Walking in Balance”, in beauty, right relationship, and balance with the land, ancestors, community, and spirit.

Any of these examples works perfectly with the rest of the poem because it is saying that, essentially, any outside force that tries to control “The Way” does so by feeding on us. Outside powers like governments, religious authorities, ego, systems that dominate, or hierarchies that control need someone to rule over. They survive by draining the life and spirit of their hosts. They cannot exist independently from us. Power that depends on control is a parasite. They require dominance, fear, maintaining an image, etc. If we are truly traveling The Way, we are striving for equality, love, surrender, vulnerability, and humility, all things that are opposites of ego-driven constructs.

On a more personal level, if we are trying to walk The Way of Love, it is not in alignment to act parasitic. Are we trying to control people around us? Are we trying to control outcomes, narratives, opinions, or events? Love does not try to control others. Love flows freely. Do we try to dominate conversations when we want to get our way instead of letting the conversation be fair and two-sided? Do we use our emotions to bully others into doing what we want, rather than keeping ourselves balanced and in check and recognizing that we are using manipulation as a tactic? Control clings, fears, threatens, traps, insists, interferes, and demands. Nothing that tries to control is love.

My Poem 29:

The plasmodium falciparum
is the deadliest parasite
for humans,
as far as we know.

Over 600,000 people die
every year from malaria
caused by these tiny
little one-celled
creatures who fly
through the air on winged
mosquito ladies
from one human host
to another,
multiply
in our livers,
then burst open
our red blood cells,
which we would prefer
were kept intact.

Their feasting and multiplying
is incongruous
with our well-being,
their only goal
multiplication.

For them the glorious bursting
of our cells is like fireworks,
celebratory blasts
releasing new generations
into the river
of life (our bloodstream)
where they hope to be a lucky
chosen one that will be sucked
into the sky
and helicoptered to a new host,
where their descendants
will begin again.

Hafiz. Hafiz’s Little Book of Life. Translated by Erfan Mojib and Gary Gach, Hampton Roads Publishing, 2023.