On Love: In the Muslim Tradition

Paths

Paths A phenomenon is always in a place and time. But it has come from somewhere and goes from there to somewhere. Man as the central phenomenon of existence as a whole can know something of where he has come from and where he is going. In that knowledge there is little certainty, although that is his most significant desire. And that is why the answers to the questions ‘‘From where?’’ ‘‘To where?’’ and ‘‘When?’’ are crucial for the individual, the community, and humanity . They are at the heart of every tradition. Answers to them always also show the way from one pole of existence to another. If these extremes are presented as fullness, which is always one and the same, man is shown to be in a state of returning, where everything along his way is contingent and inconstant. There can be infinitely many paths toward that fullness, because it is infinitely close to all contingency. It permeates every phenomenon as that phenomenon’s primary content. But, man can only know all this from existence in the world, and that means from multiplicity and contingency. He is here a man of the earth and on it. And all human paths on the earth can be right, regardless of whether they cross valleys , mountains, or oceans. All are possible, those that are on the surface , and those that go down into the depths. But each individual reaches a tangible border that he or she cannot pass. Only one path is impossible to travel by physical means. That is the upright path, 2 / On Love straight to the sky. That path corresponds to human inwardness. And it seems that it alone determines man as openness. The questions ‘‘Which is the right way?’’ and ‘‘What is the right time?’’ can have many answers. Two may be singled out as essential. The first is ‘‘To survive here and now!’’ The other is ‘‘To be happy here and now!’’ Both answers are incomplete. First, because every death is in some ‘‘here and now.’’ And no one escapes death. Second, because no happiness is permanent. It is always the permanence of impermanence. As long as a man seeks happiness, it escapes him. And its receding stimulates and reinforces longing, pain, and suffering. At the same time, every ‘‘here and now’’ leads to the limit of the Limitless , where answers from the world have no validity, as the poet says: I want to be blind, to see what’s behind what I see, To be deaf, to catch that undertone of peace, To be fingerless, to feel untouch touch me. And once I’ve passed beyond that wall-less wall Where even my burden of selfhood feels like release, Time, only time is flowing, and time is all. (Skender Kulenović, ‘‘Beyond the wall-less wall’’) And it seems that nothing bears witness to this human orientation toward ‘‘the wall-less wall’’ so much as love. It is the experience of every being. Although it is present in the world of forms, not one of them encompasses it. Although it is the experience of every being, not one can represent it in an image that would include the ways in which it is revealed to others. It is itself, therefore, fullness. It is present in every detail, but not one of them exhausts it. Everything in existence reveals itself with it, and through it everything returns to it as fullness. Wherever it seems clearest, its endurance is briefest. It is therefore in the infinity of the instant and of all time, in the greatest height and deepest depth of corporality. Paths / 3 Love is in the spirit and with it. Whenever love reveals itself, it is the descent of the spirit. But the spirit is hidden, even from the Lord’s commandment. Although it is possible in everything and toward everything , love is always oriented away from the fullness of the human self and toward it.1 That is why unity is its only aim, but its existence is always also separateness. What love reveals is the longing for unity but existence in separation. Love is the path toward unity, the path along which everything speaks of that unity that flows in all things. Love is what stimulates fullness to reveal itself in divergence. Not thereby betraying oneness, it reveals the hidden in creation and division . In that way, existence, with...