UNDERSTANDING DIWĀN-I-FARID

-Text, Translation & Explanations

. His prose and poetry reflect his profound knowledge of the intellectual heritage of mankind. His understanding of traditional symbolism hardly finds a parallel in our times. His being multi-lingual gives him direct access to the repositories of knowledge. His understanding of world spirituality deepens his own spiritual experience. Farid is one of the outstanding masterpieces of Saraiki mystical poetry and belongs to the rich and illustrious tradition of wisdom poetry, or contemplative poetry in the Islamic civilization. It reaches heights of poetic excellence. It has expanded the Kafi genre in both its vertical and horizontal dimensions. It has revealed the essence of poetry which is a passionate openness on to the Transcendent, a passion intimately linked with knowledge participating in Truth, Beauty and Love. Understanding arid is a sequel to Dr. Shahzad Qaiser’s earlier work of translating Khawaja Ghulam Farid whose original text and translations have been kept. The verses of the Diwan, in the current work, have been explained for fostering a plain understanding of the doctrines, without going deep into the technicalities of metaphysics and its realisation, to facilitate an understanding of Khawaja Ghulam Farid’s experience of ‘love and gnosis’ and thereby his attainment of ‘deliverance and union’ within the traditional matrix.
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