Sufi Practice and the Heart

Sufism is the mystical current within Islam — not a separate tradition but an interior discipline pursued within Islamic practice. Its central metaphor is the polishing of the heart: removal, over time, of everything that obstructs the reflection of the divine within the human.

The practices are various. Dhikr, the rhythmic remembrance of the divine names, is nearly universal. Sama — sacred music and sometimes ecstatic movement — is central to some orders (the Mevlevi, for instance) and eschewed by others. Rigorous ethical training and long companionship with a teacher (shaykh) run throughout.

The poetry is one of the tradition's great public faces. Rumi, Hafez, Attar and Ibn Arabi have entered the global bloodstream in translation. Read closely, they are not decorative wisdom; they are technical descriptions from within a specific contemplative practice.

Contemporary interest in Sufism outside Islam sometimes strips the practice from its Islamic grounding. Whether this is possible without losing what makes it work is a question the tradition itself has generally answered in the negative. The trellis, in this tradition, is not incidental to the vine.