Attar's Conference of the Birds, Part 5

Leyla: salām, Omid jān! Thank you for joining me for this conclusion of our selection of Attar’s Conference of the Birds. And as we said last time and from the beginning, this is a selection from all over, spanning the entire work. And so this episode will contain some spoilers. If you don’t want to know the spoiler, maybe go read the whole thing before you listen to this episode. But hopefully, like Omid said, this will spark interest in learning more about the story, and you can go fill in the details later. But with that, I hand over the floor to you, Omid jān. Is there anything we should think about before we start this last part?

Omid: I think it’s important to, as you said, understand that even with spoilers, I’ll just share a quick story. When I heard this story when I was a kid, kind of as a short story that I was told or read in a children’s book, and the ending was revealed. And in the end, it didn’t really discourage me. In fact, it made me even more excited to go and read the whole book and see what it was ultimately about. So yes, a little bit of a spoiler. But again, for these kinds of things, it’s not a bad thing necessarily to know how it turns out, because hopefully it’ll just get people even more excited.

Leyla: That’s a good point. Yeah, wonderful!

Omid: Just a thought, just a thought. Other than that, yeah, we are now on the verge of hopefully arriving at the destination of the journey. And Attar tells us, this is now verse 38 in the guide, he says, “ālamee por morgh meebordand rāh beesh narseedand see ān jāygāh.” He says, even though a whole world of birds, “ālam” means ‘the world’, a whole world of birds had set out on the journey, no more than thirty reached that place, reached that place of arrival. So there is a striking contrast here between a world of birds, “ālamee por morgh,” and the final number of birds that arrive, which is thirty, and “see,” which is ‘thirty’, is not a random number here, as we will soon find out. Again, no spoilers yet, but something to note here is that the number thirty is not just chosen randomly. Also just pronunciation, a fun little pronunciation note here: we have the word “naraseedand,” which means ‘did not arrive’, right? It comes from “raseedan,” “naraseedand” ‘they did not arrive,’ right? But we pronounce it in the poem as “narseedand,” we take out one of the vowels so that it will keep the rhythm of the poem, the “vazn,” as we call it in Persian, the meter, as we say in English. Because if we say “beesh narseedand see ān jāygāh” the whole thing falls out of the meter, so we say “beesh narseedand.” And that happens often in Persian poetry. Words may be familiar, but they will be pronounced slightly differently in the poem so that they can keep the meter of the poem. Just a side note. So what happens when they arrive? “hazratee deedand beevasf ō sefat bartar az edrāké aghl ō ma'refat.” Attar says, when they arrived there, they saw a presence beyond description and without attributes, beyond the understanding of intellect and even wisdom. So as they arrive in this place where the Simorgh presumably is, they see this character, this “hazrat,” “hazrat” means ‘a presence’, literally. It also means ‘a magnificence’ in a way, the way we use it “hazraté adāmee” means ‘great man’. “hazraté khānom,” ‘great lady’, but it really means an important presence. So they see this presence and importantly this presence is described as “bee vasf ō sefat,” “vasf” and “sefat” are both kind of attributes, qualities, ways to describe something. So we have this entity, that’s presumably Simorgh, that cannot even really be described. It’s just a presence, right? And it cannot be understood by the “aghl,” which is the ‘intellect’, which is something he hinted at before. It’s beyond the logical understanding of the mind. But even “ma'refat,” which was one of the parts of the journey, even ‘wisdom’, even ‘insight’, cannot quite understand this “hazrat,” this ‘presence’. So he’s taking the Simorgh even beyond that, right? And making it almost like a mystery. How are we to encounter, how are we to experience this ultimate being, this ultimate ruler, that the birds were seeking? How do you experience what is so nameless and so descriptionless and beyond even the intellect and wisdom itself, beyond insight? And that’s part of the mystery of the story. But then he says, “dar tahayyor jomlé sargardān shodand bāz az now'ee degar heyrān shodand.” He says they all became lost in bewilderment, and they’re astounded once again, they’re mystified once again, but in a completely different way. Why? Because we had “heyrat” before. It was one of the Valleys. But they’ve already crossed that Valley, these thirty birds. They’ve crossed the Valley of Bewilderment. And yet here, seeing the Simorgh, they become bewildered all over again in a different way. So I love this because that’s where the journey takes them. Not in, like, absolute clarity or certainty, but into a deeper sense of mystification, this deeper sense of bewilderment. That’s how we know it’s a mystical story, right? There’s an odd mystery to it. And so, now Attar really for the next few verses, kind of starts to, as much as he can, give us a sense of what this experience is like of encountering the Simorgh, this ultimate destination of the quest, object of the quest. He says, “chon negah kardand ān see morgh zood beeshak een see morgh ān seemorgh bood.” It’s a really beautiful wordplay. And here we now start to understand why there’s only thirty birds specifically. He says, when the thirty birds looked closely, without a doubt, it became clear that these thirty birds, “see morgh,” were themselves that “seemorgh.” So now we also understand why Simorgh is named Simorgh in a way, right? That the name “seemorgh” and the idea of thirty birds, “see morgh,” come face to face so that they can really understand that what they’re really looking at, what they’re really ultimately arriving at, is themselves. So this is the kind of wordplay that Attar uses to show us that the ultimate object of the journey is our true self. It’s not some actual bird named “seemorgh,” but the idea is that this is a journey of self-discovery ultimately, right? And it’s a discovery that leaves no room for “shak,” no room for doubt. Right? There’s no longer any space to wonder about ‘am I this or am I not this?’. For the birds, this experience is “bee shak,” it’s without a doubt, beyond any doubt. It’s absolute certainty. And he says, “kheesh-rā deedand,” we go back to “kheesh.” “kheesh-rā deedand seemorghé tamām bood khod seemorgh see morgh modām.” Again, he plays with “see morgh” and “seemorgh.” He says, ‘they saw themselves as the complete Simorgh’. And so the Simorgh was always or had always been the thirty birds. So it’s this beautiful realization that what they were seeking this whole time was really themselves and all through this journey, what they were looking for, what they were trying to arrive at was themselves. And so the idea is that the self and this ultimate powerful divine being are no longer understood as two separate things. They just completely merge as one in their awareness and their understanding. And so he continues to keep us in that moment in the next two verses. He says, “chon sooyé seemorgh kardandee negāh bood een see morgh een k'een jāygāh.” And then, “var bé sooyé kheesh kardandee nazar bood een seemorgh eeshān ān degar.” He just keeps mixing these words about self and other over and over in these two verses. And the idea is that literally when they look towards the Simorgh, it was the thirty birds that were standing in that place. And if they looked at “kheesh,” if they looked towards themselves, “bood een seemorgh eeshān,” ‘the Simorgh was them, and not any other being’. So, as they tried to see the Simorgh as something separate, they only saw themselves. As they tried to look at themselves, they only saw Simorgh again, a deep merging of these two entities, the birds and the Simorgh itself. They really come together. And so I like these words here, “negāh” and “nazar.” Both of them have something to do with looking. Although “nazar” has a kind of a deeper, kind of a more contemplative notion of looking at something, “negāh” is a little bit more casual, maybe. But both of these words, again, reinforce the idea that the story really ends or climaxes around the idea of a perspective. That what ultimately changes for the birds through this journey, what they arrive at, is not discovering something that they didn’t have or that they didn’t kind of know, but really a fundamental and seismic shift in their perspective of themselves and of existence itself. And so “nazar” and “negāh.” And then he continues, he says, “var nazar dar har dō kardandee beham har dō yek seemorgh boodee beesh ō kam.” So he was telling us if they looked at the Simorgh, they saw themselves; if they looked at themselves, they saw Simorgh. Now, he says, if they tried to look at both at once, if they try to look at the Simorgh and themselves at the same time, it was still the same Simorgh, no more and no less, nothing changed. The same entity. And so even if there’s two different places that they’re standing, them and the Simorgh, there is still no difference between these two entities. So the perspective shifts back and forth. They look at the Simorgh, they see themselves, they look at themselves, they see Simorgh. And looking at both, there’s no distinction at all. The two perspectives ultimately cannot be separated and divorced from each other. And so finally, Attar really drives it home, he says, “bood een yek ān ō ān yek bood een dar hamé ālam kasee nashnood een.” He uses the words “ān” and “een.” “ān” meaning ‘that’ and “een” meaning ‘this’. And again he erases the distinction between these two notions, between this and that. It’s as though the whole notion of otherness has been wiped away. And there’s only oneness, there’s only merging. Right? And so literally, the verse means ‘this one was that and that one was this’. And then ‘in all the world, no one had ever heard of such a thing’. So the story, really, this verse first of all, is really constructed as a mirror. This was that and that was this. So it’s almost like the experience of looking into a mirror and really, truly seeing what’s what. But also I just want to note that the story really then comes full circle. That the birds set out looking for a king to rule over them and bring order to the world, but in the end, they discover that that king, that ruler, that true sovereign, is nothing external, right? That is the deepest truth of their own being. It’s who they truly are and have been all along. It’s been present within them the whole time. And that is the mystery of the Conference of the Birds. It is what Attar wants us to contemplate and hopefully eventually set out to experience on our own. And for me, it’s a really magnificent notion and a great invitation that we can choose to take or not to take.

Leyla: Bravo, bravo!

Omid: Reading the book is one thing but really experiencing what Attar is describing is a whole other thing.

Leyla: Well, so I have a couple of questions. Please, of course. So in the end, thousands and thousands of birds have been trying to go on this journey, and in the end those thirty go. So what about the others? Are they not the Simorgh?

Omid: So the 100,000, or however many countless, set out on the journey. As I mentioned, as Attar takes the birds through the Valleys, many, many birds drop off in each Valley. So it’s only the thirty that make it all the way. Does this mean that the other birds were not Simorgh? I would say no. It just means that the other birds were not successful in realizing. By taking this journey all the way, they were not able to fully realize that this is who they are. That doesn’t change the fact that they are also Simorgh, but they’re just not able to realize it. And in a way, the fact that only a few get there is also Attar telling us that out of nine billion human beings, very few ultimately take this journey and endure and persist all the way through and finally realize the truth of their own existence. There’s many people who decide not to go with all those excuses that I mentioned, and there’s many who do start, but then at some point they give up for whatever, for many, many reasons that are also in the book.

Leyla: Interesting, okay. And the other question I have is that in the Shahnameh, since this was written so far after the Shahnameh, for instance, one of the stories that we’ve done on our culture series is the Story of Zahhak and the Simorgh plays a prominent role in his story. Oh, sorry. Not Zahhak, sorry, Zal. In the Story of Zal. Simorgh plays a prominent role in his story. So then, was this a concept like the concept of Simorgh, that then Attar interpreted in this way? Is that Simorgh the same as this Simorgh?

Omid: Fantastic question. What you said just before your last sentence is exactly correct. The concept of Simorgh existed before Attar, before Ferdowsi. It’s been a very, very kind of persistent part of Iranian mythological storytelling culture before any of these guys came to it. You’ll find that other people as well, including Sohrevardi and Hafez and many others. So what generally Simorgh has always represented is kind of the epitome of wisdom, right? Simorgh has represented a divine being that holds all the wisdom of the world and exists above and beyond the usual ordinary aspects of our own existence. In Shahnameh also, Simorgh lives on the, at the peak of the same mountain of Alborz or Qāf, right. So as a concept, that’s really the idea. Now, each of these mystics and writers and poets takes the idea of Simorgh and shapes it in a way that works for their own story, while still being respectful to the general idea of Simorgh being this magnificent divine creature, the epitome of wisdom and beauty. And so, the whole idea of Attar using Simorgh is that, for Attar to show us that even the name Simorgh can be used to understand that there’s Simorgh, that is really the same entity as the birds that arrived. He plays with the linguistic aspect of Simorgh and uses this Simorgh as the ultimate quest, the object of the ultimate quest, the ultimate divinity, the ultimate ruler that the birds were seeking. And it’s really, as you say, wonderful to discover Simorgh in different texts and see what each of these authors does with it. It’s really fantastic.

Leyla: How interesting. Then I can imagine, as much as I joke about this being a spoiler, I can imagine in that time, having read about Simorgh, like this really being a mind-blowing revelation, getting to the end of this book, and that’s what they discover. Although I feel like when I first heard the story, I did have that feeling of there is great surprise and awe of it being.

Omid: There’s another thing I just want to underline if it’s okay. I know we touched upon it, but again, I want to say, now that we’re at the end of our lessons, that, again, 4500 verses, right? We have talked about 46 of them and have picked these again to kind of take us through the arc of the story, but just it’s important for me to underline the fact that this is by no means the entirety of Conference of the Birds. Not only are there all these beautiful parables, but there’s even just the story of the birds themselves has so many more sections and ups and downs that we didn’t touch upon. And I want to make sure that as people kind of think about the story, whether or not they go back and read the full thing, which I do recommend, but either way, just to have that awareness that there’s a lot more to it than just this. This is just a little teaser.

Leyla: And one of your projects, YOUniversal, the project is to bring these stories and do different sections. So we’ll link to that on the show notes. What kind of classes do you have for learning more about this story?

Omid: Thank you. We do sometimes do a short version, like a six-week version of mantegh-ot-tayr, Conference of the Birds, usually in the summers as a workshop. I don’t know when the next one of those will be. We also do a full class. We read every single verse of those 4500. The last time we did that, it took two years. Weekly classes. But currently we don’t have anything necessarily on mantegh-ot-tayr. Hopefully something will be upcoming. For the moment, in the fall, we’re starting new classes on Rumi, and on Masnavi, Rumi’s Masnavi as well, as well as the ghazals. And then we have a continuing Shahnameh class that people who are interested and have read some of Shahnameh are welcome to join us as well.

Leyla: So we’ll definitely link to that. But in your journey of Attar’s Conference of the Birds with the 4500 lines, do you find that many people sign up and a very small percentage get to the end?

Omid: Well, in this case, the last time we did it, actually we started out with not that many people and we ended up with the same number. We were I think about 12 people. Usually our classes are anywhere between twenty to thirty people, but this one was already daunting I think from the beginning.

Leyla: Okay, so people who chose to go on the journey ended up…

Omid: They persevered, and I’m very proud of them. And we got through every single verse and it was really, really beautiful. There’s so much to learn from every single word, in every single verse of this book, as well as the entire overview and arc of the journey. So, it’s a magnificent experience.

Leyla: This was a lot of work for you to go out and pick individual lines, so really appreciate all the work that you did.

Omid: It’s my pleasure. It’s what I do. I love it.

Leyla: All the wonderful writing that you did about it, I’m sure that this will open this journey for a lot of people. And we’ll, of course, hopefully be back with more stories together of these different parables and all these different stories, as you said.

Omid: And I want to thank you, Leyla jān, for bringing all of these beautiful, beautiful experiences to people, all these opportunities to learn about the language and the culture. I truly, truly am in awe and really appreciative of what you do with so much, really, perseverance and dedication. It really means a lot to me personally. And I’ve met people along the way who have done your bootcamps, have done your classes, have even discovered YOUniversal Center through what we do together. But every single one of them, no matter what, they have been so, so transformed by the experience. So really kudos to you as well, and to everyone that comes and does what this offers.

Leyla: Likewise, of course, I really respect what you do, so thank you so much. And we’ll be back soon with another story. So thank you so much.

Omid: Cheers, everyone.