Sea without shore : a manual of the Sufi path

Tuts work is an approach to the Creator of man, who describes Himself as “closer to him than the very veins of the jugular” (Koran 50:16).The book has three parts. The first describes men I met and knew in the path. All were fonts of guidance whom God had blessed with His greatest gift: experiencing the incomparable Oneness of the Divine. I begin with them lest such men be thought to no longer exist, but also because they themselves had been taught by men who travelled the way before them, and regarded any other Sufi path as the pride that precedes a fall. The second part sets forth the rule of the Shadhili Order, the way of my sheikh and others mentioned in this volume, because it is a Sufi method that is tried and true. As a contemporary manual, some things are specific to our times, but most will never change as long as there is any path. A third part contains answers to theological questions of our day that travellers may need. The Arabic terms are glossed where they first appear in the present work or defined in a glossary in the back. A few proper Arabic names have been spelled as they are by their owners or as colloquially pronounced. ‘The text is uncluttered with reference notation for most brief maxims and poetry of the Sufis, whose instruction remains even today mainly spoken. Documentation is rather confined to texts cited as evidence, whether Koran, hadith, or written authorities, and consists of a parenthesized shortened title of the work, followed by a bracketed number locating it in the Works Cited, then the quotation’s volume and page number, or if a hadith, its number and authenticity rating using one of the abbreviations given on the following page. May our Almighty Master grant us the supreme grace of His Divine Presence in this world and the next: “Nor is that difficult for Allah” (Koran 35:17). "Sea Without Shore is a practical manual for those travelling the path of Sufism or Islamic mysticism, which strives, in Junayd's words, "to separate the Beginninglessly Eternal from that which originates in time," in a word, to be with the Divine without any relation. The book opens with narratives of five Sufis met by the author in Syria, Jordan, and Turkey whose lives exemplified the knowledge and practice of the Sufi path. The second part is a complete handbook of the method and rule of the Shadhili order of Sufism, transmitted to the author by his spiritual mentor, Sheikh 'Abd al-Rahman al-Shaghouri--from devotions, dhikr or 'invocation,' and metaphysical doctrine, to how a Sufi lives, marries, and earns a living in the modern world. A third part treats wider theological questions such as other faiths and mysticisms, universalism and the finality of Islam, the promise of God to Jews and Christians, evolution and religion, and divine Wisdom and Justice in the face of human suffering. The book provides an indelible portrait of a vibrant mystical tradition spanning seven and a half centuries of endeavor to know the Divine face-to-face. Sheikh Nuh Keller was born in the US in 1954. He read philosophy and classical Arabic at the University of Chicago and UCLA, and became a Muslim in Cairo in 1977. He was authorized as a sheikh in the Shadhili order by Sheikh 'Abd al-Rahman in 1996 and is the leading authority on traditional Islam in the West. He has studied jurisprudence, hadith, and other subjects with traditional scholars, produced Reliance of the Traveller, the 1st translation of a standard Islamic legal reference in a English to be certified by al-Azhar, the Muslim world's oldest institution of higher learning. Among his other works and translations are Sufism in Islam, al-Maqasid: Imam Nawawi's Manual of Islam, Port in a Storm, and an illuminated calligraphic edition of Dala'il al-Khayrat." -- Provided by publisher Men of the path. The sheikh The faqih The neighborhood imam The friend The last ottoman The way. Knowing the path Method Faith Wirds The hadra Works of the heart Life, work, and wealth Pastimes Marriage and family Company The Shadhili rule Bearings. Faiths and mysticisms Universalism People of the Book Evolution Suffering.