A Deeper Side of Dance (#11)

Remembering Murshid Moineddin Jablonski

"I am not Murshid; *we* are Murshid. I do not have all the answers; *we* may have all the answers."-Moineddin Jablonski (from his collection of sayings, "Job's Tears")

It is difficult today for me to write about the man who was my Sufi guide for almost 20 years, difficult because his passing is still so close and the pain still very fresh. It would be easy to use standard Sufi language about him going to the Beloved or about how the transmission of Murshid Samuel Lewis, through the Dances and otherwise, will carry on, all of which is true. Yet to dwell on "rising above" the personal loss of one's friend and teacher would seem to this person inauthentic to the way that Moineddin lived and taught.

Being Moineddin's student was really like having two different guides. Before his first successful kidney transport (about 1981), Moineddin impressed one as a master of Dance, Walk, darshan, commentary and virtually everything else that Murshid Samuel Lewis did.

I remember in 1977 waiting for darshan with him at the Mentorgarten, Murshid Samuel Lewis's former home in San Francisco. When I was called into the meditation room, he told me, 'Now I'm going to give you the darshan of all the Messengers in the prayer Salat [of Hazrat Inayat Khan]" He did, progressively, in one long inhalation, taking me with him. As a young student, I left the room stunned. Today, as a somewhat older student, I'm still stunned when I remember it, still reliving that breath.

This Moineddin was a master and a saint, and there was no doubt in anyone's mind that he was Murshid Samuel Lewis's successor. The collection of his early poems and sayings (which he entitled "Job's Tears") showed a suffering servant who had not only experienced but embodied effacement in the being both of his teacher as well as Hazrat Inayat Khan But one of his poems from his later collection, entitled"The Color of Her Hair" (TCOOH), written after he "resurrected" shows the cracks he discovered in his psyche that resulted from trying to be someone else over a prolonged period:

SUFI POEM

Murshid lasted
three years
carrying everything.

This refers to the time between when Murshid Samuel Lewis began to instruct his first students (1967-68) and the time he passed (1971), during which time he "carried everything."

In 1979 I think, there was a "farewell party" for Moineddin the San Francisco Bay area. He seemed to have run out of options for his failing kidneys. He had been videoed over a number of weeks, leading Walks and Dances, giving darshan. However, a last-chance, successful operation saved his life. He left the Bay area for Hawaii, still remembered as a saint in the minds of most of us. When he came back, risen again, he was a different person.

Moineddin attributed his resurrection to a comprehensively different way of dealing with his inner self (that is, in Sufi terminology his nafs or basic self). Different, that is, from the way that virtually all of Murshid Samuel Lewis' other students had been dealing with it, which ranged from "rising above" to "killing" it (the latter, being what one finds in a lot of classical Sufi literature). Due to the influence of the Rev. Frida Waterhouse Moineddin discovered what he also wrote about in TCOHH:

ME AND MY SHADOW

I divided myself in two.
Heaven from the chest up,

everything below the belt
dark and unworthy.

White on black for forty
years. Then my shadow

showed. Yelled,
To hell with this!

Either I get included
or I blow you apart!

Now, this may sound familiar to many of us. In fact, at this point, more than 20 years later, it sounds quite sensible and unrevolutionary, given all the stories of self-destructing spiritual teachers that have proliferated since then. In his first return to the Jamiat in the SF Bay area, I remember him challenging all of us to start dealing with our own nafs, shadow, basic selves or whatever was holding us back. He also required that everyone have a personal, living spiritual guide, no matter who their original teacher was. There was mass resistance to both, for a number of years. Moineddin stood firm and, with examples of spiritual self-destruction proliferating, there was gradual acceptance that "psychology" was not the devil.

It was during this period that, with the support of Murshids Moineddin and Wali Ali, this person received a transmission on retreat that led to the founding of the Dance Network. Moineddin was very supportive of this initiative, which really meant that he had a lot of trust in the resilience of the Dance of Universal Peace transmission and the ability of both Sufis and non-Sufis to care for it. Certainly there was not overwhelming support either for his new "get real" approach or for the idea of allowing non-Sufi initiates access to Dance training and resources. In some way, the challenge to continue the livingness of Murshid Samuel Lewis' transmission, as opposed to its mere nostalgic remembrance, involved both increased depth and breadth at the same time.

Over the years, as more and more spiritual teachers hit the wall and self-destructed (including mureeds of Murshid Samuel Lewis), opposition to Moineddin also softened. What he had been saying that seemed "crazy" started to seem very sane. I'm telling you all this to show the courage of the man, who when you first met him (at least in his second incarnation), you might be confused about "where the Sufi teacher was."

When he resurrected the first time, Moineddin became for me the description Murshid Samuel Lewis once gave of one of his teachers in Pakistan: "He was the most perfect ordinary human being I ever met." He still had the same power, transmission and capabilites, but it only came out externally when someone was present who could receive it. He manifested as himself, a person of great humour, a unique human being with his own transmission, not a stand-in or substitute or caricature of Murshid Samuel Lewis. I will miss him very much, as a friend and for what he brought to the Sufi path, which unfortunately is still all too unique.

I was on a personal retreat in the Borders of Scotland at the end of February when Moineddin passed into his "second resurrection." The night before I was to leave my retreat cabin, there was a horrendous noise about 2:30 am followed by thunder, lightening, gale winds and blizzarding snow. I had never seen anything like it. It went on for more than 12 hours and I was buried in my cabin for another 2 days, without power but fortunately with a small propane heater and stove. Later I found out that the storm started 11 hours before Murshid passed away. During the retreat I had been meditating with Moineddin's basic selves, with whom I had a connection. His High Self would have been very happy to stay around, but the basic selves had had enough. In this sense, I would make a commentary and tribute to them (and him):

Moineddin lasted 30 years
sharing everything,
with a little help from his selves (friends).

I have selected a few of his unpublished poems and sayings below. Hopefully, they will all be published in the near future. May his next resurrection be even better than the last, and may Allah preserve his secret!
***

[These can be on accompanying pages, as sidebars or in some artistic design]

From his first collection of sayings, "Job's Tears" (written about 1979):

A teacher's departure from earth will be an initiation for his disciples; his return, in whatever form, will be an even greater initiation.

The claims of devotees on behalf of their teacher have never led those devotees to enlightenment.

When the spirit of Christ breaks us like bread, we become a communion to all who would share our life.

If you work with what you do have, what you do not have will be added unto you.

Beware, beware! What I thought to be an oasis of realization turned into quicksand of ego.

If Murshid does not like to think about my shortcomings, then I will not dwell on them.

There are those who love Dharma; and there are those who love drama.

What rhythm is to character, melody is to personality.

Mohammed treasured the example and being of Jesus Christ so deeply, that he endeavored to preserve Christ's life for the coming generations in the transmissions that became known as Sufism.

Mastery involves power as such; Sainthood involves power not as such.

The face of obstacles and the face of Allah are as one. If we can look into the face of obstacles as easily as we can look at the smiles of an infant, we shall be very close to the spirit of Murshid.

Murshid's living voice sings through the heart of his every mureed; a thousand springs of inspiration rise from a single Weeping Rock.

As long as I shall live, this is Murshid's house; therefore, O faithful companions, keep me living.

Become a pearl-diver when you say your prayers.

The breath is enough,
the heart is enough,
the eye is enough,
the atmosphere is enough.

Spiritual liberty and spiritual responsibility become one in spiritual realization.

===

From "The Color of Her Hair" (written about 1990):

THE COLOR OF HER HAIR
(for Iolani)

Standing to pee
(yet somehow on my knees)
I plead with my new kidney,
"Please work. Please work."

This is the frequent prayer
I make to my new "inhabitant"
plucked from an eight year old
girl, brain dead-from what?

After two months the kidney's
working well. My young donor!
Also eight, my daughter wants to know
the color of her hair?

They won't tell us.

GOING OVER OLD GROUND

I am not monogamous in the dream
but god-like, antlered.
I make love to everyone,
then disappear. People
point to hoof-prints
pressed everywhere
in the earth. But none,
not even the royal hounds,
can track the strange animal
who disappears into
the ground, the foliage
and very air into light.

ABOVE THE GAWKING CIRCUS

Above the gawking circus
the aging trapeze artist
spins by her teeth.

This is me at fifty
biting hold of
my spining life.

Working without a net, I grin.
Bad gums, loose teeth. Still
the muse seduces me!

LOVE THE DARKNESS

Love the darkness.
Daylight eyes
are no good to you
when the gate of night
swings open, here
where stars
are but footprints
of your trackless soul.

THE OCARINA

Note by clay note
pipe me down.
Play the holes of my heart
that swallow love
and slowly heal.

WHEN YOUR DEEP FEAR HAS FOUND YOU

A yellow sunflower will grow
beside you on the dunghill.
You will be astonished
as it turns to face you.
It will marvel as fire
comes to eat from
your hand.

MURSHID SAM
(for Joe)

His broken shoes traveled
India, Japan, Chinatown,
the Haight. Everywhere
he went he said These
are my people.

SONG

Let the world
of children's
voices rising
from playgrounds
take you for
the moment
away from
yours.