If love hurts, the Sufis say you’re doing it right

From oral folktales to contemporary novels, from the narratives we inherit to the ones we craft anew, across cultures and beyond borders, we are all haunted by an eager desire to love and be loved. 

The question of our being - why and how we exist –  can only be contemplated in light of the question of desire, and by extension, love. 

In Sufi thought, desire animates and shapes the soul. Interrogating what we desire, and how we desire it, is vital to transforming our relationship with ourselves, others in this world, and ultimately to the transcendent reality itself, that is, God.

In Plato’s seminal text on love, The Symposium, Socrates proposes that all humans love because love is the desire to live a happy life, and that beauty is the means to this happiness since “what is good is the same as what is beautiful”. According to this logic, all human beings, animated by a desire to live well, are drawn to love what is ‘Good’ and ‘Beautiful’.

But abstractions aside, what is love? More importantly, what does love entail?

Love in the Sufi tradition, is not just a feeling or emotion, it is expansive, ecstatic, it pervades all beings and is the root of all creation; love is the primordial cosmic force that creates and sustains life. 

There is no single authority on the subject, but this is not for a lack of resources. In the Indo-Persian tradition alone – one luminous corner of a vast literary world – there are infinite, archival sources from which we draw our ideas about love. 

There is a lot to learn from the stories we inherit. Looking to the popular romances of Heer & Ranjha, Sassui & Punnu, Layla & Majnu, as well as all other folk tales like them, one thing is for certain: no love story is without its tragedies, and fulfillment of our desire to be with our beloved is not a promise true love keeps. 

Love is scarcely about fulfilling one’s desires. When we commit to loving someone, we are pierced by a double edged sword, one that promises pleasure and suffering in one fell swoop.

For Farid ud-Din Attar (1145–1221), risk is an unalterable part of the path toward true love, that is, toward union with the divine beloved - the ultimate source of all that is ‘Good’ and ‘Beautiful’. 

In praise of the Persian Sufi poet, mystic, and philosopher, known for his epic poem The Conference of the Birds (Mantiq al-Tayr), Rumi writes:

Attar has roamed through the seven cities of love while we have barely turned down the first street.

When it comes to the question of love, who better to turn to than the poet who endlessly roams love’s cities and valleys?

The Conference of the Birds is an allegorical tale in which a group of birds, guided by their leader the hoopoe, embark on a journey to find their king, the Simurgh, who symbolises God. 

Along the way, they must cross seven valleys: the Valley of Quest, the Valley of Love, the Valley of Knowledge, the Valley of Detachment, the Valley of Unity, the Valley of Bewilderment, and the Valley of Annihilation. Many birds abandon the journey due to fear or attachment to their earthly stations, but those who persevere are rewarded with mystical union. 

Risk is a vital step to take in order to test the true nature of one’s love. Attar writes:

True lovers give up everything they own

To steal one moment with the Friend alone –

They make no vague, procrastinating vow,

But risk their livelihood and risk it now.

There are a variety of experiences of love, some of which may not involve the risks that he is talking about, but when it comes to true love, we must risk everything we own.  

The risk that comes with this journey is both physical and metaphysical. On one level, the risk is a material risk. The birds in Attar’s tale are compelled to give up their material comforts which includes their natural habitats, their material possessions and their worldly stations or responsibilities.

On a deeper level, this idea of dispossessions entails a renunciation of one’s selfhood, that is, a perceived ownership over one’s ‘self’. True love blurs the boundaries between the self and the other. It tests everything one appears to own, even in the metaphysical terrain.

Importantly, there is no promised reward at the end of this renunciation; the thought of a single moment with the beloved is enough cause to risk one’s entire life. 

This is because the risk involved does not entail that something is gained or reimbursed in return but is instead a proclamation of one’s devotion – love is an act of wilful submission. 

The lover’s task is to submit, beyond reason and without hesitation. The birds in Attar’s story are not afforded the time to make a vague promise or procrastinate on their decision; they must devote themselves to the path of love in one all-encompassing gesture:

But you, unwilling both to love and tread

The pilgrim’s path, you might as well be dead!

The lover chafes, impatient to depart,

And longs to sacrifice his life and heart.

The true lover is devoted with such intensity and vigor that it chafes the soles of their feet, even before they have set out on their journey. 

Anyone who is unwilling to express their devotion in this way may as well be dead.

Attar makes it clear that suffering and misery are part and parcel of the path toward this genuine experience of love:

Until their hearts are burnt, how can they flee

From their desire’s incessant misery?

One must risk their livelihood and renounce everything they seem to have ownership over till their very hearts are burnt. And until this happens they have not known the true misery that is integral to desire. Suffering itself is a revelatory experience! 

To love in this sense is to experience a radical transformation, where the lover’s will merges with the divine will, and the boundaries between the self and the divine dissolve.

Any kind of love, whether that is between humans or of God, is marked by some form of misery because it is this misery that allows the full experience of its pair: ecstasy and joy. 

True life, living well, begins after this risk has been taken, and anything before is simply a half-life. Both God and the world are disclosed through our capacity to love. Without it, how meaningful is our time on this earth? 

In the Valley of Love, logic and reason become useless; the lover must willingly burn in love’s fire. To live with this fire, to live in it, is undeniably demanding and requires total surrender. But it is this very fire that also illuminates our existence. As far as our mortal bodies allow it, aren’t we all seeking illumination?