Mentorship – Jalalludin Rumi and Shams of Tabriz
Mentorship can take unexpected forms, such as the mutual one between Jalalludin Rumi and Shams of Tabriz.
Mentorship: When Good Advice becomes Solace
by James Cowan
In our modern, bustling life, it is often important to pause and think about the role that mentors can play as a way of understanding what to do next. Often, we think of such people as being of a professional class such as a psychologist or a business superior, when in fact they do not have to be so. A mentor can be someone who has a deep understanding of the inner life and is willing to share his or her knowledge.
In the new book, Warriors of Love, the idea of the mentor is explored between Jalalludin Rumi and his friend Shams of Tabriz in the thirteenth century. These men met in Konya, Turkey, and formed a deep bond. Each became to the other his mentor.
Their mentorship, however, was not simply that of good advice about what to do in unusual or trying circumstances. Rather, their friendship was founded upon an understanding of their individual needs, and how they might enact a more balanced attitude towards the relationship between their inner and outer lives.
Rumi was a scholar and a poet. Shams, on the other hand, was an itinerant philosopher, a gadfly who called no place his home. Together they would perform a sobhet, or meditation, which sometimes lasted many months. While remaining isolated in a room, they were able to plumb the depths of their spirituality, their hal, and so release it into the world.
As mentors, they completed one another. Their spiritual lives were enhanced by the stark contrast in their personalities. The scholar and the vagabond, the poet, and the wild man – somehow they found a way to smooth the rough edges of their respective characters.
Warriors of Love traces this transformation. The author takes us on a remarkable journey into the realm of Sufism and the mystical nature of Islam during the thirteenth century. His thoughtful introduction explores how mentorship can help people to overcome the doubts and uncertainties they might feel about themselves.
Fifty poems by Rumi are included in the book. These explore Rumi’s sense of loss when Shams, his beloved mentor, chose to leave him because of jealousies in the Konya household fomented by his disciples. Rumi makes us aware of how much Shams meant to him, both as a friend and spiritual guide. In his great lyrical poems, he proceeds to plead for Shams to return to Konya.
But this ‘return’ is not so much physical anymore. Rumi is already aware that Shams’ absence heralds the need for a far deeper commitment to life as a spiritual person. He is being asked by his ‘loss,’ so to speak, to become more wedded to the interior life than he might have been in the past. In a sense, Shams had become a thorn, a goad, urging Rumi to transcend himself.
To possess a mentor is thus to reach out for help. Not help as a crutch so much as that of the power to be inspired. Living our normal day to day lives often makes us vulnerable to the ordinary and the prosaic, so that inspiration begins to wither in the soul. Rumi knew this, even as he accepted that his friend might never return to Konya, as much as he might have wished. In the end, he made Shams absence into a mentor of a far higher order.
Warriors of Love is truly an inspirational book. It ranges over so much that is nourishment for the body and the mind. The author has ventured to places that few of us ever go. He wants us to experience friendship as a companion in the business of living out our everyday lives. Rumi’s poetry is redolent with longing, with love, and more importantly, with the healing power of knowing another person deeply, and without reserve.
The challenge that Rumi and Shams set the reader is that mentorship is not confined to gender. Women, too, must embrace the concept, and make it part of their lives. They have to reach out to a mentor, whoever that person might be and begin the process of living a richer, more inspired and fulfilled existence. This is the true story of mentorship for people today.
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About the Author
James Cowan is the author of more than 35 books, including A Mapmaker’s Dream and Desert Father. He has traveled widely among Aborigines in Australia, and in the company of Copts along the Nile. On Mount Athos or in Borneo, he has spent his life seeking out mentors. Recipient of the ALS Gold Medal for literature, Cowan manages to spend a good deal of his life on the road.
