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Historical Timetable: Developments from 144,000 BC to 100 A.D>

AB: This dialogue of Muslim spiritual leaders with leaders of other religions is continuing, particularly by people like His Holiness the Dalai Lama. His Holiness once asked me to find for him a West African Black Sufi leader – it was very, very specific – to discuss the two religions. Such a leader almost fell out of the sky. It was Dr. Tirmiziou Diallo, the hereditary Sufi leader of Guinea, West Africa, whom I mentioned earlier, and whom I met through a common German friend in the diplomatic corps. I accompanied him to Dharamsala for meetings with His Holiness. The topic they were most interested in discussing was compassion. In the West African form of Sufism, the main principle is love and compassion. This Sufi leader was so moved by his experience with His Holiness, that he came to a Kalachakra initiation His Holiness held in Graz, Austria last October.

Many Buddhists in the West know of Islam primarily through the Sufi poets such as Rumi and Hafiz, who emphasize complete love and devotion to God or God as manifest through all things. While people love those poets and love that sort of approach, the enraptured love they speak of doesn’t seem to a big place in most of the Buddhism that many Western Buddhists have adopted, which is silent meditation and inner investigation.

SA: There are many Muslims who are not ecstatic, as well. That poetry is very strong and probably has its roots in Hinduism, or in other Indian devotional traditions. But, there is another tradition from Central Asia that bridges Islam and Buddhism in a very interesting way. It’s what the Chinese would call "matching couplets" or quatrains. In the Turkic languages, it’s called koshma, which means "that which runs through your mind." It’s a thought you capture as it’s running away; a thought that you should let go, but you capture anyway. You write a couplet, and add a final line that turns the meaning around, saying something that doesn’t make sense. It’s a koan in essence. Famous poets like Omar Khayyam drew on that, as did many Sufis, particularly those of Central Asia. A famous folk poet from Turkey, Uris Amray, also well known as a Sufi, is a good example. Many of his poems start with a contemplation over a grave in the cemetery, which is a common form of meditation.

BALKH.....All roads lead to Balkh (mysterious Near Eastern city), said by Gurdjieff, referring to the Sufic origin of all systems.

BARAKA BASHAD......Blessed Be.. A baraka is a blessing or power used by the Sufis. Baraka is another name for the X-Factor, conceived as a magickal fluid that pours forth from the saints.

Sufi sages rode horse-headed canes called Zamalzain. "gala limping horse".

"Sufis paint the final annihilation of the ego with a "black" brush. Is this light simply black, or is it an absence of color that only appears black?"

ISMA"ILI SUFISM.....the sacred book 'Umm al-Kitab'...Near Swat....Nizari branch in Chitral, Hunza, Afghanistan

An overwhelming majority of Muslim and non-Muslim Kurds are followers of one of many mystic Sufi orders (or tariqa). The bonds of the Muslim Kurds, for example, to different Sufi orders have traditionally been stronger than to orthodox Muslim practices. Sufi rituals in Kurdistan, led by Sufi masters, or shaykhs, contain so many clearly non-Islamic rites and practices that an objective observer would not consider them Islamic in the orthodox sense.