Page viii - Preface:
"My goal throughout is to let the tradition speak for itself....I take as my mentor
here Abd ar-Rahman Jami (d. 1492) who writes as follows in the introduction to his
well-known Sufi classic Lawa’ih":
‘It
is hoped that none will see in the midst
the one who has embarked on this explication...
since the author has no share save the post of translator,
and no portion save the trade of speaker.’
Commentary: Sadly,
the goal of the author (and I do not mean Jami) has not been realized, and one of the
purposes underlying the current Commentaries on the author’s book is to
demonstrate this fact. Ironically, the author fails in precisely the way he hoped not to -
that is, by ‘his’ being in evidence throughout his explication (through
his interpretations) and, as a result, he does not let the Sufi tradition speak for
itself. Instead, we are left, on all too many occasions, with the author’s version of
the Sufi tradition rather than the actual reality itself.
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