Post One — The Stopping Place - Entering the World of Al-Niffari

                                                     A Journey into the Heart of Darkness.
 

                                                               As Above, So Below

The Stopping Place — Entering the World of Al-Niffari

There are moments in the spiritual journey when the seeker discovers that the journey itself has become the obstacle.

We read. We meditate. We contemplate. We seek God, truth, enlightenment, awakening. We gather teachings and compare one tradition with another. We build bridges between Zen, Vedanta, Buddhism, Sufism and all the other languages humanity has invented in its attempt to speak about the Unspeakable.

And then, perhaps, something happens.

We are told to stop.

This is where I have found myself lately, wandering into the strange and beautiful world of the tenth-century Sufi mystic Muhammad ibn al-Niffari.

One of the central words associated with his writings is waqfah — the stopping, the standing still, the moment in which the seeker is no longer simply moving toward something.

It is not merely physical stillness.

It is the stopping of the one who is constantly seeking.

And that is a very different matter.

Because who is it that is seeking?

The seeker.

And who wants to arrive?

The seeker.

Who wants enlightenment?

The seeker.

Who wants to become desireless?

Again, the seeker.

And suddenly we discover the strange circularity of the spiritual quest: the very "I" that wants to disappear may be the one perpetually keeping itself alive by wanting to disappear.

Perhaps this is why the stopping place is so important.

There is nothing to achieve in the waqfah.

There is nowhere to go.

For a moment, the machinery of seeking becomes quiet.

And in that quietness, we may begin to notice something uncomfortable:

Perhaps the witness we have been relying upon is also part of the story.

Perhaps even the one who says, "I am witnessing reality," is still standing apart from reality.

I find this strangely familiar.

Zen has its own way of approaching this territory. Buddhism speaks of anatta, the absence of a permanent, independent self. Vedanta speaks of the witness and asks us to discover that which remains when everything observed is removed.

And Sufism gives us another language.

Waqfah.

Stop.

Stand.

Look.

But do not immediately make another theory out of what you see.

Perhaps the deepest instruction is simply:

Stop seeking for a moment.

And see what remains when the seeker becomes still.

That is where our conversation with Al-Niffari begins.

And perhaps, just perhaps, that is where the real conversation begins as well.