I have a taste for ghazals and I like them.
I love the sufiana style of writing in Tagore's poetry.
This concept that you refer to in Buddhism is something I've been nurtured with through the history of my country for 700, 800 years - Persian poets and philosophers haven't said anything different with regard to experiencing life in the moment, as opposed to the belief of permanence.
I thought about one of my favorite Sufi poems, which says that God long ago drew a circle in the sand exactly around the spot where you are standing right now. I was never not coming here. This was never not going to happen.
People listened to Farsi texts, and to the great texts of our Baba Bulleh Shah, Khwaja Ghulam Farid, Mian Mohammad Bakhsh Jehlmi. People do listen to it these days, but much less than in those days.
I grew up around a lot of Rumi, Hafez and Omar Khayyam books. My parents in Kabul had all the volumes around the house.
I started listening to Sufi music when I was 21.
I am not a Sufi, but I follow the Sufi.
Sufi poetry is, in a sense, self-help poetry about how to live a decent life, how to deal with your mortality.
If Rumi is the most-read poet in America today, Coleman Barks is in good part responsible. His ear for the truly divine madness in Rumi’s poetry is really remarkable.
I think that Sufism fits all over the world. The concept is not anything that fits standard Western ideas - it's always related to culture, to music, to religion. It is a dominant religion in Senegal.
I grew up in Banaras on Kabir and other Hindi poets and then I got introduced to Faiz, Hasrat Mohani, Allama Iqbal and Majaaz. They took me to another facet of literature and drama.
