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Around the world, the awards season is underway–in music and film. On Friday, at the 29th annual Victoires de la Musique ceremony (France’s premier music award ceremony), Lebanese trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf won Best World Music Album for his stellar new album “Illusions.” In concert, the jazz-funk thrust of his performances always includes a contemplative interlude, which he calls “a collective universal prayer.” Here are two of my favorite songs from his impressive body of work: “Beirut” and “Nomade Slang.”

The Chinese film Bai Ri Yan Huo (Black Coal, Thin Ice), a film noir about the hunt for a serial murderer, has won the Golden Bear Award for best picture at the Berlin International Film Festival, and the Silver Bear Award for best actor (Liao Fan). Though the trailer for the film above is in Chinese, the clip below has English subtitles…

Philosophy is finished. Now is the time for love.

— Shaykh Muzaffer Ozak al-Jerrahi

In a recent article in the NYTimes about Istanbul, Orhan Pamuk, the Noble Prize winning author, mentions his affection for a certain Turkish book bazaar–where I always bring my friends (but not for the books).

Here’s an excerpt from the article: “Nobody else would be here on Saturdays. I’d be haggling, talking, chatting. I would know every clerk, but it’s all changed now,” he [Pamuk] said, referring to the somewhat touristy atmosphere and the disappearance of characters he’d come to know, such as a manuscript seller who doubled as a Sufi preacher. These days, he said, “I come only once a year.”

If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was referring to Shaykh Muzaffer Ashki al-Jerrahi, a Sufi teacher in the Halveti-Jerrahi Order, who used to sell manuscripts in a corner bookstore of the bazaar (and wrote many books of his own). Every time I meet friends in Istanbul, I take them to the bookstore where Shaykh Muzaffer once worked–to see the photographs and framed calligraphy hung in his memory like a hidden shrine.

Though Shaykh Muzaffer (Muzaffer Effendi) was a beloved Sufi preacher in Istanbul, he was responsible for bringing the Halveti-Jerrahi Sufi Order, founded by Hadrat Pir Nureddin al-Jerrahi (b. 1678), to the “west” at the end of the 20th century by traveling, teaching, and living in America. Today, the Halveti-Jerrahi Sufi Order and the Nur Ashki Jerrahi Sufi Order (led by Shaykha Fariha) carry on his legacy and teachings.

Shaykh Muzaffer died in 1985, was buried in Istanbul–in the Jerrahi dervish lodge where Sufis still gather every week for whirling and the meditative dhikr ceremony–as led by Shaykh Muzaffer in the video below…

The sheikhs are the pourers of the wine and the dervish is the glass.
Love is the wine. By the hand of the wine pourer, the glass — the dervish — is filled. This is the short way.
Love could be offered to one by other hands. This is the short way.

— Shaykh Muzaffer Ozak el-Jerrahi

Today, February 15th, is the anniversary of Shaykh Muzaffer’s funeral procession through Istanbul (as seen in the video below). Though it was an icy day, thousands of dervishes came out to follow his coffin and attend his funeral prayer in Fatih Mosque, before carrying his body back to the Sufi lodge. For 40 days, la ‘ilaha ‘illa-llah was continuously recited by Sufis in his tomb–together with verses from the Quran and the 99 Divine Names. After 40 days passed, a new Sufi master, Sefer Effendi, was elected to carry on the leadership of the Halveti-Jerrahi Order, along with Shaykh Muzaffer’s memory…

Love and the lover have no rigid doctrine. Whichever direction the lover takes, he turns toward his beloved. Wherever he may be, he is with his beloved. Wherever he goes, he goes with his beloved. He cannot do anything, cannot survive for even one moment, without his beloved. He constantly recalls his beloved, and his beloved remembers him. Lover and beloved, rememberer and remembered, are ever in each other’s company, always together…

— Shaykh Muzaffer Ashki al-Jerrahi

It’s been a long road, but after a 10-month stalemate, Lebanon has finally formed a government. The new twenty-four member government, led by Prime Minister Tammam Salam, unites Hezbollah and its allies with the Sunni coalition of former Prime Minister Saad Hariri. The two blocks have each been allotted eight ministries–with the remaining eight going to neutral candidates. To see a list of the new cabinet members, please click here. With a war next door in Syria, weekly bombings in Lebanon, and a devastating refugee crisis affecting the entire region, the new government in Lebanon will have no shortage of crises to confront…

As my students and I discuss the writings of St. Augustine in Beirut, we’re contemplating the imagistic nature of memory, and the relationship between memory, personal identity, and autobiographical narrative…

The power of memory is prodigious, my God. It is a vast, immeasurable sanctuary. Who can plumb its depths? And yet it is a faculty of my soul. Although it is part of my nature, I cannot understand all that I am. This means, then, that the mind is too narrow to contain itself entirely. But where is that part of it which it does not itself contain? Is it somewhere outside itself and not within in? How, then, can it be a part of it, if it is not contained in it?

I am lost in wonder when I consider this problem. It bewilders me. Yet men go out and gaze in astonishment at high mountains, the huge waves of the sea, the broad reaches of rivers, the ocean that encircles the world, or the stars in their courses. But they pay no attention to themselves. They do not marvel at the thought that while I have been mentioning all these things, I have not been looking at them with my eyes, and that I could not even speak of mountains or waves, rivers or stars, which are things that I have seen, or of the ocean, which I know only on the evidence of others, unless I could see them in my mind’s eye, in my memory, and with the same vast spaces between them that would be there if I were looking at them in the world outside myself. When I saw them with the sight of my eyes, I did not draw them bodily into myself. They are not inside me themselves, but only their images. And I know which of my senses imprinted each image on my mind…

— St. Augustine

Today in Beirut, classes were cancelled at the university, and many people stayed home from work–but not because of Valentine’s Day. February 14th marks the anniversary of the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri in 2005. To commemorate his memory, his son (former Prime Minister Saad Hariri) gave a speech this evening from abroad to emphasize political “moderation,” and confront Lebanese involvement in Syria. In his speech, he rejected domestic and international attempts to drag Lebanon into a sectarian “inferno.” Tonight, many of my friends in Beirut–fearful of an attack on this highly charged day of remembrance–decided to play it safe, and spend Valentine’s Day at home. Others, however, were planning an exciting night out on the town…

Psyche, Sound & Emptiness

with Royce Froehlich

Rubin Museum of Art

March 7th – 28th
Fridays: 6:30 – 8:30 p.m.
$125; 10% discount for Rubin Museum Members

What do the music theorist John Cage and psychoanalyst Carl Jung have in common? A shared fascination with the I-Ching, Hinduism and Buddhism. In this new course, participants will listen to Cage’s music, study Jung’s theories of the psyche, and explore how Eastern thought has inspired Western artists and psychologists…

For more information or to purchase tickets, please click here (spaces are limited)…

As my students and I contemplate the writings of St. Augustine this week in Beirut, we’re exploring the relationship between time, memory, and personal narrative…

It is now, however, perfectly clear that neither the future nor the past are in existence, and that it is incorrect to say that there are three times – past, present, and future. Though one might perhaps say: ‘There are three times – a present of things past, a present of things present, and a present of things future.’ For these three do exist in the mind, and I do not see them anywhere else: the present time of things past is memory; the present time of things present is sight; the present time of things future is expectation…

— St. Augustine

Of all the exercises, I should say that T’ai Chi is the best. It can ward off disease, banish worry and tension, bring improved physical health and prolong life. It is a good hobby for your whole life, the older you are, the better. It is suitable for everyone – the weak, the sick, the aged, children, the disabled and blind. It is also an economical exercise. As long as one has three square feet of space, one can take a trip to paradise and stay there to enjoy life for thirty minutes without spending a single cent.

— T.T. Liang

In my new Huffington Post article, “Tai Chi in Beirut (貝魯特的太極練習課),” I share my latest tai chi adventures on the sea in Beirut…

What, then, am I, my God? What is my nature?
A life that is ever varying, full of change, and of immense power…

— St. Augustine

This week in Beirut, my students and I have been reading Saint Augustine’s Confessions to contemplate the nature of evil, the quest for truth, and the essence of divine love. According to St. Augustine, our transgressions and attachment to the material world are driven by our desire to “gain,” and our “fear of losing.” As a result, our habituation to the overriding power of our desires keep us from reaching the “heights.” As St. Augustine puts it, “It is a disease of the mind, which does not wholly rise to the heights where it is lifted by the truth, because it is weighed down by habit.”

I have learnt to love you late, Beauty at once so ancient and so new! I have learnt to love you late! You were within me, and I was in the world outside myself. I searched for you outside myself and, disfigured as I was, I fell upon the lovely things of your creation. You were with me, but I was not with you. The beautiful things of this world kept me far from you and yet, if they had not been in you, they would have had no being at all. You called me: you cried aloud to me; you broke my barrier of deafness. You shone upon me; your radiance enveloped me; you put my blindness to flight. You shed your fragrance about me; I drew breath and now I gasp for your sweet scent. I tasted you, and now I hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am inflamed with love of your peace…

— St. Augustine

When there’s no sign of hope in the desert,
So much hope still lives inside despair.
Heart, don’t kill that hope: Even willows bear
Sweet fruit in the garden of the soul…

— Rumi

I took this photo while visiting a Sufi madressa in the desert in Sudan. When I arrived, I was invited to sit in on a spiritual lesson being given to the young boys, and to step inside this shrine of a revered Sufi sheikh…

Every time I drove by the Corinthia Hotel Khartoum this winter in Sudan, I couldn’t help but stare–its unusual shape was so different from the other hotels in Khartoum. Because the funds for the construction of this five-star hotel came from Libya, the hotel is often referred to as Qaddafi’s Egg or Qaddafi’s Ball. Situated in the middle of Khartoum’s commercial center (where the Blue Nile and White Nile meet), it was designed to resemble a ship’s sail–and it offers panoramic views of Khartoum. Despite its popularity and opulence, I won’t stay anywhere in Khartoum except my favorite hotel in Sudan–a true home away from home–which has a more modest feel and facade…

Unfortunately, the celebrated gamelan program at the University of Michigan is currently in danger of being shut down, as the university is refusing to find housing for the instruments. So far, the petition to preserve the rich gamelan tradition at the University of Michigan has reached 674 signatures–but it could use a lot more. Studying Javanese gamelan introduces students not only to “non-western” music, but also to the world’s cultural diversity. My personal experience of studying Javanese gamelan at Brown University changed my life in more ways than I can count or explain. It would be a shame if students at the University of Michigan were robbed of this unique and transformative educational opportunity due to a lack of “space.” To sign the petition and help preserve the gamelan at the University of Michigan (seen in concert in the video above), please click here–and help spread the word!

February 15, 2014 may be your last chance to see and hear the full set of beautiful bronze instruments of the Javanese court gamelan orchestra that for nearly fifty years has entertained and exposed students, faculty and the Ann Arbor community to one of the world’s great music and dance traditions. In March, the gamelan will be removed from its dedicated space, and the majority of its instruments placed in storage. A small subset of the instruments (19 out of 69) will be housed temporarily in the Stearns Building and accessible to students, but we have no firm assurance that even this small subset will be available after School of Music has completed its expansion.

Despite plans for the expansion of the School of Music building, we have not been guaranteed a space that will allow us to continue to provide the unique experiences and international connections for students throughout the university and Ann Arbor community as well as maintain the University of Michigan’s unique profile as one of the oldest and most distinguished of gamelan programs.

Expensive programs are now being put in place to promote “globalization” at the University, yet the gamelan program is in danger of disappearing because despite multiple searches throughout the university, a space cannot be found for it…

All morning, my phone was buzzing with texts from friends here in Beirut about the dismantling of a car bomb (100 kilograms of explosives) in the neighborhood where I go for acupuncture. Some areas of Lebanon are now considered more dangerous than Baghdad. Meanwhile, in America, even Lebanon, Tennessee is exploding…