63. Wāṣif ʿAlī Wāṣif: Separation and Union
A Sourcebook in Global Philosophy - Mohammed Rustom
Amer Latif [+]
Emerson College
Description
In this essay, Wāṣif ʿAlī Wāṣif (d. 1993 CE), a prominent Pakistani poet, essayist, philosopher, and Sufi master, explores the problem raised by a fundamental feature of human existence: most of our lives are lived in separation from the objects of our desires and are sustained by the hopes of attaining these objects. We are not where we want to be; we imagine that the fullness of life is not here but there; our now lacks the fullness we crave, and we feel that this fullness will be found in a future then. Wāṣif ʿAlī’s treatment of this problem not only shows the mutual interdependence of this and that, now and then, and separation and union, but it does so without erasing the differences between our experiences of separation and union. As such, this short essay exemplifies the holistic scope of the Islamic doctrine of tawḥīd—asserting the unity and oneness of God. In practice, tawḥīd, which literally means “making one,” is a perspective that takes the myriad realities and qualities of our experience and makes them one by relating them all back to God—the perpetual and inexhaustible Source of all realities and all qualities.