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The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

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Who has not heard or read these lines of beauty?

"Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough, A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse -- and Thou," or "The Moving Finger writes; and having writ, Moves on."?

These lines are from the first translation of The Rubaiyat by the English translator and man of letters, Edward FitzGerald (1809 - 1883). While it retains the spirit and philosophy expressed in the original quatrains, FitzGerald's translation was so free in its rendition as to be virtually an original work.
Omar Khayyam, poet, astronomer and mathematician was born in Persia in the latter part of the 11th century. His surname, Khayyam, means "tent-maker" although that undoubtedly referred to his father's trade more than to his own because actually, he was independently wealthy. He was a friend of Nizami, the Vizier of Baghdad who founded the great college of Baghdad, where Omar Khayyam was taught. Omar Khayyam lived in seclusion until Malik Shah appointed him Astronomer Royal, who, along with eight other scholars, revised the Muslim calendar. It seems certain that Khayyam was a Sufi mystic and kept his spiritual life hidden from superficial worldly minds.

"Omar," Paramhansa Yogananda has said, "by a very large number of Western readers, has come to be regarded as a rather erotic pagan poet, a drunkard interested only in wine and earthly pleasure. This is typical of the confusion that exists on the entire subject of Sufism. The wine is the joy of the spirit, and the love is the rapturous devotion to God?"

The Rubaiyat as well as the Tales of the Arabian Nights are not love stories about drunkards, genies, and magic caves filled with treasures, but mystical stories based on the religion of Sufism. Their encoded symbolism, when revealed, is deeply mystical and meaningful.

One example is the magic lamp of Aladdin. First, the meaning of the name: AL is Arabic for God, "ALLAH." DDIN is a transcription of the word DJINN (or we would say in the West, "Genie.") But in Arabic it means SPIRIT. Thus, ALADDIN means "The Spirit of God." Well, what is the magic lamp, then? The magic lamp is something we all possess in the depths (cave) of the subconscious, the MIND. What would it mean then that the "Spirit of God" rubs the "Mind"? This refers to the practice of meditation. By focussing on an idea, a single thought, our minds are capable of bringing about any reality we dream of. We are the co-creators of our own universe, our own lives. As Pogo, the comic strip character, said: "We have met the enemy, and it is we-uns." We are responsible for our own self-undoing, just as we are responsible for creating our own lives.

Secrecy and the practice of hiding deep truths behind a veil of exotic symbolism was the way the Sufis protected themselves against persecution for their unorthodox views. It is similar to the deep mysticism of the Jewish Kabala. The Sufis called their secret language QBL. The alchemists of the West used another example of hidden mysticism. Do you think they were really trying to transmute lead into gold, or were they trying to transmute the gross material of our bodies and souls into the golden glory of the spirit? If you think so, read John Randolph Price?s book published by Hay House, The Alchemist?s Handbook. Nostradamus and Leonardo daVinci also hid their writings in obscure diaries and secret codes.

Paramhansa Yogananda accomplished much of the mystic discovery about Omar Khayyam in his book, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Explained. Paramhansa Yogananda was one of the great spiritual beacons of the 20th century. His Autobiography of a Yogi, first published in 1946, has been a best-selling autobiography for the past fifty years. Yogananda was born in India in 1893 and sent to this country in 1920 where he founded the Self-Realization Fellowship in Los Angeles, California, a non-sectarian and universal organization. His close friend and editor of the book on the Rubaiyat, J. Donald Walters, also known as Kriyananda, wrote: "Yogananda's charity, compassion, unshakable calmness, loving friendship to all, delightful sense of humor and deep insight into human nature were such as to leave me constantly amazed."

Poetry can mean many things, but occasionally, the intention is missed. "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Explained" is a scholarly examination of the work from some of the best minds of Yoga walking the earth today. In the west, it's a poem of sensual delight, in the east it's a poem of a relationship with God - who has it right, if any of them? A deeply philosophical set of writing that will surely please a great many readers, "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Explained" will enlighten and educate.

The first time I encountered this book was in the 10th Grade and I have been mesmerized by it ever since. The author gives extraordinary metphors and allows the reader to interpret the poetry how it best fits them. He speaks of most of the joys there is on this wonderful world and takes you to places you have never been before. I would recommend this wonderful book to anyone who loves poetry.

While spirituality and religion doesn't offer critical thinking. every one that considers themselves on "The Path" should read this book. This book is not religion. It is however, a treatise on the neurality that centers the respective journey along the path. An affirmation of one's belief, hope, and aspirations for unity, love and peace. The Rubainat liberates one's faith, affirms connectivity to the world, and validates the necessary work of working together and not allowing our respective 'belief systems' to alter or prevent our relations to each other along the path.
Herein lies the spectre of critical thought that doesn't diminish one's belief, but, instead, affirms the notion we all come from one Source. All love and beauty abides in the final Destination we're all tied to.

Required reading, indeed.

Yugen

This was an interesting book by a yoga master. It fully and in depth explains Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat. It was an interesting reading experience that gives you a taste of Persian poetry. Yoganda has certainly outdone himself in this explained Rubaiyat based on Edward Fitzgerald's first translation of the mysterious persian poet's masterpiece.

If you want the best of mysticism and poetry, read this beautiful and deep book. I've fallen in love again with reading poetry, and I've been given a new understanding of eastern wisdom.

Even though the commentaries are full of esoteric wisdom, Yogananda writes in a poetic style that is easy on the eyes, mind, and soul.

I quote from Yogananda here: "Come, fill the Cup of Consciousness with the divine wine of bliss! Cast away your material desires (deceitful, because forever disillusioning), and fling into the crackling fire of fresh spiritual enthusiasm your robe of penitence for having ever indulged in them."

Many of Khayyam's quatrains make it seem unlikely that he is anything more than indifferent with respect to religious belief, heaven, hell, etc. In any case, there have been a wide variety of interpretations. (e.g. Christopher Hitchens includes Khayyam's quatrains as essential reading for atheists)

Why not just read them yourself and make up your own mind? Several of the best translations are all free, in the public domain, and available online through Project Gutenberg or WikiSource. Look for Fitzgerald, McCarthy, Whinfield, or even Richard Le Gallienne's paraphrase, which attempts to maintain the witiness of Khayyam.

Anything is preferable to having someone else tell you "for sure" what is meant - even if their analysis is correct, isn't it better to figure it out for yourself?

This is a book of rather peculiar interpretations of Omar Khayyam's "Rubaiyat" in the famous translation by Edward FitzGerald. Mr. Yogananda takes the 75 quatrains of the first translation of 1859 and adds to each a paraphrase, an "extended meaning" and what he calls "keys to meaning."

The purpose of this book, however, is to illustrate Mr. Yogananda's beliefs with the poetry of Omar Khayyam, not to explain or comment the quatrains.

Quatrain number 52 is one of the most materialistic, even fatalistic, of Omar Khayyam's poems:

And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop't we live and die,
Lift not thy hands to It for help - for It
Rolls Impotently on as Thou or I.

(in the standard 101 quatrain-edition of Edward FitzGerald this poem is number 72 and reads more correctly: "And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky, / Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die, / Lift not your hands to It for help - for It / As impotently moves as you or I.")

Mr. Yogananda paraphrases it as "Sun, Moon, stars, and planets pass athwart the sky as though in a slow celestial dance. Their movements correspond to the decrees of the Cosmic Law. Their changing configurations are choreographed, like the events in our lives. The stars and planets themselves can no more choose how they will affect us than we can select our own karmic destinies. Look not to the stars, then, for help if you would change your lot. Look to God. He it was who made you and all the stars. He it was who first determined the workings of karmic law."

God and "karmic law" figure prominently in Mr. Yogananda's interpretations of the other quatrains, too. However, the connection between the poems and Mr. Yogananda's interpretation is in all cases very flimsy and arbitrary. In Omar Khayyam's quatrain about the indifference of nature towards human suffering it is definitely far-fetched to claim that he wanted the reader to look to God and remind him of the "karmic law" when he wrote this poem. Rather, it seems the opposite was the case.

Omar Khayyam asks many questions about life and life's meaning in his quatrains. Mr. Yogananda claims to have all the answers. I prefer to stay with the questions and find my own answers. One of which is: no, Omar Khayyam was no yogi.

Lo! some we loved, the loveliest and best
That Time and Fate of all their Vintage prest,
Have drunk their Cup a Round or two before,
And one by one crept silently to Rest.

Omar Khayyam
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I wish I could understand Omar Khayyam...