Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today, we are
going to challenge a concept that I think most
of us, especially in the modern world, sort of
consider a gold standard. And that is interfaith
dialogue. Exactly. It's a phrase that sounds
incredibly civilized, doesn't it? It does. It
evokes a very specific image. I always picture,
you know, a round table, maybe a conference center
somewhere. People from different religions, they're
all politely nodding at one another. You have
your tea. I have mine. You stay in your theological
lane. I stay in mine. And we just agree to be
nice. Right. It's safe. It's sanitized. It's
what we call tolerance. But the stack of research
we are unpacking today suggests that this version
of dialogue, this polite, guarded exchange, might
actually be a little superficial. Or at least
it's not the only way to do it. And for that,
we're traveling back in time today, about 600
years, to the Valley of Kashmir. We're going
to look at a radical experiment in how to bridge
the gap between two totally different worldviews.
And the central figure here isn't a diplomat.
He's a mystic. And he didn't use polite conversation
to bridge that gap. He used something much, much
heavier. He used the concept of death. This is
the Deep Dive on Nandrishi. also known as the
Elimdar or flag bearer of Kashmir. And we're
basing this conversation on the fascinating research
of scholar Abir Bashir Bazaz, specifically his
work on negative theology. And just to set the
stakes here. Bazaz's argument is that Nun Rishi
didn't just preach coexistence. No. He practiced
interfaith translation. And that is a much messier,
much more dangerous, and honestly a much more
effective game than what we usually see today.
Translation is the key word there. We aren't
talking about swapping words in a dictionary.
Not at all. We are talking about translating
your entire soul into the language of the other.
So let's set the scene. If we drop into Kashmir
in the late 1300s. What are we walking into?
It was a moment of just absolute seismic shifts.
You have to imagine the ground literally moving
beneath people's feet. For centuries, Kashmir
had been this incredible intellectual powerhouse
of Hinduism, specifically Shaivism and Buddhism,
a real center of Sanskrit learning. But by the
14th century, the political structures were collapsing.
And you have the rise of the Muslim sultanate.
So the king is now a sultan. The entire political
order has just flipped. Exactly. And with that
political flip, you get a new religion. Is Islam
becoming the dominant political force? But, and
this is crucial, the research highlights that
there wasn't just one type of Islam arriving.
It wasn't a monolith. Right. The sources distinguish
between the elites and the vernacular. Let's
start with the elites. Who were they? OK, so
these were the immigrants. Think Persian Sufis,
like the Kuberwiyah order. These guys were the
cosmopolitan intellectuals of the medieval world.
They came from Central Asia, they spoke Persian,
and they headed straight for the royal court.
They were the high church equivalent, if you
will. So these are the top -down guys. They hang
out with the sultan, they focus on Islamic la
shara, and for them, being Muslim is about being
distinct from the locals. Precisely. Their whole
project was about boundaries. We are Muslims.
You are non -Muslims. Here is the line. Cross
it if you want to be saved, but otherwise, stay
over there. Yes. They brought a kind of potted
plant version of Islam, keeping it in the soil
of Persia, just moving the pot to Kashmir. They
didn't want to get their hands dirty with the
local culture. And then on the complete other
side of the spectrum, you have Nun Rishi. The
vernacular, the little tradition. Nun Rishi wasn't
an immigrant. He was born in a village in Kashmir
around 1378. He didn't hang out in courts. He
walked the forests. He didn't speak Persian.
He spoke, and more importantly, he composed poetry
in Kashmiri. That seems like a small detail.
But in that context, speaking the local language
was a political statement, wasn't it? Oh, it
was a radical claim to authority. By speaking
Kashmiri, he was saying, God speaks your language,
too. He established the Rishi Order, which was
an indigenous Muslim ascetic movement. But, and
here is the kicker, he's so entangled with the
local traditions that even today he has two names.
The Muslims call him Shaikh Lalam, teacher of
the world, and the Hindus call him Sahazanand,
the bliss of the natural. There is a legend in
the source material that just perfectly captures
this entanglement. It involves Lal Dede, the
famous Hindu mystic. I think this story really
sets the tone for everything else. You absolutely
cannot tell Nun Rishi's story without Lal Dede.
She was a wandering yogini, a real giant of Kashmiri
Shaivism. And legend says that when Nun Rishi
was an infant, he refused to breastfeed. From
his own mother, yeah. He wouldn't eat. The family
was distraught. They thought the child was going
to die. And then Laldeh enters the scene. Right.
A Hindu ascetic enters a Muslim household. She
picks up the baby Nun Rishi and whispers to him,
You are not ashamed to be born, so why are you
ashamed to drink? And then, in this incredibly
potent, almost shocking image, she offers him
her own breast. And he feeds. That is, wow. A
Hindi yogini literally nursing the future Muslim
saint of Kashmir. It's so intimate. It's the
foundational myth of Kashmiri pluralism. It's
saying that his spiritual DNA, his vitality,
it flows directly from the Hindu past. He isn't
erasing the old religion. He is imbibing it.
He is nourished by it. And this gave him immense
credibility with the common people. Which brings
us to this concept of translation. Because Nandrishi
didn't just borrow milk. He borrowed language.
Yeah. Bazaaz talks a lot about this term sahaja.
What does that mean here? Sahaja is a Sanskrit
word. It means innate or spontaneous. In the
local spiritual ecology, it meant the truth that
you were born with something natural, not forced
by rituals. It's the water, not the bottle. And
Nun Rishi does something audacious here. He takes
the Sanskrit concept and applies it to the Quran.
He calls the Quran the sahaja Quran. Which changes
everything. If the Quran is sahaja, then it's
not a foreign import from Arabia. Right. It's
an awakening of something you already have inside
you. He's telling the Kashmiri peasant, you don't
have to become an Arab or a Persian to follow
this path. This path is already in your blood.
He even gave the Prophet Muhammad a new title,
didn't he? He called him the first rishi. That
is bold. Taking the prophet of Islam and categorizing
him as a rishi of Vedic sage, that feels like
it would upset the orthodox elites. Oh, the elites
hated it. But for the common person, it was a
masterclass in translation. By calling Muhammad
a rishi, he validates Islam through the lens
of the ancestors. It creates a genealogy. It
does. It says, look, this new message is just
the latest chapter of our own story. It's interreligious
entanglement at its best. He's refusing to let
the religions be separate categories. Okay, so
he hooks them with the local language and these
familiar concepts. But once he has their attention,
the actual message he delivers is, well, it's
heavy. Yes. This is where we get to the negative
theology. This is the core of the Zaz's research.
So why negative? Is he just being pessimistic?
Is this about being depressed about the world?
No. Negative here doesn't mean bad or sad. It
refers to the via negativa, the negative way.
It's a theological method where you try to understand
the ultimate reality, God, truth, whatever you
call it, by stripping away everything that it
is not. You clear the deck. You clear the deck,
you negate the finite to find the infinite. And
for Nun Rishi, the ultimate tool for clearing
the deck was death. The sources say his poetry
is obsessed with death and the void shunya. Why
focus on that? Why not paradise or blessings
or how great God is? Because blessings and rituals
divide us. My rituals are better than yours.
My heaven looks different than yours. My God
has a beard, yours has many arms. Exactly. But
death, death is the great equalizer. Nunon Rishi
realized that if you strip away the labels, Hindu,
Muslim, Brahmin, outcast what is left, we are
all temporary. We are all going to die. There
is this one shruk. That's what his verses are
called, right? Shruks. Yes. Shruk implies a knot.
They are like riddles you have to untie. Right.
They aren't meant to be consumed easily. You
have to chew on them. So there's this one shirk
about shop closing. Yeah. It really stuck with
me because it feels so modern. We're all so busy
doing our thing. The shop closing metaphor is
haunting. He compares human life to a bazaar.
During the day, it's loud. It's busy. People
are trading, cheating, arguing over prices. It
feels so important. The hustle. Right. But then.
Evening comes, the shutters go down, the shopkeepers
leave, and the marketplace is just empty. Like
water absorbed by new clay vessels. Yeah. That's
the line he uses to describe how death takes
youth. It just sucks it dry. It's about the suddenness
of the end. He's forcing the listener to confront
the fact that their business, their ego, their
status, their religious arguments is all going
to vanish when the sun sets. But isn't that just
depressing? Hey, everyone, nothing matters. We're
all dust. How is that a bridge between people?
Usually we try to build bridges on hope, not
despair. That's the genius of it. If we are all
dust, then why are we fighting? If I admit that
I am nothing and you admit that you are nothing,
we suddenly have something profound in common,
our shared fragility. It levels the playing field.
It reminds me of that phrase the sources mentioned,
die before you die. That sounds like a riddle.
It is, and it's a concept found in both Sufism
and Buddhism, which Nand Rishi harmonizes perfectly.
Die before you die means dismantling your ego
now. While you're alive. Don't wait for physical
death. Kill your greed, kill your pride, kill
your tribalism while you are still alive. So
it's an active process. It's not just waiting
for the end. Yes. He writes, death is a sweet
drink without which you shall not heal. Without
which you shall not heal. That flips the script.
Usually we think of death as the sickness. He's
saying the ego is the sickness and the awareness
of death is the medicine. It's a call to kenosis,
self -emptying. If you empty yourself of you,
you make room for the divine. And in that empty
space, a Hindu and a Muslim can actually meet.
Because the walls of dogma have been knocked
down. The walls which are built by the ego, yes.
Now, this wasn't just mystical navel -gazing,
though, was it? Bazaz argues that this negative
theology had real -world political teeth. He
calls it negative political theology. It was
incredibly political. You have to remember the
context. You have sultans building massive monuments
claiming divine right. You have elites hoarding
wealth. When Nun Rishi comes along and says,
all of this is fleeting, the void is coming for
everything, he is delegitimizing their power.
It's the ultimate reality check for a dictator.
You can't really intimidate a guy who's already
focused on the void. Exactly. There's a poem
where he describes the palaces of the rich. High
walls, guarded gates, turning the poor away.
They look so permanent. Right. But then he fast
forwards the tape. He says, I saw those same
palaces in ruins and now people are growing cotton
over them. Cotton growing over the ruins of the
palace. That is such a specific, humble image.
Nature reclaiming the monument. It tells the
peasant. Don't be intimidated by the sultan.
His power is dust. And it tells the sultan, watch
out. It's a critique of power rooted in the apocalypse.
He also redefines what a true believer is. Yeah.
And he does it in a way that seems designed to
bypass the religious gatekeepers. This is the
poem, He Alone is a True Muslim. Now remember
the elites. To them, a true Muslim follows Shari,
wears the right clothes, prays in Arabic. Nandrishi
says, no. A true Muslim is one who conquers anger,
one who conquers greed, one who shares his food
with the hungry. Which are virtues that a Buddhist
monk or a Hindu peasant would immediately nod
along with. Exactly. He shifted the definition
from tribal identity to ethical substance. He
made it so that a non -Muslim could look at a
Muslim and recognize shared values rather than
just seeing a foreign conqueror. I want to go
back to the poetry itself for a minute. You mentioned
these are knots. They aren't linear lectures.
Bazaz highlights a couple of metaphors that are
really... Well, they're tricky. One is the pomegranate.
The pomegranate and the fire. It's a complex
image interpreted by the critic Rahman Rahi.
Imagine a child who wants to steal pomegranates
from a tree, but it's dark. Okay. So to see the
fruit, the child lights a bundle of grass. Okay,
so he's shedding light on the prize. Makes sense.
But the fire gets out of control. It threatens
the whole orchard. And suddenly the child is
stuck. He has the desire for the fruit, but he's
created a disaster, and now he's terrified of
the return journey home. Afraid of the punishment.
Yes. That feels like a metaphor for everything.
We want the fruit, money, power, pleasure. We
burn things down to get it, and then we're left
staring at the ashes, terrified of the consequences.
It captures the anxiety of existence. It's not
a comforting, here's the answer poem. It's a
poem that forces you to feel the tension between
your desire and your inevitable end. And then
there's the crow. That one felt very visual to
me. The crow shedding its feathers. Imagine a
bird standing there and all its beautiful plumage,
the things that let it fly, the things that give
it shape and identity, just fall off and pile
up at its feet. That is a stark image. A naked
bird. It's the shedding of the self. The feathers
are our pretensions, our titles, our I -ness,
I -am -that. When you face the truth, the nothing,
you lose your feathers. And Bazaz calls what's
left the form of the nothing, Shunyakar. Right.
Nandrishi says that when life, zoo, and greed
blob finally the stage, what remains is the form
of the nothing. It implies that our true reality,
our sahaja state, is what's left when the frantic
noise of living stops. It's the silence after
the song. So bringing this all together, we have
a mystic who used the local language, bridged
the gap with Hindu philosophy, and used the terrifying
reality of death to level the playing field.
between the powerful and the poor. That's a great
summary, yes. Why does this matter to us sitting
here today? We aren't in medieval Kashmir. But
Bazaz seems to think this Nundurishi model is
actually urgent for us. It is urgent because
our current model of tolerance is failing. We
built a world where we tolerate each other, but
we don't engage. We just ignore the differences
to keep the peace. Bazaz calls what Nonarishi
did interreligious entanglement. Entanglement
sounds messy. It sounds like something you get
stuck in. It is messy, and that's the point.
True pluralism isn't about ignoring differences
or building walls. It's about being willing to
translate your sacred concepts into the language
of your neighbor. Nandrishi wasn't afraid to
let his Islam be contaminated. And I use that
word in a positive way, the way a scholar would.
He wasn't afraid to let it be contaminated by
the Hindu worldview. He risked his own purity
to make a connection. Yes. He suggests that if
we only speak our own theological language, we
are just shouting into the void. But if we translate,
if we say, okay, I call it monotheism, you call
it the void, but let's look at what we both fear.
Death. Suffering. Fragility. That's where you
find the connection. That is where you find the
sahaja, the innate connection. It's moving the
conversation from my doctrine versus your doctrine
to we are all in the same sinking boat. Or to
use Nun Rishi's metaphor, we are all in the same
shop and the shutters are coming down. So how
do we want to treat each other in these final
minutes? That is a powerful question. It shifts
the stakes completely. It makes kindness urgent.
It does. It reminds us that religion at its best
isn't a fortress. It's a bridge. And sometimes
the only way to cross that bridge is to leave
your heavy armor, your ego, your rigid definitions
behind. Bazaz uses a great phrase for this. Apophatic
boldness. The boldness to speak about what cannot
be spoken. And the boldness to cross frontiers.
Nun Rishi negated the power structures of his
time to open a space where a Hindu yogini could
be the spiritual mother of a Muslim saint. That
is a radical act of love. It's much harder than
just sitting at a conference table sipping tea.
So here is the challenge for you listening today.
We often think of understanding someone else
as learning their facts. Oh, they believe X,
Y, and Z. But Nun Rishi challenges us to go deeper.
He challenges us to translate. What would it
look like for you to translate your core beliefs
into the language of the person you disagree
with most? Not to convert them. And not to lose
yourself. But just to find that innate ground
beneath all the arguments. If you stripped away
the labels, the politics, and the jargon, and
you were both just facing the nothing, what would
you say to each other then? It's a scary question.
But as Nandrishi would say, it's a sweet drink
without which you shall not heal. Couldn't have
said it better. Thanks for taking this deep dive
into the mystic world of Kashmir with us. We'll
catch you on the next one.