Return to the Eternal Abode
Sufi Dialogues with Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Thought-provoking, comprehensive, and interdisciplinary conversations on Sufism with one of the world’s foremost scholars of Islamic, religion, and comparative studies.
Description
Return to the Eternal Abode is a series of in-depth discussions between Amira El-Zein and Seyyed Hossein Nasr, one of the world's foremost scholars of Islamic, religious, and comparative studies. Each of the six chapters addresses a central theme at the heart of Sufism: creativity, cosmology, the environment, poetry, art, and modernity. Nasr's answers to El-Zein's probing questions offer thought-provoking, comprehensive, and interdisciplinary approaches to these aspects of the Sufi tradition, reflecting a lifetime of scholarship and comfortably synthesizing various sources, philosophies, and traditions, both Islamic and otherwise. The book also sheds light on Nasr's relations to eminent thinkers of the twentieth century, such as Titus Burckhardt, Mircea Eliade, Louis Massignon, and Henry Corbin and provides, in many ways, an accessible synopsis or overview of his entire oeuvre.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr is University Professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University. He is the author and editor of many books, including Islamic Philosophy from Its Origin to the Present: Philosophy in the Land of Prophecy, also published by SUNY Press, and The Garden of Truth: The Vision and Promise of Sufism, Islam's Mystical Tradition. Amira El-Zein is a poet, translator, and Associate Professor of Arabic Literature and Culture at Georgetown University in Qatar. Her previous books in English include Islam, Arabs, and the Intelligent World of the Jinn and The Jinn and Other Poems. She has published extensively in Arabic, French, and English on topics ranging from Sufism to comparative religion and medieval Islam.
Reviews
"Return to the Eternal Abode is an engaging and even joyful exploration of Sufism, delving into the topics of cosmology and poetry—and unraveling the intricate connections between them. The book welcomes readers with or without expertise, requiring little more than a genuine sense of curiosity and a belief in philosophy's original promise to reveal the most fundamental truths of human existence." — Cyrus Ali Zargar, University of Central Florida, author of Religion of Love
Sufism and Self-Transformation in the Poetic Imagination of ʿAṭṭār"These dialogues offer accessible, clear explanations of some rather subtle issues within Sufism, ranging from the relationship between different cultures and forms or styles of Islamic art, to Greek philosophy and Islam, and the relationship between imagination and cosmology. The conversational style is exceptionally readable, and functions to make subjects that are otherwise dense or difficult relatively easy to understand." — William Rory Dickson, University of Winnipeg, author of Living Sufism in North America
Between Tradition and Transformation