Click TV Special
Children of of Adam are limbs of one body,
They all have been created of one essence.
When life and time hurts a limb,
The other limbs cannot remain at ease.
If you’re not sad for the sufferings of others,
You don’t deserve to be called a Human.
~ Sa’adi Shirazi (Sufi Poet)
I’m excited to tell you today about my journey to New York in America to attend the United Nations “Youth Training program on SDGs & the Role of Youth to achieve it”.
I have participated in the UN Human Rights Council sessions in Geneva, Switzerland several times in the past. But participating in the UN General Assembly in New York would be an amazing experience for the first time in my life.
One of the causes of my curiosity is to see the Sufi poet and philosopher Sheikh Sa’adi Shirazi’s beautiful Persian poem “Bani Adam” inscribed on the United Nations Building Entrance.
“Children of Adam” or Bani Adam is a Sufi anecdote which has a great appeal in itself. That’s why it has been celebrated by the United Nations headquarters in New York. The largest and the most splendid carpet at the UN entrance was gifted by the Persian philanthropists which is adorned by the same Sufi couplets. Beautifully translated into English, the original Persian poem goes as follows:
بنی آدم اعضای یک پیکرند
که در آفرينش ز یک گوهرند
Children of of Adam are limbs of one body,
They all have been created of one essence.
When life and time hurts a limb,
The other limbs cannot remain at ease.
If you’re not sad for the sufferings of others,
You don’t deserve to be called a Human.
In 2016, when I was in Iran, the land of mystics, poets and Sufi sages, I visited the shrine of Sheikh Sa’adi in Shiraz.
While travelling in this historical city of Iran, I recalled the same poem which I was taught in my childhood days in an Indian Sufi seminary as part of my curriculum. Textbooks written by Sufi mystics and Persian poets like Sa’adi Shirazi and Jalaluddin Rumi beautifully explore the universal values and ultimate truths for the mankind.
Until recently, the two books by Sa’adi: Gulistan (the Rose Garden) and Boostan (the Orchard) were part of the curriculum in Indian Sufi seminaries and are still taught as Sufi manuals and textbooks in a few shrine-based Madrasas and (khanqahs) like Jamia Arifia in Syed Sarawan, Allahabad which I visited very recently.
Sheikh Sa’adi beautifully says:
Live with the real humanity or be like a bird
It is this bird that imitates the language of humanity
You’re not a human, if you are a captive of a beast
Because even angels don’t have a way to the nest of humanity
If this savagery dies out of your nature
You will get to live with the human conscience for the rest of your life
Mankind reaches a point where it sees nothing, but God
Observe and see how vast is the reach of humanity.
