The Mirage of Existence
A summary of Ahmad Javaid’s remarks on one of Mir’s couplets (plus additional notes)
mawwāj āb sā hai va leykin uRe hai khāk
hai mīr baḥr-e be tehey hasti sarāb sā
The waves are like water and yet dust fills the air;
Mir, this shallow sea of existence is like a mirage.
Not only is this couplet exquisite from a literary standpoint, it also contains a profound philosophical teaching. The couplet revolves around the idea that the affirmation of the cosmos entails its negation. In other words, phenomena must be acknowledged even as they must be denied. Otherwise, there can be no knowledge of existence—to know existence is to affirm phenomena in order to deny them. To be connected to its reality, form requires the negation of itself, not the affirmation of its independent existence. The affirmation of form is accidental whereas its negation is essential. Without negation, form remains dissociated from its reality. The intellect is what gives form the element of transcendence. Transcendence is the negation of form—it is not the denial of the phenomenon nor the denial of the experience, it is the rational denial of form.
But poetry is not philosophy and Mir was, above all else, an extraordinary poet.
The phrase “The waves are like water” brings another beautiful couplet to mind:
ravānī to thī us mein pānī nahin thā
huwa gharq mein jisko daryā samaj kar
It flowed, but it had no water—
thinking it was a sea, I drowned.
But Mir’s couplet is far greater because it encapsulates this entire couplet in the phrase “The waves are like water.”
By using “like” (sā) in the first hemistich, Mir is telling us that the waves are not water. Ordinarily, a simile establishes the independent existence of two things as well as their rational unity. Consider the following example:
You are like the sun in splendor.
The one being praised (i.e., the mushabbah) is radiant so the poet compares her to something that epitomizes radiance: the sun (i.e., the mushabbah bihi). The quality shared by the two elements of a simile is stronger in the mushabbah bihi, but the point of the simile is to affirm the existence of this quality in the mushabbah and, by extension, the existence of the mushabbah itself.
By using “like” to express how insignificant the mushabbah is, Mir has turned the general rule of simile upside down. The waves are like water, but they are not water at all.
Water means reality or that passion for being which entails the negation of all other existents. Waves epitomize the potential of water—a sea without waves is deficient. Waves signify that a body of water, having fulfilled its purpose (or its passion for being), is now capable of impacting its shores. In other words, because it is perfect in itself, it has the power to effect others.
So when Mir says the waves are like water, he means, when we look closely, the phenomenon that appears to epitomize existence is actually nothing at all.
“And yet” (va leykin) in the phrase “and yet dust fills the air” places emphasis on the negation in the previous phrase. We have two eyes. One eye perceives form while the other perceives reality. The eye that perceives form believes forms are real, but our other eye knows we cannot perceive reality until we see the negation of form in forms themselves. Viewed through the lens of the eye that perceives form, this universe is a sea of existence and, like a tumultuous sea, its waves roar loudly, meaning the idea of existence in this sea appears to be completely engaged in action; however, as soon as we look with our other eye, we can see that it is nothing but an illusion—the entire universe is just dust.
Just as the phenomenon of dust is opposed to the phenomenon of water, their meanings are also opposed: dust is nonexistence whereas water is reality and gives life. The concept of nonexistence, however, has as much of a role in the shaping of meaning as the concept of existence, so the expression “dust fills the air” is critical. This expression is used for something that is not only nonexistent, it is meaningless too—and meaninglessness is the lowest kind of nonexistence.
In the second hemistich, the word translated as mirage is sarāb, which is a form that entrances the eye and the mind, but is ultimately a delusion (and not simply an illusion). There is a subtle relationship between sarāb and dust because we normally see a sarāb (heat shimmer) in the desert. Furthermore, like dust, sarāb is meaningless—because it is a delusion, it is not even a true form. The phenomena of existence are all a mirage.
“Shallow sea” (bahr-e be teh) has two meanings. In one sense, it means an ignorant person lacking any substance. For instance, Mir says:
is fan mein koi be teh kya ho mera muʿāriz
awwal to mein sanad hun phir ye meri zabān hai
In another sense, it means a sea so shallow that its depth cannot even be measured. This shallow sea of existence is a mirage, but it is also like a mirage, meaning it is so unreal that it cannot even be considered unreal—even its unreality is deficient.
This post is dedicated to the memory of Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, whose Sher-e shor angez was one of the first works of Urdu literary criticism I ever read.