Our new library additions include “The Heart”, one of the most important chapters from Martin Lings’ What is Sufism?, which we are pleased to offer both as a PDF file and as an original audio recording. You can access and download both clicking here.

In virtue of being the centre of the body, the heart may be said to transcend the rest of the body… While the body as a whole is “horizontal”… the heart has, in addition, a certain “verticality” for being the lower end of the “vertical” axis which passes from the Divinity Itself through the centres of all the degrees of the Universe.

From his Mawaqif, a series of mystical comments on Qur’anic verses by Amir Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza’iri (Emir Abdelkader), we bring a new English translation of the brief and condensed “Diversity of Divine Self-Disclosures.”

Ultimately, the worshiper does not seek, through the form which he worships, but the Reality which deserves to be worshiped and which is none other than God. For this is what God has decided and decreed from pre-eternity.

And finally a rare jewel from the Japanese tradition: the archaic Iroha song, in which the spirituality of Buddhism is refracted through the heart of the Japanese language in the Goju-on sillabary. We offer here an exquisite audio recording contributed by the Japanese Classical Literature Podcast.