How to Climb the Seven-Story Mountain

Two Works, a Thousand Years Apart, Illustrate the Spiritual Journey

By John Walbridge 

Classics by Marcus Aurelius and Farīd al-Dīn Attār, a thousand years apart, illustrate the spiritual journey.

What if you could take a pill that let you see the world with the wonder of Adam on the morning of creation? Aldous Huxley tried it—and his experiment reveals profound truths about wonder, meaning, and what makes us human.

In 1953, Aldous Huxley ingested mescaline under supervision and sat back to experience the results. Colors became more intense, flaming out like precious stones. Ordinary things—chairs, tables, the folds of his trousers—took on miraculous aspect. Everything seemed charged with "isness," with what Huxley described as "the unfathomable mystery of pure being." He felt he was seeing "what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation."

Philosopher Sophia Vasalou explores what this experiment reveals about wonder as a mode of perception. Unlike emotions rooted in survival or practical interests, wonder arises before we've considered whether something benefits or harms us. Following Aristotle and Descartes, Vasalou suggests wonder reflects a uniquely human capacity to respond to the world in ways that transcend utility—the ability to ask "why?" purely for the sake of knowing.

But can wonder be found without pharmaceuticals? Vasalou argues yes—through the stories we tell each other and the ways we help each other think and see. If we had to be captive to one mood, we could do worse than make that mood wonder.

Read the full essay: https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/to-see-the-world-for-the-first-time

About the Author: Sophia Vasalou is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham, specializing in Islamic and ancient Greek philosophy, ethics, and the philosophy of emotion.

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Two of humanity's greatest literary masters—separated by continents and centuries—share a profound interest in how seemingly intractable conflicts can be resolved through reconciliation. What can we learn by comparing their approaches to forgiveness?

Scholar Juan Cole examines Rumi's tale of a grocer who kills his parrot in rage, only to be devastated by remorse when he learns the bird had saved his life—and Shakespeare's The Tempest, where the wizard Prospero uses magic to undo his brother's treachery. Both authors grapple with whether true reconciliation requires inner transformation or can be imposed from without.

In Rumi's story, Imam Ali demonstrates extraordinary ethics by forgiving an assassin who spat in his face, explaining that continuing the attack would mix divine justice with personal revenge. Shakespeare's Prospero, by contrast, doesn't so much forgive as rectify—using magic to compel his enemies to undo their crimes without necessarily achieving their contrition.

Both authors acknowledge life's tragic dimensions yet hold out hope for peaceful resolution. Their contrasting visions reveal essential questions: Can we win others over, or only overpower them? What does genuine forgiveness require?

Read the full essay: https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/rumi-shakespeare-forgiveness

About the Author: Juan Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, specializing in modern Middle Eastern and South Asian history.

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Can English Capture the Language of Revelation? Robert Alter's Torah and Lessons for the Translation of the Qur'an  by Caner K. Dagli

Can English truly capture the language of divine revelation? Robert Alter's literary approach to translating the Hebrew Bible offers profound lessons for how Muslims might translate the Qur'an—and why most English Qur'an translations fall short.

KEY INSIGHTS: 
• Why Alter's one-man Torah translation caused a literary sensation 
• How respecting register, rhythm, and rhetoric preserves sacred text's power 
• The problem with committee translations that flatten sacred language 
• Three historical English Qur'an translations that achieved literary excellence

Robert Alter, a comparative literature professor, challenged centuries of biblical translation by prioritizing literary style over theological smoothness. His jarring translation of Esau's crude demand—"Let me gulp down some of this red red stuff"—preserves the original's colloquial register, shocking modern readers just as it shocked ancient audiences.

Scholar Caner K. Dagli explores what Muslims can learn from this approach, examining three English Qur'an translations that rise to literary merit: George Sale's 1734 version (Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an), and more recent attempts to capture the rhetorical power of Arabic revelation. While Muslims have traditionally insisted the Qur'an cannot be translated—only "interpreted"—Dagli suggests Alter's methodology offers a path forward for conveying the Qur'an's linguistic majesty in English.

The essay challenges translators to honor both the uniqueness and beauty of sacred language rather than domesticating it into contemporary idiom, preserving what makes scripture unlike ordinary speech.

Read the full essay: https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/robert-alters-torah-and-lessons-for-the-translation-of-the-quran

About the Author: Caner K. Dagli is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the College of the Holy Cross and general editor of The Study Quran.

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What if the chaos in our societies today began not in politics or economics, but in our music? This episode explores a fascinating theory from ancient Greece and China: that civilization's decline starts when musical traditions break down. Drawing from Plato's Laws and Chinese historical accounts, we examine how ancient thinkers believed that exposure to disorderly music could lead directly to political collapse—and why this ancient warning might be eerily relevant to our algorithm-driven, emotionally reactive modern world.

Key Topics Covered:

• The concept of "theatrocracy"—rule by the irrational whims of the audience
• How ancient Greece and China both developed musical laws to preserve social harmony
• The connection between the Logos (Greek) and the Tao (Chinese) in musical philosophy
• Why Plato warned against sensational music creating social breakdown
• The fall of the Zhou dynasty and parallels to Athens' decline
• How musical conventions shaped virtue and emotional regulation
• The relationship between artistic discipline and genuine creative freedom
• Why breaking from tradition without technical mastery leads to cultural decline
• T.S. Eliot's defense of tradition in creative expression

Cultural Devolution:
How the new victimhood culture rejects human dignity and divinity
By Hamza Yusuf
Read by Michael Sugich

"Cultures vary in their approaches to instilling a sense of right and wrong in children, and in determining how to encourage rights and redress wrongs. One key difference in approaches relates to the religiosity, or the lack thereof, of the specific culture. In cultures where a significant number of people remain religious, parents often introduce scripturally derived concepts of reward and punishment, promote emulation of prophetic or sagely character, and warn of God’s wrath or bad karma upon those who break moral codes or disregard divine sanctions found in such presentations as the Ten Commandments or the Golden Rule. Other cultures, especially in modern secular societies, take a more humanistic approach, arguing that basic moral precepts—such as telling the truth—are simply self-evident and result when good people act appropriately. In other words, good people exhibit upright moral behavior, they tell the truth, they don’t steal, and they abide by the rule of law. Teaching young people these basic principles of behavior takes time and constant vigilance, since many youth display a rebellious spirit expressed in testing limits, getting away with things, and violating the status quo. Young people commonly question the mores of a culture, and shifts in cultural norms usually occur first among them."

Hamza Yusuf is the president of Zaytuna College. He promotes classical learning in Islam and emphasizes the importance of the tools of learning so central to Muslim civilization and known in the West as the liberal arts. He serves as vice president for the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies, and he has published numerous articles, essays, encyclopedia entries, and translations, including The Prayer of the Oppressed and Purification of the Heart.

Many intellectuals believe Islamophobia is a form of racism, but the ultimate presuppositions embedded in this view are antithetical not only to Islam but to religion as such.

https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/muslims-are-not-a-race

The modern world knows it faces a void of meaning—and in a strange recurrence of history, some secular intellectuals are now calling for various forms of paganism.

An essay by Faraz Khan

To many, Islamic art can speak more profoundly and clearly than even the written word. Is it wiser then for Muslims to show, not to tell?

Article by Oludamini Ogunnaike

Read here: https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/the-silent-theology-of-islamic-art

Contrary to its usage in today’s public discourse, dignity is not something all humans universally have, but something that everyone must do.

Article by Caner K. Dagli 

https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/dignity-is-for-the-heart-not-the-ego