Javad Nurbakhsh
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Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh is the present master of the Nimatullahi Sufi Order.
Dr. Nurbakhsh was born in Kerman, Iran in 1926 and attended medical school at the University of Tehran, receiving his medical doctor diploma in 1952. He specialized in psychiatry, first in practice at Tehran's Ruzbeh hospital and then as Professor of the University. To earn the professor's chair, it was required at that time to have completed a course of study abroad. In 1962, Dr. Nurbakhsh was awarded the highest recorded examination score for this placement and was subsequently invited to undertake post-graduate studies at the Sorbonne in Paris. After obtaining the diploma as Assistant étranger, Dr. Nurbakhsh returned to Tehran where he continued his teaching and clinical work.
In 1974, Dr. Nurbakhsh received an additional doctorate, "Honoris Causa" from the World Psychiatric Association and was elected president of the Society of Iranian Psychiatrists. He continued to write and publish numerous works of psychiatry in both Iranian and Western journals. In 1977, Dr. Nurbakhsh was named Head of the Department of Psychiatry in Tehran University (1977) and Director of the Ruzbeh hospital. It was during this tenure as Director that Iran, for the first time, hosted the World Congress of Psychiatry under the supervision of Dr. Nurbakhsh.
In parallel to this exceptional professional, academic career, Dr. Nurbakhsh was committed to an intense, personal involvement in spiritual activity. At the age of sixteen years he was initiated into the Nimatullahi Sufi tariqat. From that time forward, he spent much of the time not occupied in classroom studies in the presence of the Master of the Order, Munis 'Ali Shah. At the age twenty, he was appointed by his master to the position of Shaikh (spiritual director), and was conferred with the spiritual name of Nur 'Ali Shah. After the death of Munis in 1953, Dr. Nurbakhsh became Master of the Nimatullahi Order. He was then twenty-six years old.
For more than 50 years, Dr. Nurbakhsh established more than one hundred khaniqahs and numerous libraries and museums throughout Iran and the greater world. During the period of guidance under Dr. Nurbakhsh, the Nimatullahi order has flourished in the face of disapproval and even opposition from religious authority in its native Iran. There has been an emphasis on the growth of the order, including spreading to the West and parts of the developing world. The stated basis for this is not growth for its own sake. Dr. Nurbakhsh cites the fraternity and equality of all human beings, with all respect for all religions of the world, as well as love and service to all humanity and without regard towards creed, culture or nationality.
The Nimatullahi's under Dr. Nurbakhsh have hosted a number of international scholastic conferences on the subject of Sufism, uniting disparate elements from academia and spiritual practice. In the United Kingdom, he established a major centre with a manuscript library for the study and documentation of Sufism and its literature.
Social activities of the Nimatullahi Order are also of a distinctly humanitarian and practical nature, according to Dr. Nurbakhsh. To these ends, a number of efforts began during the 1990's in West Africa, continuing today. These include a Health Clinic in Porto Novo, Benin, founded in 1996 and since 2005, a Medical Center in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Dr. Nurbakhsh also directed efforts of the order to send new clothes and toiletries to patients in the leprosarium and prisoners of Abidjan.
[edit] Selected Statements by Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh
"The basis of Sufism is consideration of the hearts and feelings of others. If you haven't the will to gladden someone's heart, then at least beware lest you hurt someone's heart, for on our path, no sin exists but this"
"Sufism is a path towards the Truth where there are no provisions except Love. Its method is to look solely in one direction, and its objective is God."
"True lovers prefer the Beloved's desires to their own, being content with whatever the Beloved desires - 'be it cure or pain, union or separation.'"
"...if you encounter a human being who claims to be a Sufi and behaves contrary to the human code of ethics, do not ask, "What kind of Sufi is this?" Rather, it would be better to ask, "What kind of person would this have been had he not been a Sufi?"
"The capital of the Path is, in truth, nothing other than sincerity. Sincerity has been defined as `showing yourself as you really are' and `being inwardly what you show yourself to be'."
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