The Conference of the Birds

The Conference of the Birds

The Conference of the Birds is an ancient poem composed by Farid Attar. The poem is known to be the best piece of article written by the poet. The poem is made up of several parables where every parable is characterized by an allegory. This paper seeks to identify and analyze the allegorical players in the parables. One of the allegorical players in the poem is the birds. The poet made use of the birds to represent how humankind achieves enlightenment. The birds arrange for a meeting during which they are to find one of them to the sovereign leader (Campos, 2017). One of the wisest birds Hoopoe advice the birds to find Simorgh. Simorgh was a legendary bird. Every bird represented the moral symbolism of human behaviour. More so, every bird had its corresponding. The use of the birds is some kind of a parable where the moral experiences of the birds during their journey to find Simorgh represent the experiences of the humankind in their journey to find divinity. The parable starts with a meeting purposed to help the birds find their leader because they had no leader at the time. There are also other allegorical players in the poem. They include the secret of the birds, the use of flowers, nature, animals and insects. The poem has other parables that make use of Cats, Mice and the spider to pass the intended message to the audience. The paper will analyze what the individual allegorical players represent and also discuss their significance and contribution to the poem. The parable uses the birds to be symbolic of the humankind. More so, the birds have to go over a long journey in efforts to find their leader. The journey by the birds is symbolic of all the encounters that the human king have to go through fin their efforts to find salvation and God (Campos, 2017). When the birds get to the home the alleged leader, they find that it is a lake full of water. When the birds looked in the lake water, they were faced by their reflection. The reflection of each bird was symbolic of a human sin. For instance, the parrot was a representation of how human beings sought for immortality rather than seeking to know and understand their God. On the other hand, the peacock was symbolic of all human activities that lean towards devil-worshipping. The poem has also made use of nature as an allegorical player. Nature is used allegorically in the form of valleys. According to the poem, the birds have to cross seven valleys to rich to their proposed leader (Campos, 2017). Every valley represents an independent aspect of a person in relation to their God. The seven valleys come in the form of a parable because they represent the seven senses that every human being should poses.

According to the teachings of the Sufis, every human being should have seven senses. The seven senses are necessary for the humankind to understand the real nature of God (Campos, 2017). The first valley corresponds to the first sense of the Quest. This sense enlightens an individual about dogma, belief and also disbelief. The second valley corresponds to love. In this context, love is a necessary sense for humankind to understand the nature of God. The sense of love keeps a person away from the reason of love while keeping them much closer to the feeling of love. Along the journey of the birds, the third valley was symbolic of knowledge (Campos, 2017). According to the context of the poem, the mundane knowledge has no relevance in a person’s life. They forth valley is defined as detachment of a person from all material world. Most people are aware of this sense, but yet they fail to heed to it. The fifth valley is a sense of unity. During their journey, the birds learned that everything in the universe is connected absolutely to each other in one way or the other. The valley of wonderment was the sixth sense along the journey of the birds. The sense of wonderment lets the pilgrims realize that they have never understood anything in nature and the universe. According to the seventh and the last valley of poverty and annihilation, the being of humanity seizes to exist and merges with the universe form one entity. The new entity is usually timeless because it exists in both the future and the past too. The understanding of the definitions of the seven valleys by the travellers or the pilgrims made them be filled with fear and affliction. During the journey, some parts of the birds die on their way (Campos, 2017). This is what happens for the human beings. Just like the birds, some die due to diseases, hunger, thirst and some fall prey to other animals. IN that case, only a small number of the birds reached their destination, as it happens with humankind. The little birds that managed to reach to their destination come to learn that the Beloved is similar to the sun because it can reflect by a mirror. A simplification of this understanding is that all human beings reflect God since all human beings are a reverberation and shadow of God. There is nothing that can be alienated from its Creator.

According to the discussion above, the parable of the birds and the journey describes the exact path followed by human beings in their search for understanding of the true nature of God (Campos, 2017). According to the parable, the path is neither short nor smooth. There are so many factors that keep the soul’s journey from completing the path to God. The parable describes such blockages as the failure of human beings to practice love. Love for one another is a core value that is required for a person to get closer to God. Remember the poem concludes that human beings are a reflection of God. In that case, the failure to love one another means that it is a failure to love God. However, most of the human beings fail to practice love as a result; it blocks them from getting closer to God. The other core fact that continues to let human beings to get close to God is their attraction to the material world. They focus on the accumulation of the material world at the expense of growing their divinity. All these challenges and hindrances appear in the form of the valleys. However, the valleys in the journey of the birds do not account for hindrances in the journey. Other challenges include predation by other animals and other natural causes of death such as hunger, thirst and diseases. Once they, the compromise the number of people who get to reach to God.

Hoopoe pays a very significant role in the poem of The Conference of the birds. Hoopoe is also the first bird to be introduced in the poem. Because Hoopoe is considered as the wisest of all birds in the conference, it is entrusted to advise and lead the birds in their journey to search for their leader (Campos, 2017). With reference to Hoopoes advice to the birds, the parable concludes with a very concrete answer. After the birds start their journey, they encounter a lot of challenges and other hindrances. According to the advice by Hoopoe to find Simorgh, the journey was tough such that only thirty birds reached their destination. In other words, Simorgh refers to thirty birds. Therefore, the birds realized that there was no Simorgh. In simple words, the thirty birds were the Simorgh. They confirmed this through their reflection from the lake water. The reflection helped them to realize that there could be no way to separate any part of God’s creation from him (Campos, 2017). This answer is very crucial in helping the soul’s journey on its path to seek an understanding of the true nature of God. The soul was able to lean that no one can be separated from God and that everything in the universe is the pouring of God’s presence. Hoopoe’s advice required that the birds had to select a leader. This is what happens when the Sufis have to select a Sheikh who is entrusted to lead the rest of the humankind. However, on reaching the destination, the birds realized that they were the leaders. This is to mean spiritual life is the responsibility of everyone, not just the clergy.

 

Work Cited

Campos, Fabio, Paulo Blikstein, and Ali Azhar. “The Conference of the Birds: A Collaborative Storytelling Environment for Literacy Development.” Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Interaction Design and Children. 2017.