Principles of Khayyam

Omar Khayyam was born in 1048 in Neyshabur city, northeast Iran. He was a Persian polymath, philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, musician and poet of the medieval period. He compiled astronomical tables and contributed to calendar reform, and wrote the most important treatises on algebra before modern times. Khayyam is famous as “Hakim”. This term, in Persian, means a person who rules or commands in a wise manner, a physician, wise man, ruler, judge, governor, or administrator. Hakim is a physician treating diseases through deep understanding of the mental and life status of the sick individual. Khayyam died in 1131 and buried in the mausoleum garden which is a masterpiece of Iranian architecture. For the full story of Khayyam’s life and works in the Encyclopaedia Iranica, click here, and in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, click here. There are many translations of the Rubáiyát in various languages. To access to the first classical and illustrated version of the Omar Khayyam’s Rubáiyát translated in English by Edward FitzGerald (1859), click here, or to buy the book, click here, and to buy the later revisions, click here. Some samples of the Rubáiyát translated by Karim Emami (2003) in modern language/era can be accessed here from the book “The Wine of Nishapur”. In this section, principles of philosophical health issues will be discussed in relation to the quatrains (Rubáiyát) compiled by Khayyam.

the following posts will be updated regularly ……………..

• Poetry Therapy in Khayyam’s Quatrains: speaking freely and simply showing emotions is one of the important axes of poetry therapy. Khayyam’s creative and critical thinking and his different view of phenomena are among the main goals of poetry therapy. Khayyam is deconstructive and non-normative and behaves freely and truthfully in expressing his doubts and emotions. Khayyam had the idea of human peace and happiness in mind. He is trying to change the attitude of his audience to the common issues of his time and correct many cognitive distortions. Khayyam invites people to get rid of unnecessary fears and anxieties that are caused by the unfavorable conditions of the times. In this way, he causes cognitive reconstruction in the psyche and life of people, which is an important principle
in the field of cognitive-behavioral therapy.

• The Hidden Truths in Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat: this book, presenting Paramahansa Yogananda’s complete commentaries on the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, brings together the poetic and spiritual insights of three men of great renown, whose lives spanned a period of more than nine hundred years.

• The Benefits of Reading the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam as Pastoral: the aim of this essay is to diagnose the Rubáiyát as literary pastoral. It starts from the premise that FitzGerald’s tavern is an ideal arena for spirited musing, for venting complex human issues over one of the simplest human…

• Transcendent Future Theory and Khayyam’s Thinking about Death: What are the transcendent future and thinking about death in Khayyam’s point of view? How do these two views consider overcoming the stress of death? How do these two views consider immortality, heaven and hell?
What is the effect of thinking about death on seizing the day?

• Omar Khayyám and Living Mindfully: living mindfully means that we accept the fact that everything is in the process of becoming a dissolution … yes, everything is in a state of flux. That is what makes this present moment so very special. So let us engage with it … with a whole-body-and-mind awareness. When we do that, and interfere with nothing, strangely our minds become free from all limitations, fetters and bonds. So, in the words of Omar Khayyám, “Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.”

• Omar Khayyam’s Transgressive Ethics: Khayyam is the beautiful symbol of Persian spirits, philosophizing the mysteries of the universe in poetry. He has been perhaps the most translated medieval poet in the world.

• Omar Khayyam’s Transgressive Ethics and Their Socio-Political Implications in Contemporary Iran: Khayyam has been a symbol of Persian spirits, philosophizing the mysteries of the universe in poetry while drinking wine and loving his friends.

• How Classical Persian Poetry Can Lift Us Through Life’s Difficulties: a friend’s grandfather passed away last month. When I told her I’d be writing this blog post, she mentioned that her grandmother found Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat on her Alexa, and how listening to it helped her to cope with her loss. I see the words of Persian poetry as a precious gift, from humans who lived long before us – their words will continue to lift future generations through life’s difficulties, too. It is their simplicity that breaks down barriers.

• How ‘The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám’ Inspired Victorian Hedonists: the kind of hedonism popularised by the Rubáiyát can help to put us back in touch with the virtues of direct experience in our age of mediation, where so much of daily life is filtered through the two-dimensional electronic flickers on a smartphone or tablet. We are becoming observers of life rather than participants, immersed in a society of the digital spectacle. We could learn a thing or two from the Victorians: let us keep a copy of the Rubáiyát in our pockets, alongside the iPhone, and remember the words of wise Khayyám: ‘While you live Drink! – for, once dead, you never shall return.’

• From Khayyam to Hafez and the Healing of a Broken Heart: to live in the present, is to essentially be happy. When someone like me, has grown so devoted to a sacred shrine like my past, I want to belong to a new sacred shrine – Love. It is undeniable that from the beginning itself, the answer has always been Love. It is up to me, to embrace and discover the Lover, the Loved and the Beloved within me. My gratitude goes to Iran, as she gave me the opportunity to know how I will heal this broken heart. From Khayyam, Rumi to Hafez, to these moments of camaraderie symbolize that the cultivation of self-love is the Love that is connected to the divine Beloved, the Merciful and Compassionate. As for all that humanity has been able to attain, I, in my lifetime, will never be certain of who speaks to my broken Heart.

• Death Deemed Undead, The Fragility of Life and the Theme of Mortality and Melancholia In Omar Khayyam’s ‘Rubaiyat’: each rubai is complete in itself and has no connection with what goes before or follows after. The leading ideas are pleasure, death and fate and the predominant state of mind are the sensuous, the gruesome and rebellious. The term “Vairagya” refers to a deeply ruminative cynicism arising out of wisdom, knowledge and awareness about the ways of the world especially its perplexing transience and man’s search for meaning in the grand scheme of things. No other topic engenders as much vairagic thinking as does the imponderability of life’s purpose, its relevance and meaning.

• Cognitive Poetics as a Literary Theory for Analyzing Khayyam’s Poetry, and The Functions of Conceptual Mappings in the Interpretation of Omar Khayyam’s Poetry: how system mapping of Khayyam’s poetry could illustrate the unique aspects of his thought as well as showing the reason for his preferred patterns.

• Background and Importance of Omar Khayyam’s Poems: Khayyam’s poems are enigmatic in nature, filled with rich symbolism and deep philosophical insights. They explore a wide range of existential themes, including the meaning of life, the transient nature of time, and the mysteries of love and mortality.

• Analysis of Symbolic Figures of Speech, Rhythm, and Theme in the Umar Khayyam Rubayyat Poem: theme used in Umar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat poem as a whole contained love for the Divine, with final rhyme patterns a-a-a-a, a-a-b-b, and a-a-b-a. There are also several symbols such as wines, roses, and nightingales to deepen the meaning of the poem conveyed.

• A Sufi Mystic of Love: Khayyam meditation is love and love–a thousand times love. He proclaims: “How sad, a heart that does not know how to love, that does not know what it is to be drunk with love. If you are not in love, how can you enjoy the blinding light of the sun, the soft light of the moon?”

• Common Themes in Khayyam Neyshaburi’s Quatrains and Christian Bobin’s Books: there are many similarities between Bobin’s look and that of Khayyam philosophy about life where both insist on being happy and profiting of present. Both believe on the death and the life after that, however, they aren’t able to comprehend the secrets of the life and that of the death.

• Archetype of Death and Re-birth in Khayyam and Al-Bayati’s Poetry: this paper studies the comparative literature based on the American Literary School and the Archetype of Death and Re-birth. It also uses analytical descriptive and inductive methods to test the theoretical capacities of Jung’s Collective Unconscious and the Archetypes to study the Iranian and Arabian literature comparing between Khayyam and Bayati’s poetry.

• Presentation of Khayyamian Thing in Materialistic Re-Configurations: reflecting on existence as a linguistic practice has always been one of the sublime features of literature. This issue has had a significant appearance in Khayyam philosophy questioning existence. In this study it was tried to achieve new ontological perceptions of Khayyamian Thing with a materialistic approach and from a poststructuralist perspective.

• A Critical Approach to Khayyam’s Supplementary Quatrains Based on the Harold Bloom’s Theory of the Anxiety of Influence: the aim of this study is to understand why mystical thoughts have confiscated Khayyam’s quatrains for its own purposes. The critical reading of texts based on the Harold Bloom’s theory might be useful to explore the details of this conflict. This theory focuses on the influences of Khayyam on the later poets and their reactions to him. Creative misreading and changing the horizon of expectation are two important issues of anxiety of influence.

• The Influence of Khayyam Philosophy on the Creation of the Character of the Greek Zorba: one of the writers who were influenced by the thought of Khayyam is Greek Nikos Kazantzakis. After adjusting the Greek Zorba and Khayyam ethics and thinking based on the American comparative critique, it was concluded that their, both, most important intellectual and personality traits are: thinking about death, worth knowing the moment, tent about leniency and happiness, praising dance, wine, and lover, fighting religious hypocrites, wonder and skepticism, and interference in the affairs of the creator, and materialism.

• Khayyam’s Philosophy and Quatrains (Rubáiyát): at this link, there are hundreds of peer-reviewed papers published in Persian in the Iranian literature and journals (English abstracts are available).

• The Great Umar Khayyam: this book contains a selection of the essays presented at the conference hosted by the Leiden University, the Netherlands, by prominent scholars specializing in Khayyam from around the globe.

• Online Rubaiyat Khayyam: contemporary literal English translation of Rubaiyat in quatrain form.