CONFERENCE OF THE BIRDS

The Conference of the Birds is one of the great works of world literature. In it Farid ud-Din Attar explores the nature of the spiritual path through an allegory of the brave birds that go in search of their king through the peaks of exultation and the valleys of despair that represent the stages of the seeker as he travels towards enlightenment. Attar was the predecessor of the great Persian Sufi poet Jalalludin Rumi, who borrowed Attar's technique of weaving wisdom within entertaining and amusing tales.
"Attar, along with Chaucer and Dante, is a great genius of community and how that involves the path toward enlightenment. We are these bird-beings searching for the source of what we are together." - Coleman Barks, author of The Essential Rumi