Recently I rediscovered on my hard drive an old talk I gave in September 2009 about what I then called “the living tradition.” While rereading it, I recognized my words, yet I heard them differently. What was once searching has since become lived.
I have not rewritten this text to correct it, but to let it resonate with how life has unfolded — with letting go, quiet dissolutions, and new forms of closeness. What follows is not an archive, but a conversation between then and now.
I was reminded of a poem by Rutger Kopland:
How shall I explain
why what we search for
is not what we find?
Let time go
wherever it wants to go
and then see
how meadows find their cattle
how forests find their wild beasts
how the sky finds its birds
how wide vistas find our eyes
and how simplicity finds its mystery.
Perhaps this already says enough. What truly lives does not allow itself to be fixed. It finds us, more than we find it.
The word tradition comes from traditio: to hand over, to pass on. Usually we think of forms, rituals, and customs. But more deeply, it is not about repetition. It is about what keeps entering the present.
Tradition is not storage.
It is movement.
What keeps it alive is not age, but relation. When no one listens, it fades. When it closes in on itself, it dries out. When it opens to encounter, it keeps breathing.
I grew up in a culture where local traditions were still visible. At the same time, I now see how religious forms have lost much of their capacity to gather people. Sometimes I even see the opposite: strong identification with distant spiritual networks, while attention to the immediate surroundings grows thin.
This raises questions for me. Not about sincerity, but about embodiment. About where meaning actually takes place: in proximity, in shared responsibility, in real presence.
At that time, I more easily used words such as Islam, Sufism, or Mevlevi tradition when pointing to an inner movement of surrender and deepening. Over time I have become more reserved with such language. Not because the movement has disappeared, but because these words quickly create fixed images. They narrow the field, while what concerns me precedes all naming: opening, releasing, becoming available.
When it comes to this inner movement, names help little. What truly lives cannot be owned — not even by language.
For me, tradition becomes alive when it widens rather than contracts. When it becomes ground instead of property. When it does not need defense, but is carried by love.
In the Masnavi, Rumi tells the story of the Bedouin and his wife. On the surface it speaks of poverty and longing, of complaint and trust. More deeply it points to an inner shift: from the blaming self (nafs al-lawwama) to the inspired self (nafs al-mulhama).
A movement
from comparison to receiving,
from lack to participation,
from victimhood to responsibility.
No longer living from what is missing, but learning to stand in what is given. No longer pointing outward, but allowing the inner landscape to change.
For me this touches the heart of living transmission. Not repeating forms, but allowing repositioning. Not preserving the past, but listening to what appears now.
Perhaps this is why I hear my old words differently. What was once mostly thought has slowly become experience. What once searched for form now leans toward simplicity.
Rumi writes that we live in a universe created for the ripening of love. No one owns wisdom. It appears where space is made. What we can do is remain open. Not hide emptiness, but acknowledge it. Not confuse control with depth.
Looking back, I see that my own path has gradually shifted from representation to presence. Less speaking on behalf of, more listening with. Less structure, more attention.
This is also what occupies me now: in working with the Masnavi, in music, in meeting others. Not transmitting systems, but keeping space open. Not institution, but circle. Not claim, but invitation.
Perhaps this is what I now call living tradition:
not what we preserve,
but what continues to move us.