Through a green lens: What Sufi wisdom teaches us about loving Nature

It was a Friday morning, just after sunrise, when the light was still soft and yellow. I woke up, reaching for my daily ritual – a mug of green tea with cinnamon, a king suggestion from a wise friend. As I took slow sips, spiced notes traversing my body by the natural laws of gravity, the greenness of the tea gathered everything green in my peripheral vision, converging as a lens for me to sense something deeper: a whisper of Sufi love for nature, carried through symbols and unseen meanings.

It was not too long for the whisper to be gone – lost to traffic, to the sharp tapering construction sounds. The world returned. Loud, insistent… a little overwhelming. Almost absentmindedly, I picked up my phone as if to look for something that I was supposed to be looking for, and soon a short film with an interesting title “The Unwinding” caught my attention.

I started watching with curiosity… a story of an old man, David, and his personal journey through loneliness. Towards the end, he recounts (paraphrases) something that Buckminster Fuller, the American philosopher, inventor, and visionary thinker wrote in his book Critical Path about his conversation with a little girl. Fuller and the girl were looking at logs burning in a fireplace, when the child asked him, “Bucky, what is fire?” Fuller thought for a moment, and then replied, “Honey, the light and heat from the sun is what grew the tree… and when the tree grew old and died, the fire is the sun unwinding itself from the log.” David connects this to his own unwinding since his wife passed away.

The story and the Fuller reference stayed with me, making me feel as if we are all in a process of unwinding – letting go of something luminous held within us from the very beginning. From the moment we arrive, we are already returning. Or perhaps it is the sun within the heart, working in silence, turning coal into something like a diamond. Maybe!

I got my hands on Fuller’s Critical Path and found my way to the pages from which the quote from the film is paraphrased. Fuller’s elaboration of what fire is not merely scientifically sound; it beautifully captures the complex interconnectedness of things over time and space, ending with: “So the fire is the many-years-of-Sun-flame-winding now unwinding from the tree. When the log fire pop-sparks, it is letting go a very sunny day long ago, and doing so in a hurry”.[1]

While I would need to take my time for navigating Critical Path, which seems to deliberate on the political, economic, environmental, and ethical crises of humanity, my own reflections on the sun and on unwinding brought back a verse from Tarjí‘-band of the 18^th-century Persian Sufi mystic Hatif Isfahani:

دلِ هر ذرّه‌ای که بشکافیآفتابیش در میان بینی

“Split the heart of every atom,

and you will find a sun within it.”[2]

Professor Dr. M. Shamsher Ali, a prominent nuclear scientist, often recited this verse, and every time he would exclaim with joy, “What strange words!”. He would explain: if you examine the tiniest particle of matter, the atom, you find a nucleus at its center, with electrons revolving around it like planets around the sun. The verse opens another way of seeing.  Isfahani points to a hidden luminosity within all things, a quite suggestion that every fragment of creation holds the Divine within. In exploring reality, the Sufis turn inward, while scientists observe the outer world. And yet, they seem to arrive at the same place, each uncovering the reality in their own way.

And then there is Sa’di Shirazi, the beloved Persian poet of the Subcontinent, whom we affectionately call Sheikh Sa’di, and who captures the above with elegance:

بَرگِ دَرَختانِ سَبز در نَظَرِ هوشیارهَر وَرَقَش دفتری‌ست مَعرِفَتِ کِردگار

“In the eyes of the awakened, every green leafIs

a page from the book of divine knowledge.”[3]

The meaning of this verse is profound: if an insightful person sets their gaze upon a leaf, they will perceive the hidden treasures of the Creator—the knowledge, or ma‘rifah, encoded in nature itself. Interestingly, when Sa’di wrote these lines, photosynthesis was unknown, and the role of chlorophyll—the green heart of the leaf—remains an ongoing scientific study. It is astonishing that Sa’di could capture such profound ecological and physiological truths in poetry centuries before science ‘discovered’ them. This reminds us – nature has always been a living book, waiting for those with eyes to read it.

A question may arise—how do the Sufis open the gate to such astonishing mysteries? The answer lies in treading the Sufi path, the path of love (Madhab-i ‘Ishq), teaches that love for the Divine naturally extends to all creation. Poetry became the most popular medium to express mystical experiences, and Sufi poets employ symbols from nature—sun, bird, leaf, tree, ocean, to bridge the concrete and the Divine. As Al-Qushayri noted, symbols allow Sufis to convey spiritual experiences beyond ordinary language and perception, revealing hidden truths too profound to express directly.[4]

While reflecting on these symbols, I was drawn away by a gentle chirping – it was my little friend, the playful tailorbird (tuntuni). Watching her sip nectar from the sun-kissed red flowers on my balcony, I was transported to the assembly of birds in The Conference of the Birds by Farid al Din Attar. It felt as if I were present in that gathering, listening as the Hoopoe presented herself as a messenger from the unseen, bearing knowledge of God and the secrets of creation. As the birds’ journey through the seven valleys seeking for their king, the Simurgh, the startling truth revealed at the end of the journey, beautifully captured by Attar:

گر سیمرغ بر تو رخ بنمایدتو خود را در او، او را در خود یابی

Gar Sīmurgh bar to rukh benamāyad,T

o khod rā dar ū, ū rā dar khod yābī.

“If the Simurgh unveils its face to you,

You will find yourself in it—and it in yourself.” [5]

At last, the thirty birds see themselves in the mirror—the king they sought was never apart from them. The journey outward dissolves into a journey within.

The journey continues in the work of Mir Alisher Nava’i, often regarded as the father of Uzbek literature. His Lisan al-Tayr may remind us of The Conference of the Birds, yet it is not simply an imitation. Alisher Nava’i retells the story in his own voice, reshaping the journey of the soul through bird symbolism in a way that feels grounded in his own land and culture. To Nava’i, the Divine is not only found at the end of the journey, it is always present, though often overlooked.

Following the flight of the birds further east, we arrive in the Indian Subcontinent, where Fariduddin Ganjshakar from Punjab draws on them to express spiritual insight. He writes:

“Upon a brackish pond, swans come and rest,

They dip their beaks but do not drink—for they long to fly away.”[6]

In another verse, he contrasts a heron, a deceptive man in holy garb, with a swan, a figure of sincerity and authenticity:

“I knew him as a great swan, so I associated with him.

Had I known he was only a wretched crane,

I would never have crossed paths with him.”[7]

Here, the swan represents authenticity, a kind of inward freedom, and a longing that refuses to settle for anything other than the Divine.

From Punjab, the flight of the birds carries us further to the Malay world, where Hamzah Fansuri, one of the earliest Malay Sufi poets, continues this poetic language of nature in his own way. In his writings, ‘the bird’ is not just a symbol but itself a reflection of human life. He portrays himself as a wandering bird, always on the move, yet still connected to a deeper, sacred origin. As he writes:

“Hamzah the stranger is a sacred bird,

His house is the ‘Frequented House’

(Bayt al-Ma’muri);

In this pre-existent state,

he was intended for camphor,

From the trees of the region of Fansur.” and

“He continuously changes his abode,

Roaming around all the time.”[8]

Through images of flight, trees, and fragrance, Hamzah Fansuri transforms everyday elements of nature into symbols that speak about the soul’s journey. All through his writings, the search for the Divine feels close, not distant or abstract; it appears in our everyday lives, within things that we see, feel and hold quietly within ourselves.[9]

How does ‘looking through the green lens of Sufism’ allow us to reflect on the present ecological crisis, now considered humanity’s greatest challenge, where the relationship between human beings and nature has reached a critical point? Environmental ethics and practice are embedded in Islam, and Ecological/Green Sufism[10] further guides us in manifesting spiritual discipline in how we live on the earth: less waste, less domination, more humility, care for water, animals, land, food, and community. Recent movements, especially in Indonesia, Sufi-inspired schools and communities are doing important work in connecting spiritual training with conservation, farming, renewable energy and ecological education.[11] 

This is crucial, as our ecological crisis is rooted in the deeper spiritual crisis of modern humanity. Sufism lets us view these crises through a green lens. Sufi mystic poetry guides us in seeing nature as a ‘sacred manuscript’, an integral part of Divine existence, not just a resource. As Sa’di Shirazi reminds us, the mystery lies within a green leaf… let us pause and ponder there. To the question ‘why do we feel so distant from nature?’, Sufi poetry offers a gentle answer in which love and nature are woven together by an invisible thread of symbols and imagery. The chest in which pearls of wisdom are gathered from the ocean of love must be opened and read with an open heart; only then will the symbols of nature begin to speak anew. And within, the hidden sun of the heart will shine, illuminating humans as the Vicegerents of God, finally capable of fulfilling the trust entrusted to them.

Ah… my old friend Tuntuni has returned. With her sweet voice, she calls for my attention. Let me pause, and deeply listen to the whispers of the unseen.

Bio: Formerly a practicing lawyer, Supreme Court of Bangladesh, Saiyeeda followed her spiritual anchor in Sufism along a path leading her to pursue a PhD at Universiti Malaya. Her daily life and academic journey are deeply intertwined with her practice of poetry and visual arts, including sketching, painting, and calligraphy. In this piece, she explores yet another vital connection: her deep-seated connection to the natural world and the divine presence within all creations.

[1] Fuller (1981, pp. 62–63).

[2] This line, attributed to Hatif Isfahani, is cited by  Bahá'u'lláh in his mystical work The Seven Valleys (1857), specifically in the section known as the Valley of Knowledge. The entire poem can be found here: ganjoor.net/hatef/divan-hatef/tarjeeband.

[3] Sa’di (1974).

[4] al-Qushayri (2007).

[5] Attar (1984).

[6] Singh (2003).

[7] Ibid.

[8] Fansuri (1986); Parman & Marni (2021).

[9] Zekrgoo & Tajer (2023).

[10] See for example: Rahmi & Taufik (2024); Wirajaya et al. (2021).

[11] See for example: Amri (2025); Irawan (2022, 2025); Lobo (2025); Fikri et al. (2024).