Daniel Ladinsky

In June 2020, Professor Omid Safi commented, "Part of what is going on here is what we also see, to a lesser extent, with Rumi: the voice and genius of the Persian speaking, Muslim, mystical, sensual sage of Shiraz are usurped and erased, and taken over by a white American with no connection to Hafez's Islam or Persian tradition. This is erasure and spiritual colonialism [...] not simply a matter of a translation dispute, nor of alternate models of translations."

In 2017 Ladinsky published Darling, I Love You: Poems from the Hearts of Our Glorious Mutts, featuring his original haiku, illustrated by Patrick McDonnell, creator of the internationally syndicated MUTTS comic strip.

In April 2009, the Premier of Ontario, Dalton McGuinty, recited from Ladinsky's book at a Nowruz celebration in Toronto, but was later informed there was no corresponding Persian original for the poems.

In 2002, he published an anthology of mystical poetry from Eastern and Western mysticism, titled, Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West.

He has written four works which he claims are based on poetry of 14th-century Persian Sufi poet Hafiz: I Heard God Laughing (1996), The Subject Tonight Is Love (1996) The Gift (1999), and A Year With Hafiz: Daily Contemplations, (2011) as well as an anthology, Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West (2002), and The Purity of Desire: 100 Poems of Rumi (2012). In introductions to his books, Ladinsky notes that he offers interpretations and renderings of the poets, rather than literal or scholarly translations. His work is based on conveying and being "faithful to the living spirit" of Hafiz, Rumi, and other mystic poets. But Hafez scholars have argued that his writings have no connection to the great Persian poets.

In early 1990s, under the guidance of Jessawala, Ladinsky started working on English renderings of poems of Hafiz, a 14th-century Persian mystic poet. Since he did not know the Persian language, he based his "renderings" on an 1891 English translation of The Divan of Hafez by Henry Wilberforce-Clarke. Eventually, he published I Heard God Laughing in 1996. Thereafter he published more works on Hafiz, The Subject Tonight Is Love (1996) and The Gift (1999). Since the release of his first publication I Heard God Laughing, Ladinsky's books have been translated into German, Hebrew, Turkish, Indonesian, and Slovene languages and maintain international best-selling status in the religious and inspirational poetry genre. The BBC invited Ladinsky to write on Hafiz. His work is widely quoted on social media, including by Rupi Kaur, Oprah, Paulo Coehlo, and many; it is reprinted in the books of internationally known authors, including Ram Dass, Eckhart Tolle, Greg Mortenson, Matthew Fox, Elif Shafak, Stephen R. Covey, Jack Kornfield, Tom Shadyac and Elizabeth Gilbert. Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim and Sufi leaders and organizations, as well as non-affiliated spiritual and service groups, license Ladinsky's work for use and reprint.

He worked for a few years at a carpentry job, and thereafter joined his father's investment company. Unable to find fulfillment, he visited the Meher Baba Center in South Carolina again. Then, in 1978, Davy advised him to visit the Meher Baba ashram, at Meherabad, near Ahmednagar, India. There he met Meher Baba's sister Mani Irani, and his close disciple, Eruch Jessawala. Though Ladinsky's first visit lasted only two weeks, it started a process which continued with regular visits for the next two decades.He even lived in a nearby spiritual community at Meherazad for six years, working at the local free clinic

Daniel Ladinsky (born 1948) is an American poet and interpreter of mystical poetry, born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. Over a twenty-year period, beginning in 1978, he spent extensive time in a spiritual community at Meherabad, in western India, where he worked in a rural clinic free to the poor, and lived with the intimate disciples and family of Meher Baba.