SUFI SAINTS / WALIS LIST
Abdullah Shah Ghazi
Abdul Waahid Bin Zaid
Abdul Khaliq Gajadwani.
Abdul-Qadir Gilani (10771166)[3][4]
Abdul Razzaq Jilani
Abu Ishaq Shami
Ab-Sa'd Abul-Khayr
Abu al-Abbas al-Mursi
Abul Hasan Hankari
Adam Khaki
Afaq Khoja
Ahamed Mohiyudheen Noorishah Jeelani
Ahmad Raza Khan
Ahmad Yasawi
Ahmad Ghazali
Ahmad al-Tijani (17371815)
Ahmadou Bamba
Ahmed Yasav
Ak Shms d-Dn
Akhundzada Saif-ur-Rahman Mubarak
Al-Busiri
Habib al-Ajami
Al-Aydarus
Al-Badawi
Al-Ghazl
Al-Hallaj
Ali Hujwiri (990-1077)[5]
Ali Mahimi (13721431)[6]
Al-Hashmi (12601349)
Ali Shah Pir Baba (1431-1502)[7]
Ali-Shir Nava'i
Al-Khrqn
Al-Qsim
Al-Qayar
Al-Qunaw
Al-Qushayri
Al-Tirmidh
Alauddin Sabir Kaliyari (11961291)[8]
Amr Khusrow (12531325)[9]
Amr Kulal
Ansar
Ardabil
Ajan Fakir
Abd al-Karm al-Jl
Auliya (12381325)[10]
Azan Pir (17th century)[11]
Bb Eliys
Bb Fakr d-Dn (11691295)[12]
Baba Kuhi of Shiraz (948 - 1037 CE)
Baba Shadi Shaheed (17th century)
Badr d-Dn
Bh d-Dn Naqshband
Balm Sultan
Baha-ud-din Zakariya (11701267)[13]
Bande Nawz (13211422)[14]
Bkuv
Bq Billh (15641605)[15]
Bawa Muhaiyaddeen
Bayazid-i Bastam
Ben Issa
Bhita' (16891752)
Bibi Jamal Khatun (d. 1639)[16]
Bodla Bahar
Bu Ali Shah Qalandar (12091324)[17]
Bursev
Bulleh Shah (16801757)
Chirag-e-Delhi (12741356)[18]
Dara Shikoh (16151659)[19]
Daud Bandagi Kirmani (15131575)[20]
Dawud al-Tai
Dehlaw
Ghulam Ali Dihlawi
Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (17031762)
El-Desouk
Erzurum
Farid al-Din Attar
Fard d-Dn Ganjshakar (11881280)[21]
Fuzl
Gharb Nawz (11411230)[22]
Ghulam Fard
Ghousi Shah
Gl Baba
Hfez-e Shrz
Haji Huud (10251141)[23]
Hajji Bayram
Hajji Bektash
Haddad
Hamedn
Hasan al-Basri
Hazrat Babajan
Ab Yqub Yusf
Mir Sayyid Ali Hamadani (13141384)[24]
Hansv
Harabat Baba
Harooni
Hujwir
Iraq (12131289)[25]
Ibrahim Niass
Ibn Adham
Ibn Arab
Ibn Ata Allah al Iskandari ash Shadhili
Imam Al Fassi
Ismail Hakki Bursevi
Jabir ibn Hayyan
Ja'far al-Sadiq
Jahanara Begum Sahib (16141681)[19]
Jahaniyan Jahangasht (13081384)
Jam
Jan-e-Jnn (16991781)
Jaunpur
Jazoul
Jilani Dehlvi (1024-1088)
Jil
Junayd Badd
Khlid-i Baghdd
Kk
Kaliyar
Karkh
Khan Jahan Ali (d. 1459)
Lal Shahbaz Qalander (11771274)[26]
Machiliwale Shah
Magtymguly Pyragy
Maharv (17301791)
Mahmoodullah Shah
Mahmud Hday
Mir Ahmed Ibrahim Ash Shadhili
Mir Amjad Ibrahim Ash Shadhili
Meher Ali Shah
Mian Mir (15501635)[27]
Mir Sayyid Ali Hamadani
Mir Shams-ud-din
Muhammad Suleman Taunsvi
Mohammad Tartusi
Moinuddin Chishti
Mubarak Makhzoomi (1013-1119)[28]
Muhammad Al-Makki
Muhammad ibn Tayfour Sajawandi
Muhammad Ilyas Attar Qadri
Muqaddam
Mustafa Gaibi
Nadir Ali Shah
Nim
Njm d-Dn Kubr
Nazim Al-Haqqani
Nasm
Nasir Khusraw
Nasreddin
Nathar Vali
Shah Niamatullah
Ni'matullh Wali
Nizamuddin Auliya
Omar Khayym
Osman Fazli
Otman Baba
Pir Baba
Pir Sultan
Pir Yemeni
Qahistan
Syed Ahmad Ullah (1826-1906)
Qutb d-Dn Haydr
Qutb d-Dn Shrz
Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki (11731235)[29]
Rabbn (ca. 1564-1624)[30]
Rabia Basri
Rahman Baba
Rz
Fakhr ad-Dn
Najm al-Dn
Rifa'
Rukn-e-Alam (12511335)[31]
Rumi
Saad
Sabakh
Sachal Sarmast (1739-1827)
Shah Maroof Khushabi
Shah Sulaimn Nri (1508-1604)
Muhammad Qadiri (1552-1654)
Sahl al-Tustari
Salim Chishti (14781572)[32]
Salman al-Faris
Sanai
Hazrat Sakhi Sarwar Syed Ahmad Sultan (12th-century)
Sar Saltuk
Sarmad Kashani (d. 1661)[33]
Saint Nur
Semnan (13081405)[34]
Shadhil
Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai (1689-1752)
Shah Badakhshi (15841661)[35]
Sayed Badiuddin
Shah Gardez (10261152)[36]
Shah Hussain (15381599)[37]
Shah Jalal (12711347)[38]
Shah Mustafa
Shah Paran (14th century)[39]
Shamas Faqir
Shms-i Tabriz
Sheikh Edebali
Syed Abdus Salam Ibrahim ash Shadhili
Sheikh Glib
Shibl
Soch Kraal
Sufi Barkat Ali
Suhraward
Ab Hfs Umar
Ab'n-Najb Abdl-Qdir
Suhraward
Shahb al-Dn al-Maqtul
Sharfuddin Shah Wilayat (1255-1346)
Shaykh Syed Mir Mirak Andrabi ( 921A.H - 990 A.H)
Sirri Saqti
Sultan Bahu (16281691)
Sultan Walad
Surkh Bukhar (11921291)[40]
Syed Yaqub
Talcal Yahy
Tajuddin Muhammad Badruddin
Telli Baba
Hazrat Syed Waris Shah
Waris Ali Shah
Yahya Efendi
Yahya Maneri (12631381)[41]
Yemeni Tamimi
Abdul Aziz bin Hars bin Asad Yemeni Tamimi
Abu Al Fazal Abdul Wahid Yemeni Tamimi
Yunus Ali Enayetpuri (R.)
Yunus Emre
Youza Asouph
Zahed Gilan
Zarruq
Z'l-Nn al-Misr
TERMS STARTING WITH
Sufism: A classical development of mysticism and a reaction from the legalism and rigidity of orthodox Islam. Being a sect seeking to attain a nearer fellowship with God by scrupulous observation of the religious law, it represents an infiltration into Islam of the Christian-gnostic type of piety with its charismatic and ascetic features. Gained many of its converts from the heterodox Moslems in Persia. -- H.H.
Sufism: A system of Mohammedan mysticism, arising chiefly in Persia. It offers steps toward union with God, as repentance, abstinence, renunciation, poverty, patience, trust. Love is the keynote to the Sufi ethics.
Sufism ::: process of attaining closeness to the Creator through love, which is attained by purification of the nafs; tasawwuf
TERMS ANYWHERE
(also see Sufism above)
Asma (Allahi) al Husna (A) The holy names (of Allah). Traditionally there are 99 (beautiful) names of Allah in the Koran. These Asma al Husna are being used within Sufism for recitation as a wazifa (mantram).
Sufism: A classical development of mysticism and a reaction from the legalism and rigidity of orthodox Islam. Being a sect seeking to attain a nearer fellowship with God by scrupulous observation of the religious law, it represents an infiltration into Islam of the Christian-gnostic type of piety with its charismatic and ascetic features. Gained many of its converts from the heterodox Moslems in Persia. -- H.H.
Sufism: A system of Mohammedan mysticism, arising chiefly in Persia. It offers steps toward union with God, as repentance, abstinence, renunciation, poverty, patience, trust. Love is the keynote to the Sufi ethics.
Sufism ::: process of attaining closeness to the Creator through love, which is attained by purification of the nafs; tasawwuf
Fana (A) To go beyond. Fana is the proces of transcending the limited self (ego) so that it can merge into the greater Self, the divine presence. Within Sufism three stages: Fana fi Shaikh (the merging into the master or teacher), Fana fi Rasul (the merging into the messenger, prophet) and Fana fi Allah (the merging into God). The first two stages are preparations for the last stage. See page 33
Fana: In Sufism, the “self-attenuation,” or “self-effacement,” the final stage on the way to mystic union with God (tariqat), the cleansing of the mirror of one’s impersonal heart and the unfettering from the attachment to material limitations which prevent the soul from apprehending the splendor of the “Real” which is behind and within all appearances. Four degrees of fana are described by the Sufi mystics: the fana fi seheikh, the complete suppression of one’s personality in obedience to one’s superior; the fana fir Rasul, self-attenuation or effacement of one’s personality in the gratitude for the Prophet, the vehicle of the grace of God; fana Fillah, self-effacement or self-attenuation in God; and fana al fana, the attenuation of the attenuation, the stage beyond consciousness and unconsciousness.
from The Sufi Message, Volume V, Sufism
Gharb i mutlaq: Arabic for the absolute void; in Sufism, the plane of absolute inactual being.
halka ::: lit., circle; a group which gathers to practice or study Sufism, usually a shaykh and murids.
from Social Gatheka 1, Sufism not Passivism, by Hazrat Inayat Khan (unpublished)
from Social Gatheka 7, Sufism, by Hazrat Inayat Khan (unpublished)
from The Sufi Message, Volume XII, My Initiation in Sufism
ijaza ::: permission; license to teach tasawwuf (Sufism)
mysticism ::: Mysticism The belief that one can rise above reason to achieve direct union with God or the Divine through meditation and intuition. In mystical practices, one attempts to merge with God or the Divine through a disciplined quest to achieve enlightenment. Some forms of mysticism include the Kabbalah, Sufism (Islam), Yoga, and Buddhism.
quote :::After receiving instruction in the five different grades of Sufism, the physical, intellectual, mental, moral, and spiritual, I went through a course of training in the four schools:
quote :::Sufism has as its object the uniting of life and religion, which so far seem to have been kept apart... Therefore the teaching of Sufis is to make everyday life into a religion, that every action in life may have some spiritual fruit.
quote :::Sufism, therefore, is the process of making life natural... By this process of Sufism one realizes one's own nature, one's true nature... Sufism means to know one's true being, to know the purpose of one's life and to know how to accomplish that purpose.
quote :::I will say that there is one principle mission of Sufism, that is, to dig the ground under which the light of the soul becomes buried. The same is the teaching of Christ, who has said, that no one shall cover his light under a bushel, also. 'Raise your light on high.'...
Rind (P) Pupil. The free aspect of sufism where the adept tries to live in the here-and-now, without concerning him/herself with regrets over the past and worries about the future. The emphasis on this path is detachment (compare: salik)
Salik (A) Pupil, follower. Aspect of sufism where the adept places emphasis on righteousness and morality
sofism ::: n. --> Same as Sufism.
Some say that sāf may have been the root from which the word Sūfī has arisen. (see Suf and Sufism)
soofeeism ::: --> Same as Sufi, Sufism.
Talib (A) Pupil. Term generally used by Hazrat Inayat Khan to refer to an adept or disciple of Sufism. Comparable to mureed.
tariqa ::: lit., way to; path; order of Sufism founded by a recognized member of a silsila
Tasawwuf (A) Islamic mysticism, Sufism
tasawwuf ::: system of spiritual cleansing known in the West as Sufism
tasawwuf ::: Sufism; the Sufi way of life; mysticism.
Universel Name introduced for a sufi temple by Hazrat Inayat Khan. The name denotes that Sufism holds the idea of the unity of religious ideals and strives for universal brother- and sisterhood of mankind.
With reference to the approach to the central reality of religion, God, and man's relation to it, types of the Philosophy of Religion may be distinguished, leaving out of account negative (atheism), skeptical and cynical (Xenophanes, Socrates, Voltaire), and agnostic views, although insertions by them are not to be separated from the history of religious consciousness. Fundamentalism, mainly a theological and often a Church phenomenon of a revivalist nature, philosophizes on the basis of unquestioning faith, seeking to buttress it by logical argument, usually taking the form of proofs of the existence of God (see God). Here belong all historic religions, Christianity in its two principal forms, Catholicism with its Scholastic philosophy and Protestantism with its greatly diversified philosophies, the numerous religions of Hinduism, such as Brahmanism, Shivaism and Vishnuism, the religion of Judaism, and Mohammedanism. Mysticism, tolerated by Church and philosophy, is less concerned with proof than with description and personal experience, revealing much of the psychological factors involved in belief and speculation. Indian philosophy is saturated with mysticism since its inception, Sufism is the outstanding form of Arab mysticism, while the greatest mystics in the West are Plotinus, Meister Eckhart, Tauler, Ruysbroek, Thomas a Kempis, and Jacob Bohme. Metaphysics incorporates religious concepts as thought necessities. Few philosophers have been able to avoid the concept of God in their ontology, or any reference to the relation of God to man in their ethics. So, e.g., Plato, Spinoza, Leibniz, Schelling, and especially Hegel who made the investigation of the process of the Absolute the essence of the Philosophy of Religion.
KEYS (10k)
5 Hazrat Inayat Khan
3 Inayat Khan
1 Sufism
1 Mawlay al-Arabi ad-Darqawi
1 Khawwas
1 Imam Al Junayd
1 Ibn El-Jalali. Source: Idries Shah
1 Hazrat Khwaja Ibn-El-Jalali
1 Hazrat Junaid Baghdadi
1 Al- Hallaj
1 ?
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
63 Idries Shah
5 Seyyed Hossein Nasr
5 Jalaluddin Rumi
3 Tariq Ramadan
3 Hazrat Inayat Khan
2 Paulo Coelho
2 Naguib Mahfouz
2 Javad Nurbakhsh
2 Jalaluddin Rumi
2 Dan Eaton
2 Charlotte Kasl
1:Sufism is truth without form." ~ Hazrat Khwaja Ibn-El-Jalali, #KEYS
2:But he who knows, and knows that he knows, is a wise man-follow him." ~ Sufism, #KEYS
3:Sufism is truth without form." ~ Ibn El-Jalali. Source: Idries Shah, "The Way of the Sufi,", (reprint 1990)., #KEYS
4:Sufism consists of purity of a person's relationship with God." ~ Hazrat Junaid Baghdadi, @Sufi_Path #KEYS
5:High moral character is the essence of #KEYS
6:At the end of the valley of sin; do not be surprised if you find virtue standing." ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, (1882 - 1927) founder of the Sufi Order in the West in 1914, (London) and teacher of Universal Sufism, Wikipedia., #KEYS
7:All wisdom can be stated in two lines: What is done for you—allow it to be done. What you must do yourself—make sure you do it." ~ Khawwas, (bio. ?), Source "Essential Sufism,", (1997) ed. James Fadiman & Robert Frager., #KEYS
8:The further one goes on the spiritual path the more will one have to learn to play a part." ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, (1882 - 1927) founder of the Sufi Order in the West in 1914, (London) and teacher of Universal Sufism, Wikipedia., #KEYS
9:Love all, trust none; forgive all, forget none, respect all, worship none. That is the manner of the wise." ~ Inayat Khan, (1882 - 1927) founder of the Sufi Order in the West in 1914, (London) and teacher of Universal Sufism, Wikipedia., #KEYS
10:He am I whom I love, He whom I love is I, Two Spirits in one single body dwelling. So seest thou me, then seest thou Him, And seest thou Him, then seest thou Us." ~ Al- Hallaj, (c. 858 - 922) Persian mystic, poet and teacher of Sufism, Wikipedia., #KEYS
11:All things existing have their opposites, except God. It is for this reason that God can not be made intelligible." ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, (1882 - 1927) founder of the Sufi Order in the West in 1914, (London) and teacher of Universal Sufism, Wikipedia., #KEYS
12:A person need not be unworldly in order to become spiritual. We may live in the world and yet not be of the world." ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, (1882 - 1927) founder of the Sufi Order in the West in 1914, (London) and teacher of Universal Sufism, Wikipedia., #KEYS
13:A tender-hearted sinner is better than a saint hardened by piety." ~ Inayat Khan, (1882 - 1927) founder of the Sufi Order in the West in 1914, (London) & teacher of Universal Sufism, Wikipedia. From "The Complete Sayings of Hazrat Inayat Khan,", (1978, 2005, 2010), #KEYS
14:The heart which is not struck by the sweet smiles of an infant is still asleep." ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, (1882 - 1927) founder of the Sufi Order in the West in 1914, (London) and teacher of Universal Sufism, Wikipedia. Quote from the "Complete Sayings of Hazrat…,", (1990)., #KEYS
15:Love that ends, is the shadow of love; true love is without beginning or end." ~ Inayat Khan, (1882 - 1927) founder of the Sufi Order in the West in 1914, (London) & teacher of Universal Sufism, Wikipedia. From "The Complete Sayings of Hazrat Inayat Khan,", (1978, 2005, 2010), #KEYS
16:Sufism is to adhere to the science of Reality. Sufism is to perpetually work for the good. Sufism is rendering sincere counsel to all in the community. Sufism is perfect sincerity in deference to Reality. ~ Imam Al Junayd, @Sufi_Path #KEYS
17:In the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is called 'the resurrection body ' and 'the glorified body.' The prophet Isaiah said, 'The dead shall live, their bodies shall rise' (Isa. 26:19). St. Paul called it 'the celestial body' or 'spiritual body ' (soma pneumatikon) (I Corinthians 15:40). In Sufism it is called 'the most sacred body ' (wujud al-aqdas) and 'supracelestial body ' (jism asli haqiqi). In Taoism, it is called 'the diamond body,' and those who have attained it are called 'the immortals' and 'the cloudwalkers.' In Tibetan Buddhism it is called 'the light body.' In Tantrism and some schools of yoga, it is called 'the vajra body,' 'the adamantine body,' and 'the divine body.' In Kriya yoga it is called 'the body of bliss.' In Vedanta it is called 'the superconductive body.' In Gnosticism and Neoplatonism, it is called 'the radiant body.' In the alchemical tradition, the Emerald Tablet calls it 'the Glory of the Whole Universe' and 'the golden body.' The alchemist Paracelsus called it 'the astral body.' In the Hermetic Corpus, it is called 'the immortal body ' (soma athanaton). In some mystery schools, it is called 'the solar body.' In Rosicrucianism, it is called 'the diamond body of the temple of God.' In ancient Egypt it was called 'the luminous body or being' (akh). In Old Persia it was called 'the indwelling divine potential' (fravashi or fravarti). In the Mithraic liturgy it was called 'the perfect body ' (soma teilion). In the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo, it is called 'the divine body,' composed of supramental substance. In the philosophy of Teilhard de Chardin, it is called 'the ultrahuman'.
~ ?, http://herebedragons.weebly.com/homo-lumen.html,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:The parallels to modern physics [with mysticism] appear not only in the Vedas of Hinduism, in the I Ching, or in the Buddhist sutras, but also in the fragments of Heraclitus, in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, or in the teachings of the Yaqui sorcerer Don Juan. ~ fritjof-capra, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Sufism is experiential ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
2:Sufism is, in operation, pragmatic. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
3:Sufism is known by means of itself. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
4:Sufism is the essence of all religions. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
5:Sufism, in one definition, "is" human life. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
6:The secret of Sufism is that it has no secret at all'. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
7:As soon as thought is restricted, it ceases to be Sufism. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #NFDB
8:Sufism is transmitted by means of the human exemplar, the teacher. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
9:Sufism is that which succeeds in bringing to man the High Knowledge. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
10:Deteriorated science is a cult, so is imitative or deteriorated Sufism. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
11:What you are pleased to call Sufism is merely the record of past method. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
12:People change and needs change. So what was Sufism once is Sufism no more. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
13:Sufism," according to the Sufi, "is an adventure in living, necessary adventure. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
14:Sufism was formerly a reality without a name: now it is a name without a reality. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
15:Sufism is, in fact, not a mystical system, not a religion, but a body of knowledge. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
16:That which is capable of perceiving objective reality is, in Sufism, the human soul (ruh). ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
17:Sufism is the doing in this lifetime what any fool will be doing in then thousand years’ time. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
18:The practice of Sufism is the intention to move toward truth by means of love and devotion. ~ Javad Nurbakhsh, #NFDB
19:When the mind is full of established biases, it will not be able to graft Sufism on top of them. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
20:Sufism is experience, and hence not to be defined – imprisoned – in perennial, static categories. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
21:We are born of Love.Love is our mother.― Rumi ((( Hugs ♡ ))) ~ Jalaluddin Rumi #Poetry #Sufism #Love #MothersDay, #NFDB
22:Without Sufism, Islam would not have spread into two thirds of what we call the Islamic world. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr, #NFDB
23:Silence is the language of god.All else is poor translation. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi ~ Jalaluddin Rumi #sufism #poetry #God, #NFDB
24:Sufism is education, in that it has a body of knowledge which it transmits to those who have not got it. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
25:You may not appreciate Sufism at first, but once you do you will appreciate it until the end of your days. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
26:Sufism, they say, is that which enables one to understand religion, irrespective of its current outward form. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
27:Sufism is therefore not 'Do as I say and not as I do', or even 'Do as I do', but 'Experience and you will know'. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
28:Question 3: Why should a person study Sufism?
Answer: Because he was created to study it; it is his next step. ~ Idries Shah,#NFDB
29:Sufism is therefore not 'Do as I say and not as I do', or even 'Do as I do', but 'Experience it and you will know'. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
30:“There are never too many ways to kneel and kiss the earth” ~ Jalaluddin Rumi ~ Jalaluddin Rumi #Earth #Gratitude #poetry #Sufism, #NFDB
31:it was being written in the East that 'Sufism was formerly a reality without a name: now it is a name without a reality'. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
32:It is not Sufism if it does not perform its function for you. A cloak is no longer a cloak if it does not keep a man warm. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
33:Sufism has always had the function of purifying Islamic ethics and that fasting and tazkiya is like lighting a lamp. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr, #NFDB
34:Sufism, the "secret tradition," is not available on the basis of assumptions which belong to another world, the world of intellect. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
35:It is pointless trying to know where the way leads. Think only about your first step, the rest will come. ~ Shams Tabrizi#shamstabrizi #rumi #love #sufism, #NFDB
36:Sufism is always systematised only for limited or transitory periods: because Sufism is primarly instrumental, not for enjoyment or display. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
37:I reject any path which rejects life, but I can't help loving Sufism because it sounds so beautiful. It gives relief in the midst of battle. ~ Naguib Mahfouz, #NFDB
38:True Sufism is resistance: spiritual, intellectual, social, cultural, political and economic resistance. It cannot be, for sure, supporting dictators. ~ Tariq Ramadan, #NFDB
39:“The very center of your heart. is where life begins. The most beautiful place on earth.” ~ Jalaluddin Rumi ~ Jalaluddin Rumi #sufism #poetry #heart #rumiquote 💛 #photography, #NFDB
40:The leaf of every tree brings a message from the unseen world. Look, every falling leaf is a blessing. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi ~ Jalaluddin Rumi #Poetry #Sufism #Spring #Blessings #Beauty, #NFDB
41:I love Sufism as I love beautiful poetry, but it is not the answer. Sufism is like a mirage in the desert. It says to you, come and sit, relax and enjoy yourself for a while. ~ Naguib Mahfouz, #NFDB
42:Sufism is the spiritual tradition of the dervishes. Its teachers never strive to show how wise they are, and their disciples go into a trance by performing a kind of whirling dance. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
43:Sufism and yoga are one and the same thing. They are just words, in wisdom there is no difference. All the teachings are absolutely the same. They are only different paths to the One. ~ Irina Tweedie, #NFDB
44:If you want the moon, do not hide at night. If you want a rose, do not run from the thorns. If you want Love, do not hide from yourself. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi ~ Jalaluddin Rumi #Sufism #poetry#fieldofflowers #moon, #NFDB
45:Sufism is about connecting with the intuitive parts of ourselves so that we can attune to the highest vibration in the universe, which is pure love. It's about joining together in the mystical heart. ~ Charlotte Kasl, #NFDB
46:If light is in your heart, you will find your way home. ~ Jalaluddin RumiOuessant Island sunrise, France📸 photo by Jean-Pierre Linossier. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi ~ Jalaluddin Rumiquote #sufism #poetry #light #heart 💜 #photography, #NFDB
47:Then seek the Truth. Seek always to be on its side, even when it brings you pain. There are times when the Truth goes quiet for long stretches, or when it doesn’t tell you what you want to hear. That’s Sufism. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
48:If anybody asks what Sufism is, what kind of religion is it, the answer is that Sufism is the religion of the heart, the religion in which the thing of primary importance is to seek God in the heart of mankind. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #NFDB
49:Sufism is experiential. Capacities, even those for learning beyond a certain point, are provoked by Sufis, by one's own efforts and what results from them, and by an element of what is referred to by Sufis as the Divine. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
50:While most streams of Buddhism take a contemplative stance on passion, pleasure, and pain, Sufism encourages us to be open to our passions - to dive into the sea, to become at one with the beauty and power of the waves. ~ Charlotte Kasl, #NFDB
51:The basis of Sufism is consideration of the hearts and feelings of others. If you haven't the will to gladden someone's heart, then at least beware lest you hurt someone's heart, for on our path, no sin exists but this. ~ Javad Nurbakhsh, #NFDB
52:There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief and unspeakable love. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi#poetry #sufism #rumi, #NFDB
53:Let me also again emphasize that it is only within Islam that Sufism can be practiced. The two have never been separated from each other in their reality and in fact are inwardly one, and certainly they have never been separated for me throughout my life. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr, #NFDB
54:Sufism is not a religion or a philosophy, it is neither deism nor atheism, nor is it a moral, nor a special kind of mysticism, being free from the usual religious sectarianism. If ever it could be called a religion, it would only be as a religion of love, harmony, and beauty. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #NFDB
55:To those who say "Sufism is apolitical" or "no politics," I respond: "No politics is politics." Look at the very old African Sufi tradition, the Asian Sufi tradition, or the North African Sufi tradition. Then you get it and understand what Sufism is all about wisdom, courage and resistance. ~ Tariq Ramadan, #NFDB
56:People who were also traders were also men of Sufism, as we see around Java, people who were outwardly trading but were also men of very high spiritual character. Otherwise no trader would be able to convert a person from one religion to another. It was because they were men of spiritual character. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr, #NFDB
57:The notion that Western religions are more rigid than those of Asia is overdrawn. Ours is the most permissive society history has ever known - almost the only thing that is forbidden now is to forbid - and Asian teachers and their progeny play up to this propensity by soft-pedaling Hinduism's, Buddhism's, Sufism's rules. ~ Huston Smith, #NFDB
58:We view Sufism not as an ideology that molds people to the right way of belief or action, but as an art or science that can exert a beneficial influence on individuals and societies, in accordance with the needs of those individuals and societies ... Sufi study and development gives one capacities one did not have before. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
59:In other words, Islamic fundamentalism isn’t necessarily a response to the West. Rather it is a response to earlier allegedly corrupted strands of Islam.” “Yep, that’s how they’d see it. Just like Protestantism was a response to Catholicism. Wahhabism grew out of opposition to the Ottoman Empire and to the homegrown Sufism of Arabia. ~ Dan Eaton, #NFDB
60:We admire Sufism in the West for its tolerance, mysticism, and poetry, its ecstatic rituals, its music, even. But it’s also, especially in rural parts, a religion that bears more than a casual resemblance to late medieval Catholicism. It encourages the veneration of saint-like figures at special shrines and their celebration at festivities. ~ Dan Eaton, #NFDB
61:The very essence of the Sufi spiritual tradition requires you to purify your heart, to liberate yourself from your ego and to be courageous in facing any corrupt power, injustice and oppression. Unfortunately, colonial powers pushed an agenda by using Sufism against resistance, and some ulama played that game in the past and in the present. ~ Tariq Ramadan, #NFDB
62:The would-be students wish to transcend books.
But, ask yourselves: if someone says that books do not contain wisdom, and yet he writes books; books do not contain Sufism, and yet he continues to publish books on Sufism, what is really happening? It really is your duty, and not mine, to ask and to find the answer to that question, if you are interested enough. ~ Idries Shah,#NFDB
63:It is a Sufi contention that truth is not discovered or maintained by the mere repetition of teachings. It can only be kept understood by the perpetual experience of it. And it is in the experience of truth that the Sufis have always reposed their trust. Sufism is therefore not 'Do as I say and not as I do', or even 'Do as I do', but 'Experience it and you will know'. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
64:One famous female Sufi mystic and religious teacher was Rabi-’ah al-’ Ada-wiyyah (712‒801), who after a girlhood in slavery fled to the desert, where she rejected all offers of marriage and devoted herself to prayer and scholarship. Although the most distinguished of women Sufis, Rabi-’ah was not unique, since Sufism gave all women the chance to attain a holy dignity ~ Rosalind Miles, #NFDB
65:In the eastern part of the Iranian world there arose various schools of Sufism, some of which contain barely disguised Zoroastrian concepts. Figures such as Rumi, Suhrawardi, Mansur al-Hallaj, Nurbakhsh, and even Omar Khayyam all convey essentially Iranian mystical thoughts in Islamic guise, often expressing themselves in their own Persian language rather than Arabic. ~ Stephen E Flowers, #NFDB
66:Look at Senegal, about 90% of the Muslims in Senegal are Tijani or Qadiri Sufis. Among them, they have very great teachers who have written poems about al-Hallaj, and they have not been killed. In fact, it's Sufism that brought Islam through all of Senegal, right under our noses the last couple of centuries. And you can go down the same line through Indonesia and Malaysia. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr, #NFDB
67:What binds Buddhism, Sufism, and Quaker practices together is a belief in our interconnectedness; profound respect for others; being guided by a greater good beyond material possessions, status, and image; valuing silence and stillness of the mind; acceptance of differences; developing inner awareness of one’s perceptions and motivation; commitment to service; and seeking guidance from within. ~ Charlotte Kasl, #NFDB
68:From it genesis twelve hundred years ago to today, Islamic philosophy (al-hikmah; al-falsafah) has been one of the major intellectual traditions within the Islamic world, and it has influenced and been influenced by many other intellectual perspectives, including Scholastic theology (kalam) and doctrinal Sufism (al-ma'rifah or al-tasawwuf al-'ilmi) and theoretical gnosis ('irfan-i nazari). ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr, #NFDB
69:There is no religion in the world where there is a possibility of spiritual development outside of the context of that religion. This is only a modern invention. For example, Christian mystics were also Christians. They also went to Church and followed Christian laws. Hindu mystics were practicing Hindus; they didn't kill cows and have steak. They follow the Hindu laws and so on and so forth down the line and Sufism is no exception. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr, #NFDB
70:The Now is also central to the teaching of Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam. Sufis have a saying: “The Sufi is the son of time present.” And Rumi, the great poet and teacher of Sufism, declares: “Past and future veil God from our sight; burn up both of them with fire.” Meister Eckhart, the thirteenth-century spiritual teacher, summed it all up beautifully: “Time is what keeps the light from reaching us. There is no greater obstacle to God than time. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
71:Rabe'a al-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint of Sufism, was seen running through the streets of her hometown, Basra, carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered "I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God. ~ John Green, #NFDB
72:Rabe'a al-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint of Sufism, was seen running through the streets of her hometown, Basra, carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered, 'I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God. ~ John Green, #NFDB
73:Rabe’a al-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint of Sufism, was seen running through the streets of her hometown, Basra, carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered, ‘I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God. ~ John Green, #NFDB
74:Rabe'a
al-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint of Sufism, was seen running through the streets of her hometown, Basra, carrying a
torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered, 'I
am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn
down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is
God. ~ John Green,#NFDB
75:Rabe’a al-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint of Sufism, was
seen running through the streets of her hometown, Basra,
carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the
other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she
answered, ‘I am going to take this bucket of water and pour
it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this
torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people
will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but be-
cause He is God ~ John Green,#NFDB
76:The man, who shuts himself up from all men, however high spiritually he may be, will not be free in Malakut, in the higher sphere. He will have a wall around him, keeping away the jinns and even the angels of the angelic heavens; and so his journey will be exclusive. It is therefore that Sufism does not only teach concentration and meditation, which help one to make one-sided progress, but the love of God which is expansion; the opening of the heart of all beings, which is the way of Christ and the sign of the cross. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #NFDB
77:Sufis like to say: “This is not a religion; it is religion,” or “Sufism is the essence of all religions,” which provides “a belief in an inner teaching beyond formalized religion.” In other words, Sufism puts spirituality first — getting to the heart of the matter, the lived experience of the Divine. Eckhart does the same; he tried to get deeper than the “formalized” version of Christianity. Sufism explicitly practices what I call Deep Ecumenism, honoring the essence of religious teaching and the lived experience of Divinity, found in all religious traditions. ~ Matthew Fox, #NFDB
78:I see You, Every time I look into Buddha’s eyes. I give myself to You. Every time I alter one of Your 1,000s names. Honestly & fully I love You. Through Christ and Maria, Shiva and Shakti, Krishna and Radha, With every day that passes and every breath I take. I enter gratitude for receiving Your Love. Obeying Your Laws of Truthfulness and Ahimsa, Weaving Prana With hearts and souls of Gaia. Through mysticism, shamanism, sufism, and ecstatic meditations. I yearn to touch You, to feel You, to be You. Within this amazing Journey of Awareness of Your Consciousness. ~ Nata a Nuit Pantovi, #NFDB
79:Indeed, wherever the Nondual traditions would appear – traditions uniting and integrating the Ascending and Descending paths, in the East and in the West – we find a similar set of themes expressed so constantly as to border on mathematical precision. From Tantra to Zen, from the Neoplatonists to Sufism, from Shaivism to Kegon, stated in a thousands different ways and in a hundred different contexts, nonetheless the same essential word would ring out from the Nondual Heart: the Many returning to and embracing the One is Good, and is known as wisdom; the One returning to and embracing the Many is Goodness, and is known as compassion. ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
80:We admire Sufism in the West for its tolerance, mysticism, and poetry, its ecstatic rituals, its music, even. But it’s also, especially in rural parts, a religion that bears more than a casual resemblance to late medieval Catholicism. It encourages the veneration of saint-like figures at special shrines and their celebration at festivities. It’s something the fundamentalist mullahs abhor. Just as the Protestants smashed icons, prohibited carnivals, and defaced cathedrals, the Wahhabists insist on a reformed style of Islam, purged of all that. Remember all the TV footage from 1996. When the Taliban took over in Afghanistan, their first task was stamping that stuff out. ~ Dan Eaton, #NFDB
81:It is important to recall here the fact that, in contrast to the claim of those who only look at the quantitative aspects of things and consider the esoteric element of religion to be marginal and peripheral, the esoteric dimension actually lies at the heart of religion and is the source of both its endurance and renewal. We observe this truth not only in Islam, but also in the Kabbalistic and Hasidic traditions in Judaism and various mystical currents in Christianity. In Islam itself, Sufism has been over the centuries the hidden heart that has renewed the religion intellectually, spiritually, and ethically and has played the greatest role in its spread and in its relation with other religions. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr, #NFDB
82:Islam and Christianity promise eternal paradise to the faithful. And that is a powerful opiate, certainly, the hope of a better life to come. But there's a Sufi story that challenges the notion that people believe only because they need an opiate. Rabe'a al-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint of Sufism, was seem running through the streets of her hometown, Basra, carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered, 'I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven of fear of hell, but because He is God. ~ John Green, #NFDB
83:Woman is a beam of the divine Light. She is not the being whom sensual desires takes as its object. She is Creator, it should be said. She is not a creature. Great Fatima-ul- Zehra ( Means of Fatima the Radiant, Brightest Star, Star of Venus, The Evening Star), the daughter of the Prophet, is the secret in Sufism. She is the Hujjat of Ali (JJ). In other words, she establishes the esoteric sense of his knowledge and guides those who attain to it.
Through her perfume, we breathe paradise. Though she was his daughter, the Prophet Muhammad (SAWW) called her “Um Abi’ha” (mother of her father). What mystery was the Prophet hinting at by this statement? While Fatima Zahra ( Salam -ullah – alleha ) was Muhammad’s (SAWW) daughter. The spiritual Fatima Al-Batool ( the divine virgin) her house is the living Ka’ba. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
84:Atheism or agnosticism can be the revolt of a virtual mystic against the limitations of exoterism; for a man may have in himself, undeveloped, the qualifications for following a spiritual path even in the fullest sense and yet at the same time — and this is more than ever possible in the modem world — he may be ignorant of the existence of religion’s mystical dimension. His atheism or agnosticism may be based on the false assumption that religion coincides exactly with the outward and shallow conception of it that many of its so-called ‘authorities’ exclusively profess. There are souls which are prepared to give either everything or nothing. The inexorable exactingness of Sufism has been known to save those who could be saved by no other means: it has saved them from giving nothing by demanding that they shall give everything. ~ Martin Lings, #NFDB
85:Karl Marx famously called religion 'the opiate of the masses'. Buddhism, particularly as it is popularly practiced, promises improvement through karma. Islam and Christianity promise eternal life to the faithful. And that is a powerful opiate, certainly, the hope of a better life to come. But there's a Sufi story that challenges the notion that people believe only because they need an opiate. Rabe'a al-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint of Sufism, was seen running through the streets of her hometown, Basra, carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered, 'I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God. ~ John Green, #NFDB
86:No fundamentalist undercurrent ran through the national culture before the first war. Sufism had always been the predominant Muslim sect, and Wahhabism was a foreign, wartime import. A few times a year, Arab Wahhabis came through the village in search of recruits. They promised rations, shelter, an eternity in Paradise, and, until that day of glorious martyrdom, a monthly salary of two hundred and fifty U.S. dollars. Few young men followed the monochromatic Wahhabi faith, but many were quite willing to be radicalized for a monthly salary that eclipsed what they would otherwise earn in a year. The war of independence so quickly conflated with jihad because no one cared about the self-determination of a small landlocked republic. Arab states would gladly fund a war of religion, but not one of nationalism. And in this way it didn’t matter who won the war between the Feds and fundamentalists: the notion of a democratic and fully sovereign Chechnya would be crushed regardless. ~ Anthony Marra, #NFDB
87:Osho was very generous with his genius. When I went to Poona in 1988, he answered a question of mine. “Rumi says, ‘I want burning, burning.’ What does this burning have to do with my own possible enlightenment?” “You have asked a very dangerous question, Coleman. Burning has nothing to do with your enlightenment. This work you have done with Rumi is beautiful. It has to be, because it is coming out of Rumi’s love. But for you these poems can become ecstatic self-hypnosis.” He pretty much nailed me to the floor with that one. Sufism is good, but end up with Zen. It was a fine hit he gave me. I am still drawn to the Sufi longing and love-madness, but clarity is coming up strong on the inside. I have not assimilated his wisdom yet, but I mean to. I am very grateful to him. But it is not wisdom for everyone. Osho crafted his words to suit the individual. Ecstatic self-hypnosis might be just the thing for someone else. He was showing me a daylight beyond any beloved darkness, an ecstatic sobriety beyond any drunkenness. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
88:I don’t think Kashmiriyat is dead, nor is Sufism. If we don’t support the idea of Kashmiriyat or the Sufi tradition, it will fade out eventually, because radicalism is increasing. Sheikh Saheb was said to be a pure Musalman but he kept the Jamaat-e-Islami at bay, telling them they were not going to meddle in political life. After him, Farooq was the same way and in fact more aggressive about it, saying that they should close down all the Jamaat schools and that if Delhi funded the state, it would set up its own schools. But he did not get that much support. This is getting compromised. If you don’t do anything about Kashmir, then more and more Wahhabism will come in, as petro-dollars, etc., with their mosques growing and the lectures from their mosques increasing. A couple of years ago I was leaving Srinagar on a Friday and I was startled. Every road I passed had a loudspeaker blaring for the jumme ka namaaz. This never happened earlier. To my surprise, one of the breeding grounds of the fast-spreading radicalism is the Srinagar jail. A Kashmiri who was detained twice under the Public Security Act told me that the atmosphere of radicalism was so suffocating that you felt that you were in a jail inside a jail. So long as the likes of Masarat Alam and Qasim Fakhtoo are given free rein radicalism will grow. While Pakistan remains a factor in Kashmir, the real danger is that radicalism will end up as the lasting political legacy of Kashmir. ~ A S Dulat, #NFDB
89:In the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is called 'the resurrection body ' and 'the glorified body.' The prophet Isaiah said, 'The dead shall live, their bodies shall rise' (Isa. 26:19). St. Paul called it 'the celestial body' or 'spiritual body ' (soma pneumatikon) (I Corinthians 15:40). In Sufism it is called 'the most sacred body ' (wujud al-aqdas) and 'supracelestial body ' (jism asli haqiqi). In Taoism, it is called 'the diamond body,' and those who have attained it are called 'the immortals' and 'the cloudwalkers.' In Tibetan Buddhism it is called 'the light body.' In Tantrism and some schools of yoga, it is called 'the vajra body,' 'the adamantine body,' and 'the divine body.' In Kriya yoga it is called 'the body of bliss.' In Vedanta it is called 'the superconductive body.' In Gnosticism and Neoplatonism, it is called 'the radiant body.' In the alchemical tradition, the Emerald Tablet calls it 'the Glory of the Whole Universe' and 'the golden body.' The alchemist Paracelsus called it 'the astral body.' In the Hermetic Corpus, it is called 'the immortal body ' (soma athanaton). In some mystery schools, it is called 'the solar body.' In Rosicrucianism, it is called 'the diamond body of the temple of God.' In ancient Egypt it was called 'the luminous body or being' (akh). In Old Persia it was called 'the indwelling divine potential' (fravashi or fravarti). In the Mithraic liturgy it was called 'the perfect body ' (soma teilion). In the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo, it is called 'the divine body,' composed of supramental substance. In the philosophy of Teilhard de Chardin, it is called 'the ultrahuman'.
~ ?, http://herebedragons.weebly.com/homo-lumen.html,#NFDB
90:He was the leader of the Prophet David’s army,’ said the Sheikh. ‘David had him killed so that he could marry Nebi Uri’s beautiful wife. Two angels, Mikhail and Jibrael, appeared and asked David why he needed an extra wife when he already had ninety-nine others. You know this story?’ ‘Yes. I think we Christians know Nebi Uri as Uriah the Hittite.’ It was an unlikely tangle of tales: a medieval Muslim saint buried in a much older Byzantine tomb tower had somehow been confused with the Biblical and Koranic Uriah; perhaps the saint’s name was Uriah, and over the passage of time his identity had been merged with that of his scriptural namesake. More intriguing still was the fact that in this city, long famed for the shrines of its Christian saints, the Muslim Sufi tradition had directly carried on from where Theodoret’s Christian holy men had left off. Just as the Muslim form of prayer, with its bowings and prostrations, appears to derive from the older Syriac Christian tradition that I had seen performed at Mar Gabriel, and just as the architecture of the earliest minarets unmistakably derives from the square late-antique Syrian church towers, so the roots of Islamic mysticism and Sufism lie with the Byzantine holy men and desert fathers who preceded them across the Near East. Today the West often views Islam as a civilisation very different from and indeed innately hostile to Christianity. Only when you travel in Christianity’s Eastern homelands do you realise how closely the two religions are really linked. For the former grew directly out of the latter and still, to this day, embodies many aspects and practices of the early Christian world now lost in Christianity’s modern Western incarnation. When the early Byzantines were first confronted by the Prophet’s armies, they assumed that Islam was merely a heretical form of Christianity, and in many ways they were not so far wrong: Islam accepts much of the Old and New Testaments, and venerates both Jesus and the ancient Jewish prophets. Certainly if John Moschos were to come back today it is likely that he would find much more that was familiar in the practices of a modern Muslim Sufi than he would with those of, say, a contemporary American Evangelical. Yet this simple truth has been lost by our tendency to think of Christianity as a Western religion rather than the Oriental faith it actually is. Moreover the modern demonisation of Islam in the West, and the recent growth of Muslim fundamentalism (itself in many ways a reaction to the West’s repeated humiliation of the Muslim world), have led to an atmosphere where few are aware of, or indeed wish to be aware of, the profound kinship of Christianity and Islam. ~ William Dalrymple, #NFDB
91:The Conference Of The (Underemployed) Birds
"It shows the top half of the workforce enjoying permanent, well-paid, fulltime jobs,
while the bottom half can find only casual, poorly-paid, part-time work which, as
Labour
market economist Professor Sue Richardson warned this week, was creating a
class of
"excluded and dangerous" men with incomes to low to support a
family." - The Age, October 04, 2003.
"My discourse is sans words, sans tongue, sans sound: understand it then,
sans mind, sans ear."
- Farid Ud-Din Attar, The Conference of the Birds
(i)
A Willy-Wagtails' call intercepts the morning. Birds were real once, like jobs.
The modem's dial-up scream is cut short; why is our technology suffering so?
Fake, Australian accents in the call centre aviary: Calcutta nest robbers gloat.
A taxidermy of outsourced work: ditto, we're all stuffed on the global floor.
39
Bottom of the bird market. This new flu's crashed like tech stocks, Acme trap
For the Roadrunner managerial class, the coyote - disenfranchised American?
(ii)
Magpies don't attack in the open anymore, have you noticed: phenomena?
Phone tab's the way forward. Keep an eye on your receiver, not the skies.
There are new powers afoot for dealing with these full employment refos,
Our government issues wide-brimmed hats with strings of corks attached.
The contemporary job market has a thin eggshell; depleted proteins crack.
An excluded & dangerous class birthed? They backed job terrorism not us.
(iii)
I saw a hoopoe once. Was it Jaipur? Its crown of truth strutted on the lawn,
Painted a post-colonial green. What good is spiritual knowledge without law?
40
You will play an integral role in this dynamic environment by fudging your
Work history for sure. Service orientate your brain - lively, world class, lame.
Dangerous as ideas? There's a metal storm inside your head. Try Sufism?
Was it John Lennon or Steve McQueen who went on about "ism ism ism?
"
(iv)
There are nightingales here reputedly. Wasn't it someone from myth who
Couldn't stand being unemployed anymore & turned themselves into one?
Hit an epic glass ceiling probably. Better to be amorous than under-employed?
There's no new twist in the figures though. The virtual exclusion of women
From net growth in full-time job mythology is eons old. Sumerians started it.
Gilgamesh's entrapment of Enkidu needed a woman's art: ‘Wanted Harlot.'
(v)
41
Australia has plenty of parrots, but cockatiels inhabit our universal currency
Of shame. See them locked up in Athens, Rome, Madrid, Delhi & Bangkok.
Feathered service economies, budgerigars tell beak fortunes in Iranian streets.
Collars of gold chained to human profit. Flocks flee drought & agricultural rut.
We even killed off one sub-species called ‘Paradise', cleared full-time underbrush.
& if they were flightless, then we paid out redundancies see: dodo, puffin & moa.
~ B. R. Dionysius,#NFDB
92:As everyone knows, Islam set up a social order from the outset, in contrast, for example, to Christianity. Islamic social teachings are so basic to the religion that still today many people, including Muslims, are completely unaware of Islam's spiritual dimensions. Social order demands rules and regulations, fear of the king, respect for the police, acknowledgement of authority. It has to be set up on the basis of God's majesty and severity. It pays primary attention to the external realm, the realm of the body and the desires of the lower soul, the realm where God is distant from the world. In contrast, Islamic spiritual teachings allow for intimacy, love, boldness, ecstatic expressions, and intoxication in the Beloved. All these are qualities that pertain to nearness to God. (...) In short, on the social level, Islam affirms the primacy of God as King, Majestic, Lord, Ruler. It establishes a theological patriarchy even if Muslim theologians refuse to apply the word father (or mother) to God. God is yang, while the world, human beings, and society are yin. Thereby order is established and maintained. Awe and distance are the ruling qualities. On the spiritual level, the picture is different. In this domain many Muslim authorities affirm the primacy of God as Merciful, Beautiful, Gentle, Loving. Here they establish a spiritual matriarchy, though again such terms are not employed. God is yin and human beings are yang. Human spiritual aspiration is accepted and welcomed by God. Intimacy and nearness are the ruling qualities. This helps explain why one can easily find positive evaluations of women and the feminine dimension of things in Sufism.
(...) Again, this primacy of yin cannot function on the social level, since it undermines the authority of the law. If we take in isolation the Koranic statement, "Despair not of God's mercy surely God forgives all sins" (39:53), then we can throw the Sharia out the window. In the Islamic perspective, the revealed law prevents society from degenerating into chaos. One gains liberty not by overthrowing hierarchy and constraints, but by finding liberty in its true abode, the spiritual realm. Freedom, lack of limitation and constraint, bold expansivenessis achieved only by moving toward God, not by rebelling against Him and moving away.
Attar (d. 618/1221) makes the same point more explicitly in an anecdote he tells about the great Sufi shaykh, Abu'l- Hasan Kharraqani (d. 425/1033): It is related that one night the Shaykh was busy with prayer. He heard a voice saying, "Beware, Abu'l-Hasan! Do you want me to tell people what I know about you so that they will stone you to death?" The Shaykh replied, "O God the Creator! Do You want me to tell the people what I know about Your mercy and what I see of Your generosity? Then no one will prostrate himself to You." A voice came, "You keep quiet, and so will I."
Sufism is concerned with "maintaining the secret" (hifz al-sirr) for more reasons than one. The secret of God's mercy threatens the plain fact of His wrath. If "She" came out of the closet, "He" would be overthrown. But then She could not be found, for it is He who shows the way to Her door. ~ Sachiko Murata,#NFDB
93:The contemporary Christian Church, precisely, has understood them in this' 'wrong way, to the letter, 'like the Jews,' exoterically, not esoterically. Nevertheless to say 'like the Jews' is an error. One would have to say 'as the Jews want.' Because they also possess an exotericism, for their masses, represented by the Torah and Talmud, and an esotericism, in the Cabala (which means: 'Received Tradition'), in the Zohar ('brightness'), the Merkaba or Chariot being the most secret part of the Cabala which only initiated rabbis know and use as the powerful tool of their magic. We have already said that the Cabala reached them from elsewhere, like everything else, in the Middle Ages, even though they tell us otherwise, using and transforming it in concordance with their Archetype. The Hasidim, from Poland, represent an exclusively esoteric sect of Judaism.
Islam also has its esoteric magic, represented by Sufism and the sect of the Assassins, Hassanists, oflran. They interpret the Koran symbolically. And it was because of contact with this sect of the 'Old Man of the Mountain' that the Templars felt compelled to secede more and more from the direction of Rome, centering themselves in their Esoteric Kristianity and Mystery of the Gral. This was also why Rome destroyed them, like the esoteric Cathars (katharos = pure in Greek), the Bogomils, the Manichees and the gnostics.
In the Church of Rome, called Catholic, there only remains a soulless ritual of the Mass, as a liturgical shell that no longer reaches the Symbol, which no longer touches it, no longer puts it into action. The Nordic contribution has been lost, destroyed by prejudice and the ethnological persecution of Nordicism, Germanism and the complete surrender to Judaism.
Zen Buddhism preserves the esotericism of Buddha. In Japan Shinto and Zen are practiced by a racially superior warrior caste, the Samurai. The most esoteric side of Hinduism is found in Tantrism, especially in the Kaula or Kula Order.
So understood, esotericism is what goes beyond the exterior form and the masses, the physical, and puts an elite in contact with invisible superior forces. In my case, the condition that paralysed me in the midst of dreaming and left me without means to influence the phenomena. The visible is symbol of invisible forces (Archetypes, Gods). By means of an esoteric knowledge, of an initiation in this knowledge, a hierarchic minority can make contact with these invisible forces, being able to act on the Symbol, dynamizing and controlling the physical phenomena that incarnate them. In my case: to come to control the involuntary process which, without knowing how, was controlling me, to be able to guide it, to check or avoid it. Jung referred to this when he said 'if someone wisely faces the Archetype, in whatever place in the world, he acquires universal validity because the Archetype is one and indivisible'.
And the means to reach this spiritual world, 'on the other side of the mirror,' is Magic, Rite, Ritual, Ceremony. All religions have possessed them, even the Christian, as we have said. And the Rite is not something invented by humans but inspired by 'those from beyond,' Jung would say by the Collective Unconscious. ~ Miguel Serrano,#NFDB
94:Vasana is determinism that feels like free will. I’m reminded of my friend Jean, whom I’ve known for almost twenty years. Jean considers himself very spiritual and went so far in the early nineties as to walk way from his job with a newspaper in Denver to live in an ashram in western Massachusetts. But he found the atmosphere choking. “They’re all crypto Hindus,” he complained. “They don’t do anything but pray and chant and meditate.” So Jean decided to move on with his life. He’s fallen in love with a couple of women but has never married. He doesn’t like the notion of settling down and tends to move to a new state every four years or so. (He once told me that he counted up and discovered that he’s lived in forty different houses since he was born.) One day Jean called me with a story. He was on a date with a woman who had taken a sudden interest in Sufism, and while they were driving home, she told Jean that according to her Sufi teacher, everyone has a prevailing characteristic. “You mean the thing that is most prominent about them, like being extroverted or introverted?” he asked. “No, not prominent,” she said. “Your prevailing characteristic is hidden. You act on it without seeing that you’re acting on it.” The minute he heard this, Jean became excited. “I looked out the car window, and it hit me,” he said. “I sit on the fence. I am only comfortable if I can have both sides of a situation without committing to either.” All at once a great many pieces fell into place. Jean could see why he went into an ashram but didn’t feel like he was one of the group. He saw why he fell in love with women but always saw their faults. Much more came to light. Jean complains about his family yet never misses a Christmas with them. He considers himself an expert on every subject he’s studied—there have been many—but he doesn’t earn his living pursuing any of them. He is indeed an inveterate fence-sitter. And as his date suggested, Jean had no idea that his Vasana, for that’s what we’re talking about, made him enter into one situation after another without ever falling off the fence. “Just think,” he said with obvious surprise, “the thing that’s the most me is the thing I never saw.” If unconscious tendencies kept working in the dark, they wouldn’t be a problem. The genetic software in a penguin or wildebeest guides it to act without any knowledge that it is behaving much like every other penguin or wildebeest. But human beings, unique among all living creatures, want to break down Vasana. It’s not good enough to be a pawn who thinks he’s a king. We crave the assurance of absolute freedom and its result—a totally open future. Is this reasonable? Is it even possible? In his classic text, the Yoga Sutras, the sage Patanjali informs us that there are three types of Vasana. The kind that drives pleasant behavior he calls white Vasana; the kind that drives unpleasant behavior he calls dark Vasana; the kind that mixes the two he calls mixed Vasana. I would say Jean had mixed Vasana—he liked fence-sitting but he missed the reward of lasting love for another person, a driving aspiration, or a shared vision that would bond him with a community. He displayed the positives and negatives of someone who must keep every option open. The goal of the spiritual aspirant is to wear down Vasana so that clarity can be achieved. In clarity you know that you are not a puppet—you have released yourself from the unconscious drives that once fooled you into thinking that you were acting spontaneously. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
95:Arts of energy management and of combat are, of course, not confined to the Chinese only. Peoples of different cultures have practised and spread these arts since ancient times. Those who follow the Chinese tradition call these arts chi kung and kungfu (or qigong and gongfu in Romanized Chinese), and those following other traditions call them by other names.
Muslims in various parts of the world have developed arts of energy management and of combat to very high levels. Many practices in Sufism, which is spiritual cultivation in Islamic tradition, are similar to chi kung practices. As in chi kung, Sufi practitioners pay much importance to the training of energy and spirit, called “qi” and “shen” in Chinese, but “nafas” and “roh” in Muslim terms.
When one can free himself from cultural and religious connotations, he will find that the philosophy of Sufism and of chi kung are similar. A Sufi practitioner believes that his own breath, or nafas, is a gift of God, and his ultimate goal in life is to be united with God. Hence, he practises appropriate breathing exercises so that the breath of God flows harmoniously through him, cleansing him of his weakness and sin, which are manifested as illness and pain.
And he practises meditation so that ultimately his personal spirit will return to the universal Spirit of God. In chi kung terms, this returning to God is expressed as “cultivating spirit to return to the Great Void”, which is “lian shen huan shi” in Chinese. Interestingly the breathing and meditation methods in Sufism and in chi kung are quite similar.
Some people, including some Muslims, may think that meditation is unIslamic, and therefore taboo. This is a serious mis-conception. Indeed, Prophet Mohammed himself clearly states that a day of meditation is better than sixty years of worship. As in any religion, there is often a huge conceptual gap between the highest teaching and the common followers. In Buddhism, for example, although the Buddha clearly states that meditation is the essential path to the highest spiritual attainment, most common Buddhists do not have any idea of meditation.
The martial arts of the Muslims were effective and sophisticated. At many points in world history, the Muslims, such as the Arabs, the Persians and the Turks, were formidable warriors. Modern Muslim martial arts are very advanced and are complete by themselves, i.e. they do not need to borrow from outside arts for their force training or combat application — for example, they do not need to borrow from chi kung for internal force training, Western aerobics for stretching, judo and kickboxing for throws and kicks.
[...]
It is reasonable if sceptics ask, “If they are really so advanced, why don't they take part in international full contact fighting competitions and win titles?” The answer is that they hold different values. They are not interested in fighting or titles. At their level, their main concern is spiritual cultivation. Not only they will not be bothered whether you believe in such abilities, generally they are reluctant to let others know of their abilities.
Muslims form a substantial portion of the population in China, and they have contributed an important part in the development of chi kung and kungfu. But because the Chinese generally do not relate one's achievements to one's religion, the contributions of these Chinese Muslim masters did not carry the label “Muslim” with them.
In fact, in China the Muslim places of worship are not called mosques, as in many other countries, but are called temples. Most people cannot tell the difference be ~ Wong Kiew Kit,#NFDB
96:O who wants a share of the pleasure of closeness
If you want all goodness to appear in you
The councillor is honest, so heed this news:
There is no pleasure in life except accompanying the [fuqara]
for they are the sultans and the masters and the princes [umara]
They are people who are satisfied with little, of clothing
and food, and care not for the world.
Their hearts are free of whispering temptations
So accompany them and show proper manners in their councils
and leave your fortunes behind, no matter how much they offer to bring you upfront
Take their Path if you want to follow them
And leave your claims, and be careful not to question them
abut their purpose, and let their benefit be your intention
And seize the time and always attend with them
and know that pleasure and content distinguish who attended
Be content with them, they elevate you, and you reach.
If they register you, hang on; and if they erase you, vanish;
and if they don't feed you, starve; and if they feed you, then eat.
And abide by silence, except if you are asked, then say
I have no knowledge, and conceal yourself in ignorance
And don't be critical of people's flaws
even if it is apparent to existence
and look with an eye that sees only goodness and that does not see defects in anyone
And see defects only in you; and have faith
that your have a flaw that would have been apparent, but was concealed
With this you attain what you hope for of proper manners [adab]
Humble your self [nafs] to them in doubtless humility
a humility that takes the place of proper manners [adab]
And lay down your head and ask for forgiveness for no reason
and stand up on the feet of fairness apologizing
If you want a light for the Path from them then elevate
above everything they hate of your actions
and make your self [nafs] persist in doing good
If you commit a fault, apologize, and hold up
your apology for what you committed and what happened from you
Flatter them, and say: heal with your piety
with the cream of your pardon, the injury of your wound
It is me who is wrong, so grant me your pure advise
And say: your slave is more deserving of your pardon
so pardon and be lenient and clement, O [fuqara]
If you transgress, don't fear their enthusiasm
they are more sublime than you be harmed by their company
they are not the mighty whose power harm you
They are more deserving of kindness, which is their character
so do not feel or expect from them any evil or harm
If you want want them to guide you along the Path of piety
strive to fulfill what they request of you
immediately and don't delay it saying tomorrow
Always be generous in giving to the companions
actually and figuratively; and overlook if they slip
Always be truthful with them, and don't be dishonest
because they are truthful people, masters and chiefs
and pardon anyone of them who ever offended you
Observe the Sheikh carefully in his states, and hopefully
a trace of his achievement might appear in you.
Ask him to pray for you, you profit from his prayer
and through it you attain what you hope for of his blessing
and improve your assumption of him, and realize his sanctity
Wholeheartedly do the effort, and strive to serve him,
perhaps you please him, and take care not to become bored
And memorize his advise, and increase your attending to him
and answer him immediately if he calls you
and lower your voice in confounding out of obedience
For his pleasure begets The Lord's pleasure and begets obedience
He will be pleased with you, so be cautious not to leave him
And accompany whose self [nafs] is a gentle self [nafs]
in this time, for the selves [nafs] are generally despairing
of them, and their craft is underestimated by the people
And know that the people's Path needs study
and the state who claims it today is as you see.
If they distance me, because of their affection,
I should grieve for what I suffer due to parting with them
due to my breaking from them after accompanying them
When will I see them, and how will I reach seeing them
or reach my ear hearing news about them?
My lagging behind prevents me from being suitable for them
My origins are from them, so blame me, I do not blame them
O Lord, please grant me piety to be suitable to befriend them
I have no one, and how is it possible for the like of me to compete with them
over resources in which I did not know impurity?
Their traits are venerated beyond being countable
their appearances have pointed to their hidden inners
their glory is through obeying The Lord in this world
I love them and shelter them and prefer them
in my heart; specially a group of them.
They have become superior above other people by obediences
their companion adopts proper manners [adab] from them
and how unlucky is he who misses their company
A people with noble characteristics - wherever they sit,
the place continues to be fragrant with their traces
So devote to them and do not part with them and increase in attachment
and if you miss them, then weep out of sorrow
They are a clan who honor whoever relates to them
Sufism presents gifts from their manners and traits.
Their perfect harmony from them delights the eye
I 'wagged the tail' of pride of love because of them
when they accepted me as a slave of their love
and their right to their love I never forget
They are the people I love and my loved ones who
proudly boast dragging the tails of honor
I cut my heart to pieces composing poetry in their love
and I have begged The Lord by them, desiring
that The Lord forgives me together with all the Muslims
I am still united with and connected to them in Allah,
and our sins there by Him forgiven and pardoned
O whoever was in this council with us
please ask The Lord to wipe our sins,
and pray for the one who 'fived' the beautiful original
And then prayers upon the selected one, Sayyidina
Mohammed, the best of whoever fulfilled and whoever pledged
~ Ibn Arabi, Modification Of The R Poem
,#NFDB
97:Look! What wonders the spring has wrought! The river bank is a paradise! Rose-embowered glades, Blossoming jasmine and hyacinth, And violets, the envy of the skies!. Rainbow colours transformed Into a chorus of rapturous sounds, And the harmony of flowers The hillside is carnation-red; In the languid haze, the air Seems drunk with the beauty of life! The brook, on the heights of the hill, Dances to its own music. The world is dizzy in a pageant of colour! My rosy-cheeked Cup-bearer! The voice of spring is the voice of life! But the spring lasts not for ever; So bring me the cup that tears all veils -- The wine that brightens life -- The wine that intoxicates the world -- The wine in which flows The music of everlasting life, The wine that reveals eternity's secret. Unveil the secrets, O Saqi. Look! The world has changed apace! New are the songs, and new is the music; The West's magic has dissolved; The West's magicians are bewildered; Old politics has lost its game; The world is tired of kings; Gone are the days of the rich; Gone is the jugglery of old; Awake is China's sleeping giant; The Himalayas' torrents are unleashed; Sinai is riven; Moses awaits the light divine. The Muslim says that God is One But his heart is Still a heathen: Culture, sufism, rites and rthetoric, All adore non- Arab idols; The truth was lost in trifles, And the nation was lost in conventions. The speaker's rhetoric is enchanting, But is devoid of passion; It is clothed in logic neat, But lost in a maze of words; The sufi, unique in the love of truth, Unique in the love of God, Was lost in un-Islamic thought; Was lost in the hierarchic quest; The fire of love is extinguished, And a Muslim is a heap of ashes, O Saqi! Give me the old wine again! Let the potent cup go round! Let me soar on the wings of love; Make my dust bright-pinioned; Make wisdom free; And make the young guide the old; Thou it is that nourishest. this nation; Thou it is that canst sustain it; Urge them to move, to stir; Give them Ali's heart; give them Siddiq's passion; Let the same old love pierce their hearts; Awaken in them a burning zeal; Let the stars throw down their spears, And let the earth's dwellers tremble Give the young a passion that consumes; Give them my vision, my love of God; Free my boat from the whirlpool's grip, And make it move forward-, Reveal to me the secrets of life, For thou knowest them all; The treasures of a fakir like me Are suffused, unsleeping eyes, And secret yearnings of the heart-, My anguished sighs at night, My solitude in the world of men, My hopes and my fears, My quest untiring, My nature an arena of thought A mirror of the world. My heart a battlefield of life, With armies of suspicion, And bastions of certitude; With these treasures I am More rich than the richest of all. Let the young join my throng, And let them find an anchor of hope. The sea of life has its ebb and flow-, In every atom's heart is the pulse of life; It manifests itself in the body, As a flame conceals a wave of smoke; Contact with the earth was harsh for it, But it liked the labour; It is in motion, and not in motion; Tired of the elements' shackles; A unity, imprisoned by plurality; But always unique, unequalled. It has made this dome of myriad glass; It has carved this pantheon. It does not repeat its craft For thou art not me, and I am not thou; It has created the world of men, And remains in solitude, Its brightness is seen in the stars, And in the lustre of pearls-, To it belong the wildernesses, The flowers and the thorns; Mountains sometimes are shaken by its might; It captures angels and nymphs; It makes the eagle pounce on a prey, And leave a blood-stained body. Every atom throbs with life; Rest is an illusion; Life's journey pauses not, For every moment is a new glory; Life, thou thinkest, is a mystery; Life is a delight in eternal flight; Life has seen many ups and downs; It loves a journey, not a goal. Movement is life's being; Movement is truth, pause is a mirage. Life's enjoyment is in perils, In facing ups and downs; In the world beyond Life stalked for death, But the impulse to procreate Peopled the world of man and beast. Flowers blossomed and dropped From this tree of life. Fools think life is ephemeral; Life renews itself for ever -- Moving fast as a flash, Moving to eternity in a breath; Time, a chain of days and nights, Is the ebb and flow of breath. This flow of breath is like a sword, Selfhood is its sharpness; Selfhood is the secret of life; It is the world's awakening, Selfhood is solitary, absorbed, An ocean enclosed in a drop; It shines in light and in darkness, Existent in, but away from, thee and me. The dawn of life behind it, eternity before, It has no frontiers before, no frontiers behind. Afloat on the river of time, Bearing the buffets of the waves, Changing the course of its quest, Shifting its glance from time to time; For it a hill is a grain of sand, Mountains are shattered by its blows; A journey is its beginning and end, And this is the secret of its being. It is the moon's beam, the spark in the flint, Colourless itself, though infused with colours, No concern has it with the calculus of space, With linear time's limits, with the finitude of life. It manifested itself in man's essence of dust, After an eternity of a strife to be born. It is in thy heart that Selfhood has an abode, As heaven has its abode in the cornea of thy eye. To one who guards his Selfhood, The living that demeans it, is poison; He accepts only a living, That keeps his self- esteem; Keep away from royal pomp, Keep thy Selfhood free; Thou shouldst bow in prayer, Not bow to a human being. This myriad-coloured world, Under the sentence of death, This world of sight and sound, I Where life means eating and drinking, Is Selfhood's initial stage; It is not thy abode, O traveller! This dust-bowl is not the source of thy fire; The world is for thee, not thou for the world. Demolish this illusion of' time and space; Selfhood is the Tiger of God, the world is its prey; The earth is its prey, the heavens are its prey; Other worlds there are, still awaiting birth, The earth-born are not the centre of all life; They all await thy assault, Thy cataclysmic thought and deed; Days and nights revolve, To reveal thy Selfhood to thee; Thou art the architect of the world. Words fail to convey the truth; Truth is the mirror, words its shade; Though the breath is a burning flame, The flame has limited bounds. 'If now I soar any farther, The vision will sear my wings.'
~ Allama Muhammad Iqbal, To the Saqi (from Baal-i-Jibreel)
,#NFDB
3 Integral Yoga
2 Philosophy
1 Poetry
2 Aldous Huxley
2 A B Purani
2 The Perennial Philosophy
2 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
0 1963-06-15, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Hes a man who could have practiced some Tantrism in the way Woodroffe did; I cant say. There are also many people of that kind who were converted to Sufism they are very easily converted to Sufism. But true spiritual life, there arent many.
He has written three volumes entitled Gnosis.
02.01 - Metaphysical Thought and the Supreme Truth, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This, you will see, answers your point about the Western thinkers, Bradley and others, who have arrived through intellectual thinking at the idea of an "Other beyond Thought" or have even, like Bradley, tried to express their conclusions about it in terms that recall some of the expressions in the Arya. The idea in itself is not new; it is as old as the Vedas. It was repeated in other forms in Buddhism, Christian Gnosticism, Sufism. Originally, it was not discovered by intellectual speculation, but by the mystics following an inner spiritual discipline. When, somewhere between the seventh and fifth centuries B.C., men began both in the East and West to intellectualise knowledge, this Truth survived in the East; in the West, where the intellect began to be accepted as the sole or highest instrument for the discovery of
Truth, it began to fade. But still it has there too tried constantly to return; the Neo-Platonists brought it back, and now, it appears, the Neo-Hegelians and others (e.g., the Russian Ouspensky and one or two German thinkers, I believe) seem to be reaching after it. But still there is a difference.
1.04 - GOD IN THE WORLD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
It is in the Indian and Far Eastern formulations of the Perennial Philosophy that this subject is most systematically treated. What is prescribed is a process of conscious discrimination between the personal self and the Self that is identical with Brahman, between the individual ego and the Buddha-womb or Universal Mind. The result of this discrimination is a more or less sudden and complete revulsion of consciousness, and the realization of a state of no-mind, which may be described as the freedom from perceptual and intellectual attachment to the ego-principle. This state of no-mind exists, as it were, on a knife-edge between the carelessness of the average sensual man and the strained over-eagerness of the zealot for salvation. To achieve it, one must walk delicately and, to maintain it, must learn to combine the most intense alertness with a tranquil and self-denying passivity, the most indomitable determination with a perfect submission to the leadings of the spirit. When no-mind is sought after by a mind, says Huang Po, that is making it a particular object of thought. There is only testimony of silence; it goes beyond thinking. In other words, we, as separate individuals, must not try to think it, but rather permit ourselves to be thought by it. Similarly, in the Diamond Sutra we read that if a Bodhisattva, in his attempt to realize Suchness, retains the thought of an ego, a person, a separate being, or a soul, he is no longer a Bodhisattva. Al Ghazzali, the philosopher of Sufism, also stresses the need for intellectual humbleness and docility. If the thought that he is effaced from self occurs to one who is in fana (a term roughly corresponding to Zens no-mind, or mushin), that is a defect. The highest state is to be effaced from effacement. There is an ecstatic effacement-from-effacement in the interior heights of the Atman-Brahman; and there is another, more comprehensive effacement-from-effacement, not only in the inner heights, but also in and through the world, in the waking, everyday knowledge of God in his fulness.
A man must become truly poor and as free from his own creaturely will as he was when he was born. And I tell you, by the eternal truth, that so long as you desire to fulfill the will of God and have any hankering after eternity and God, for just so long you are not truly poor. He alone has true spiritual poverty who wills nothing, knows nothing, desires nothing.
1.13 - SALVATION, DELIVERANCE, ENLIGHTENMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Much of the literature of Sufism is poetical. Sometimes this poetry is rather strained and extravagant, sometimes beautiful with a luminous simplicity, sometimes darkly and almost disquietingly enigmatic. To this last class belong the utterances of that Moslem saint of the tenth century, Niffari the Egyptian. This is what he wrote on the subject of salvation.
God made me behold the sea, and I saw the ships sinking and the planks floating; then the planks too were submerged. And God said to me, Those who voyage are not saved. And He said to me, Those who, instead of voyaging, cast themselves into the sea, take a risk. And He said to me, Those who voyage and take no risk shall perish. And He said to me, The surface of the sea is a gleam that cannot be reached. And the bottom is a darkness impenetrable. And between the two are great fishes, which are to be feared.
1.ami - To the Saqi (from Baal-i-Jibreel), #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Naeem Siddiqui Original Language Urdu Look! What wonders the spring has wrought! The river bank is a paradise! Rose-embowered glades, Blossoming jasmine and hyacinth, And violets, the envy of the skies!. Rainbow colours transformed Into a chorus of rapturous sounds, And the harmony of flowers The hillside is carnation-red; In the languid haze, the air Seems drunk with the beauty of life! The brook, on the heights of the hill, Dances to its own music. The world is dizzy in a pageant of colour! My rosy-cheeked Cup-bearer! The voice of spring is the voice of life! But the spring lasts not for ever; So bring me the cup that tears all veils -- The wine that brightens life -- The wine that intoxicates the world -- The wine in which flows The music of everlasting life, The wine that reveals eternity's secret. Unveil the secrets, O Saqi. Look! The world has changed apace! New are the songs, and new is the music; The West's magic has dissolved; The West's magicians are bewildered; Old politics has lost its game; The world is tired of kings; Gone are the days of the rich; Gone is the jugglery of old; Awake is China's sleeping giant; The Himalayas' torrents are unleashed; Sinai is riven; Moses awaits the light divine. The Muslim says that God is One But his heart is Still a heathen: Culture, Sufism, rites and rthetoric, All adore non- Arab idols; The truth was lost in trifles, And the nation was lost in conventions. The speaker's rhetoric is enchanting, But is devoid of passion; It is clothed in logic neat, But lost in a maze of words; The sufi, unique in the love of truth, Unique in the love of God, Was lost in un-Islamic thought; Was lost in the hierarchic quest; The fire of love is extinguished, And a Muslim is a heap of ashes, O Saqi! Give me the old wine again! Let the potent cup go round! Let me soar on the wings of love; Make my dust bright-pinioned; Make wisdom free; And make the young guide the old; Thou it is that nourishest. this nation; Thou it is that canst sustain it; Urge them to move, to stir; Give them Ali's heart; give them Siddiq's passion; Let the same old love pierce their hearts; Awaken in them a burning zeal; Let the stars throw down their spears, And let the earth's dwellers tremble Give the young a passion that consumes; Give them my vision, my love of God; Free my boat from the whirlpool's grip, And make it move forward-, Reveal to me the secrets of life, For thou knowest them all; The treasures of a fakir like me Are suffused, unsleeping eyes, And secret yearnings of the heart-, My anguished sighs at night, My solitude in the world of men, My hopes and my fears, My quest untiring, My nature an arena of thought A mirror of the world. My heart a battlefield of life, With armies of suspicion, And bastions of certitude; With these treasures I am More rich than the richest of all. Let the young join my throng, And let them find an anchor of hope. The sea of life has its ebb and flow-, In every atom's heart is the pulse of life; It manifests itself in the body, As a flame conceals a wave of smoke; Contact with the earth was harsh for it, But it liked the labour; It is in motion, and not in motion; Tired of the elements' shackles; A unity, imprisoned by plurality; But always unique, unequalled. It has made this dome of myriad glass; It has carved this pantheon. It does not repeat its craft For thou art not me, and I am not thou; It has created the world of men, And remains in solitude, Its brightness is seen in the stars, And in the lustre of pearls-, To it belong the wildernesses, The flowers and the thorns; Mountains sometimes are shaken by its might; It captures angels and nymphs; It makes the eagle pounce on a prey, And leave a blood-stained body. Every atom throbs with life; Rest is an illusion; Life's journey pauses not, For every moment is a new glory; Life, thou thinkest, is a mystery; Life is a delight in eternal flight; Life has seen many ups and downs; It loves a journey, not a goal. Movement is life's being; Movement is truth, pause is a mirage. Life's enjoyment is in perils, In facing ups and downs; In the world beyond Life stalked for death, But the impulse to procreate Peopled the world of man and beast. Flowers blossomed and dropped From this tree of life. Fools think life is ephemeral; Life renews itself for ever -- Moving fast as a flash, Moving to eternity in a breath; Time, a chain of days and nights, Is the ebb and flow of breath. This flow of breath is like a sword, Selfhood is its sharpness; Selfhood is the secret of life; It is the world's awakening, Selfhood is solitary, absorbed, An ocean enclosed in a drop; It shines in light and in darkness, Existent in, but away from, thee and me. The dawn of life behind it, eternity before, It has no frontiers before, no frontiers behind. Afloat on the river of time, Bearing the buffets of the waves, Changing the course of its quest, Shifting its glance from time to time; For it a hill is a grain of sand, Mountains are shattered by its blows; A journey is its beginning and end, And this is the secret of its being. It is the moon's beam, the spark in the flint, Colourless itself, though infused with colours, No concern has it with the calculus of space, With linear time's limits, with the finitude of life. It manifested itself in man's essence of dust, After an eternity of a strife to be born. It is in thy heart that Selfhood has an abode, As heaven has its abode in the cornea of thy eye. To one who guards his Selfhood, The living that demeans it, is poison; He accepts only a living, That keeps his self- esteem; Keep away from royal pomp, Keep thy Selfhood free; Thou shouldst bow in prayer, Not bow to a human being. This myriad-coloured world, Under the sentence of death, This world of sight and sound, I Where life means eating and drinking, Is Selfhood's initial stage; It is not thy abode, O traveller! This dust-bowl is not the source of thy fire; The world is for thee, not thou for the world. Demolish this illusion of' time and space; Selfhood is the Tiger of God, the world is its prey; The earth is its prey, the heavens are its prey; Other worlds there are, still awaiting birth, The earth-born are not the centre of all life; They all await thy assault, Thy cataclysmic thought and deed; Days and nights revolve, To reveal thy Selfhood to thee; Thou art the architect of the world. Words fail to convey the truth; Truth is the mirror, words its shade; Though the breath is a burning flame, The flame has limited bounds. 'If now I soar any farther, The vision will sear my wings.' <
2.01 - On Books, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo: The Mahomedan or Islamic culture hardly gave anything to the world which may be said to be of fundamental importance and typically its own. Islamic culture was mainly borrowed from others. Their mathematics and astronomy and other subjects were derived from India and Greece. It is true they gave some of these things a new turn. But they have not created much. Their philosophy and their religion are very simple and what they call Sufism is largely the result of gnostics who lived in Persia, and they are the logical outcome of that school of thought largely touched by Vedanta.
I have, however, mentioned that Islamic culture contributed the Indo-Saracenic architecture to Indian culture. I do not think it has done anything more in India of cultural value. It gave some new forms to art and poetry. Its political institutions were always semi-barbaric.
--
I believe he has been influenced by Sufism. But his general thesis is quite tenable: that is to say, right up to the beginning of the modernist period the poets, at least most of them, seem to have some perception or experience of other subtler worlds. They admit the existence of those worlds in some way. They sometimes even assert that this world is an illusion.
Only, his estimate of Bridges is one-sided. Probably, he wrote it at a time when Bridges was the craze, or when the Testament of Beauty was enthusiastically welcomed. I never thought much of his poetry, even in those early days, from what I saw of quotations from him. He is never rhythmical except when he rhymes. In his blank verse he is intolerable. Even the quotations given in this book are prosaic. Hardy is very good at times, at others he slips into want of rhythm.
2.25 - List of Topics in Each Talk, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
| 12-09-23 | Islamic civilisation and The Synthesis of Yoga, Sufism |
| 10-10-23 | Fitness for Yoga, The Yoga and Its Objects, Bhakti and Grace |
--
| 08-04-43 | Mehdi Imam's Poetry of the Invisible, Sufism, poetic criticism |
| 05-05-43 | Sisir Kumar Maitra's article on Kathopanishad: 'Value', attaining the Eternal |
Blazing P3 - Explore the Stages of Postconventional Consciousness, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
of Buddhism, the samadhi of yoga, the satori of Zen, the fana of Sufism, the shema of the
Kabbalah, and the Kingdom of Heaven of Christianity.
--- Overview of noun sufism
The noun sufism has 1 sense (no senses from tagged texts)
1. Sufism ::: (Islamic mysticism)
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun sufism
1 sense of sufism
Sense 1
Sufism
=> mysticism, religious mysticism
=> religion, faith, religious belief
=> belief
=> content, cognitive content, mental object
=> cognition, knowledge, noesis
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
=> theological virtue, supernatural virtue
=> cardinal virtue
=> virtue
=> good, goodness
=> morality
=> quality
=> attribute
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun sufism
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun sufism
1 sense of sufism
Sense 1
Sufism
=> mysticism, religious mysticism
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun sufism
1 sense of sufism
Sense 1
Sufism
-> mysticism, religious mysticism
=> quietism
=> Sufism
--- Grep of noun sufism
sufism
Wikipedia - Al-Risala al-Qushayriyya -- Treatise on Sufism by al-Qushayri
Wikipedia - Arcs of Descent and Ascent -- Ontological circle in Neoplatonism, Islam and Sufism
Wikipedia - Category:Scholars of Sufism
Wikipedia - Category:Sufism in Afghanistan
Wikipedia - Category:Sufism in Africa
Wikipedia - Category:Sufism in Algeria
Wikipedia - Category:Sufism in Pakistan
Wikipedia - Category:Sufism in Sindh
Wikipedia - Category:Sufism stubs
Wikipedia - Category:Sufism
Wikipedia - Category:Western Sufism
Wikipedia - Fana (Sufism) -- Annihilation of self in Sufism
Wikipedia - Hijab (Sufism)
Wikipedia - History of Sufism
Wikipedia - Hu (Sufism)
Wikipedia - Index of Sufism-related articles -- Wikipedia index
Wikipedia - Jhulelal (Sufism)
Wikipedia - Langar (Sufism)
Wikipedia - Mast (Sufism)
Wikipedia - Mushahada -- Concept in Sufism
Wikipedia - Pirani (Sufism)
Wikipedia - Pir (Sufism)
Wikipedia - Rabbani (Sufism)
Wikipedia - Sajjada nashin -- Successor in Sufism
Wikipedia - Salka (Sufism)
Wikipedia - Sama (Sufism)
Wikipedia - Shaykh of Sufism
Wikipedia - Sheikh (Sufism)
Wikipedia - Sufi Ruhaniat International -- Stream of Universal Sufism
Wikipedia - Sufism in Afghanistan -- Sufism in Afghanistan
Wikipedia - Sufism in Algeria
Wikipedia - Sufism in India -- History of Islamic mysticism in India
Wikipedia - Sufism in Pakistan -- history of Islamic mysticism in Pakistan
Wikipedia - Sufism in Sindh
Wikipedia - Sufism
Wikipedia - Tariqa -- School or order of Sufism
Wikipedia - Template talk:Sufism-stub
Wikipedia - Template talk:Sufism
Wikipedia - Template talk:Western Sufism
Wikipedia - Universal Sufism
Wikipedia - Warid (Sufism)
Wikipedia - Wassil (Sufism)
Wikipedia - Western Sufism -- A new religious movement with its origins in traditional Sufism
Wikipedia - Wird (Sufism)
Wikipedia - Wujud -- Term in Islamic philosophy and Sufism
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1171550.The_Biographical_Tradition_in_Sufism
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13199357-the-book-of-ascension-to-the-essential-truths-of-sufism
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/142138.Merton_Sufism
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/144931.What_is_Sufism_
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15730879-techings-of-sufism
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16779807-sufism-for-non-sufis
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1787607.Sufism
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19325969-women-of-sufism
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21121753-sufism-and-surrealism
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22150923-sufism-and-american-literary-masters
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23968812-sufism-and-american-literary-masters
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24998778-the-shambhala-guide-to-sufism
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/261031.Sufism
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/266124.The_Man_of_Light_in_Iranian_Sufism
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28127051-sufism-and-islamic-society
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3602192-sufism-and-theology
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4722821-idea-of-personality-in-sufism
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/520859.Sufism
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/525868.Women_of_Sufism
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/553352.Sufism_Good_Character
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/586578.Essential_Sufism
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/660747.Sufism_and_Islam
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/726715.Sufism_and_Taoism
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/762229.The_Heart_of_Sufism
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/803729.Sufism
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9314540-realities-of-sufism
http://it.religion.wikia.com/wiki/Sufismo
https://religion.wikia.org/de/wiki/Sufismus
https://religion.wikia.org/es/wiki/Sufismo
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Asceticism#Sufism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Sufism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Sufism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Religious_experience#Sufism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#Additional_reading
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#Ali_ibn_Abi_Talib
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#Basic_views
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#Bayazid_Bastami
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#Contemporary_Sufism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#Contributions_to_other_domains_of_scholarship
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#Dhikr
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#Etymology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#External_links
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#Formalization_of_doctrine
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#Growth_of_Sufi_influence_in_Islamic_cultures
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#History_of_Sufism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#Ibn_Arabi
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#In_movies
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#In_music
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#In_popular_culture
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#Islam_and_Sufism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#Islamic_positions_on_non-Islamic_Sufi_groups
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#Junayd_Baghdadi
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#Mansur_al-Hallaj
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#Muraqaba
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#Nooruddeen_Abul_Hasan_Ali_Ash_Shadhili
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#Origins
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#Perception_outside_Islam
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#Preeminent_Sufi_Sheikhs
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#Reception
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#References
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#See_also
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#Sufi_cosmology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#Sufi_practices
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#Sufism_and_Islamic_law
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#Sufi_Visitation
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#The_influence_of_Sufism_on_Judaism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#Theoretical_perspectives_in_Sufism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#Traditional_and_non-traditional_Sufi_groups
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sufism#Traditional_Islamic_thought_and_Sufism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Sufism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Universal_Sufism
Kheper - Bektashiya -- 15
Kheper - Chistiyyah -- 4
Kheper - cosmology_and_psychology -- 19
Kheper - cosmology -- 32
Kheper - Sufism -- 39
Kheper - Ibn_Arabi -- 12
Kheper - introduction -- 5
Kheper - lataif -- 27
Kheper - latifa -- 20
Kheper - links -- 23
Kheper - Rumi -- 5
Kheper - Sufism -- 15
Kheper - Universal_Sufism -- 12
Kheper - Universal_Sufism -- 40
Kheper - Zevi_and_Sufism -- 31
Integral World - The Science of Sufism, Zakariyya Ishaq
https://thoughtsandvisions-searle88.blogspot.com/2012/10/sufism_16.html
https://thoughtsandvisions-searle88.blogspot.com/2012/10/sufism.html
https://esotericotherworlds.blogspot.com/2014/04/neo-sufism-case-of-idries-shah.html
Dharmapedia - Sufism
Psychology Wiki - Fanaa_(Sufism)
Psychology Wiki - Sufism
Psychology Wiki - Sufism#Sufi_psychology
Occultopedia - sufism
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sufism
https://peace.fandom.com/wiki/Sufism
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Sufism
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Sufism
Fana (Sufism)
History of Sufism
Index of Sufism-related articles
Pir (Sufism)
Salka (Sufism)
Sama (Sufism)
Sheikh (Sufism)
Sufism
Sufism in Afghanistan
Sufism in Bangladesh
Sufism in India
Sufism in Pakistan
Sufism in Punjab
Western Sufism
Wird (Sufism)
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