Sufi
Mysticism
subject
Sufism
Sufism ::: process of attaining closeness to the Creator through love, which is attained by purification of the nafs; tasawwuf
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.
KEYS (10k)
48 Jalaluddin Rumi
37 Kabir
22 Ibn Arabi
17 Hafiz
14 Saadi
11 Hazrat Inayat Khan
8 Imam al-Ghazali
5 Bulleh Shah
5 Abu Hamid al-Ghazali
4 Kahlil Gibran
3 Amir Khusrau
3
2 Sufi Proverb
2 Proverb
2 Mansur al Hallaj
1 Hafez
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
63 Idries Shah
8 Seyyed Hossein Nasr
7 John Green
5 Jalaluddin Rumi
4 Hazrat Inayat Khan
3 Tariq Ramadan
3 Dan Eaton
3 Charlotte Kasl
2 Rumi
2 Paulo Coelho
2 Naguib Mahfouz
2 Javad Nurbakhsh
2 Jalaluddin Rumi
1:this too shall pass ~ Proverb, #KEYS
2:Student, tell me, what is God? ~ Kabir, #KEYS
3:Wherever you are is the entry point ~ Kabir, #KEYS
4:I sell mirrors in the city of the blind. ~ Kabir, #KEYS
5:What you seek is seeking you ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
6:The essence of life is in remembering God. ~ Kabir, #KEYS
7:Listen, my friend. He who loves understands. ~ Kabir, #KEYS
8:Give your weakness to one who helps. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
9:Let yourself become living poetry. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
10:A day of silence can be a pilgrimage in itself. ~ Hafez, #KEYS
11:Ants, fighting together, will vanquish the lion. ~ Saadi, #KEYS
12:If there is a paradise on earth, It is this, it is this, it is this ~ Amir Khusrau, #KEYS
13:I am yours. Don't give myself back to me. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
14:Whenever God lays His glance, Life starts clapping! ~ Hafiz, #KEYS
15:Suffering is a gift. In it is hidden mercy. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
16:The ego is a veil between humans and God. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
17:There is no river at all, and no boat, and no boatman. ~ Kabir, #KEYS
18:When you really look for me you will see me instantly. ~ Kabir, #KEYS
19:I know you're tired but come, this is the way. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
20:You've taken away my looks, my identity, by just a glance. By making me drink the wine of love-potion, You've intoxicated me by just a glance; My fair, delicate wrists with green bangles in them, Have been held tightly by you with just a glance. I give my life to you, Oh my cloth-dyer, You've dyed me in yourself, by just a glance. I give my whole life to you Oh, Nijam, You've made me your bride, by just a glance. ~ Amir Khusrau, #KEYS
21:Out of suffering have emerged the strongest Souls; ~ Kahlil Gibran, #KEYS
22:Stay close to anything that makes you glad you are alive. ~ Hafiz, #KEYS
23:The happiness of the drop is to die in the river. ~ Imam al-Ghazali, #KEYS
24:Deliver us, O Allah, from the Sea of Names. ~ Ibn Arabi, #KEYS
25:Good poetry ... makes the universe ... reveal its ... 'secret' ~ Hafiz, #KEYS
26:The remedy against want is to moderate your desires. ~ Saadi, #KEYS
27:Follow my tracks in the sand that lead Beyond thought and space. ~ Hafiz, #KEYS
28:God is the answer to every question. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #KEYS
29:One Thread Only One thread, one thread only! Warp and woof, quill and shuttle, countless cloths and colors, a thousand hanks and skeins with ten thousand names ten thousand places. But there is one thread only. ~ Bulleh Shah, #KEYS
30:I must keep silent. Silent. And let Love describe itself. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
31:Oh, Lord, nourish me not with love, but with the desire for love. ~ Ibn Arabi, #KEYS
32:For millions of years you have slept. This morning, will you not wake? ~ Kabir, #KEYS
33:You carry all the ingredients to turn your existence into joy. Mix them. ~ Hafiz, #KEYS
34:If your eyes are opened, you'll see the things worth seeing. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
35:Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
36:It is not long before those who are obedient in service obtain command. ~ Saadi, #KEYS
37:A truth can walk naked, but a lie always needs to be dressed. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
38:Look at you, you madman! Screaming you are thirsty and dying in a desert, ~ Kabir, #KEYS
39:The desire to know your own soul will end all other desires. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
40:How can the heart travel to God, when it is chained by its desires? ~ Ibn Arabi, #KEYS
41:Sing such a song with all of your heart that you'll never have to sing again. ~ Kabir, #KEYS
42:You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
43:The words that enlighten the soul are more precious than jewels. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #KEYS
44:Where there's a will there's a way To him that will, ways are not wanting ~ Proverb, #KEYS
45:You put your lips upon my forehead, and lit a Holy lamp inside my heart. ~ Hafiz, #KEYS
46:A wise man among the ignorant is as a beautiful girl in the company of blind men. ~ Saadi, #KEYS
47:The lover never despairs. For a committed heart everything is possible. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
48:Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull of that which you truly love. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
49:Although you appear in earthly form, your essence is pure consciousness. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
50:If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished? ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
51:Desire makes slaves out of kings, while patience makes kings out of slaves. ~ Imam al-Ghazali, #KEYS
52:Run my dear, From anything That may not strengthen Your precious budding wings. ~ Hafiz, #KEYS
53:Are you looking for the Holy One? I am in the next seat. My shoulder is against yours. ~ Kabir, #KEYS
54:To be really sorry for one's errors is like opening the door of heaven. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #KEYS
55:Be silent, be silent; savour this timeless moment, speak no more of longing ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
56:I felt in need of a great pilgrimage, so I sat still for three days and God came to me. ~ Kabir, #KEYS
57:No matter how subtle the sleeper’s thoughts become, his dreams will not guide him home. ~ Hafiz, #KEYS
58:Why are you so enchanted by this world, when a mine of gold lies within you? ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
59:God sleeps in the rock, dreams in the plant, stirs in the animal, and awakens in man. ~ Ibn Arabi, #KEYS
60:He who knows the secret of sound, knows the mystery of the whole universe. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #KEYS
61:Let's ask God to help us to self-control for one who lacks it, lacks his grace. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
62:Lift the veil that obscures the heart, and there you will find what you are looking for. ~ Kabir, #KEYS
63:Yes, yes; you’ve read thousands of books but you’ve never tried to read your own self; you rush into your temples, into your mosques, but you have never tried to enter your own heart; futile are all your battles with the devil for you have never tried to fight your own desires. ~ Bulleh Shah, #KEYS
64:If you knew the secret of life, you too would choose no other companion but love. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
65:Time is a factory where everyone slaves away earning enough love to break their own chains. ~ Hafiz, #KEYS
66:All know that the drop merges into the ocean, but few know that the ocean merges into the drop. ~ Kabir, #KEYS
67:You have left Your Beloved and are thinking of others:and this is why your work is in vain. ~ Kabir, #KEYS
68:In silence there is eloquence.Stop weaving and seehow the pattern improves. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
69:I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
70:To pardon the oppressor is to deal harshly with the oppressed. ~ Saadi, #KEYS
71:The severity of the master is more useful than the indulgence of the father. ~ Saadi, #KEYS
72:A lovely face is the solace of wounded hearts and the key of locked-up gates. ~ Saadi, #KEYS
73:The rose and thorn, the treasure and dragon, joy and sorrow, all mingle into one. ~ Saadi, #KEYS
74:Better is the sinner who hath thoughts about God, than the saint who hath only the show of sanctity. ~ Saadi, #KEYS
75:Nothing is so good for an ignorant man as silence; and if he was sensible of this he would not be ignorant. ~ Saadi, #KEYS
76:Whenever you are alone, remind yourself that God has sent everyone else away so that there is only you and Him. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
77:Maybe you are searching among the branches, for what only appears in the roots. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
78:There wouldn't be such a thing as counterfeit gold if there were no real gold somewhere. ~ Sufi Proverb, #KEYS
79:Repeating The Name Of Ranjha Repeating the name of Ranjha I have become Ranjha myself. O call me ye all 'Dhido-Ranjha,' let no one call me Heer. Ranjha is in me, I am in Ranjha, no other thought exists in my mind. I am not, He alone is. He alone is amusing himself. ~ Bulleh Shah, #KEYS
80:Seek the wisdom that will untie your knot. Seek the path that demands your whole being ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
81:The desires of this world are like sea water. The more you drink of them, the more you thirst. ~ Ibn Arabi, #KEYS
82:Turn Your Face Toward Me Turn your face toward me, my dear one, Turn your face toward me! It is you who inserted the hook in me, It is you who pulls the cord. Turn your face toward me! The call to prayer came from your throne in heaven, The sound reverberated in Mecca. Turn your face toward me! Says Bulla, I will not die, Though someone else may. Turn your face toward me! ~ Bulleh Shah, #KEYS
83:I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in darkness, the astonishing light of your own being. ~ Hafiz, #KEYS
84:When you know yourself, your 'I'ness vanishes and you know that you and Allah are one and the same. ~ Ibn Arabi, #KEYS
85:The ground's generosity takes in our compost and grows beauty! Try to be more like the ground. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
86:When someone beats a rug, the blows are not against the rug, but against the dust in it. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
87:Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
88:Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. ~ , 1 Corinthians 13:7, #KEYS
89:A poet is someone Who can pour Light into a spoon Then raise it To nourish Your beautiful parched, holy mouth ~ Hafiz, #KEYS
90:Just sit there right now, don't do a thing. Just rest....You can use my soft words as a cushion for your head. ~ Hafiz, #KEYS
91:Light will someday split you open Even if your life is now a cage. Little by little, You will turn into stars. ~ Hafiz, #KEYS
92:This is how I would die into the love I have for you. As pieces of cloud dissolve into the sunlight. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
93:The profession of love to God which is insufficient to restrain from disobedience to God is a lie. ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, #KEYS
94:Within the Supreme Brahma, the worlds are being told like beads:Look upon that rosary with the eyes of wisdom. ~ Kabir, #KEYS
95:A diamond was laying in the street covered with dirt. Many fools passed by. Someone who knew diamonds picked it up. ~ Kabir, #KEYS
96:Don't open your diamonds in a vegetable market. Tie them in bundle and keep them in your heart, and go your own way. ~ Kabir, #KEYS
97:Do you believe there is some place that will make the soul less thirsty? In that great absence you will find nothing. ~ Kabir, #KEYS
98:The treasure of joy is closer to you than you are to yourself-so why should you go searching from door to door? ~ Sufi Proverb, #KEYS
99:Roam abroad in the world, and take thy fill of its enjoyments before the day shall come when thou must quit it for good. ~ Saadi, #KEYS
100:Remember God so much that you are forgotten. Let the caller and the called disappear; be lost in the Call. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
101:Reading book after book the whole world died, and none ever became learned! ~ Kabir, XXXIII.3 Translated by Charlotte Vaudeville, #KEYS
102:Never have I dealt with anything more difficult than my own soul, which sometimes helps me and sometimes opposes me. ~ Imam al-Ghazali, #KEYS
103:Admire the diamond that can bear the hits of a hammer. Many deceptive preachers, when critically examined, turn out to be false. ~ Kabir, #KEYS
104:Once the seed of faith takes root, it cannot be blown away, even by the strongest wind. Now that's a blessing. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
105:Oh beloved, seeking and searching the seeker is lost. And the ocean has fallen into the dewdrop; now it is impossible to find it. ~ Kabir, #KEYS
106:Why was I born, O God, if not to find Thee? Why do I die, O God, if not to come to Thee? ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, Sayings of Hazrat Khan , #KEYS
107:If it were possible to meet the Beloved while laughing and in a state of comfort, why should one suffer the anguish of separation? ~ Kabir, #KEYS
108:Love does not grow on trees or brought in the market, but if one wants to be "loved" one must first know how to give unconditional love. ~ Kabir, #KEYS
109:Oh Khusrau, the river of loveRuns in strange directions.One who jumps into it drowns,And one who drowns, gets across. ~ Amir Khusrau, #KEYS
110:Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
111:Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper, That we may record our emptiness. ~ Kahlil Gibran, #KEYS
112:Beware! Don't allow yourself to do what you know is wrong, relying on the thought, Later I will repent and ask God's forgiveness. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
113:Verily, the weight of half of disbelief in the world is carried by religious people who made God detestable to His servants. ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, #KEYS
114:The angel is free because of his knowledge, the beast because of his ignorance. Between the two remains the son of man to struggle. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
115:Nada is found within. It is a music without strings which plays in the body. It penetrates the inner and outer and leads you away from illusion. ~ Kabir, #KEYS
116:Sometimes there are two persons who disagree, and there comes a third person and all unite together. Is this not the nature of music? ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #KEYS
117:I am in love with no other than myself, and my very separation is my union... I am my beloved and my lover; I am my knight and my maiden. ~ Ibn Arabi, #KEYS
118:If in thirst you drink water from a cup, you see God in it. Those who are not in love with God will see only their own faces in it. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
119:So long as man clamours for the I and Mine, his works are as naught: When all love of the I and the Mine is dead, then the work of the Lord is done. ~ Kabir, #KEYS
120:If you find it complicated to answer someone's question, do not answer it, for his container is already full and does not have room for the answer ~ Ibn Arabi, #KEYS
121:Many have died; you also will die. The drum of death is being beaten. The world has fallen in love with a dream. Only sayings of the wise will remain. ~ Kabir, #KEYS
122:Remember for just one minute of the day, it would be best to try looking upon yourself more as God does, for She knows your true royal nature. ~ Hafiz, #KEYS
123:That which God said to the rose, and caused it to laugh in full-blown beauty, He said to my heart, and made it a hundred times more beautiful. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
124:This place is a dream. Only a sleeper considers it real. Then death comes like dawn, and you wake up laughing at what you thought was your grief. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
125:The ignorant one does not see his ignorance as he basks in its darkness; nor does the knowledgeable one see his own knowledge, for he basks in its light ~ Ibn Arabi, #KEYS
126:The world is not a courtroomThere is no judge no jury no plaintiff.This is a caravan filled with eccentric beings telling wondrous stories about God. ~ Saadi, #KEYS
127:The aim of the Mystic is to stretch his range of Consciousness as widely as possible, so that he may touch the highest pride and the deepest humility. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #KEYS
128:Be quiet in your mind, quiet in your senses, and also quiet in your body. Then, when all these are quiet, don't do anything. In that state truth will reveal itself to you. ~ Kabir, #KEYS
129:Come and be Love's willing slave, for Love's slavery will save you. Forsake the slavery of this world and take up Love's sweet service. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, translated by Helminski , #KEYS
130:Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing there is a field. I will meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
131:Repeating The Name Of The Beloved ::: Repeating the name of the BelovedI have become the Beloved myself.Whom shall I call the Beloved now? ~ Bulleh Shah, #KEYS
132:Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
133:Know that that which is referred to as other-than-Allah, or the universe, is related to Allah as the shadow is related to the person. The universe is the shadow of Allah. ~ Ibn Arabi, #KEYS
134:Between the poles of the conscious and the unconscious, there has the mind made a swing:Thereon hang all beings and all worlds, and that swing never ceases its sway. (pg. 16) ~ Kabir, #KEYS
135:In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest where no-one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
136:When My Beloved Appears ::: When my Beloved appears,With what eye do I see Him?With His eye, not with mine,For none sees Him except Himself. ~ Ibn Arabi, #KEYS
137:Practice is the act of rehearsing a behavior over and over, or engaging in an activity again and again, for the purpose of improving or mastering it, as in the phrase practice makes perfect. ~ , #KEYS
138:The small man builds cages for everyone he knows While the sage, who has to duck his head when the moon is low, Keeps dropping keys all night long For the beautiful rowdy prisoners. ~ Hafiz, #KEYS
139:I don't think there is such a thing asan intelligent mega-richperson.For who with a fine mind can lookout upon this world andhoardwhat can nourisha thousandsouls. ~ Kabir, #KEYS
140:There can be no rebirth without a dark night of the soul, a total annihilation of all that you believed in and thought that you were. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, Thinking Like The Universe: The Sufi Path Of Awakening , #KEYS
141:Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesnt matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again, come, come. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
142:Patience is not sitting and waiting, it is foreseeing. It is looking at the thorn and seeing the rose, looking at the night and seeing the day. Lovers are patient and know that the moon needs time to become full. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
143:There is a place where words are born of silence,A place where the whispers of the heart arise.There is a place where voices sing your beauty,A place where every breathcarves your imagein my soul. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
144:Study me as much as you like, you will not know me, for I differ in a hundred ways from what you see me to be. Put yourself behind my eyes and see me as I see myself, for I have chosen to dwell in a place you cannot see. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
145:...a man should say to his soul every morning, "God has given thee twenty-four treasures; take heed lest thou lose anyone of them, for thou wilt not be able to endure the regret that will follow such loss. ~ Imam al-Ghazali, The Alchemy of Happiness , #KEYS
146:As long as I talked unceasingly about the Lord,The Lord stayed away, kept at a distance.But when I silenced my mouth, sat very stillAnd fixed my mind at the doorway of the Lord,I was linked to the music of the Word,And all my talking came to an end. ~ Kabir, #KEYS
147:There's a community of the spirit, join it and feel the delight of walking in the noisy street and being the noise. Drink all your passion and be disgraced. Close both eyes to see with the other one. Open your hands if you want to be held. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
148:In God, there is no sorrow or suffering or affliction. If you want to be free of all affliction and suffering, hold fast to God, and turn wholly to Him, and to no one else. Indeed, all your suffering comes from this: that you do not turn towards God. ~ Imam al-Ghazali, #KEYS
149:It is He who is revealed in every face, sought in every sign, gazed upon by every eye, worshipped in every object of worship, and pursued in the unseen and the visible. Not a single one of His creatures can fail to find Him in its primordial and original nature. ~ Ibn Arabi, #KEYS
150:Declare your jihad on thirteen enemies you cannot see -egoism, arrogance, conceit, selfishness, greed, lust, intolerance, anger, lying, cheating, gossiping and slandering. If you can master and destroy them, then you will be read to fight the enemy you can see. ~ Imam al-Ghazali, #KEYS
151:Sometimes you get frightened as a camelSometimes you get stuck in the mud like hunted prey.O young fool, how long will you keep running from yourself?In the end, the thing will happen anyway.Just go in the direction where there is no direction.Go, search there. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
152:Beware of confining yourself to a particular belief and denying all else, for much good would elude you - indeed, the knowledge of reality would elude you. Be in yourself a matter for all forms of belief, for God is too vast and tremendous to be restricted to one belief rather than another. ~ Ibn Arabi, #KEYS
153:Men have such a good opinion of themselves, of their mental superiority and intellectual depth; they believe themselves so skilled in discerning the true from the false, the path of safety from those of error, that they should be forbidden as much as possible the perusal of philosophic writings. ~ Imam al-Ghazali, #KEYS
154:Whoever builds his faith exclusively on demonstrative proofs and deductive arguments, builds a faith on which it is impossible to rely. For he is affected by the negativities of constant objections. Certainty(al-yaqin) does not derive from the evidences of the mind but pours out from the depths of the heart. ~ Ibn Arabi, #KEYS
155:God said to David, "Be not too intimate with men; for two kinds of persons are excluded from My presence: those who are earnest in seeking reward and slack when they obtain it, and those who prefer their own thoughts to the remembrance of Me. The sign of My displeasure is that I leave such to themselves. ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, #KEYS
156:God said unto Jesus, "O Jesus! When I see in My servants' hearts pure love for Myself unmixed with any selfish desire concerning this world or the next, I act as guardian over that love." Again, when people asked Jesus "What is the highest work of all?" he answered, "To love God and to be resigned to His will. ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, #KEYS
157:Don’t go outside your house to see the flowers.My friend, don’t bother with that excursion.Inside your body there are flowers.One flower has a thousand petals.That will do for a place to sit.Sitting there you will have a glimpse of beautyinside the body and out of it,before gardens and after gardens. ~ Kabir, #KEYS
158:Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly and wants to rip to shreds all your erroneous notions of the truth that make you fight within yourself, dear one, and with others, causing the world to weep on too many fine days... The Beloved sometimes wants to do us a great favor: Hold us upside down and shake all the nonsense out. ~ Hafiz, #KEYS
159:"Praise be to God; whose compassion is all-embracing and Whose mercy is universal; Who rewards His servants for their remembrance [dhikr] [of Him] with His remembrance [of them] - verily God (Exalted is He!) has said, 'Remember Me, and I will remember you' - Opening lines from Kitab al-Adhkar wa'l Da'awat of the Ihya ulum ad-Din" ~ Imam al-Ghazali, #KEYS
160:I have a thousand brilliant lies For the question: How are you? I have a thousand brilliant lies For the question: What is God? If you think that the Truth can be known From words, If you think that the Sun and the Ocean Can pass through that tiny opening Called the mouth, O someone should start laughing! Someone should start wildly Laughing Now! ~ Hafiz, #KEYS
161:It is more important to find out the truth about oneself than to find out the truth about heaven and hell, or about many other things which are of less importance and are apart from oneself. However, every man's pursuit is according to his state of evolution, and so each soul is in pursuit of something-but he does not know where it leads him. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #KEYS
162:It is time to put up a love-swing!Tie the body and then tie the mind so that they swing between the arms of the Secret One you love,Bring the water that falls from the clouds to your eyes,and cover yourself inside entirely with the shadow of night.Bring your face up close to his ear,and then talk only about what you want deeply to happen. ~ Kabir, #KEYS
163:One of the gnostics was hungry and wept. Someone who had no tasting (dhawq) in that area censured him for that. The gnostic said, "But Allah makes me hungry so that I might weep. He tests me by affliction so that I might ask Him to remove it from me. This does not lessen my being patient." We know that patience is holding the self back from complaint to other-than-Allah. ~ Ibn Arabi, #KEYS
164:The soul of man is the spark of God. Though this spark is limited on the earth, still God is all-powerful; and by teaching the prayer 'Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven', the Master has given a key to every soul who repeats this prayer; a key to open that door behind which is the secret of that almighty power and perfect wisdom which raises the soul above all limitations. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #KEYS
165:Are you looking for me?I am in the next seat.My shoulder is againstyour own neckYou won't find me in the mosqueor the sadhus temple.You wont find me in holy booksor behind the lips of priests.Nor in eating nothing but vegetablesYou will find me in the tiniest house of time.Kabir says : Student, tell me, what is God?He is the breath inside the breath.... ~ Kabir, #KEYS
166:There, where millions of Krishnas stand with hands folded, Where millions of Vishnus bow their heads, Where millions of Brahmâs are reading the Vedas, Where millions of Shivas are lost in contemplation, Where millions of Indras dwell in the sky, Where the demi-gods and the munis are unnumbered, Where millions of Saraswatis, Goddess of Music, play on the vina— There is my Lord self-revealed: and the scent of sandal and flowers dwells in those deeps. ~ Kabir, #KEYS
167:Creatures perish in the darkenedblind of quest, knowing intimations. Guessing and dreaming they pursue the real, faces turned toward the sky whispering secrets to the heavens. While the lord remains among them in every turn of timeabiding in their every condition every instant. Never without him, they, not for the blink of an eye -- if only they knew! nor he for a moment without them. ~ Mansur al Hallaj, #KEYS
168:You only know the universe according to the amount you know the shadows, and you are ignorant of the Real according to what you do not know of the person on which that shadow depends. Inasmuch as He has a shadow, He is known, and inasmuch as one is ignorant of what is in the essence of the shadow of the form which projects the shadow, he is ignorant of Allah. For that reason, we say that Allah is known to us from one aspect and not known to us from another aspect. ~ Ibn Arabi, #KEYS
169:The Real made me contemplate the light of the veils as the star of strong backing rose, and He said to me, "Do you know how many veils I have veiled you with?""No", I replied.He said, "With seventy veils. Even if you raise them you will not see Me, and if you do not raise them you will not see Me.""If you raise them you will see Me and if you do not raise them you will see Me.""Take care of burning yourself!""You are My sight, so have faith. You are My Face, so veil yourself" ~ Ibn Arabi, #KEYS
170:How many nights have you remained awake repeating science and poring over books, and have denied yourself sleep. I do not know what the purpose of it was. If it was attaining worldly ends and securing its vanities, and acquiring its dignities, and surpassing your contemporaries, and such like, woe to you and again woe; but if your purpose in it was the vitalizing of the Law of the Prophet, and the training of your character, and breaking the soul commanding to evil, then blessed are you and again blessed. ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, #KEYS
171:The Prophet related that when Allah loves the voice of His slave when he makes supplication to Him, He delays the answer to his supplication so that the slave will repeat the supplication. This comes from His love for the slave, not because He has turned away from him. For that reason, the Prophet mentioned the name of the Wise, and the Wise is the one who puts everything in its proper place, and who does not turn away from the qualities which their realities necessitate and demand; so the Wise is the One who knows the order of things. ~ Ibn Arabi, #KEYS
172:Your love renders you impatient and disturbed.With such sincerity you have placed your head at her feet that you are oblivious to the world.When in the eyes of your beloved riches don't count, gold and dust are as one to you.You say that she dwells in your eyes - if they be closed, she is in your mind.If she demands your life, you place it in her hand; if she places a sword upon your head, you hold it forward.When earthly love produces such confusion and demands such obedience, don't you wonder if travelers of the road of God remain engulfed in the Ocean of Reality? ~ Saadi, #KEYS
173:The Names of Allah are endless because they are known by what comes from them, and what comes from them is endless, even though they can be traced back to the limited roots which are the matrices of the Names or the presences of the Names. In reality, there is but one of the Names or the presences of the Names. In reality, there is but One Reality which assumes all these relations and aspects which are designated by the Divine Names. The Reality grants that each of the Names, which manifest themselves without end, has a reality by which it is distinguished from another Name. It is that reality by which it is distinguished which is the Name itself - not that which it shares. ~ Ibn Arabi, #KEYS
174:Where spring, the lord of seasons reigneth, there the unstruck music sounds of itself,There the streams of light flow in all directions, few are the men who can cross to that shore!There, where millions of Krishnas stand with hands folded,Where millions of Vishnus bow their heads, where millions of Brahmas are reading the Vedas,Where millions of Shivas are lost in contemplation, where millions of Indras dwell in the sky,Where the demi-gods and the munis are unnumbered, where millions of Saraswatis, goddess of music play the vina,There is my Lord self-revealed, and the scent of sandal and flowers dwells in those deeps. ~ Kabir, II.57 Translated by Rabindranath Tagore[26], #KEYS
175:To what shore would you cross, O my heart?there is no traveller before you, there is no road:Where is the movement, where is the rest, on that shore?There is no water; no boat, no boatman, is there;There is not so much as a rope to tow the boat, nor a man to draw it.No earth, no sky, no time, no thing, is there: no shore, no ford!There, there is neither body nor mind: and where is the place that shall still the thirst of the soul?You shall find naught in that emptiness.Be strong, and enter into your own body: for there your foothold is firm. Consider it well, O my heart! go not elsewhere,Kabîr says: 'Put all imaginations away, and stand fast in that which you are. ~ Kabir, #KEYS
176:It is ignorance if, when Allah afflicts someone by what gives him pain, he does not call on Allah to remove that painful matter from him. The one who has realization must supplicate and ask Allah to remove that from him. For that gnostic who possesses unveiling, that removal comes from the presence of Allah. Allah describes Himself as "hurt", so He said, "those who hurt Allah and His Messenger." (33:57) What hurt is greater than that Allah test you with affliction in your heedlessness of Him or a divine station which you do not know so that you return to Him with your complaint so that He can remove it from you? Thus the need which is your reality will be proven. The hurt is removed from Allah by your asking Him to repel it from you, since you are His manifest form. ~ Ibn Arabi, #KEYS
177:Similarly, the existence of Allah has multiplicity and the many Names. It is this or that according to what appears from it of the universe which demands the realities of the Divine Names by its development. They are doubled by it and stand in opposition to the unity of multiplicity. It is one by source in respect to its essence, as the primal substance (hayûla) is a single source in respect to its essence, while it has many forms which it supports by its essence. It is the same with Allah through the forms of tajalli which are manifested from Him. So the locii of the tajalli are the forms of the universe, in spite of the intelligible unity (ahadiyya). Look at the excellence of this divine instruction which Allah gives by granting its recognition to whoever He wishes among His slaves. ~ Ibn Arabi, #KEYS
178:Then the matter is as we have confirmed. So know that you are imagination and that which you perceive and of which you say, "It is not me" is also imagination. All of existence is imagination within imagination. True existence is Allah, the Real, in particular in respect to essence and source, not in respect to His Names, because the Names have two meanings. One meaning is His source which is the same as the "Named", and the other meaning is what it indicates and that by which the Name is separate from this other Name, and so distinct. The Ever-Forgiving is separate from the Manifest and the Hidden, and the First is distinct from the Last. Thus it is clear to you that each Name is the same as the other Name, and yet it is not the other Name. Inasmuch as the Name is the same, it is the Real, and inasmuch as it is not it, it is the imaginary Real which we discussed. ~ Ibn Arabi, #KEYS
179:Truth is one, unique, single; it isindivisibly One.And its Oneness, and the knowledge ofthat oneness belongs to him; isplaced in him.Impossible, impossible; it is aloofness,estrangement, separation; he is known onlyby them.Knowledge of One is abstract; single,indivisible.To say one, and to say single is to reachthe attribute; but he, who is one, is beyondattribute.If I say "I," he sends back "I," in answerto my "I". So, "he" is for you and not forme.And if I say Unity is Oneness for hisloneliness, for his being alone, then Iplaced him increation; among things created.And if I say single One, as number one; howcan he comewithinnumber?And if I say, he is One for as theresult of being considered one, being provedOne-then Iplaced limit on him; delimitedhim. ~ Mansur al Hallaj, #KEYS
180:DEFEATDefeat, my Defeat, my solitude and my aloofness;You are dearer to me than a thousand triumphs,And sweeter to my heart than all world-glory.Defeat, my Defeat, my self-knowledge and my defiance,Through you I know that I am yet young and swift of footAnd not to be trapped by withering laurels.And in you I have found alonenessAnd the joy of being shunned and scorned.Defeat, my Defeat, my shining sword and shield,In your eyes I have readThat to be enthroned is to be enslaved,And to be understood is to be leveled down,And to be grasped is but to reach one's fullnessAnd like a ripe fruit to fall and be consumed.Defeat, my Defeat, my bold companion,You shall hear my songs and my cries and my silences,And none but you shall speak to me of the beating of wings,And urging of seas,And of mountains that burn in the night,And you alone shall climb my steep and rocky soul.Defeat, my Defeat, my deathless courage,You and I shall laugh together with the storm,And together we shall dig graves for all that die in us,And we shall stand in the sun with a will,And we shall be dangerous. ~ Kahlil Gibran, #KEYS
181:I have loved in life and I have been loved.I have drunk the bowl of poison from the hands of love as nectar, and have been raised above life's joy and sorrow.My heart, aflame in love, set afire every heart that came in touch with it.My heart has been rent and joined again; My heart has been broken and again made whole; My heart has been wounded and healed again; A thousand deaths my heart has died, and thanks be to love, it lives yet.I went through hell and saw there love's raging fire, and I entered heaven illumined with the light of love.I wept in love and made all weep with me; I mourned in love and pierced the hearts of men; And when my fiery glance fell on the rocks, the rocks burst forth as volcanoes.The whole world sank in the flood caused by my one tear; With my deep sigh the earth trembled, and when I cried aloud the name of my beloved, I shook the throne of God in heaven.I bowed my head low in humility, and on my knees I begged of love, "Disclose to me, I pray thee, O love, thy secret."She took me gently by my arms and lifted me above the earth, and spoke softly in my ear, "My dear one, thou thyself art love, art lover, and thyself art the beloved whom thou hast adored. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #KEYS
182:When love beckons to you follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you. And when he speaks to you believe in him, Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden. For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth...... But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure, Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor, Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears. Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.>p>Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love. And think not you can direct the course of love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course. Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself. But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; And to bleed willingly and joyfully. ~ Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet , #KEYS
183:In the name of Him Who created and sustains the world, the Sage Who endowed tongue with speech.He attains no honor who turns the face from the doer of His mercy.The kings of the earth prostate themselves before Him in supplication.He seizes not in haste the disobedient, nor drives away the penitent with violence. The two worlds are as a drop of water in the ocean of His knowledge.He withholds not His bounty though His servants sin; upon the surface of the earth has He spread a feast, in which both friend and foe may share.Peerless He is, and His kingdom is eternal. Upon the head of one He placed a crown another he hurled from the throne to the ground.The fire of His friend He turned into a flower garden; through the water of the Nile He sended His foes to perdition.Behind the veil He sees all, and concealed our faults with His own goodness.He is near to them that are downcast, and accepts the prayers of them that lament.He knows of the things that exist not, of secrets that are untold.He causes the moon and the sun to revolve, and spreads water upon the earth.In the heart of a stone hath He placed a jewel; from nothing had He created all that is.Who can reveal the secret of His qualities; what eye can see the limits of His beauty?The bird of thought cannot soar to the height of His presence, nor the hand of understanding reach to the skirt of His praise.Think not, O Saadi, that one can walk in the road of purity except in the footsteps of Mohammed (Peace and Blessings be Upon Him) ~ Saadi, The Bustan of Sa'di , #KEYS
184: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.php , #KEYS
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1:Sufism is experiential ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
2:El Sufismo es experiencial. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
3:Sufism is, in operation, pragmatic. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
4:Sufism is known by means of itself. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
5:Sufism is the essence of all religions. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
6:Sufism, in one definition, "is" human life. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
7:El Sufismo es, en funcionamiento, pragmático. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
8:Al Sufismo se lo conoce por medio de sí mismo. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
9:El Sufismo es la esencia de todas las religiones”. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
10:The secret of Sufism is that it has no secret at all'. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
11:Según una definición del sufismo, este "es" vida humana. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
12:As soon as thought is restricted, it ceases to be Sufism. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #NFDB
13:Sufism is transmitted by means of the human exemplar, the teacher. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
14:El secreto del sufismo es que no tiene en absoluto ningún secreto". ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
15:Sufism is that which succeeds in bringing to man the High Knowledge. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
16:Deteriorated science is a cult, so is imitative or deteriorated Sufism. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
17:What you are pleased to call Sufism is merely the record of past method. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
18:People change and needs change. So what was Sufism once is Sufism no more. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
19:Sufismo es aquello que consigue llevar el Conocimiento Superior al hombre. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
20:El sufismo se transmite por medio del elemento humano, es decir del maestro. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
21:El sufismo es transmitido por medio del elemento humano, es decir del maestro. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
22:El Sufismo – según el Sufi – es una aventura viviente, una aventura necesaria. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
23:La ciencia deteriorada es un culto, así como el Sufismo deteriorado o imitativo. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
24:Sufism," according to the Sufi, "is an adventure in living, necessary adventure. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
25:Sufism was formerly a reality without a name: now it is a name without a reality. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
26:Antes el Sufismo era una realidad sin nombre: ahora es un nombre sin una realidad”. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
27:Sufism is, in fact, not a mystical system, not a religion, but a body of knowledge. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
28:Aquello que te complace llamar Sufismo es simplemente la recopilación de un método pasado. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
29:That which is capable of perceiving objective reality is, in Sufism, the human soul (ruh). ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
30:El Sufismo, de hecho, no es un sistema místico, ni una religión, pero un cuerpo de sabiduría. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
31:En el Sufismo, el alma humana (ruh) es aquello que es capaz de percibir la realidad objetiva. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
32:Sufism is the doing in this lifetime what any fool will be doing in then thousand years’ time. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
33:The practice of Sufism is the intention to move toward truth by means of love and devotion. ~ Javad Nurbakhsh, #NFDB
34:Cuando la mente está llena de prejuicios establecidos, no podrá injertar al Sufismo sobre ellos. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
35:When the mind is full of established biases, it will not be able to graft Sufism on top of them. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
36:Sufism is experience, and hence not to be defined – imprisoned – in perennial, static categories. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
37:El Sufismo es el hacer en esta vida lo que cualquier tonto estará haciendo dentro de diez mil años. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
38:We are born of Love.Love is our mother.― Rumi ((( Hugs ♡ ))) ~ Jalaluddin Rumi #Poetry #Sufism #Love #MothersDay, #NFDB
39:La gente cambia y las necesidades cambian. Por ende, aquello que alguna vez fue Sufismo, ya no lo es. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
40:Without Sufism, Islam would not have spread into two thirds of what we call the Islamic world. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr, #NFDB
41:Silence is the language of god.All else is poor translation. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi ~ Jalaluddin Rumi #sufism #poetry #God, #NFDB
42:Sufism is education, in that it has a body of knowledge which it transmits to those who have not got it. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
43:El Sufismo es educación, ya que tiene un corpus de conocimiento que transmite a aquellos que no lo tienen. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
44:You may not appreciate Sufism at first, but once you do you will appreciate it until the end of your days. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
45:No es Sufismo si no cumple su función para ti. Un abrigo deja de serlo si no mantiene a un hombre abrigado. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
46:Sufism, they say, is that which enables one to understand religion, irrespective of its current outward form. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
47:El Sufismo es experiencia, y por lo tanto no algo a ser definido, aprisionado en categorías perennes, estáticas. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
48: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
49:El Sufismo, dicen, es aquello que le permite a uno entender la religión, cualquiera sea su actual forma exterior. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
50:Puede que al principio no aprecies al Sufismo, pero una vez que lo hagas, lo apreciarás hasta el fin de tus días. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
51:Question 3: Why should a person study Sufism?
Answer: Because he was created to study it; it is his next step. ~ Idries Shah,#NFDB
52: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
53:“There are never too many ways to kneel and kiss the earth” ~ Jalaluddin Rumi ~ Jalaluddin Rumi #Earth #Gratitude #poetry #Sufism, #NFDB
54:Por tanto el sufismo no es “Haz como digo y no como hago”, o incluso “Haz como hago”, sino “Experiméntalo y conocerás ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
55:Por tanto el sufismo no es “Haz como digo y no como hago”, o incluso “Haz como hago”, sino “Experiméntalo y conocerás”. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
56: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
57: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
58:Sufism has always had the function of purifying Islamic ethics and that fasting and tazkiya is like lighting a lamp. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr, #NFDB
59:Pregunta 3: ¿Por qué una persona debería estudiar Sufismo?
Respuesta: Porque fue creada para estudiarlo; es su etapa siguiente. ~ Idries Shah,#NFDB
60:Sufism, the "secret tradition," is not available on the basis of assumptions which belong to another world, the world of intellect. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
61:Hace más de mil años, en oriente se escribía que “Antes el Sufismo era una realidad sin nombre: ahora es un nombre sin una realidad”. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
62:El Sufismo es sistematizado sólo por períodos transitorios o limitados; él es principalmente instrumental, no para disfrute o exposición. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
63:El sufismo o "tradición secreta" no se encuentra disponible sobre una base de suposiciones que pertenecen a otro mundo, el del intelecto. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
64: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
65:Sufism is always systematised only for limited or transitory periods: because Sufism is primarly instrumental, not for enjoyment or display. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
66: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
67:True Sufism is resistance: spiritual, intellectual, social, cultural, political and economic resistance. It cannot be, for sure, supporting dictators. ~ Tariq Ramadan, #NFDB
68:“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
69: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
70: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
71: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
72: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
73: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
74: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
75: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
76: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
77: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
78: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
79: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
80: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
81: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
82:El sufismo es experiencial. Las capacidades, incluso aquellas necesarias para aprender más allá de cierto punto, son provocadas por los Sufis, por los propios esfuerzos y lo que resulta de ellos, y por un elemento al cual los Sufis se refieren como lo Divino. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
83: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
84: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
85: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
86: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
87: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
88: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
89: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
90: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
91: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
92: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
93: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
94: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
95: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
96: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
97:Existe la afirmación Sufi de que la verdad no se descubre o mantiene por la mera repetición de enseñanzas. Su comprensión sólo puede mantenerse mediante la continua experiencia de ella. Y es en la experiencia de la verdad donde los Sufis siempre han depositado su confianza. Por tanto el sufismo no es “Haz como digo y no como hago”, o incluso “Haz como hago”, sino “Experiméntalo y conocerás”. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
98: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
99: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
100: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
101: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
102: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
103: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
104: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
105: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
106: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
107: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
108: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
109: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
110: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
111: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
112: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
113: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
114: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
115: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
116: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
117: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
118: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
119:But again we must be
careful to bear in mind that for Ibn Arabi fana is never absolute annihilation ( the failure to do so has been a source of
countless misunderstandings in regard both to Sufismm and to
Buddhism ). Fana and baqa are always relative terms. Accord-
ing to Ibn Arabi, one must always state toward what there is
annihilation, and wherein there is survival, persistence. In
the state of fana, of concentration, of "Koran," in which the
essential unity of Creator and Creature is experienced, the
Divine Attributes become predicables of the mystic ( discrimi-
nation is suspended ). Then we may say not only that the mystic
"creates" in the same sense as God Himself creates ( that is to
say, causes something which already existed in the world of
Mystery to be manifested in the sensible world ), but in addi-
tion that God creates this effect through him. It is one and the
same divine operation, but through the intermediary of the
gnostic, when he is "withdrawn" (fana) from his human at-
tributes and when he persists, survives ( baqa' ) in his divine
attributes. The mystic is then the medium, the intermediary,
through whom the divine creative power is expressed and
manifested. ~ Henry Corbin,#NFDB
120: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
121: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
122: 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
123: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
124: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
125: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
126: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
7
2 Philosophy
2 Sri Aurobindo
2 Aldous Huxley
2 The Perennial Philosophy
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.
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.
Agenda_Vol_4, #The Mothers Agenda, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He's a man who could have practiced some Tantrism in the way Woodroffe did; I can't 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 aren't many....
He has written three volumes entitled "Gnosis."
Blazing_P3_-_Explore_the_Stages_of_Postconventional_Consciousness, #unset, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
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.
Evening_Talks_With_Sri_Aurobindo, #Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
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 it is the logical outcome of that school of thought largely touched by Vedanta.
--
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.
The_Riddle_of_this_World, #unknown, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Vedas. It was repeated in other forms in Buddhism, Christian Gnosticism,
Sufism. Originally, it was not discovered by intellectual speculation, but