=kit124.txt

KIT 124 - A COMPARISON BETWEEN BUDDHISM AND SUFISM

PART I

PRINCIPLES

At a time when Buddhism has gained so much acquiescence in the
public eye, and Sufism increasingly intrigues the serious amateurs
in quest of the unknown, an inquiry into their differences and
similarities seems called for. Hence the following study, which is
simply a cursory attempt.

Shall we contrive to consider as complementary that which at first
seemed contradictory? Moreover dare we in the all- encompassing
trend of our day-and-age extrapolate between these apparently
antipodal views, in an integrated picture?

THE CONCEPT OF GOD

At this point, we urgently need to confront the apparently
intractable differences between the Sufi's continual reference to
God and the Buddhists' undogmatic attitude towards the notion of
God. Probing deeper, if we look into the insights gained by the
mystics, rather than basing our judgment on belief systems, the
differences tend to be overbridged more easily.

Granted, in his scruple for not affirming anything on the strength
of belief, Buddha was wary of the popular anthropomorphic
projections paraded as God in his time. Indeed, Buddhism in our
time is still wary of this.

Of course Sufism recognizes our anthropomorphic projections upon
what we ascribe to God.

"Since we know Him by ourselves and of ourselves, we attribute to
Him all that we attribute to ourselves." 
IBN' ARABI (1975, P 16).

On the other hand, Sufism always elicits the counter-proposition
to any proposition by permutation of the terms. Seen from the
antipodal point of view, the counterpart is, therefore:

"He describes Himself to you by yourself. Since the form in which
He discloses Himself in a faith is the form of that faith, the
theophany takes the dimension of the receptacle that receives it,
the receptacle in which He discloses Himself. That is why there
are many different faiths. To each believer, the Divine Being is
He who is disclosed to him in the form of his faith. If God
manifests Himself in a different form, the believer rejects Him,
and that is why the dogmatic faiths combat one another."
H.CORBIN: (1969. P 197).

Should we have a problem with the anthropomorphic connotations of
the word God? Since this is the term used, we could call it 'what
we mean by reality, both known or unknown.' Do we mean 'that which
lies behind the physical cosmos?' Shall we say 'the software
behind the hardware of the universe?' (or do we include the
hardware?) Or do we mean 'that which transcends all human
notions?'

Should we strip that ambivalent idiomatic term "God" of its
anthropomorphic semantics, we would be depriving ourselves of the
wide range of "realness" ascribed to that term.

In Sufism, the term God is looked upon as the antipodal pole of an
antinomy of which what we consider to be our personal self is the
opposite pole. Without this pole, our personal dimension would not
make sense - as in mathematics, where the notion of the unit
presupposes implicitly infinity and infinity presupposes the
notion of the unit. Mathematics would not be possible without
seeing the connection between the unit and infinity.

For Hazrat Inayat Khan, the concept of God, upon which belief may
be grounded, is an indispensable, albeit an unreliable, stepping
stone.

"The man who has no imagination to make a God, and is not open to
a conception of God (even his own) finds no stepping stone to
reach that knowledge which his soul longs for but his doubts
deny."
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN, UNITY (OF RELIGIOUS IDEALS), 1979, p 96)

"It is not wrong to make God in one's imagination the God of all
beauty, free from ugliness and evil, for by that imagination, he
is drawn nearer and nearer every moment of his life to that Divine
Ideal which is the seeking of his soul."
(IBID, PP. 96-97) (loc. cit. sans doubte)


"People ask: "If all is God, then God is not a person". The
answer: though the seed does not show the flower in it, yet the
seed culminates in the flower; and therefore the flower already
existed in the seed." 
(IBID, p 95).

[ (Note (sa); Ibid was a famous Roman poet, first cousin to Ovid ]

"No doubt it would be a great mistake to call God a personality,
but it is a still greater mistake when man denies the personality
of God"
(IBID, p 76).

"Man in the flowering of his personality expresses the personality
of God." 
(IBID, p 76)

THE ANTINOMY: REALITY SEEN AS TRANSCENDENT OR IMMANENT

In his retreat under the Bodhi tree, where Buddha attained
illumination, he found refuge in the "non-become", marking a clear
cleft between the transcendent and immanent,

"This being that becomes from the arising of all of this and this
not becoming." 
(MAJJHIMA NIKAYA II, 32; SAMYUTTA NIKAYA II, 28)

"Exhausted is life - the bond of becoming is destroyed." 
(MAJHH. LXXV)

Does this last statement dismiss the relevance of the existential
condition to the eternal in attaining illumination?

Presumably this may be understood as referring to the incongruity
of allowing oneself to be inveigled in the vain, repetitive,
vicious circle of recurrent birth and rebirth. Suppose we were to
illustrate this in the field of genetics: the seed that emerges
out of the unfurling of a seed would be a similar one unless the
system mutates, which sets the pace of evolution.

"The seed out of which the trunk, branches, leaves, flowers and
fruit are made arises again at the end of the cycle. The same God,
so little of whose perfection manifested in the plant, arises
again and again in its pursuit of excellence trying to emerge as
perfectly as possible in the midst of human imperfection." 
(HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN.)

It is as though, lying in wait, there is a propensity to escape
from the constraint incurred in our understanding by confining our
consciousness to the existential condition.

"The physical body becomes dependent in its experience and
expression, thus making the soul dependent and limited. If the
soul could see independently of the mind and body, it would see
infinitely more."
(1982 - 52) HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN

This may therefore be seen as an emancipation from allowing our
forward thrust to be hampered by our existential condition.

We find this also in Sufism.

"The soul's unfoldment comes from its power, which ends in its
breaking through the ties of the lower planes. It is free by
nature, and looks for freedom during its captivity. All the holy
beings of the world have becomes so by freeing the soul, its
freedom being the only object there is in life." 
( IBID (1979, P 237)).

"One reaches a point where there is not only no awareness of
existence, but no vestige of awareness that you are not aware of
existence." 
JAMI

And paradoxically, the opposite:

"True exaltation of the spirit resides in the fact that it has
come to earth and has realized there its spiritual existence."
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN. (1973 P 242)

"O Thou who art absent there, we have found Thee here. Thou art
nonexistent as Essence, existent in Thy person." 
AL JILI, (1983, p 5)

Actually there is the need for the insight gained by extrapolating
between the inherent knowledge gleaned beyond the existential,
transient condition and the wisdom acquired by 'doing' -
achieving, creating.

"All that one knows of reality is through the Names (qualities),
which are relations occasioned by the entities of the possible
things. If these veils were lifted, unity would erase the
existence of the entities of the possible things, and they would
cease being described by existence, since they only become
qualified by existence through these names." 
IBN' ARABI

And yet

"Knowledge is a veil upon the known."
(HIK, I suppose if not knows)

This then would be the mode of cognizance of the non-become.

"You are the veil over your own eye... In the absence of the
Names, the "Named" would appear."
(HIKMAT UN NURIYA, 
CF ( ETUDES.. 151, 27) IBN'ARABI

The Sufis try to grasp the link between these two dimensions of
our being and, as a matter of fact, of the divine being, pulling
us in two directions: the need for involvement and the need for
freedom, and integrate these complementary bi-poles.

"The soul manifests in the world in order that it may experience
the different phases of manifestation, yet not loose its way, but
regain its original freedom in addition to the experience and
knowledge it has gained in the world."
IBID, p 242

For the Sufis, if we look at things from the personal vantage
point, which is the usual way, all that we know of that reality we
call God is through clues.

"Know that the Essence never reveals itself to you as such, but
only by means of a causal attribute."
(IBN ARABI , I presume) (ETUDES, June 1952 p 186)...

Yet there is a further stage whereby we reverses our vantage-point
so as to try to see things from the divine point of view. It is
only at a very high level that Sufis describe the state of human
realization where God reveals Him/Herself regardless of any clues
as to His/Her nature, and regardless of His/Her experience of
Him/Herself as projected in the cosmos. Sufism acknowledges modes
of knowledge that do not rest upon experience. By shifting the
notion of the personal self, a meaningfulness may be revealed to
the contemplative which he could not acquire by his personal
volition

"The second degree of the Sufi is knowing yourself through the
knowledge that God has of Himself through you." 
IBN' ARABI 

And then Sufis recognize a yet further degree

"At an advanced stage, one learns to grasp God as He is Himself,
rather than the knowledge gleaned of Him(Her)
IBN'ARABI

"Under the decree of silence, God will stay you in your timeless
impersonal vision beyond the transience of words." 
NIFFARI. (1935)

In their view, there must be some relationship between that
intangible reality and its means of manifesting itself, which is
of a transient nature.

The difference between these perspectives could be accounted for
by the contrast between the activity of consciousness, which
experiences reality in the space-time existential state, and the
act of intelligence - the ground of consciousness - that is
endowed with an inherent proto-critic knowledge of the software of
the universe, not bound by the duality of subject versus object
that is found in the activities of consciousness.

"Consciousness must always be conscious of something. When
consciousness is not conscious of anything, it is pure
intelligence."
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN (1979, P 69)..

Buddha ascribes this perspective, rarely reached by a
contemplative, to the plane beyond existence attained through the
practice of the Jhana. (Sangiti Suttana XXXIII, 1965 p 236) and
passing beyond.

As a result, in Sufism, one's logical understanding is continually
taxed by what seems like blatant contradictions. To add enigma to
paradox, one could entertain two complementary (though at first
sight contradictory) views:

"God can only be known by the synthesis of antinomic
affirmations."
ABU SA'ID AL KHARRAZ. (CF. IBN'ARABI 1975 P 36)

It is at its transcendent level of thinking, as Buddhism confirms,
that the mind can overcome these contradictions that aver
themselves to be conceptual.

"At the transcendental level where all intellect-born
contradictions are finally resolved in a state of unimpeded mutual
solution, the Mahayana transcends even its opposition to other
schools, thus revealing its essentially non-conceptual character."
(SANGHARAKSHITA, 1987, p 246).

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