=kit125.txt

KIT 125 - A COMPARISON BETWEEN BUDDHISM AND SUFISM

PART II

NOSTALGIA VERSUS DESIRE

As he surveys the links in the causal chain (pattica samupadha)
leading to the suffering attendant upon existential conditions,
Buddha infers that suffering is due to craving (asava) - normally
rendered as desire - that in turn begets ignorance; whereas
liberation from attachment to "contact" with the world sparks
realization and enlightenment.

Both Buddhism and Sufism see desire as the prime mover leading
towards existence. Desire is considered pejorative in Buddhism,
and liberation from the existential state is coveted.

"The ascetic has given up worldly craving..." 
EVOLA 1951 P 176.

"The ascetic causes the awakening of mindfulness derived from
detachment."
IBID, P 177.

Sufism distinguishes between craving (which is personal) and
nostalgia, whereby one is giving, albeit personal, expression to
the cosmic emotion, and sparking the whole process of existence
(according to the Sufis Ishq'Allah. )

On one hand:

"The real proof of one's progress in the spiritual path can be
realized by testing, in every situation in life, how indifferent
one is."
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN
(UNPUBLISHED ESOTERIC PAPERS)

"All that produces longing in the heart deprives it of its
freedom."
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN

"If you do not rise above the things of this world, they will rise
above you."
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN.

And then the absolute opposite:

"He who arrives at the state of indifference without experiencing
interest in life is incomplete and apt to be tempted by interest
at any moment; but he who arrives at the state of indifference by
going through interest really attains the blessed state..."
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN

How can we reconcile these two objectives pulling us in opposite
directions?

"Indifference gives great power; but the whole manifestation is a
phenomenon of interest. All this world that man has made, where
has it come from? It has come from the power of interest. The
whole creation and all that is in it are the products of the
Creator's interest. But at the same time the power of indifference
is a greater one still, because, although motive has a power, yet
at the same time motive limits power. Yet it is motive that gives
man the power to accomplish things."
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN

"So long as a man has a longing to obtain any particular object,
he cannot go further than that object." 
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN

The very foundation of Sufism, based upon the famous Hadith Qudsi
earmarks "Ishq" (variously translated as desire, love, nostalgia)
as the motivation behind the great achievements of our
civilizations. Ideally, the existential state must have a purpose
other than just offering a leg-up for awakening beyond it. What a
loss of an opportunity to escape from it and thereby neglect all
the enrichment that it offers!

"The soul reaches a stage of realization where the whole of life
becomes to him one sublime vision of the immanence of God. This is
the real exaltation, when one has risen above one's limitation and
has become conscious of the Perfection whom we call God. The
fulfillment of this whole creation is to be found in man."
(THE SUPPLEMENTARY PAPERS OF PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN, THE SUFI
ORDER, USA, P 130)

"It is in man that the divine perfection can be seen." 
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN

"Manifestation is the self of God; but a self that is limited - a
self that makes His perfection known when He compares Himself with
the limited self we call nature. The purpose of the whole creation
is fulfilled in the attainment of that perfection which is for a
human being to attain."
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN.

For the Sufis, realization in life is attained by fulfilling the
purpose of life, which is actuating the splendor behind the
existential level in "building a beautiful world of beautiful
people." In the course of accomplishment new horizons of
meaningfulness reveal themselves.

The purpose of life is attained in the mastery achieved through
accomplishment. ...

However, admittedly, once involved in the rat race, one tends to
forget one's initial motivations and gets entangled in the vicious
circle: greed - unkindness - ignorance.

"A man who has gone through all experiences and has held his
spirit high, not allowing it to be strained, to rise above
everything that seeks to drag it down, that is spirituality."
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN, (1973, PP. 242-243)

Buddha lived as a recluse and founded a monastic order. Christ
said of his disciples, "They are in the world but not of the
world." For Ibn 'Arabi, by cloistering oneself from the world, one
misses out on the divine revelation, because if one can espy what
transpires behind what appears, one will - at least at the first
stage - earmark in the existential realm, signs (ayat) giving
clues to the "intention" behind the human drama. In a second step,
clues to the perfection of the divine, archetypal attributes are
exemplified, albeit imperfectly, in our very human nature. The
exemplar gives a clue to the archetype. Therefore the key is to
see clearly the relationship between the two poles of this
dichotomy.

"Since the ephemeral conditions manifest the form of the eternal,
it is by contemplating the ephemeral that God communicates to us
the knowledge of Himself."
IBN ARABI. ( 1975, P 15).

For the Sufis, as in Advaita Vedanta, reality includes both its
paramount eternal ground and its unfurling in the transient
existential condition of becoming and unbecoming, in their
interrelationship. In Sufism, when considering our contingent ego,
it is always envisioned with reference to this pinnacle "pole" of
our being. It is the categorizing faculty of our finite minds that
sees duality, but in the state of awakening in life, tawhid, these
apparently contradictory propositions can be reconciled in an
antinomy:

"Thou art He without thou." 
IBN'ARABI (1976 4)...

"When thou knowest thyself, thou understandeth that thou art He ."
(Mr. IBID of LOC. CIT. , I presume) (1976, p 16)..

Understand whereby you are He and whereby you are other than He. 
(IBID again, I presume) (1975 I,103, Cf. 1969. p192 ).

LEVELS OF EXPERIENCE, SPHERES OF REALITY

Conceptualization is the first step. Mysticism starts with
experience.

"The God who is intelligible to man is made by man himself, but
what is beyond his intelligence is the reality."
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN

Looking from a loftier vantage point, all the aforesaid depends
upon the level at which our thinking is operating. To make
ultimate sense, we would need to explore these various levels of
our thinking and reconnoiter in particular those levels of
thinking that are bereft of the notion of the personal I, of our
middle range, spacio-temporal windows through which we try to scan
reality. This is what is meant by enlightenment and where the
conjunctions between Buddhist and Sufi views (though not
identical) are remarkable and gratifying.

Both Tibetan Buddhism and Sufism distinguish several levels of
thinking. But we cannot really understand these unless we have
ourselves experienced them.

"He does not disclose Himself to you except to the measure that
your level allows."
(1989, p 105) IBN'ARABI.

The similarity (though not identity) is striking. For each body
one identifies with, there is a corresponding mode of thinking.
There is a Tibetan slogan: "the mind rides the wind". The wind
typifies levels of energy (matter is energy). We might say that
the same reality appears to us in different degree according to
our perspective, that is, to the degree of our insight.

We are talking about various levels of reality evidencing one's
insight. Depending upon one's perspective, one could posit degrees
of "Godness" ranging from an impersonal absolute to an all-
encompassing view of God as the Being of whom the universe is the
body. For our intellect, these two extremes, designated in
Buddhism as the non-become and the become, are designated in
Sufism by Haqq and Khaliq.

RECONCILING THE IRRECONCILIABLES.

Is it possible to extrapolate between these two perspectives?

The Sufi dervishes bear testimony in lofty flights of their souls,
to planes or spheres beyond the existential sphere, where an
infinite plethora of possibilities (Imkan) lie dormant. While
eternal in the principles of their nature, these virtual
archetypes of what is experienced on earth project themselves in
the existential mode, which is transient. Moreover, there is an
ever-recurrent flow from the inexhaustible pool of all
possibilities into the existential realm. The non-manifest
slumbers in the virtuality of possibility.

"There is no thing whose treasuries are not with Us." 
QUR'AN 15-21

"The treasuries of the things are only the possibilities of the
things, nothing else since the things have no existence in their
entities. On the other hand they possess immutability. For in the
state of their nonexistence, things are witnessed by God."
IBN' ARABI. (1989, P 87)

The crucial issue is: whatever interaction these two poles of the
antinomy might entertain.

"He brings them out from the treasuries from existence which we do
not perceive, to an existence which we do perceive."
IBN' ARABI (1989, P 87)

"...Possible things become qualified by existence from behind the
veil of the Divine attributes."
(IBN ARABI, presumably) ETUDES

"For possibility is a prayer, a call to the Necessary being who at
every instant recreates the cosmos in a new form."
IBN'ARABI (1989, P 89)

"In matter, life unfolds, discovers, realizes the consciousness
that has been so to speak buried in it for thousands of years."
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN...

"God is hidden in His creation."
(HIK) (A MEDITATION THEME FOR EACH DAY. P 31)

It is in the manifest realm that it becomes a reality.

According to al Hallaj, God, envisioned as Reality beyond the
existential state, in the solitude of oneness (beyond
multiplicity), projected Himself by dint of form, (although
intrinsically formless) in order to acquire a subsidiary,
supererogatory mode of knowledge that accrued to the knowledge of
the principles of His being, that he embodies eternally ,
presumably adding further sense to this primeval, paramount
knowledge.

"One could equally say: God wishes to see His essence in an all-
inclusive object which, by being endowed by existence summarizes
the divine order, so that He may thus manifest His mystery to
Himself ." 
IBN'ARABI (1975 P 8)

"God discovers His perfection in the imperfection of the
creature... Imagine grasping the bounty in a seed while
contemplating a flower."
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN.

For the Sufis, beyond the existential condition, all possibility
lies in wait as the undertone of the universe; these virtualities
are released in the existential condition out of love rather than
necessity.

"God does not need the world."
QUR'AN. (III, 96)

"He created them to enable them to enjoy existence, to free them
from the constraint of the void." 
IBN 'ARABI (1975 P 146)

=================================================================
================================================================

=================================================================

COMMENTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY: (sa)

As noted hitherto, Ibid and Ovid were first cousins.
Roman aristocrats, of course.
Ovid wrote equisite love poetry, so was obviously a woman.
This may bw inferred from the following grafiti of Pompeii:
"Ibid is livid that Ovid is gravid"

+You read it here first." (USA newspaper slogan, ca. 1920's)

=================================================================

