=kitc22.txt

[ N.B. (sa) -- The italics is back, Jack. ]

CURRICULUM OF THE SUFI ORDER INTERNATIONAL

The teaching of Hazrat Inayat Khan
Presented and paraphrased by Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
Including parallels with the ancient Sufis

LESSON 22
IN SEARCH OF THE DIMENSIONS OF OUR IDENTITY
COMPARISONS BETWEEN BUDDHISM AND SUFISM
WATCHING OUR BODY, OUR MIND AND OUR EMOTIONS

THE SATIPATHANA PRACTICES

In a series of steps outlined in the Satipathana practices, Buddha
enjoins upon us to objectively watch ourselves in several stages:
(i) our body, (ii) our thinking, (iii) our emotions, (iv) our
psyche, (v) eventually our consciousness.

These practices corroborate HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN's teaching; rather
than discarding the existential scenario as in yogic Samadhi, they
orient one to awakening in life.

"You are yourself the object of your realization; for the secret
of all knowledge that one acquires in the world whether worldly or
spiritual is the knowledge of the self."
(HIK),  SOCIAL GATHEKAS

PRACTICE:

See whether you can observe your body, your mind, your emotions
and your personality while identifying with them. Admittedly it is
easier if one thinks of them as 'other' than oneself. You may
notice that in your usual thinking whenever you use the word 'I',
you unwittingly are not clear as to whether you mean your psyche,
your personality or even your body, or whether you mean you as the
observer, that is, your consciousness.

THE FOLLOWING ARE THE STAGES:

THE FIRST STAGE: WATCH YOUR BODY

Consider your body as a transient formation, irrespective of your
conscious or volitional participation, without identifying with
it. That is, consider your body...

EVOLA:
"...as a function of the impersonal forces of the world which
follow their laws with complete indifference to our person."
(EVOLA),  THE DOCTRINE OF AWAKENING, 1951, P. 165

PRACTICE:

Can you envision your body as made of flesh, bone, muscles,
nerves, mucous, hair, etc.? Can you feel your heart, liver and
pancreas? One cannot feel one's body cells, but can you feel a
prodigious jiggling of vibrations, of sparkling and of activity in
your body that eludes your observation and that is obviously
determined by a programming outside of your control? Quite
understandably one has difficulty ascribing a sense of 'me' to
these organs of one's body.

The Sufi View:

Realize that, however inadequate and illusory your notion of
yourself is, your involvement with the matter of the cosmos - of
the galaxies in your body-ness - is important. It is by dint of
experiencing it and through your involvement with it that reality
has accrued to you and has proven enriching. It has become part of
you. Consequently, discounting your body as not being you would
not honor that aspect of you that has accrued through your
involvement with the fabric of the universe.

Buddhism tends to downplay our personal 'I', but although many
body functions are conditioned (to wit our autonomic nervous
system, our digestion, our breathing, our immune system) we can
influence them. We can move our body as we will, we can control
our breath and we can decide what we eat. Our personal will can
act upon our adrenal glands. Our frustration or enthusiasm will
trigger off the activity of the adrenal glands which are
conditioned. There is in us a mind/body connection.

THE SECOND STAGE: WATCH YOUR MIND

PRACTICE:

Watch your thoughts objectively. Catch them as they arise or
recede. They are often provoked by a process of association. More
generally they are conditioned by our ancestry, culture,
upbringing and social environment.

PRACTICE:

Differentiate amongst:

1) Thoughts that may be ascribed to your psyche's regurgitation of
impressions accruing from the environment;

2) Thoughts that represent your psyche's reacting to thoughts
communicated to you from other people;

3) Thoughts in which you reflect your own soul-searchings;
sometimes reverie. (Notice whether new vistas emerge.);

4) Thoughts which seem to arise purely spontaneously, or are
perhaps triggered off by covert impressions or preoccupations, but
cannot simply be considered to be reactions to these;

5) Notice that you cannot truly own your thoughts. Sufis call them
the divine thoughts. You will notice that they span archetypal and
factual meanings. Sufis consider that in our thinking we impinge
upon a whole super-existential level of reality that they ascribe
to the world of metaphor (alam al mithal);

6) At the extreme limit, you may feel that a sudden insight is
revealed to you that you could not possibly have figured out.
Notice that it is not articulated in the form of thoughts, but is
a sudden awakening to a sense of intense meaningfulness
accompanied by an intense ecstatic sensitivity to sheer beauty.

Buddha considers the mind as a formation programmed by the
universe, just like the body, irrespective of any 'I-ness'
whatsoever. Since the personal dimension of our being is
dismissed, anatta: there is no individuality. Our thoughts are
conditioned.

The Sufi View:

Granted, many of our thoughts are predictable, therefore
conditioned, by a programming outside our control, irrespective of
our will or initiative. But these thoughts, which are isomorphic
with the thinking of the universe, are customized by our identity
as an individual.

PRACTICE:

Attempt to espy the thinking of the universe as it percolates
through your thinking. You will find that it is revealed to you in
the measure to which you downplay your personal bias or wishful
thinking.

However, the thinking of the universe coming through us is limited
by the human scope within which we constrain it. We often distort
and even defile it.

The Sufis concur with Buddha in that one creates an inadequate
assessment by limiting one's thinking to that portion of the
thinking of our transpersonal level that emerges at the personal
level like the tip of an iceberg.

THE THIRD STAGE: WATCHING OUR EMOTIONS

MUSIC: Rudra Vina

PRACTICE:

Watch your feelings without identifying with them. Watch how they
arise, escalate, fade away and are replaced by new feelings. Watch
how pleasant, neutral and unpleasant feelings are associated with
perception (see the role of form) with covetousness, with craving.

MUSIC: Bach, St. John's Passion, Lamentation (Bach, Johannes-
Passion, Ensemble Vanitas, Diego Fasolis, ARTS - disc II)

Can you see that what Buddha refers to as contact (actually
perception) with something that arouses covetousness touches off
desire? Buddha calls it craving,tanha, which he considers as a
mania, asava, an intoxication.

Buddha warns that slipping into our notion of our personal
identity (which he considers as illusory) lures one into the
vicious circle of the samsaric wheel of repetitive existence.
Certainly, our concupiscence does lure our being into the
existential world. Therefore he seeks the non-become (the eternal)
rather than the process of becoming (the everlasting).

PRACTICE:

Can you see that one easily slips into identifying oneself as a
discrete individual, oblivious that we are part of the whole
(universe): but, just as Hazrat Inayat Khan points out: a wave has
no existence on its own, it is a condition of the sea; likewise we
are a condition of the Totality of the universe (God).

Can you see that attachment makes one emotionally dependent? By
robbing one of one's freedom it constitutes an emotional
constraint that can trigger off pain.

"Contacts wound...the primitive anguish which lies at the base of
samsaric existence and which produces attachment." 
EVOLA, THE DOCTRINE OF AWAKENING, P. 173.

PRACTICE:

You will be able to ascertain that in many instances one's
desires, including noble ones, are frustrated resulting in
suffering. Actually the most desperate frustration is accepting
that one cannot turn the clock back and that there is no way of
coming back on any action that proved harmful to a fellow being.

MUSIC: Kolnidrei, Capricio Italiano, n 6 (Capriccio italien,
Orchestral favourites, DECCA)

There can be no doubt as to the number of cases of psychological
distress that are due to the frustration of one's desires.
Consequently BUDDHA enjoins his disciple monks to...

"...Watch over the door of the senses."
(BUDDHA),  MAJJH XXVIII

Buddha considers that craving results from ignorance and begets
ignorance, whereas liberation from attachment to 'contact' of the
world sparks realization and enlightenment.

Hence detachment sparks realization.

"The ascetic has given up worldly craving." 
EVOLA, THE DOCTRINE OF AWAKENING, P. 176.

"The ascetic causes the awakening of mindfulness derived from
detachment."
 EVOLA, THE DOCTRINE OF AWAKENING, P. 177.

PRACTICE:

Can you envision that, owing to your birth in the existential
world, you have lost your pre-existential omniscience and slipped
into a state of ignorance, not realizing that your desire has
lured you into a situation that begets suffering?

Moreover Buddha considers that involvement in the state of
becoming is due to identifying with our body or psyche by
succumbing to conditioning.

PRACTICE:

Identify with your body. Now identify with your personality (in
contrast with your trans-personal identity). Can you see that both
of these experience desire which entails engagement in the
ephemeral condition of the existential world?

Detachment would result in:

BUDDHA:
"Upon perceiving a form the ascetic conceives no inclination."
 DIGHA, II 64.

"The ascetic causes the awakening of mindfulness derived from
detachment."
(BUDDHA),  MAJJH, LXXVII

PRACTICE:

That eschewing desire would spare one of the disappointments which
beget pain is a foregone conclusion. However, I presume that you
will, as I do, judge disinterest in the miracle of life whereby
thoughts, emotions and the intention behind the divine programming
are manifested by means of forms in the existential world as
nihilism.

No doubt to eschew being inveigled in the rat race one is
protected by the imperturbility furnished by detachment.

MUSIC: Arvo Part - Tabula Rasa - number 1 Fratres

Buddha seeks disintoxication to heal the wounds of attachment.

The Sufi View:

Disintoxication would prove (as we have said) an anesthetic to
preserve one from pain. But there is also joy in attachment.

MUSIC: Brahms, 4th Symphony

Would detachment not alienate one from the fulfillment enjoyed by
involvement in life - with all its hopes and disappointments, its
challenges and hard lessons, its bewonderment and soul-searching,
its fervor and misgivings, its zeal and toil, its passion and
compassion, its stress and distress, its joy and despair?

While Hazrat Inaazrat Inayat Khan does concur with Buddha that
indifference conveys freedom:

HAZRAT INAYAT:
"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."
(HIK),  SANGITHA I

"All that produces longing in the heart deprives it of its
freedom." 
(HIK), THE GAYAN

"If you do not rise above the things of this world, they will rise
above you."
(HIK),  VOLUME 1

However, HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN cautions:

"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."
(HIK),  SPIRITUAL LIBERTY

How can one reconcile these two objectives pulling one 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."
(HIK),  THE ALCHEMY OF HAPPINESS

"So long as a man has a longing to obtain any particular object,
he cannot go further than that object."
(HIK),  BOWL OF SAKI

Both Buddhism and Sufism see desire as the prime mover leading
towards existence. But whereas in Buddhism desire is considered
pejorative while liberation from the existential state is coveted,
in Sufism our desire understood to embody the divine nostalgia to
actualize those potentialities in Him/Her that are what becomes
us.e/ZShe becomes as us.b 
[ sic., last line garbled]

Sufism distinguishes between craving (which is personal) and
nostalgia whereby one is giving an, albeit personal, expression to
the cosmic emotion sparking the whole process of existence -
according to the Sufis Ishq Allah. The very foundation of Sufism,
based upon the famous Hadith Qudsi, earmarks ishq (variously
translated by desire, love, nostalgia) as the motivation behind
the great achievements of our civilizations.

The Sufis consider divine nostalgia as the catalyst of knowing...

HADITH:
"I was a secret treasure and loved to be known[by knowing
myself]..."

God knows Him/Herself in the principles of HHis/Her being to
witness how they are implemented when applied in the existential
state, in you. But, in addition, they consider divine nostalgia as
a catalyst of love - love for the possibility of you who blessedly
make the application of the originating principles possible.

RUMI:
"If there had not been a desire and hope of the fruit, why did the
gardener plant the tree?" 
(RUMI, QUOTED IN:) CHITTICK, 1983, 67.

"The branch came into existence for the sake of the fruit."
(Rumi, I presume.)

IBN ARABI:
"What He created was for you."
 CF. VALSAN, ET 4/1952, P. 27

"The One who enjoys this independence and has manifested the world
did not manifest it by necessity, but He created beings so that
they may enjoy existence in order to free them from the solitude
of the void and to give them the possibility of acquiring the
divine attributes and to make them His vice-regents. All of this
was done by dint of altruism, because He chose not to remain the
only holder of those things that He gave."
(Ibn 'Arabi, I presume)  CF. VALSAN, LA STATION DE LA FUTUWWAH ET
SES SECRETS, CHAPTER 146 OF FUTUHAT AL-MAKKYA, P. 19

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."
(HIK),  SUFI TEACHINGS

"The fulfillment of this whole creation is to be found in man."
(HIK),  SUPPLEMENTARY PAPERS

"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."
(HIK),  UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAL

MUSIC: Bach, Preludes and fugues, G. Gould

PRACTICE:

Can you earmark in yourself an enthusiasm, an appreciation, for
the bounty that the whole of life offers you: the flowers, the
crystals, a sunrise seen from mountains, the stars, music,
beautiful monuments, lovely people, ingenious technological
inventions, research into meaningfulness.

For the Sufis the existential world is the fulfillment of the
divine desire to manifest and actuate the potentialities latent as
principles or archetypes in the cosmic code.

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.

For Ibn 'Arabi, by cloistering oneself from the world, one misses
out on the divine revelation. 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 one notes
clues as to the perfection of the divine archetypal attributes
exemplified, albeit imperfectly, in our very human nature. The
exemplar gives a clue as to the archetype. Therefore the key is to
see clearly the relationship between the two poles of this
dichotomy.

IBN 'ARABI.
"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

Buddha is seeking freedom - awakening beyond life, while the Sufis
enlist our nostalgia to awaken in life and see what is enacted in
the human drama.

MUSIC: Nathan and Joseph. We Shall Be Healed

Buddha found that since detachment from desire (itself a
conditioning) sparks freedom, it is only when one is free from
conditioning that one can awaken from ignorance.

One would miss out on the sense of attainment gained by the
venture of commitment to one's fellow beings - struggling in the
drama of life, sharing similar fates, being subjected to the same
dangers, trying to live up to one's values, struggling for self-
esteem, confronting iniquity, experiencing solidarity with those
who are victims of erring, feeling humility stemming from
repentance and pride from steadfastness, discovering sacredness
amongst the poor in spirit, upholding belief in an ultimate
meaningfulness and goodness despite proof of the contrary.

Moreover, one would lose the privilege of sharing all that has
been gained by the bounty of our civilizations - the legacy of our
temples, palaces, cathedrals, symphonies, technology, inventions,
our inroads into the sub-atomic and outer space, medicine, our
social institutions, the inexorable advance of our understanding
in wresting the intelligence behind the marvel of our universe,
and our chance of contributing further to our pioneering and
creative spirit by putting ourselves on the line!

Indeed, how could we avail the universe of the bounty lying in
wait in the deep strata of our being unless we put it to the test
of the tune, rhythm, consonances and dissonances of the symphony
of life?

However, the concurrence with Buddhism comes to light when one
sees how easily one gets oneself involved in the proverbial
"tempest in a tea-cup." Furthermore, we react rather than acting
out of an awareness of the ideals of our deeper self. Perhaps the
clue is in the discrimination between the quest for joy and the
quest for felicity. The Sufi dervishes do practice rida,
equanimity (which is often paralleled with the Buddhist samatha
vipassana, imperturbility), adab, nobility in emotional
sensitivity, and akhlaq Allah, the divine manner, as the
conditions conducive to manifesting ishq Allah, divine love.

The difference lies in the fact that the Sufis unfailingly ascribe
emotion to their source, divine emotion, and consider that the
divine emotion is constrained, defiled and distorted at the scale
of the individual. One is always seeing, experiencing and feeling
things from the diametrically opposite vantage point to one's own.

But is this not what Buddhists do when consciousness is no longer
the consciousness of an "I?" Is this not found in Buddha's
teaching where he refers to "uncoupling" the central aspect of
one's being, illustrated by the stump of the tree, from the
samsaric aspect of one's being, illustrated by that part of the
tree that appears above the ground?

According to the Sufis the emotion which one limits within the
confines of the scope of one's consciousness is the personal
dimension of divine emotion at a cosmic scale. The mystic
encompasses this overwhelming emotion when carried beyond
him/herself by divine ecstasy.

"Divinity is the exaltation of the human soul."
(HIK),  (NIRTAN)

MUSIC: Bach Magnificat , Fecit potentiam

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