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, 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)

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).

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.

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.(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).
