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(Unpublished Esoteric Papers)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 . (1976, p 16)..

Understand whereby you are He and whereby you are other than He. (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.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.

(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)
