Part 8 (2/2)
Who can fathom the word of G.o.d's wise men?
I am neither a Jew, nor Muslim, nor Christian,
Rumi said; and my Islam is not
Dogmatic belief; it is that which is.
O light of the heart, s.h.i.+ning before the Most High,
Which always was and nevermore shall fade.
Frithjof Schuon
Footnotes
1 Martin Lings, What is Sufism (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1975), pp. 22-23. For further discussion of this theme, see our The Other in the Light of the One: The Universality of the Qur'an and Interfaith Dialogue (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 2006).
2 Tim Winter, ”Islam and the Threat of Europe” in World Faiths Encounter, no. 29, 2001, p. 11.
3 This saying, cited in the collections of al-Tirmidhi and Ibn Majah, complements other well-known sayings of the Prophet concerning the need to search for knowledge from the cradle to the grave, even if the knowledge be in China, etc. See al-Ghazzali's collection of such sayings, together with Qur''anic verses and sayings of the sages, in his Kitab al-'ilm, the first book of his monumental Iya 'ulum al-din (”Enlivening of the sciences of religion”) translated by Nabih Amin Faris as The Book of Knowledge (Lah.o.r.e: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1966).
4 See the masterful work by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Science and Civilization in Islam (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1987, ”Introduction”, pp. 21-40.
5 See Thomas Arnold, The Preaching of Islam (London: Luzac, 1935).
6 See for a more extended discussion of Ibn al-'Arabi's principles of exegesis, in the context of Sufi and postmodern hermeneutics, The Other in the Light of the One, chapter 1, ”The Hermeneutics of Suspicion or of Sufism?”, pp. 1-73. See also our paper, ”Beyond Polemics and Pluralism: The Universal Message of the Qur'an”, delivered at the conference: ”Al-Azhar and the West: Bridges of Dialogue”, Cairo, 5 January, 2009.
7 As Frithjof Schuon observes: ”Every religion by definition wants to be the best, and 'must want' to be the best, both as a whole and in its const.i.tutive elements; this is only natural, or rather 'supernaturally natural'” (”The Idea of 'The Best' in Religions”, in his Christianity/Islam: Essays on Esoteric Ec.u.menism [Bloomington: World Wisdom, 2008], p. 91).
8 ”Knowledge calls out for action”, says Imam 'Ali; ”if it is answered [it is of avail], otherwise it departs.” Cited in the compilation by 'Abd al-Waid midi, Ghurar al-ikam wa durar al-kalim (given together with the Persian translation, under the t.i.tle, Guftar-i Amir al-mu'minin 'Ali, by Sayyid usayn Shaykhul-Islami) (Qom: Intisharat-i Anariyan, 2000), vol. 2, p. 993, no. 21.
9 In the words of Frithjof Schuon: ”The true and complete understanding of an idea goes far beyond the first apprehension of the idea by the intelligence, although more often than not this apprehension is taken for understanding itself. While it is true that the immediate evidence conveyed to us by any particular idea is, on its own level, a real understanding, there can be no question of its embracing the whole extent of the idea, since it is primarily the sign of an apt.i.tude to understand that idea in its complete ness. Any truth can in fact be understood at different levels and according to different conceptual dimensions, that is to say according to an indefinite number of modalities that correspond to all the possible aspects, likewise indefinite in number, of the truth in question. This way of regarding ideas accordingly leads to the question of spiritual realization, the doctrinal expressions of which clearly ill.u.s.trate the dimensional indefinitude of theoretical conceptions” (The Transcendent Unity of Religions [Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, 1984] p. 1).
10 After mentioning this a.n.a.logy, Sakyamuni Buddha continues: ”Words are the finger pointing to the meaning; they are not the meaning itself. Hence, do not rely upon words” (cited by Eisho Nasu, ”'Rely on the Meaning, not on the Words': s.h.i.+nran's Methodology and Strategy for Reading Scriptures and Writing the Kygs.h.i.+nsh” in Discourse and Ideology in Medieval j.a.panese Buddhism, eds. Richard K. Payne and Taigen Dan Leighton [New York: Routledge, 2006], p. 253).
11 The Discourses of Rumi (Fihi ma fihi), tr. A.J. Arberry (London: John Murray, 1961), p. 202.
12 This is from William Chittick's translation of the Lawai, in Chinese Gleams of Sufi Light by Sachiko Murata (Albany: SUNY, 2000), p. 138.
13 This is the very opposite of the Cartesian axiom: 'I think, therefore I am'. Here, thought trumps being, individual conceptualisation precedes universal reality. Subjectivism, individualism, rationalism-all are contained in this error, and reinforce its basic tendency, which is to reverse the traditional, normal subordination of human thought to divine Reality.
14 Schuon refers to the distinction between metaphysics and ordinary religious knowledge in terms of uncolored light, and particular colors: ”If an ex ample may be drawn from the sensory sphere to ill.u.s.trate the difference between metaphysical and theological knowledge, it may be said that the former, which can be called 'esoteric' when it is manifested through a religious symbolism, is con scious of the colorless essence of light and of its character of pure luminosity; a given religious belief, on the other hand, will a.s.sert that light is red and not green, whereas another belief will a.s.sert the opposite; both will be right insofar as they dis tinguish light from darkness but not insofar as they identify it with a particular color” (Transcendent Unity, p. x.x.x).
15 This is one of the central questions which we posed and tried to answer in The Other in the Light of the One, pp. 117-139; 185-209; 234-266.
16 This is part of a long saying concerning the possibility of seeing G.o.d in the Hereafter. It is found in the ”sound” collection of Muslim, ai Muslim (Cairo: 'sa al-alabi, n.d.), vol. 1, p. 94.
17 Self is given in capitals only as a parallel to the use of the capital O for ”Other”; what is meant here is the empirical self, the individual as such, and its communitarian extension, and not the universal Selfhood of the Real (nafs al-aqq, as Ibn al-'Arabi calls it), at once transcendent and immanent.
18 For the most comprehensive biography of this seminal figure, see Claude Addas, Quest for the Red Sulphur, tr. Peter Kingsley (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1993); for a concise overview of Ibn al-'Arabi's thought, see Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Three Muslim Sages (Lah.o.r.e: Suhail Academy, 1988 repr), ch. 3, ”Ibn 'Arabi and the Sufis”, pp. 83121.
19 Cited in William C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-'Arabi's Metaphysics of Imagination (Albany: SUNY, 1989), p. 365.
20 Ikhtilaf al-'ulama rama. This is often cited as a adith, but is more authoritatively ascribed to al-Shafi'i.
21 Ibn al-'Arabi claims that everything he wrote was contained in his first vision of the ”glory of His Face”; all his discourse is ”only the differentiation of the all-inclusive reality which was contained in that look at the One Reality” (Sufi Path, p. xiv).
22 The following pages contain reflections on material which can be found elaborated in greater detail in our Paths to Transcendence: According to Shankara, Ibn Arabi, and Meister Eckhart (Bloomington: World Wisdom, 2006), pp. 69-129.
23 James W. Morris, ”Ibn al-'Arabi's Spiritual Ascension”, in Michel Chodkiewicz (ed.), Les Illuminations de La Mecque/The Meccan Illuminations (Paris: Sindbad, 1988), p. 380. One is reminded by the words ”my place cannot contain me” of Rumi's lines: ”What is to be done, O Muslims? For I do not recognise myself? I am not Christian, nor Jew; not Zoroastrian, nor Muslim.” This is a succinct expression of the transcendence of all religious ident.i.ty in the bosom of the unitive state, which is alluded to later in the poem: ”I have put duality aside. . . . / One I seek, One I know, One I see, One I call. / He is the First, He is the Last, He is the Outward, He is the Inward.” [paraphrasing 57:2]. (Selected Poems from the Divan-i Shamsi Tabriz, [ed. and tr. R.A. Nicholson (translation modified)] [Cambridge: CUP, 1977], pp. 125, 127).
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