Stray crumbs #1
"So this is the white man's strange wisdom", he exclaimed. "He cuts down the forests which have stood in pride and grandeur for centuries; he tears up the breast of our mother the earth and befouls the streams of clear water; without pity he disfigures the paintings and monuments of God and then bedaubs a surface with color and calls is a masterpiece."
(The reaction of a Sioux (Indian) chief on being shown an art gallery with lots of paintings on its walls, quoted by Charles Eastman)
"The earth is bleeding from wounds inflicted upon it by a humanity no longer in harmony with Heaven and therefore in constant strife with the terrestrial environment."
Seyyed Hossein Nasr
"How we see the world depends above all upon how we see ourselves. Our model of the universe---our worldview---is based upon the model we have of ourselves, upon our self-image....Having in our own minds de-sanctified ourselves, we have de-sanctified nature as well.
Philip Sherrard
Philip Sherrard
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Perhaps the famous simile of the Buddha applies most appropriately, aptly, to contemporary "de-sanctified" humanity than to that of any other era: "like children asleep in a burning house."
Modernity and modern people: the quantity and matter worshiping tribe of beings who insist that their shrouds also have pockets and who never tire of lecturing others about the wonders of their reductionist knowledge system (scientism) and philosophy (euphemism for miso-sophy), about how only they see and comprehend all of reality through their bamboo tube visions (to put a spin on old Yiddish and Japanese proverbs). “I can’t jump, therefore, there is no such thing as the sport of basketball!” said Immanuel Kant (not exact words, but his philosophy in a nutshell), one of the founders of this dying worldview upon which the entire juggernaut of modernity rests. These are Plato’s cave dwellers, the neurasthenic creatures who dwell in the dungeon of the lower self--- that suffocating cage of the corporeal self----creatures who gaze at the sky from the bottom of that dark well of nafs, and utter such inanities as, “There is no God!”, “Where is your God?” or, “God is dead!”
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ILM and Riding the Tiger (of Modernity)
“Ignorance is the greatest tragedy.” Imam Ali (AS)
The great sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov once wrote that “if knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.” The problem of modernity is essentially a problem of knowledge: it is an epistemological problem. Or in other words, it is about the conception, acquisition, accumulation and categorization, and application of knowledge. The correct ethos and attitude needed to live an authentic life in the modern world, therefore, is to possess ILM (hikma or wisdom) which means to know how to ride the anti-spiritual tiger of modernity that we all are mounting. By “authentic life” is meant a life that is rooted in humanity’s ancient (religious) traditions that are essentially True, Good and Beautiful, and only accidentally ugly and evil (to paraphrase Seyyed Hossein Nasr). In the modern world, where we are told day-in and day-out that God is dead and the Sacred nothing but delusional or wishful thinking of a child, or even a joke, an awake and aware person is like one who knows that he is riding the voracious tiger of modernity and is never complacent. One must learn to ride the beast because one cannot dismount it alive. This is an imagery that has its source in ancient Eastern traditions, also employed by the Italian critic of modernity, Julius Evola, but from a different perspective and for a totally different purpose. The “sophistication” of modern life can only be countered with the sophistication of the life of faith. Charles Upton pins it down when he says, “Simple belief, unless one is fortunate enough to retain a real simplicity of soul, to be among those we call ‘the salt of the earth’, is no longer possible for many today….The only remedy for the disease of sophistication is a greater sophistication, which finally returns to simplicity. Where religious relativism has destroyed faith, nothing but metaphysical understanding can restore it.”
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Man is born to dominate and to transcend his own being, to go beyond himself. That is the goal, the purpose, the raison de'tre of existence. Therein lay the path to nobility and holiness, as Isa Nur al Din has repeatedly reminded us. That is the meaning of being Allah’s khalifa (vicegerent) and Allah’s abd (servant). That is what distinguishes us from animals and other creatures. The desire for transcendence is natural, since it is in our primordial nature (our fitrah). Says the poet Robert Browning: “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”
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ILM and Riding the Tiger (of Modernity)
“Ignorance is the greatest tragedy.” Imam Ali (AS)
The great sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov once wrote that “if knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.” The problem of modernity is essentially a problem of knowledge: it is an epistemological problem. Or in other words, it is about the conception, acquisition, accumulation and categorization, and application of knowledge. The correct ethos and attitude needed to live an authentic life in the modern world, therefore, is to possess ILM (hikma or wisdom) which means to know how to ride the anti-spiritual tiger of modernity that we all are mounting. By “authentic life” is meant a life that is rooted in humanity’s ancient (religious) traditions that are essentially True, Good and Beautiful, and only accidentally ugly and evil (to paraphrase Seyyed Hossein Nasr). In the modern world, where we are told day-in and day-out that God is dead and the Sacred nothing but delusional or wishful thinking of a child, or even a joke, an awake and aware person is like one who knows that he is riding the voracious tiger of modernity and is never complacent. One must learn to ride the beast because one cannot dismount it alive. This is an imagery that has its source in ancient Eastern traditions, also employed by the Italian critic of modernity, Julius Evola, but from a different perspective and for a totally different purpose. The “sophistication” of modern life can only be countered with the sophistication of the life of faith. Charles Upton pins it down when he says, “Simple belief, unless one is fortunate enough to retain a real simplicity of soul, to be among those we call ‘the salt of the earth’, is no longer possible for many today….The only remedy for the disease of sophistication is a greater sophistication, which finally returns to simplicity. Where religious relativism has destroyed faith, nothing but metaphysical understanding can restore it.”
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Man is born to dominate and to transcend his own being, to go beyond himself. That is the goal, the purpose, the raison de'tre of existence. Therein lay the path to nobility and holiness, as Isa Nur al Din has repeatedly reminded us. That is the meaning of being Allah’s khalifa (vicegerent) and Allah’s abd (servant). That is what distinguishes us from animals and other creatures. The desire for transcendence is natural, since it is in our primordial nature (our fitrah). Says the poet Robert Browning: “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”
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"Only after the last tree has been cut down,
Only after the last river has been poisoned,
Only after the last fish has been caught,
Then, only then,
Will you find that money cannot be eaten."
Only after the last river has been poisoned,
Only after the last fish has been caught,
Then, only then,
Will you find that money cannot be eaten."
(Cree Indian Prophecy)
The anti-ecological modern consumerist lifestyle: we are like the ever-thirsty people who drink water without ever thinking about the spring from which the water that quenches our thirst flows, ignorant and forgetful of the very source and origin of that which sustains our life. We cut the very branch of the tree of life on which we sit and from the fruit of which we get our nourishment. And we celebrate this madness, this stupidity as “civilization", “progress” and “development”!
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"There is nothing like deprivation to excite gratitude for small mercies" says an old Spanish proverb, an appropriate saying for the strange times we live in. Three things we must never forget and must never fail to observe: Sabr, Shukr and Tauba.
"There is nothing like deprivation to excite gratitude for small mercies" says an old Spanish proverb, an appropriate saying for the strange times we live in. Three things we must never forget and must never fail to observe: Sabr, Shukr and Tauba.
