The World on Fire

 
The World on Fire

“To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order; we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.”    Confucius

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."    Reinhold Niebuhr

“One should, each day, try to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it is possible, speak a few reasonable words.”   Goethe

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There is an old saying of the sages and saints that “too much bitterness leads to hell.”

There is a lot in this world that can and do frustrate us, irritate us and make us angry. Every day, we experience and come face to face with acts and events, with people and groups of people that enrage us without fail. To be angry most, if not all, of the time is actually the condition of the average person in these latter days of modernity. And to be angry in the virtual world is as if it is a requirement nowadays, a default setting of being present on the social media platforms: “I am angry, therefore I exist” to twist the dominant Cartesian logic of the times. In the hellish dungeons of the social media in particular everything and everyone gets blocked, canceled, enraged and, therefore, weaponized so easily these days. Aggression is now available and experienced in every form and template: gender-sexual, ethno-racial, ontic-epistemic, work-related, age-related and at both macro and micro levels of existence. Rage is all around us, in abundant supply.

Anger is of course a legitimate human emotion and it cannot be denied. There is even sacred rage, anger that is completely justified, just as there is the concept of a “just war” in many world religions or civilizations inspired by these world religions. But in an increasingly and thoroughly secular and God-less world when anger turns into bitterness, then the harm that is done to the agent of rage far exceeds that done to the object of rage: bitterness destroys the angry person more effectively than the object or target of rage. That madman of Europe, the “illuminated psychopath” Friedrich Nietzsche, once rightly said that, “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby becomes a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.” The abysses of our times, many as they are and everywhere as they are, not only gaze back into you but actually and quickly pull you in, if you are not on guard.

And what should one do to be on one’s guard in these dark times? Well, here’s another piece of wisdom from the past, and this one is from a Taoist (Chinese) sage which says that, “When the world is on fire, the sage tends to his garden.” This should not be seen as apathy, or as indifference towards the world and its problems, but understood as it has always been understood throughout history and across civilizations: as the profound wisdom that engagement with the world, especially by those of us who have not engaged, or who have failed to engage fully and sincerely with our own inner selves, with our own inner moral, intellectual and spiritual universes, does not always lead to the betterment of the world around us and often does more damage to both the worlds within and without. “Before we embark on the mission to rid the world of thorns and nails which are scattered all over the place, we need to put on our shoes” as an old African proverb informs us.

But in fact, on a much higher (or deeper) level, metaphysically speaking that is, the wisdom can be understood in the sense of our relationship with God and with His creation: vertically and horizontally. I have written about this earlier in another post. Whereas vertically we are required to be passive, we are now active; whereas horizontally we are required to be active, we are now passive. This may seem odd to the average reader, but it is exactly in our passivity viz-z-viz God that we can avoid our anger from turning into bitterness which can lead us straight into hell. And also, it is this vertical passivity which, because it informs and guides whatever activity we carry out in the world, makes our horizontal existence effective and meaningful, both for us and for everything and everyone around us. Think of the vertical providing the context, the needed proportion or balance (meezan) for the horizontal without which an activity (or activism in general) can quickly turn destructive.

                                 

We must, therefore, take heed and remember that quietude/quietism and careful and thoughtful disengagement with what goes on around us in the world where everything is now politicized and vulgarized (meaning disengagement in the true Taoist sense of Wu Wei, or “non-action” or “effortless action”) is sometimes more important than being active or actively engaged with the world. This detachment which is the result of compassion and acceptance of the inexplicable "Mystery" in the higher, transcendent scheme of things must not be confused with the modern indifference or unconcern about which Tennessee Williams once said that "Happiness is insensitivity". While the original Greek apatheia meant detachment from ego, or the lack or absence of base passions ( and therefore, attachment to virtues), the modern "apathy" means the exact opposite: enslavement to ego and detachment from, or forgetfulness of, what is above the ego. 

Once again, to quote the Trappist monk Thomas Merton: "Let us not forget the redemptive power of the hermit, the monk, the recluse, the bodhisattva, the nun, the sannyasi who out of pity for the universe, out of loyalty to mankind, and without a spirit of bitterness or resentment, withdraw into the healing silence of the wilderness, or of poverty, or of obscurity, not in order to preach to others but to heal in themselves the wounds of the whole world." The great metaphysician Isa Nur al Din (Frithjof Schuon) has similarly said, ‘The world need hermits as much as preachers. In Islam, it is said that the equilibrium of the world depends largely on the existence—sometimes hidden—of the saints, or also on the Invocation of God’s Name. If man is not holy, nonetheless, the Name is holy, and man is made holy by the invocation.’ (F. Schuon, in a letter to a Hans Kury, 1951).

Never underestimate this redemptive power of silence and disengagement.

Short, Short: A Sufi tale

 The Tale of the Sands: A Sufi Tale



One of the teaching devices for which the Sufis are famous is the Sufi tale. This one, “The Tale of the Sands,” relates to their doctrine of fana, the transcending, in God, of the finite self. 

A stream, from its source in far-off mountains, passing through every kind and description of countryside, at last reached the sands of the desert. Just as it had crossed every other barrier, the stream tried to cross this one, but it found that as fast as it ran into the sand, its waters disappeared.

It was convinced, however, that its destiny was to cross this desert, and yet there was no way. Now a hidden voice, coming from the desert itself, whispered: “The Wind crosses the desert, and so can the stream.”

The stream objected that it was dashing itself against the sand, and only getting absorbed: that the wind could fly, and this was why it could cross a desert.

“By hurtling in your own accustomed way you cannot get across.
You will either disappear or become a marsh. You must allow the wind to carry you over, to your destination.”

“But how could this happen?”

“By allowing yourself to be absorbed in the wind.”

This idea was not acceptable to the stream. After all, it had never been absorbed before. It did not want to lose its individuality.

And, once having lost it, how was one to know that it could ever be regained?

“The wind,” said the sand, “performs this function. It takes up water, carries it over the desert, and then lets it fall again. Falling as rain, the water again becomes a river.”

“How can I know that this is true?” “It is so, and if you do not believe it, you cannot become more than a quagmire, and even that could take many, many years. And it certainly is not the same as a stream.”

“But can I not remain the same stream that I am today?”

“You cannot in either case remain so,” the whisper said. “Your essential part is carried away and forms a stream again. You are called what you are even today because you do not know which part of you is the essential one.”

When it heard this, certain echoes began to arise in the thoughts of the stream. Dimly, it remembered a state in which it—or some part of it?—had been held in the arms of a wind. It also remembered—or did it?—that this was the real thing, not necessarily the obvious thing, to do. And the stream raised its vapor into the welcoming arms of the wind, which gently and easily bore it upwards and along, letting it fall softly as soon as they reached the roof of a mountain, many, many, miles away. And because it had its doubts, the stream was able to remember and record more strongly in its mind the details of the experience. It reflected, “Yes, now I have learned my true identity.”

The stream was learning. But the sands whispered: “We know, because we see it happen day after day: and because we, the sands, extend from the riverside all the way to the mountain.”

And that is why it is said that the way in which the stream of Life is to continue on its journey is written in the Sands.

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Source: Huston Smith, The World’s Religions, Harper Collins: HarperCollins, 1991.

Original source: Idries Shah, Tales of the Dervishes (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1970), pp: 23–24.

Short, short: Parables

For ages wise men, sages, rishis, prophets, men embedded in the Sacred, men of God have used Parables to make their point. A parable is 'a usually short...story that illustrates a moral attitude or a religious principle' (Merriam-Webster's).

Parables are a good way to shed light on issues that are difficult to grasp, especially by those with a lesser type of philosophical spirit but maybe possessing another faculty that comprehends the same truth when told in the form of a tale, a story. Children come to mind.
"A parable is a brief story that is true to life, comparing the point of commonality between two unlike things, given for the purpose of teaching spiritual truth."

A parable is a story in prose or verse that is told to illustrate a religious, moral or philosophical idea. A parable is like a metaphor that has been extended to form a brief, coherent fiction. Unlike a simile, its parallel meaning is unspoken, implicit, but not ordinarily secret, though "to speak in parables" has come to suggest obscurity.

Parables are the simplest of narratives: they sketch a setting, describe an action and its result; they often involve a character facing a particular moral dilemma, or making a questionable decision and then suffering the consequences of that choice. Aside from providing guidance and suggestions for proper action in life, parables offer a metaphorical language which allows people to discuss difficult or complex ideas more easily. (Wikipedia)

Ignorance and forgetfulness/heedlessness (ghaflah/nissyan) have many aspects and layers and they are sometimes identified and addressed using different approaches, some clearly understandable and some not easily graspable.

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There is a proverb that 'the "opposition" of the man of knowledge is better than the "support" of the fool.'

The Sufi master Salim Abdali bear witness that this is true in the greater ranges of existence, as it is true in the lower levels.

A horseman from his point of vantage saw a poisonous snake slip down the throat of a sleeping man. The horseman realized that if the man were allowed to sleep the venom would surely kill him.

Accordingly, he lashed the sleeper until he was awake. Having no time to lose, he forced this man to a place where there were a number of rotten apples lying upon the ground and made him eat them. Then he made him drink large gulps of water from a stream.

All the while the other man was trying to get away, screaming, crying, cursing: 'What have I done, you enemy of humanity, that you should abuse me in this manner?'

Finally, when he was near to exhaustion, and dusk was falling, the man fell to the ground and vomitted out the apples, the water, and a snake. When he saw what had come out of him, he realized what had happened, and begged the forgiveness of the horseman.

This is our condition. In reading this, do not take history for allegory and allegory for history. Those who are endowed with knowledge have responsibility. Those who are not, have none beyond what they can conjecture.

The man who was saved said: 'If you had told me, I would have accepted your treatment with a good grace.'

The horseman answered: 'If I had told you, you would not have believed. Or you would have been paralysed by fright. Or run away. Or gone to sleep again, seeking forgetfulness. And there would not have been time.'

Spurring his horse, the mysterious rider rode away.

The dervaish master Haider Gul says: 'There is a limit beyond which it is unhealthy for mankind to conceal truth in order not to offend those whose minds are closed.'

(Source: from Idries Shah, 1969, 'Tales of the Dervishes', E.P Dutton and Co: NY.)

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Says Shakespeare in Hamlet:

I do repent: but heaven hath pleased it so,
To punish me with this and this with me,
That I must be their scourge and minister.
I will bestow him, and will answer well
The death I gave him. So, again, good night.
I must be cruel, only to be kind:
Thus bad begins and worse remains behind.
One word more, good lady. (3.4.174-181)