Inter- Faiths Dialogue

Detachement > from intellect

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T he soul can attain to the secrecy which is in God, where the mystery of unity beyond understanding and speech is celebrated, only when it has gone not only beyond the categories of vice and ignorance and of falsehood and wickedness - the vices which are opposite to virtue and knowledge and truth and goodness - but even, if one may say this, beyond the categories of virtue itself and of knowledge and truth and goodness as they are known to us. In the Kingdom of the Spirit of God, which lies beyond our senses and intellectual concepts and virtues, everything exists in a different way. It exists truly.

church

quote 3369 | Abbot Vasilios of Iveron Monastery
Hymn of Entry, p. 102

A bba Ammoun of Rhaithou asked Abba Sisoes, "When I read the Scriptures, my mind is wholly concentrated on the words so that I may have something to say if I am asked." The old man said to him, "That is not necessary; it is better to enrich yourself through purity of spirit and to be without anxiety and then to speak."

church

quote 3351 | Desert Fathers
Abba Sisoes: The sayings of the Desert Fathers : the alphabetical collection. Trans. Benedicta Ward, SLG. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications Inc., 1984, 1975, p. 216, Abba Sisoes 17

I ntellect is good and desirable to the extent it brings you to the King's door. Once you have reached His door, then divorce the intellect! From this time on, the intellect will be to your loss and a brigand. When you reach Him, entrust yourself to Him! You have no business with the how and the wherefore. Know that the intellect's cleverness all belongs to the vestibule. Even if it possesses the knowledge of Plato, it is still outside of the palace.

mosque

quote 3300 | Jalâl ud Dîn Rumi
The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi, p. 222, Trans. William C. Chittick. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1983

Y ou seek knowledge from books. What a shame! …
You are an ocean of knowledge hidden in a dew drop…

mosque

quote 3299 | Jalâl ud Dîn Rumi
The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi, p. 64, Trans. William C. Chittick. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1983

T hat intellectual warp and woof keeps you wrapped in blindness.

mosque

quote 3297 | Jalâl ud Dîn Rumi
The Essential Rumi, p. 66, Trans. Coleman Barks with John Moyne. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1995

H is mental questionings form the barrier. His physical eyesight bandages his knowing. Self-consciousness plugs his ears.

mosque

quote 3296 | Jalâl ud Dîn Rumi
The Essential Rumi, p. 256, Trans. Coleman Barks with John Moyne. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1995

Y our Saying "God is Most Great" does not mean that He is greater than something else, since there is nothing else alongside of Him, so that it could be said that He is greater than it… Rather, the meaning of Allahu Akbar is that He is much too great to be perceived by the senses or for the depths of His Majesty to be reached by reason and logic, and indeed, that He is much too great to be known by an other-than-Him for truly, no one knows God but God.

mosque

quote 3276 | Ibn' Ata' Allah
The Key To Salvation: A Sufi Manual of Invocation. Trans. Mary Ann Koury Danner. Cambridge: The Islamic Texts Society, 1996, p. 119

T he truth of the Self cannot come through one who has not realized that he is the Self. The intellect cannot reveal the Self, beyond its duality of subject and object. They who see themselves in all and all in them help others through spiritual osmosis to realize the Self themselves. This awakening you have known comes not through logic and scholarship, but from close association with a realized teacher.

temple_hindu

quote 3222 | The Upanishads
Katha Up. Part 1, 2:9, p. 85 in The Upanishads. Trans. Eknath Easwaran. Tomales, CA.: Nilgiri Press, 1987

B right but hidden, the Self dwells in the heart. Everything that moves, breathes, opens, and closes lives in the Self. He is the source of love and may be known through love but not through thought. He is the goal of life. Attain this goal!

temple_hindu

quote 3211 | The Upanishads
Mundaka Up. Part 2, 2:1, p. 113 in The Upanishads. Trans. Eknath Easwaran. Tomales, CA.: Nilgiri Press, 1987

T he ignorant think the Self can be known by the intellect, but the illumined know he is beyond the duality of the knower and the known.

temple_hindu

quote 3210 | The Upanishads
Kena Up. 2:3, pp. 69-70 in The Upanishads. Trans. Eknath Easwaran. Tomales, CA.: Nilgiri Press, 1987

G irish:
Narendra says that God is beyond our words and thought.
Ramakrishna:
That is not altogether true. He is, no doubt, unknowable by this ordinary mind, but He can indeed be known by the pure mind. The mind and intellect become pure the moment they are free from attachment…

temple_hindu

quote 3177 | Ramakrishna
Mahendranath Gupta. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. Trans. Swami Nikhilananda. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1942, 1948, 1958, p. 372

O ne cannot get true feeling about God from the study of books. This feeling is something very different from book-learning. Books, the scriptures, and science appear as mere dirt and straw after the realization of God.

temple_hindu

quote 3176 | Ramakrishna
Mahendranath Gupta. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. Trans. Swami Nikhilananda. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1942, 1948, 1958, p. 353

W hat will a man gain by merely reasoning about the words of the scriptures? Ah, the fools! They reason themselves to death over information about the path. They never take the plunge. What a pity!

temple_hindu

quote 3175 | Ramakrishna
Mahendranath Gupta. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. Trans. Swami Nikhilananda. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1942, 1948, 1958, p. 332

O n my first journey I found a kind of knowledge acceptable to both the elect and the common folk, on the second, knowledge acceptable to the elect and not the common folk, and on the third, knowledge acceptable to neither the elect nor the common folk; thus I remained an outcast and alone.
The first kind of knowledge was repentance, which both the elect and the common folk accept, the second was trust in God and fellowship with Him and love, which the elect accept, and the third was the knowledge of reality, which is beyond the power of human learning and reason to attain, so men reject it.

mosque

quote 2970 | Dhu-l-Nun
Essential Sufism, by James Fadiman & Robert Frager, Harper SanFrancisco, p.110

I 've given up on my brain.
I've torn the cloth to shreds
and thrown it away.

If you're not completely naked,
wrap your beautiful robe of words
around you,

and sleep.

mosque

quote 2930 | Jalâl ud Dîn Rumi
Essential Sufism, by James Fadiman & Robert Frager, Harper SanFrancisco, p.116

H ere our reason and every activity characterized by the making of distinctions must give way, for our powers now become simply one in love, grow silent, and incline toward the Father's face, since this revelation of the Father raises the soul above reason to a state of imageless bareness. There the soul is simple, spotless, and pure, empty of everything. In this pure emptiness the Father reveals his divine resplendence, which neither reason nor senses, neither rational observation nor distinctions can attain.

church

quote 2828 | John Ruusbroec
John Ruusbroec, adapted from John Ruusbroec: The Spritual Espousals and Other Works, translated by James Wiseman (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1985)

A fterward, I saw him in a darkness, and in a darkness precisely because the good that he is, is far too great to be conceived or understood. Indeed, anything conceivable or understandable does not attain this good or even come near it.

church

quote 2817 | Angela of Foligno
Angela of Foligno, from Angela of Foligno: Complete Works, translated by Paul Lachance (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press,1993).

L eave the senses and the workings of the intellect, and all that the sense and the intellect can perceive, and all that is not and that is; and through unknowing reach out, so far as this is possible, toward oneness with him who is beyond all being and knowledge. In this way, through an uncompromising, absolute, and pure detachment from yourself and from all things, transcending all things and released from all, you will be led upwards toward that radiance of the divine darkness that is beyond all being.

Entering the darkness that surpasses understanding, we shall find ourselves brought, not just to brevity of speech, but to perfect silence and unknowing.

Emptied of all knowledge, man is joined in the highest part of himself, not with any created thing, nor with himself, nor with another, but with the one who is altogether
unknowable; and in knowing nothing, he knows in a manner that surpasses understanding.

church

quote 2804 | Dionysius the Areopagite
Dionysius the Areopagite, adapted from the translation of the Mystical Theology by Colm Luibheid in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works (Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press).

B ut as the soul makes progress, and by a greater and more perfect concentration comes to appreciate what the knowledge of truth is, the more it approaches this vision, and so much the more does it see that the divine nature is invisible. It thus leaves all surface appearances, not only those that can be grasped by the senses but also those that the mind itself seems to see, and it keeps on going deeper until by the operation of the spirit it penetrates the invisible and incomprehensible, and it is there that it sees God. The true vision and the true knowledge of what we seek consists precisely in not seeing, in an awareness that our goal transcends all knowledge and is everywhere cut off from us by the darkness of incomprehensibility. Thus that profound evangelist, John, who penetrated into this luminous darkness, tells us that no man hath seen God at any time (John 1:18), teaching us by this negation that no man - indeed, no created intellect - can attain knowledge of God.

church

quote 2799 | Saint Gregory of Nyssa
Gregory of Nyssa, from Gregory of Nyssa's Mystical Writings, translated and edited by Herbert Mursillo (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. V1adimir's Seminary Press, 1979).

N ot through discourse, not through the intellect,
Not even through study of the scriptures
Can the Self be realized. The Self reveals
Himself to the one who longs for the Self.
Those who long for the Self with all their heart
Are chosen by the Self as his own.

Not by the weak, not by the unearnest,
Not by those who practice wrong disciplines
Can the Self be realized. The Self reveals
Himself as the Lord of Love to the one
Who practices right disciplines.

temple_hindu

quote 2653 | The Upanishads
Mundaka Upanishad, translated by Eknath Easwaran, 1987; Nilgiri Press, Tomales, California

S elf-realization is an exalted state of inner attainment which transcends all dualistic thinking and which is above the mind-system with its logic, reasoning, theorizing, and illustrations.

temple_buddhist

quote 2581 | The Lankavatara Sutra
Ch.IV, p.311, in Dwight Goddard, A Buddhist bible

B ut the way of instruction presented by the Tathagatas is not based on assertions and refutations by means of words and logic.

temple_buddhist

quote 2543 | The Lankavatara Sutra
Ch.II, p.284, in Dwight Goddard, A Buddhist bible

S tudents of today only pay attention to details and do not search for what is concrete. […]
When is it necessary to depend on words?" […]
When scholars read today, they only try to understand words and do not go further to find out what is vital.

candle

quote 2410 | Lu Hsiang Shan
Complete Work of Lu Hsiang-shan (Hsiang-shan ch’uan-chi), 35:10a-b, in Wing-Tsit Chan, Chinese Philosophy, Chapter 33

A student must make up his mind. To read book and merely understand their literate meanings means not to have made up one’s mind.

candle

quote 2408 | Lu Hsiang Shan
Complete Work of Lu Hsiang-shan (Hsiang-shan ch’uan-chi), 35:1b, in Wing-Tsit Chan, Chinese Philosophy, Chapter 33

T here is nothing that is not the "that" and there is nothing that is the "this." Things do not know that they are the "that" of they only know what they themselves know. Therefore "that" is produced by the "this" and the "this" is also caused by the “that." This is the theory of mutual production. (1) Nevertheless, when there is life there is death, (2) and when there is death there is life. When there is possibility, there is impossibility, and when there is impossibility, there is possibility. Because of the right, there is the wrong, and because of the wrong, there is the right. Therefore the sage does not proceed among these lines (of right and wrong, and so forth) but illuminates the matter with Nature. This is the reason.

quote 2219 | Tchuang Tzu
Chuang Tzu, chapter II, in Wing-Tsit Chan, Chinese Philosophy, Chapter 8.

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