My OperaPosts tagged with "Love"
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The Vision of God
Sunday, April 21, 2013 7:34:18 PM
'You shall not see Me!' (lan tarânî). The divine reply to Moses' request (arinî unzur ilayka) 'Let me see, so that I can behold You', Q. 7:143), seems final. It is no less categorical in its formulation than the one that Exodus gives in a parallel account (Ex. 33:18-23):[1] 'Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.' Another verse seems, moreover, to extend to all creatures the impossibility of seeing the Face of God, as the Prophet of the Banu Isra'il was informed: lâ tudrikuhu 'l-absâr wa huwa yudriku 'l-absâr, 'The looks do not reach Him but it is He who reaches the looks' (Q. 6:103).
Despite their evident meaning, these two verses are interpreted in many ways within the Islamic tradition and, more often than one would expect, in a way which safeguards the possibility of vision. The lan tarânî addressed to Moses, in particular, provokes numerous commentaries. The verse continues: 'But look at the mountain; if it remains firm in its place, then you shall see Me. And when his Lord manifested Himself to the mountain, He reduced it to dust and Moses fell down, thunderstruck. When he came to himself he said, Glory be to You! I turn to You with repentance and I am the first of the believers. For Tabari, the theophany at Sinaï which reduces the mountain to dust and which even so, he says, 'had only the strength of a little finger', demonstrates the fundamental inability of creatures to bear the vision of God, and the repentance of Moses testifies that his request was presumptuous and unacceptable.[2] But another classic commentary, by Qurtubi, whilst avoiding taking sides too explicitly, favours a very different opinion. For some people, he says, lan tarânî means: 'you shall not see Me in this world'. But, he adds, according to others, whose views Qadi Iyad has recorded, 'Moses sees God and that is why he falls down in a swoon.' Similarly, commenting on the verse which states that 'the looks do not reach Him', Qurtubi, who obviouslytends towards an admission of the possibility of vision, sets out the arguments of those who defend this point of view: the ordinary look cannot reach God but God creates in certain beings - and such is certainly the case of the Prophet Muhammad - a look by which He can be seen. Besides, if the impossibility were definitive, would Moses, who is an Envoy, have had the audacity to ask God for an absurd favour? Concerning Muhammad, Qurtubi relates the contradictory assertions of Aysha, on the one hand, and of Abu Hurayra and Ibn Abbas on the other, and favours the latter. The question, for him, is not to know if the Prophet saw God but to know how he saw Him: bi'l-basar? aw bi-ayni qalbihi? With his physical eyes or with the eye of the heart? [3] However, the great theologian Fakhr al-din Razi, Ibn Arabi's contemporary and correspondent, dismisses the possibility that Moses saw God, but affirms that vision is possible in principle.[4]
The position of the mutakallimûn - the theologians - on this question is generally left fairly open, at least if one discounts the case of the Mu'tazilites.[5] For the Ash'arites, it is rationally conceivable and scripturally established that 'the looks' (absâr) will see God in the future life. Does the Qur'an not assert: 'On that day, there will be radiant faces which shall see their Lord' (75:22-3)? Did the Prophet not say: 'you shall see your Lord just as you see the moon on the night of the full moon'? [6] Verse 6:103, according to which 'the looks do not reach Him', cannot justify any conclusive objection. For some theologians, it is exclusively a question of this lower world and does not apply to the heavenly status of the chosen ones. For others, it is necessary to distinguish between idrâk, 'all-embracing perception' (ihâta), effectively forever forbidden to the creatures, and ru'ya, vision itself, to which they have access but which will never exhaust the divine infinity. As for the vision of God here below, whilst it is ruled out by some, others reserve it for exceptional individuals: again, a saying of Aysha's, according to which the Prophet did not see God at the time of his mir'âj comes up in the debate and also an equally categorical assertion of Ibn Abbas's to the contrary, which relies in particular on two verses of the sûra Al-najm (Q. 53:11,13). Moreover, a du'â' is attributed to the Prophet in which he addresses God in the following terms which are very similar to those of Moses: as'aluka ladhdhat al-nazar ilâ wajhika, 'I beg of You the joy of seeing Your face'.[7]
If one now turns towards the spiritual masters who preceded Ibn 'Arabi, one finds there, too, many differences of interpretation, but this time they rely on spiritual experience rather than knowledge from books. A comparative clarification is taking place which is conveyed by the increased precision of the vocabulary. For Sahl al Tustari, in the 9th century, vision stricto sensu is the privilege of the elect in the heavenly abode: kushûf al-'iyân fî-l-akhira. But the men of God benefit in advance from the kushûf al-qalb fî'l-dunyâ, from the 'lifting of the veil of the heart here below'.[8] In his Kashf al-Mahjûb, Hujwiri relies on the words of Dhu'l-Nun, Junayd and Abu Yazid al-Bistami among others, to assert that God can be contemplated in this world and that this contemplation resembles vision in the future life.[9] To the notion of 'unveiling' (root k sh f) that we have just come across, that of 'contemplation' (root sh h d) is therefore added. I shall come back, with regard to Ibn 'Arabi, to the problems posed by the vocabulary of these authors who are careful to distinguish precisely between all modes of mystical knowledge.
In his famous Risâla, Qushayri envisages three degrees in the progression towards knowledge of God: muhâdara, 'presence', mukâshafa, 'unveiling', and mushâhada, 'contemplation'.[10] These stages correspond to a standard model and, with the same or other names, one finds them almost everywhere in the literature of the tasawwuf. However, if one consults the great commentary of the Qur'an of which Qushayri is also the author, it confirms what the Risâla hinted at: that vision as such remains forbidden in this life. It is worth quoting what he writes about the incident at Sinai: 'Moses came like one of those who are consumed by desire and lost in love. Moses came without Moses. He came when nothing of Moses remained in Moses.' But, Qushayri adds, it is under the sway of this amorous drunkenness that he had the audacity to ask for vision. It was refused him but, because of this state where he no longer had control over what he was saying, he was not punished for his boldness. Muhammad himself hoped for this supreme favour, without expressing his wish, however. But he was not granted his wish either, Qushayri maintains.[11]
If we next examine the words of two other great Sufi contemporaries of the Shaykh al-Akbar, we notice that for them a direct perception of Divine Reality is definitely possible. But is it a question of anything other than what spiritual Christians called 'an advance payment of beatitude', that is, of a still confused and imperfect vision? Najm al-din Kubra describes the stages of contemplation, the last of which is the contemplation of the Unique Essence.[12] Ruzbehan Baqli, in his Tafsîr,[13] concludes from the Qur'anic text that Moses did not obtain vision. In another of his works, however, he too maintains that the viator can arrive at the point where his sirr, the secret centre of his being, 'is immersed in the ocean of the Divine Essence'.[14]
Despite their evident meaning, these two verses are interpreted in many ways within the Islamic tradition and, more often than one would expect, in a way which safeguards the possibility of vision. The lan tarânî addressed to Moses, in particular, provokes numerous commentaries. The verse continues: 'But look at the mountain; if it remains firm in its place, then you shall see Me. And when his Lord manifested Himself to the mountain, He reduced it to dust and Moses fell down, thunderstruck. When he came to himself he said, Glory be to You! I turn to You with repentance and I am the first of the believers. For Tabari, the theophany at Sinaï which reduces the mountain to dust and which even so, he says, 'had only the strength of a little finger', demonstrates the fundamental inability of creatures to bear the vision of God, and the repentance of Moses testifies that his request was presumptuous and unacceptable.[2] But another classic commentary, by Qurtubi, whilst avoiding taking sides too explicitly, favours a very different opinion. For some people, he says, lan tarânî means: 'you shall not see Me in this world'. But, he adds, according to others, whose views Qadi Iyad has recorded, 'Moses sees God and that is why he falls down in a swoon.' Similarly, commenting on the verse which states that 'the looks do not reach Him', Qurtubi, who obviouslytends towards an admission of the possibility of vision, sets out the arguments of those who defend this point of view: the ordinary look cannot reach God but God creates in certain beings - and such is certainly the case of the Prophet Muhammad - a look by which He can be seen. Besides, if the impossibility were definitive, would Moses, who is an Envoy, have had the audacity to ask God for an absurd favour? Concerning Muhammad, Qurtubi relates the contradictory assertions of Aysha, on the one hand, and of Abu Hurayra and Ibn Abbas on the other, and favours the latter. The question, for him, is not to know if the Prophet saw God but to know how he saw Him: bi'l-basar? aw bi-ayni qalbihi? With his physical eyes or with the eye of the heart? [3] However, the great theologian Fakhr al-din Razi, Ibn Arabi's contemporary and correspondent, dismisses the possibility that Moses saw God, but affirms that vision is possible in principle.[4]
The position of the mutakallimûn - the theologians - on this question is generally left fairly open, at least if one discounts the case of the Mu'tazilites.[5] For the Ash'arites, it is rationally conceivable and scripturally established that 'the looks' (absâr) will see God in the future life. Does the Qur'an not assert: 'On that day, there will be radiant faces which shall see their Lord' (75:22-3)? Did the Prophet not say: 'you shall see your Lord just as you see the moon on the night of the full moon'? [6] Verse 6:103, according to which 'the looks do not reach Him', cannot justify any conclusive objection. For some theologians, it is exclusively a question of this lower world and does not apply to the heavenly status of the chosen ones. For others, it is necessary to distinguish between idrâk, 'all-embracing perception' (ihâta), effectively forever forbidden to the creatures, and ru'ya, vision itself, to which they have access but which will never exhaust the divine infinity. As for the vision of God here below, whilst it is ruled out by some, others reserve it for exceptional individuals: again, a saying of Aysha's, according to which the Prophet did not see God at the time of his mir'âj comes up in the debate and also an equally categorical assertion of Ibn Abbas's to the contrary, which relies in particular on two verses of the sûra Al-najm (Q. 53:11,13). Moreover, a du'â' is attributed to the Prophet in which he addresses God in the following terms which are very similar to those of Moses: as'aluka ladhdhat al-nazar ilâ wajhika, 'I beg of You the joy of seeing Your face'.[7]
If one now turns towards the spiritual masters who preceded Ibn 'Arabi, one finds there, too, many differences of interpretation, but this time they rely on spiritual experience rather than knowledge from books. A comparative clarification is taking place which is conveyed by the increased precision of the vocabulary. For Sahl al Tustari, in the 9th century, vision stricto sensu is the privilege of the elect in the heavenly abode: kushûf al-'iyân fî-l-akhira. But the men of God benefit in advance from the kushûf al-qalb fî'l-dunyâ, from the 'lifting of the veil of the heart here below'.[8] In his Kashf al-Mahjûb, Hujwiri relies on the words of Dhu'l-Nun, Junayd and Abu Yazid al-Bistami among others, to assert that God can be contemplated in this world and that this contemplation resembles vision in the future life.[9] To the notion of 'unveiling' (root k sh f) that we have just come across, that of 'contemplation' (root sh h d) is therefore added. I shall come back, with regard to Ibn 'Arabi, to the problems posed by the vocabulary of these authors who are careful to distinguish precisely between all modes of mystical knowledge.
In his famous Risâla, Qushayri envisages three degrees in the progression towards knowledge of God: muhâdara, 'presence', mukâshafa, 'unveiling', and mushâhada, 'contemplation'.[10] These stages correspond to a standard model and, with the same or other names, one finds them almost everywhere in the literature of the tasawwuf. However, if one consults the great commentary of the Qur'an of which Qushayri is also the author, it confirms what the Risâla hinted at: that vision as such remains forbidden in this life. It is worth quoting what he writes about the incident at Sinai: 'Moses came like one of those who are consumed by desire and lost in love. Moses came without Moses. He came when nothing of Moses remained in Moses.' But, Qushayri adds, it is under the sway of this amorous drunkenness that he had the audacity to ask for vision. It was refused him but, because of this state where he no longer had control over what he was saying, he was not punished for his boldness. Muhammad himself hoped for this supreme favour, without expressing his wish, however. But he was not granted his wish either, Qushayri maintains.[11]
If we next examine the words of two other great Sufi contemporaries of the Shaykh al-Akbar, we notice that for them a direct perception of Divine Reality is definitely possible. But is it a question of anything other than what spiritual Christians called 'an advance payment of beatitude', that is, of a still confused and imperfect vision? Najm al-din Kubra describes the stages of contemplation, the last of which is the contemplation of the Unique Essence.[12] Ruzbehan Baqli, in his Tafsîr,[13] concludes from the Qur'anic text that Moses did not obtain vision. In another of his works, however, he too maintains that the viator can arrive at the point where his sirr, the secret centre of his being, 'is immersed in the ocean of the Divine Essence'.[14]
Sticky post
The Anthropology of Compassion
Sunday, April 21, 2013 7:24:49 PM
by William C. Chittick
Ibn ʿArabī has commonly been called al-Shaykh al-Akbar, 'the Greatest Teacher', not least because he explained in unprecedented detail and at the highest level of discourse all the implications of the Islamic worldview. The result was a vast synthesis of the basic fields of learning, including Quran, Hadith, language, law, psychology, cosmology, theology, philosophy, and metaphysics. In delving into these subjects, he wanted to show how each can act as an aid in the actualization of true human nature. But what exactly is true human nature? This is what I am calling 'anthropology' – the science of the anthropos – the explication of which lies at the heart of Ibn ʿArabī's writings. To get at what he is saying, however, we need to begin where he begins, and that is with the governing axiom of the Islamic worldview, tawhīd, or the assertion of unity.
Literally, tawhīd means to say one or to assert one. Technically, its first meaning is to utter the formula, '(There is) no god but God'. The simplest way of bringing out tawhīd's implications is to place any Quranic name of God into the formula. God is Creator. It follows that there is no creator but God. God is Knowing. It follows that there is none knowing but God. God is Compassionate. It follows that there is none compassionate but God. In short, the formula means that all real qualities belong exclusively to the Ultimate Reality and that, simultaneously, all qualities of created things are essentially unreal. When we talk about ourselves or others using words like creativity, knowledge, and compassion, our words are more like metaphors than statements of the actual situation. In our case these divine attributes do not designate what they seem to designate; they are rather pale imitations or distant reflections of the true Reality. The truth of the situation is that there is no true reality but the absolute reality of the Real. This is the fundamental insight of tawhīd. Working out its implications has been the preoccupation of all schools of Islamic thought, not least theology, philosophy, and Sufism. No one has been as thorough in accomplishing this task as Ibn ʿArabī.
I chose 'anthropology of compassion' as my title because I wanted to think about how Ibn ʿArabī might have approached the theme of this conference – 'Islam, Sufism, and the Heart of Compassion'. Given his constant stress on the unity of God, his first order of concern would be to show why God is essentially compassionate, perhaps even more so than he is anything else, and why compassion should be our own concern, perhaps even more so than anything else.
It is not necessarily clear how the word compassion should be translated into Arabic. Webster's Third gives it a relatively straightforward definition: 'deep feeling for and understanding of misery or suffering and the concomitant desire to promote its alleviation'. Among the Quranic divine names, several have meanings that overlap with this definition, and each of these is explained in detail in Islamic texts. Ibn ʿArabī frequently takes pains to distinguish among the meanings of God's 'most beautiful names' and he devotes one of the longest chapters of his monumental Meccan Openings to this task (Chapter 558).
However this may be, it is fairly clear that the best word to render our notion of compassion is rahma, though I prefer to translate it as 'mercy' because of the broader range of appropriate connotations. Webster's tells us that mercy means 'compassion or forbearance shown to an offender or subject: clemency or kindness extended to someone instead of strictness or severity'. Thus compassion and mercy are near synonyms, but mercy connotes a choice of kindness rather than severity, a choice of clemency rather than strictness. This makes mercy a better choice in translating the most important theological principle in Ibn ʿArabī's writings after tawhīd, a principle expressed in the Prophet's well-known saying, 'God's mercy takes precedence over His wrath'.
With tawhīd in view, it becomes clear that the precedence of rahma is more than a mere 'choice' on God's part, for there is nothing at all arbitrary about it. In human terms, we can choose to be kind rather than severe, clement rather than strict. God, however, has no choice, because mercy pertains to the very stuff of reality. He cannot give priority to wrath over mercy, to severity over gentleness, because that would be to give priority to unreality over reality, to nonexistence over existence, to others rather than to himself. It would contradict the foundational truth upon which the universe is built, the fact that there is no reality but God, there is no true existence but God's existence.
Wrath, severity, and strictness have feeble supports in the nature of things, even if those supports are real enough in relation to us, because our own supports are rather feeble. In the grand picture, wrath and severity have no sway with God. This is a recurrent theme in Ibn ʿArabī's writings. He sees it expressed clearly by the Quranic verse in which God says, 'My mercy embraces everything' (7: 156). He often reminds us that the Quran never says anything remotely similar about wrath or severity or vengeance. He tells us over and over that everything will find its final resting place with mercy, because mercy is real, and all else is unreal. In a typical passage, he writes,
The final issue will be at mercy, because the actual situation inscribes a circle. The end of the circle curves back to the beginning and joins it. The end has the property of the beginning, and that is nothing but Being. 'Mercy takes precedence over wrath', because the beginning was through mercy. Wrath is an accident, and accidents disappear.2
Notice that in this passage, Ibn ʿArabī uses the word 'Being' – Arabic wujūd – as a synonym for mercy. From the time of Avicenna (d.1037), who died 117 years before Ibn ʿArabī's birth, wujūd was a standard way to designate the stuff of reality. By Ibn ʿArabī's time, the word was used to mean 'existence' or 'being' not only by philosophers, but also by many theologians and Sufis. As soon as we consider the notion in terms of tawhīd, it becomes clear that there is no wujūd but God's wujūd, no true being but the Being of the Real. Al-Ghazālī, the famous theologian, philosopher, and Sufi who flourished in the period between Avicenna and Ibn ʿArabī, often speaks of wujūd in terms of tawhīd. He commonly uses the formula lays fi'l-wujūd illa'llāh – 'There is nothing in wujūd but God' – meaning that God alone truly exists, and everything else is a passing cloud.
Although 'being' or 'existence' is usually adequate to bring out wujūd's meaning in philosophical texts, this is not so in Ibn ʿArabī's writings. In the Quran and in everyday Arabic, the word means 'to find'. The philosophers took the passive sense – 'to be found' – as a designation for the Greek notion of existence. The logic of this choice is fairly clear: what exists is either that which is found or that which might be found if we had the right perceptual faculties. Sufis and some theologians, in contrast to philosophers, paid attention to the meaning of the word in the Quran, where God is often the subject of the verb. Hence they included the name al-wājid, 'the Finder', in discussions of God's most beautiful names. Al-Ghazālī, for example, tells us that the Finder designates God as he who finds everything and lacks nothing.3 Ibn ʿArabī discusses the name in detail in his chapter on the divine names under the heading hadrat al-wijdān, 'The Presence of Finding'.4 Sufis had used the word wujūd in the sense of finding long before they used it to mean existence. For them, it is a divine attribute that designates awareness and consciousness.
Ibn ʿArabī has commonly been called al-Shaykh al-Akbar, 'the Greatest Teacher', not least because he explained in unprecedented detail and at the highest level of discourse all the implications of the Islamic worldview. The result was a vast synthesis of the basic fields of learning, including Quran, Hadith, language, law, psychology, cosmology, theology, philosophy, and metaphysics. In delving into these subjects, he wanted to show how each can act as an aid in the actualization of true human nature. But what exactly is true human nature? This is what I am calling 'anthropology' – the science of the anthropos – the explication of which lies at the heart of Ibn ʿArabī's writings. To get at what he is saying, however, we need to begin where he begins, and that is with the governing axiom of the Islamic worldview, tawhīd, or the assertion of unity.
Literally, tawhīd means to say one or to assert one. Technically, its first meaning is to utter the formula, '(There is) no god but God'. The simplest way of bringing out tawhīd's implications is to place any Quranic name of God into the formula. God is Creator. It follows that there is no creator but God. God is Knowing. It follows that there is none knowing but God. God is Compassionate. It follows that there is none compassionate but God. In short, the formula means that all real qualities belong exclusively to the Ultimate Reality and that, simultaneously, all qualities of created things are essentially unreal. When we talk about ourselves or others using words like creativity, knowledge, and compassion, our words are more like metaphors than statements of the actual situation. In our case these divine attributes do not designate what they seem to designate; they are rather pale imitations or distant reflections of the true Reality. The truth of the situation is that there is no true reality but the absolute reality of the Real. This is the fundamental insight of tawhīd. Working out its implications has been the preoccupation of all schools of Islamic thought, not least theology, philosophy, and Sufism. No one has been as thorough in accomplishing this task as Ibn ʿArabī.
I chose 'anthropology of compassion' as my title because I wanted to think about how Ibn ʿArabī might have approached the theme of this conference – 'Islam, Sufism, and the Heart of Compassion'. Given his constant stress on the unity of God, his first order of concern would be to show why God is essentially compassionate, perhaps even more so than he is anything else, and why compassion should be our own concern, perhaps even more so than anything else.
It is not necessarily clear how the word compassion should be translated into Arabic. Webster's Third gives it a relatively straightforward definition: 'deep feeling for and understanding of misery or suffering and the concomitant desire to promote its alleviation'. Among the Quranic divine names, several have meanings that overlap with this definition, and each of these is explained in detail in Islamic texts. Ibn ʿArabī frequently takes pains to distinguish among the meanings of God's 'most beautiful names' and he devotes one of the longest chapters of his monumental Meccan Openings to this task (Chapter 558).
However this may be, it is fairly clear that the best word to render our notion of compassion is rahma, though I prefer to translate it as 'mercy' because of the broader range of appropriate connotations. Webster's tells us that mercy means 'compassion or forbearance shown to an offender or subject: clemency or kindness extended to someone instead of strictness or severity'. Thus compassion and mercy are near synonyms, but mercy connotes a choice of kindness rather than severity, a choice of clemency rather than strictness. This makes mercy a better choice in translating the most important theological principle in Ibn ʿArabī's writings after tawhīd, a principle expressed in the Prophet's well-known saying, 'God's mercy takes precedence over His wrath'.
With tawhīd in view, it becomes clear that the precedence of rahma is more than a mere 'choice' on God's part, for there is nothing at all arbitrary about it. In human terms, we can choose to be kind rather than severe, clement rather than strict. God, however, has no choice, because mercy pertains to the very stuff of reality. He cannot give priority to wrath over mercy, to severity over gentleness, because that would be to give priority to unreality over reality, to nonexistence over existence, to others rather than to himself. It would contradict the foundational truth upon which the universe is built, the fact that there is no reality but God, there is no true existence but God's existence.
Wrath, severity, and strictness have feeble supports in the nature of things, even if those supports are real enough in relation to us, because our own supports are rather feeble. In the grand picture, wrath and severity have no sway with God. This is a recurrent theme in Ibn ʿArabī's writings. He sees it expressed clearly by the Quranic verse in which God says, 'My mercy embraces everything' (7: 156). He often reminds us that the Quran never says anything remotely similar about wrath or severity or vengeance. He tells us over and over that everything will find its final resting place with mercy, because mercy is real, and all else is unreal. In a typical passage, he writes,
The final issue will be at mercy, because the actual situation inscribes a circle. The end of the circle curves back to the beginning and joins it. The end has the property of the beginning, and that is nothing but Being. 'Mercy takes precedence over wrath', because the beginning was through mercy. Wrath is an accident, and accidents disappear.2
Notice that in this passage, Ibn ʿArabī uses the word 'Being' – Arabic wujūd – as a synonym for mercy. From the time of Avicenna (d.1037), who died 117 years before Ibn ʿArabī's birth, wujūd was a standard way to designate the stuff of reality. By Ibn ʿArabī's time, the word was used to mean 'existence' or 'being' not only by philosophers, but also by many theologians and Sufis. As soon as we consider the notion in terms of tawhīd, it becomes clear that there is no wujūd but God's wujūd, no true being but the Being of the Real. Al-Ghazālī, the famous theologian, philosopher, and Sufi who flourished in the period between Avicenna and Ibn ʿArabī, often speaks of wujūd in terms of tawhīd. He commonly uses the formula lays fi'l-wujūd illa'llāh – 'There is nothing in wujūd but God' – meaning that God alone truly exists, and everything else is a passing cloud.
Although 'being' or 'existence' is usually adequate to bring out wujūd's meaning in philosophical texts, this is not so in Ibn ʿArabī's writings. In the Quran and in everyday Arabic, the word means 'to find'. The philosophers took the passive sense – 'to be found' – as a designation for the Greek notion of existence. The logic of this choice is fairly clear: what exists is either that which is found or that which might be found if we had the right perceptual faculties. Sufis and some theologians, in contrast to philosophers, paid attention to the meaning of the word in the Quran, where God is often the subject of the verb. Hence they included the name al-wājid, 'the Finder', in discussions of God's most beautiful names. Al-Ghazālī, for example, tells us that the Finder designates God as he who finds everything and lacks nothing.3 Ibn ʿArabī discusses the name in detail in his chapter on the divine names under the heading hadrat al-wijdān, 'The Presence of Finding'.4 Sufis had used the word wujūd in the sense of finding long before they used it to mean existence. For them, it is a divine attribute that designates awareness and consciousness.
Sticky post
The Islamic Notion of Mercy
Saturday, March 30, 2013 8:40:39 AM
Bismillâhir Rohmânir Rohîm
Robbisyrochlîy shodrîy, wa yassirlîy amrîy, wahlul 'uqdatam millisâniy yafqohû qoulîy
..
William C. Chittick
Acquaintances of mine who have participated in recent dialogues between Christian and Muslim theologians, such as those organized by A Common Word, report that one of the biggest misunderstandings shown by Christian theologians is the notion that Islam has little or nothing to say about love.
One of the several reasons for this mistaken view is that the early Orientalists — those who first studied Islamic thought in the modern West — imagined that a school of thought known as “Kalam” played the same role in Islam as “theology” does in Christianity. In fact, Kalam has been one of several approaches to knowledge of God, and certainly not the most influential.
Kalam was closely allied with Islamic jurisprudence and typically depicted God as the supreme law-giver. When it mentioned love, it claimed that God loves human beings by issuing commandments, and human beings love God by obeying him. Those who obey go to heaven, and those who disobey go to hell. God deals with human beings strictly in terms of carrots and sticks — forget about love in any normal meaning of the word.
Despite the fact that more recent scholarship has done a much better job of describing the diverse theological approaches of Islamic thought, this has had relatively little effect on the prejudices that Christian theologians picked up years ago in seminary. Pope John Paul II, with all his remarkable accomplishments, provides a good example. In Crossing the Threshold of Hope, he wrote, “The God of the Koran … is ultimately a God outside of the world, a God who is only Majesty, never Emmanuel, God-with-us.” (his emphasis)
Even a cursory glance at the Quran should lead a reader to wonder why, if God is so majestic, does practically every chapter begin with the formula of consecration: “In the name of God, the All-merciful, the Ever-merciful.” In the text itself, divine names and attributes associated with mercy and kindness are far more common than those associated with magnificence and majesty. Many verses say things like, “He is with you wherever you are” (57:4) — whether before your creation, during your brief stay in this world, or after death. This divine “withness” is tightly bound up with the notion of love and mercy.
The formula of consecration contains the two names “All-merciful” (rahmān) and “Ever-merciful” (rahīm). Both are derived from the word rahma, which is variously translated as mercy, compassion, and benevolence. Rahma is an abstract noun derived from the concrete noun rahim, “womb.” Mercy is the mother’s attitude toward the fruit of her womb. When God says in the Quran, “My mercy embraces everything” (7:156), this means that God has mercy on the entire universe. Basing themselves on this sort of verse and on the very notion of mercy, some theologians referred to the realm of nature — that is, the universe in its entirety — as the divine womb.
The close connection between mercy and motherhood is obvious in many sayings of the Prophet. For example, he said that when God created mercy, he created it in one hundred parts. He kept ninety-nine parts with himself and sent one part into the world. Mothers are devoted to their children and wild animals nurture their young because of this one part. On the day of resurrection, the Prophet added, God will rejoin this one part with the ninety-nine parts — all for the benefit of those who dwell in the posthumous realms, whether paradise or hell. Among the several points embedded in this saying is the typical stress on tawhīd, the assertion of the uniqueness of the divine reality that is the foundation of Islamic thought: What we experience as mercy, compassion, and love can only be a pale reflection of a tiny fraction of the real thing.
Another account tells us that the Prophet had stopped to rest at a bedouin camp, where a woman with an infant was baking bread over an open fire. The child slipped away and approached the fire, and the mother quickly pulled him back. She turned to the Prophet and said, “Do you not say that God is ‘the most merciful of the merciful’?” He replied that he did. She said, “No mother would throw her child into the fire.” For a moment the Prophet turned away and wept. Then he said that God puts into hellfire only those who refuse to go anywhere else.
As a divine attribute, mercy is not identical with love, because love demands mutuality: “He loves them, and they love Him” (5:54). In contrast, mercy is one-sided, which is to say that God has mercy on creation, but not the other way around. People must certainly try to be merciful and compassionate, but that means they must love their neighbors as themselves. Failure to do so is a sure recipe for bad karma. As the Quran says repeatedly about those who do not act appropriately, “They are wronging only themselves.”
Classical theologians spent a good deal of time explaining the subtle differences between the meanings of “All-merciful” and “Ever-merciful.” Commonly they said that the All-merciful mercy is universal and the Ever-merciful mercy is particular.
Robbisyrochlîy shodrîy, wa yassirlîy amrîy, wahlul 'uqdatam millisâniy yafqohû qoulîy
..
William C. Chittick
Acquaintances of mine who have participated in recent dialogues between Christian and Muslim theologians, such as those organized by A Common Word, report that one of the biggest misunderstandings shown by Christian theologians is the notion that Islam has little or nothing to say about love.
One of the several reasons for this mistaken view is that the early Orientalists — those who first studied Islamic thought in the modern West — imagined that a school of thought known as “Kalam” played the same role in Islam as “theology” does in Christianity. In fact, Kalam has been one of several approaches to knowledge of God, and certainly not the most influential.
Kalam was closely allied with Islamic jurisprudence and typically depicted God as the supreme law-giver. When it mentioned love, it claimed that God loves human beings by issuing commandments, and human beings love God by obeying him. Those who obey go to heaven, and those who disobey go to hell. God deals with human beings strictly in terms of carrots and sticks — forget about love in any normal meaning of the word.
Despite the fact that more recent scholarship has done a much better job of describing the diverse theological approaches of Islamic thought, this has had relatively little effect on the prejudices that Christian theologians picked up years ago in seminary. Pope John Paul II, with all his remarkable accomplishments, provides a good example. In Crossing the Threshold of Hope, he wrote, “The God of the Koran … is ultimately a God outside of the world, a God who is only Majesty, never Emmanuel, God-with-us.” (his emphasis)
Even a cursory glance at the Quran should lead a reader to wonder why, if God is so majestic, does practically every chapter begin with the formula of consecration: “In the name of God, the All-merciful, the Ever-merciful.” In the text itself, divine names and attributes associated with mercy and kindness are far more common than those associated with magnificence and majesty. Many verses say things like, “He is with you wherever you are” (57:4) — whether before your creation, during your brief stay in this world, or after death. This divine “withness” is tightly bound up with the notion of love and mercy.
The formula of consecration contains the two names “All-merciful” (rahmān) and “Ever-merciful” (rahīm). Both are derived from the word rahma, which is variously translated as mercy, compassion, and benevolence. Rahma is an abstract noun derived from the concrete noun rahim, “womb.” Mercy is the mother’s attitude toward the fruit of her womb. When God says in the Quran, “My mercy embraces everything” (7:156), this means that God has mercy on the entire universe. Basing themselves on this sort of verse and on the very notion of mercy, some theologians referred to the realm of nature — that is, the universe in its entirety — as the divine womb.
The close connection between mercy and motherhood is obvious in many sayings of the Prophet. For example, he said that when God created mercy, he created it in one hundred parts. He kept ninety-nine parts with himself and sent one part into the world. Mothers are devoted to their children and wild animals nurture their young because of this one part. On the day of resurrection, the Prophet added, God will rejoin this one part with the ninety-nine parts — all for the benefit of those who dwell in the posthumous realms, whether paradise or hell. Among the several points embedded in this saying is the typical stress on tawhīd, the assertion of the uniqueness of the divine reality that is the foundation of Islamic thought: What we experience as mercy, compassion, and love can only be a pale reflection of a tiny fraction of the real thing.
Another account tells us that the Prophet had stopped to rest at a bedouin camp, where a woman with an infant was baking bread over an open fire. The child slipped away and approached the fire, and the mother quickly pulled him back. She turned to the Prophet and said, “Do you not say that God is ‘the most merciful of the merciful’?” He replied that he did. She said, “No mother would throw her child into the fire.” For a moment the Prophet turned away and wept. Then he said that God puts into hellfire only those who refuse to go anywhere else.
As a divine attribute, mercy is not identical with love, because love demands mutuality: “He loves them, and they love Him” (5:54). In contrast, mercy is one-sided, which is to say that God has mercy on creation, but not the other way around. People must certainly try to be merciful and compassionate, but that means they must love their neighbors as themselves. Failure to do so is a sure recipe for bad karma. As the Quran says repeatedly about those who do not act appropriately, “They are wronging only themselves.”
Classical theologians spent a good deal of time explaining the subtle differences between the meanings of “All-merciful” and “Ever-merciful.” Commonly they said that the All-merciful mercy is universal and the Ever-merciful mercy is particular.
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The Circle of Inclusion
Tuesday, December 25, 2012 6:12:14 PM
Each person who has stood in an open space, or sailed on the sea, or stood on a high mountain has experienced the circularity of the horizons, seen the direction of the sun rising in the east, reaching its zenith and then setting in the west, or felt the overarching night-sky studded with stars, and found themselves at the centre looking from a face they cannot see. This experience applies equally to everybody who stands in such a space and it is a wonderful example of how each person is right at the centre of what is happening. Similarly each of us has a direct connection to what is real, like the path of the sun that reaches us from across the waters. If the attention is then turned inwards towards the invisible centre of one's being – the heart – and what is happening there is observed, it is possible to establish a connection with the source of one's being, which is equally the ever-present dimensionless point of return.
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