Comparisons Between Sufism and Buddhism
Watching Our Consciousness
by
Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
Inspired by the vision of
Hazrat Inayat Khan
[Please note that in the audio meditations for this lesson Pir Vilayat is speaking
alternately in English and in German. The corresponding transcripts are in English only.]
In the first stages of the Satipathanas described by Buddha you have observed your body, thinking, emotion and personality without identifying with them. Now, in the fourth Satipathana, watch your consciousness without identifying with it.
| Place the memory of yourself before yourself...
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…while carrying your consciousness beyond the point where it is functioning as the witness.
Hazrat Inayat Khan:
You are yourself the object of your observation.
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Practice
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Dwell in your body, watching your body without thinking any thought connected with your body.
Dwell in your feelings, watching your feelings without thinking any thought connected with your feelings.
Dwell in your mind, watching your mind without thinking any thought connected with your mind.
Dwell in your consciousness watching your consciousness without thinking any thought connected with your consciousness.
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Now we deal with the most difficult stage.
You say, “I am not my body, I’m not my mind and I’m not my personality. What am I? I must be my consciousness because I perceive this, I realize this and I remember that. What do I mean by ‘I’? Of course, I mean my consciousness. I am that which is aware. The body, and even my character, are that of which I am aware, but I am that which is aware. I am the subject.”
Even that has to go by the board as the most basic of all illusions.
Buddha explains it this way. He says, “Consciousness is like a flame. A flame depends upon the combustible. As long as there is the log, well then there is a flame. But if you ran out of logs, there would be no more flame.”
Further, he questions, is the flame the same that burns first one log and then another? When the fire is extinguished, and then relit, is the second flame another flame or the same flame?
How can you say I am this consciousness or that consciousness? You start realizing there is just consciousness which emerges when a formation has been built up, like a plant or a crystal. Consciousness flows in the plant or in a cell or in a crystal. But you can’t say this is the consciousness of the crystal; it is the consciousness that flows through the crystal. Or in the same way, if you could get into the consciousness of an ant in an ant nest you would realize that the ant is so conscious of the kind of will of the ant nest that the consciousness of the ant nest is much stronger than the consciousness of the individual ant. It does the things that the ant nest wants to do.
Then you become aware of the total consciousness of the universe. Consciousness, which you thought was really at least the epitome of me, is totally implicated in all consciousness of the universe.
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Often I find that people have trouble with this practice because they are watching their thoughts, or their breath, from the vantage point of their personal consciousness rather than, as Buddha suggests, from a vantage point where consciousness is carried beyond its functioning as a personal witness. Consequently people err by engaging in introspection. Therefore having proceeded through the three previous Satipathanas and having arrived at the fourth, one needs now, once more, to proceed watching one’s body, mind emotions and personality from the vantage point attained in the fourth Satipathana.
Practice
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Buddha enjoins upon us to observe: this is my body composed of flesh, bones and blood. It is a formation configured by cosmic forces regardless of my will…
| …as a function of the impersonal forces which follow their course with complete indifference to our person.
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Moreover, Buddha declares that considering the inevitable decay of the body results in dis-identification with the body and consequently confers upon the ascetic a sense of deathlessness (in Sanskrit amrita.)
Likewise are my thoughts and my personality so configured.
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In the days of Buddha little was known of physics. Through this study we find that already during one’s lifetime the molecules of our body cells are ionized: all that remains is electromagnetic charge. Matter is transmuted into energy. This energy field will be the infrastructure, the support system, for our body during ‘life after life’ that we call death.
Buddha affirmed, admittedly initially, that one’s body and personality are conditioned by one’s ancestral inheritance. This corresponds to the presence of the past, as Sheldrake postulates, where determinism sets in.
However, in addition, one recognizes that: I enjoy free will by my personal incentive. I can alter my body by my diet, by jogging, by awakening dormant faculties, by monitoring the endocrine glands; and I do and can alter my personality by unfurling potential qualities.
If living systems were predetermined, they would be locked into sclerosis.
Instead of being predetermined as Leibnitz suggests, quantum physics points out the role of randomness to foster the way evolution proceeds by trial and error. Further, Prigogine introduces in his theories of dissipative structures not only the “undeterminate” in science, but also randomness as opening the chance for systems to explore unforeseen patterns by trial and error, thereby self-organizing themselves to foster creativity.
Buddha discounts the personal incentive. But who seeks for freedom from conditioning if not the individual? Conditioning is not the act of the individual!
The Sufis consider the personal dimension of our identity as the customizing of the global Being uniquely in each human being. This makes for a bounty of possibilities since the factors in the cosmic code are infinite. For the Sufis this bespeaks of the divine magnanimity.
Ibn 'Arabi:
| The One who enjoys this independence and has manifested the world did not manifest it by necessity, but He created beings so that they may enjoy existence in order to free them from the solitude of the void. This was done by dint of altruism, because He chose not to remain the only holder of those things that He gave.
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| When God sent Himself down to the waystations of His servants, their properties exercised their influence over Him. Hence He only determines their properties through them. He does not determine our properties except through us. Or rather we determine our own properties through ourselves though within Him. He only will according to the situation.
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Werner von Braun:
Man is the observer of the universe, the experimenter, the searcher for truth, but he is not spectator alone. He is a participant in the continuing process of creation.
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Practice
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Take advantage of the objective observation of your body to render the state of consciousness ‘corporeal.’
The consequence is that one acts nobly. One acts with decorum, maintaining a high standard in everything that one does.
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Watch Your Emotions
One must cultivate an attitude of absolute objectivity with regard to one’s psychological and emotional soul-searching.
Practice
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Observe objectively “this feeling arises.”
Now inquire: what were the circumstances or thoughts which triggered off this feeling?
Discern clearly that this sensation or thought had this effect upon my feelings.
Observe that by exercising detachment, the feeling subsides.
The clue to exercising detachment is outwitting the forces that result from identifying with the personal dimension of one’s being.
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Here lies the secret of one’s wounds provoked, even exasperated. One is aroused by the incoming emotion triggered off by not only a disturbing event or thought, but frustration at the obstacles standing in the way of the fulfillment of one’s desires: covetousness, concupiscence, jealousy, hate, anger, pride, doubt, the primordial anguish, wavering, the need for attention or recognition, winning an argument, agitation, restlessness.
Usually we confuse that aspect of ourselves that is the observer with our psyche. Distinguishing between these proves most useful to psychotherapists in their efforts to alleviate the despair of patients by teaching them to identify with the observing self while pointing out that it is the psyche that is distressed, not the observer.
Pain, distress, anguish, despair, frustration, a broken heart, self-pity are right there lurking in our personal identity; in our transpersonal identity there is the self-assurance that begets peace and sovereignty. To make this transit, overcoming desire requires a lot of maturity, of discernment as to values, and of mastery.
Hazrat Inayat Khan:
| Man seeks freedom and pursues captivity.
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The moment a person feels that he will no longer remain in prison, the prison bars must break instantly of themselves.
It depends upon your discrimination: what to renounce and for what; whether to renounce things momentarily precious for everlasting things or everlasting things for things momentarily precious.
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Buddha:
| He remains vigilant over the eyes and the ears. Watch over the doors of perception. He remains vigilant over the mind.
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Practice
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Place sentinels at the doors of perception. Impressions are arrested at the periphery by an attitude of detachment before they reach and trigger off one’s emotional reaction.
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Since the frustration of one’s craving or aversion is the cause of suffering, Buddha advocates curbing any inclination or attraction for what the world offers you which draws you into the samsaric “vicious circle” and robs you of your freedom. In doing this one is isolating oneself in splendid isolation which is the way of the ascetic, not that of valuing life with all its joys and pains and challenges which is the way of the Sufi. But Buddha lays the ultimate value in freedom. It is desire that avers itself to be the impediment whereby one is conditioned that robs one of one’s freedom.
This detachment is sparked by girding oneself with silence.
Buddha:
| Between the world and me there is now a zone of silence.
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You will find that you will reduce the period of sleep and promote deep sleep (orthodox sleep) rather than sleep with dreams (paradoxal sleep).
Practice
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To appreciate the serenity arrived at by detachment, perform the Yogic practice of Yoni Mudra. Like the popular statuette of the monkeys obstructing perception, place fingers on eyes, ears, nose and mouth.
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Here we are reconnoitering precisely the deep ground for resentment. Therefore Buddha is tackling one of the most fundamental of all psychological problems and therefore it is a pointer for psychotherapists: the healing of wounds by dis-intoxification.
Scrutinizing the Mind
A we have seen when studying yoga, particularly nirvetarka samadhi, the Yogi frees his mind from the limitation due to labeling a thought, for example one’s representation of a quality by a name, by defining it and thereby limiting its outreach.
Buddha:
| That part of this aggregate that is gross and material is form, and that part that is subtle is name, and between the two there is an independent relationship.
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It is in the perspective of our individual consciousness that we segregate objects and thoughts by labels.
Julius Evola:
| Thought and form condition each other.
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This should caution us about “vain repetition” of which Christ warns us. The error lies in trying to develop a quality in our self without maintaining the representation of that quality in its perfection predicated to God as the archetype of which the coveted quality in our personality is the exemplar.
Al Jili:
| There is access to the knowledge of God only through the intermediary of His names and His qualities. But he who breaks the seal, transpiercing thus quality and name, is with God through the essence without the divine quality being veiled from him. He becomes the mirror of the divine name so that he himself and the name are like two mirrors confronting each other and being reflected the one in the other.
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No doubt the signs, the ayat, of which the Qur’an speaks in their bounty scatter our thoughts in thought associations. To this Buddha opposes the state of nirvana: emptiness, “the sign-less.” In a further step, in nirvecara Samadhi, the Yogi frees herself from thought associations.
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