Comparisons Between Sufism and Buddhism
The Jhanas
by
Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
Inspired by the vision of
Hazrat Inayat Khan
Amongst the Buddhist practices one could list three steps: (i) the Satipathanas, (ii) the Jhanas, (iii) the Arupa Jhanas.
So far in the Satipathanas we have been observing the different constituents of ourselves objectively, but now in this next step, the Jhanas, we observe other than ourselves (the world) while unswervingly holding on to the consciousness of our consciousness, “bodhi,” in daily life.
Caution yourself by this thought: this is the way the world appears within the constraint imposed by the focalization of consciousness due to my notion of myself as an individual.
The breakthrough is fired when you realize that the personal focal center of your consciousness, previously the observer, is now that which is observed. The personal vantage point has merged with the consciousness of the universe.
The consequence is that in the awakened state, the objects, scenes, and events you remember having perceived in the scenario of life through the personal vantage point now appear as they would through a lens; that is, as a distortion of the way they are viewed from the impersonal, all-encompassing vantage point.
Practice
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Rather than identifying with your consciousness as the witness, push your consciousness to its limits where it is functioning beyond the point where it is a personal vantage point. It merges with the transpersonal dimension of consciousness. You watch your consciousness as it watches an object, your body, a thought, etc. The witness is impersonal. One does not identify with it.
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Sufism does corroborate Buddhism in that, for the Sufis the observer is not the person – God is the observer.
Ibn 'Arabi:
| By Himself He sees Himself and by Himself He knows Himself.
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| He is not only the Perceiver but also the one through whom He perceives.
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| He does not require a creature nor a subject because He is the Creator and the created.
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The difference is that Buddha would never formulate an assumption, which is a dogma. His teaching is based upon experience. Yet he does declare a credo:
| Monks there is a non-become, non-formed, non-perishing. If it were not for the non-become, non-formed, non-perishing there would be no refuge from all of this.
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Exploring Deeper Zones of Your Being
The Jhanas aim at disengaging the central principle of one’s being standing apart from all of this.
…to unclutch the root, as it were, of one’s being…reaching into deeper layers of one’s being from its unfoldment in one’s congenital identity.
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We grasp a deeper stratum of reality, which, according to Sufis, is “that which transpires behind that which appears.”
| To life Buddhism opposes that which is beyond life.
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This perspective can be applied to psychotherapy: we may grasp the issues behind facts and circumstances.
| Consciousness is free from perceptions and images. Consciousness maintains itself without resting upon psychical functions, perceptions, images, thoughts or emotions.
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Dismiss the supports of consciousness (vitarka and vikara) without passing into the subconscious or into sleep.
How does matter, how do events, how do the thoughts of other people, how do the emotions of other people, how does the personality of another person, how does the consciousness of another person appear from the vantage point of consciousness carried beyond the point where it is functioning as a personal consciousness? That is in a state of awakening, “bojhanga?”
Practice
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In order to achieve this you need liberate yourself from habitual faculties. Moreover you need to not only avoid your usual identification but even identification with the super-sensible dimension of your identity.
An example of how one is able to maintain the overview holding on to the vantage point of the consciousness of your consciousness: ask yourself when walking,
| “Who is walking? Who is breathing?”
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Hazrat Inayat Khan:
True exaltation of the spirit resides in the fact that it has come to Earth and has realized there its spiritual existence.
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| The soul manifests in the world in order that it may experience the different phases of manifestation, yet not lose its way, but regain its original freedom in addition to the experience and knowledge it has gained in the world.
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| The purpose of life is fulfilled in rising to the greatest heights and in diving to the deepest depths of life, in widening one's horizons, in penetrating life in all its spheres, in losing oneself, and in finding oneself in the end.
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I. Matter will now appear to you as actuating the mind.
Dr. David Bohm:
| The more you explore matter the more you discover something of the nature of the mind.
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Hazrat Inayat Khan:
| Consciousness awakens in matter where it was, so to speak, buried for thousands of years.
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II. How does the thinking of people appear when consciousness has extended beyond the point where it is functioning as an individual consciousness?
| The ascetic causes the awakening of mindfulness derived from detachment, from dispassion, derived from ceasing to involve oneself in the flux of becoming, ending in renunciation. He causes the awakening of investigation, of enthusiasm, of equanimity, of concentration.
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| This should be considered as realization, bodhi, rather than cognizance. – the great awakening, piti sambojhhang.
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Abu Bakr al Warraq:
| Knowledge is of things with regard to their forms or characteristics, whereas realization is of things in their deeper reality, haqa'iq.
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You will discover that there is disparity between the real world and our representation of it – our theorems. This is the very foundation of maya.
Bastami:
| God deludes you in the markets of this world and will delude you in the next.
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| God’s guile encompasses them in a way they do not understand.
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| I saw the tree of oneness. Then I looked and I knew that all this was deceit.
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Ibn 'Arabi:
| The signs alert us to what they manifest, what they reveal. He is known through the things.
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Qur'an:
| We will show them our Signs in the furthest regions of the earth and in your own souls.
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Ibn 'Arabi:
| So there is a real and a created representation. If you witness your representation, you will not see the real; and if you witness the real, you will discard your representation thereof….
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Ibn 'Arabi:
| He is known through the things. Things are like curtains over the real. When they are raised, unveiling takes place.
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Our consciousness does not grasp the real; it is veiled by our representation of it.
Ibn 'Arabi:
| Knowledge is a veil on the known.
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In his quest for reality Bastami goes through a deep process:
Then He annihilated me from my own existence and showed me His Selfhood unhampered by my existence.
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Finally came the moment of truth.
Bastami:
| Thou art my sight in my eye, and my knowledge in my ignorance. Be Thyself Thine own light that Thou mayest be seen by Thyself. There is no God but Thee.
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III. How does the consciousness of people appear when consciousness has extended beyond the point where it is functioning as a personal vantage point?
We are unaware that we do know the real. We are not conscious of this knowing – it is apprised by our intelligence.
Diana Robertson:
| We may explore the universe and find ourselves or we may explore ourselves and find the universe.
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Abdullah Ansari:
I searched for God and found myself and I searched for myself and I found God.
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Jean-Paul Richter:
| The unconscious is really the largest realm in our minds. And just on account of this unconscious, its unknown boundaries may extend far away. Why should everything come to consciousness that lies in the mind since, for example, that of which it has already been aware, the whole great realm of memory, only appears in it in small areas, while the entire remaining world stays invisible in the shadow? And may there not be a second half world of our mental moon which never turns towards consciousness?
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What Richter is saying is that we store cognizance in the unconscious of which we are not aware, but it is acquired unbeknown to us. It is an acquired knowledge that accumulates in our unconscious memory and therefore is not to be confused with protocritic knowledge though it does affect our knowing implicitly.
If you could grasp reality you would be shattered.
Niffari:
| Why seek for the known when you could know the Knower?
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Ibn 'Arabi:
| Thou knowest this world in the degree of which one can know the shadows; and thou art ignorant of it in the degree of thy ignorance of the person on whom the shadows depend.
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This is the clue to awakening.
One espies the manifesting as the existential world, but more importantly, the intention behind the blueprint.
At a certain level of our thinking, our psyche touches upon a level prior to
causality.
Andreas Speiser:
| It is an initial state which is not governed by mechanistic law, but is the preconditioning of law, the chance substrate upon which law is built.
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How is this possible? Perhaps the greatest miracle is that our brain, configuring the fabric of the stars, serves as a transducer to grasp the software that manifests as the stars. Actually the fabric of our bodies is more sophisticated than that of the stars, because in the course of the evolutionary process the inorganic matter of the stars has organized itself as organic matter.
The Perspective of Astronauts
The perspective of astronauts has opened up a completely new horizon fostering the upgrading of our thinking. Viewing Planet Earth from outer space leads us earthlings into an overview from the moment that we are apprised of their perspective. The overview of the astronauts overarches our commonplace point of view.
Contemplating Planet Earth and, more so, plunging into the galaxies and discovering themselves as part of that maelstrom, has had the consequence of altering the astronauts' thinking. Entering into their thinking has the effect of altering ours.
Michael Collins:
| I liked that feeling, being a part of the universe instead of part of the Solar System. USA, 54
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Julian Janes:
| It is something about understanding the totality of existence, the essential defining reality of things, the entire universe and man’s place in it. It is a groping among stars for final answers, a wandering the infinitesimal for the infinitely general, a deeper and deeper pilgrimage into the unknown.
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Brian Swimme:
| We are the first humans to look into the night sky and see the birth of stars, the birth of galaxies, the birth of the cosmos as a whole. Our future as a species will be forged within this new story of the world.
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Our intelligence sparkles when, plunging with our minds into the unfathomable depth and outreach of the choreography of the stars, it resonates with the intelligence motivating the galaxies, discovering its commonality therewith.
This way of thinking opens the perspective for a further step in our human thinking and in the future of spirituality. In fact, just as species mutate, the thinking of humanity advances.
Hazrat Inayat Khan:
| The collective working of many minds as one single idea and the activity of the whole world are governed by the intelligence of the Planet. The whole Universe has contributed to the way humanity thinks today.
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Kevin W. Kelley:
| It is the golden thread that runs through all these expressions of individual experience that is the magic of life.
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Just as it takes a lot of molecules to produce a brain that can serve intelligence, so it takes many minds to illuminate our thinking. And what is more, instead of adding to each other, paramount thoughts multiply and can upgrade our thinking exponentially by updating it in infinite regress, like a logarithm.
What are we doing in our life? The whole universe is inviting us to participate in its evolution by updating our understanding.
Murchie:
Why should I stir from my accustomed ways for the risks and trials of space?
I have come here with open eyes to see the unseen. I have come with open mind to listen to the music of the spheres.
You and I have been appointed to a greater consciousness than our own.
Man has become a cell of the consciousness of the whole time-space universe. It behooves him to enlarge his view, to accept life’s new dimension when it is offered – to adopt the perspective of space.
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