Winds of Change.NET: Liberty. Discovery. Humanity. Victory.

Formal Affiliations
  • Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto
  • Euston Democratic Progressive Manifesto
  • Real Democracy for Iran!
  • Support Denamrk
  • Million Voices for Darfur
  • milblogs
Syndication
 Subscribe in a reader

Sufi Wisdom: What Is Religion?

| No Comments

(Part of our weekly Sufi Wisdom series. T.L. James is moving, so I'm taking this on again for the next few weeks.)

Today's wisdom comes from Ala'uddin al-Bukhari al-Attar, one of the great Shaykhs of the Naqshbandi school:

"All religions, as theologians - and their opponents - understand the word, is something other than what it is assumed to be.

Religion is a vehicle. Its expression, rituals, moral and other teachings are designed to cause certain elevating effects, at a certain time, upon certain communities.

Because of the difficulty of maintaining the science of man, religion was instituted as a means of approaching truth. The means always became, for the shallow, the end, and the vehicle became the idol.

Only the man of wisdom, not the man of faith or intellect, can cause the vehicle to move again."

Leave a comment

Here are some quick tips for adding simple Textile formatting to your comments, though you can also use proper HTML tags:

*This* puts text in bold.

_This_ puts text in italics.

bq. This "bq." at the beginning of a paragraph, flush with the left hand side and with a space after it, is the code to indent one paragraph of text as a block quote.

To add a live URL, "Text to display":http://windsofchange.net/ (no spaces between) will show up as Text to display. Always use this for links - otherwise you will screw up the columns on our main blog page.




Recent Comments
  • Armed Liberal: Chris sometimes arguing with you is like living in "The read more
  • Chris: Chris, if you think there are no experiments in evolutionary read more
  • Armed Liberal: As opposed, of course, to today's Michael Mann quote: Who read more
  • Chris: You are aware that the same person whose "peer reviewed" read more
  • Armed Liberal: Chris, if you think there are no experiments in evolutionary read more
  • The Great Satan: You are aware that the same person whose "peer reviewed" read more
  • Chris: Oh, and one more thing, GS - about the surface read more
  • Chris: Wow, GS, seem to have touched a nerve. Let me read more
  • Chris: Chris, if you're thinking that AGW will be conclusively proved read more
  • Joe Katzman: As a basic statement of what science must be, it's read more
  • The Great Satan: Is that the NASA data that relies on the utterly read more
  • Chris: My apologies for the double post. Rubbish. Models are an read more
  • Chris: I think he means Briffa, and oh if you are read more
  • Armed Liberal: Thanks, Satan - you're 100% right. I conflated the place read more
  • The Great Satan: Re cherrypicking, check Yaffa please. Cite, link, and/or quote, read more
The Winds Crew
Town Founder: Left-Hand Man: Other Winds Marshals
  • 'AMac', aka. Marshal Festus (AMac@...)
  • Robin "Straight Shooter" Burk
  • 'Cicero', aka. The Quiet Man (cicero@...)
  • David Blue (david.blue@...)
  • 'Lewy14', aka. Marshal Leroy (lewy14@...)
  • 'Nortius Maximus', aka. Big Tuna (nortius.maximus@...)
Other Regulars Semi-Active: Posting Affiliates Emeritus:
Winds Blogroll
Author Archives
Categories
Powered by Movable Type 4.23-en