amin's blog

sermon 12

When God gave Ali victory over the enemy at the Battle of Jamal one of his comrades said on that occasion: 'I wish my brother so-and-so had been present and he too would have seen what success and victory God has given you.' Ali responded:
'Did your brother hold me as a friend?'
He said: 'Yes'
Then Ali said: 'In that case he was with us. Rather in this army of ours even those persons were also present who are still in the loins of men and wombs of women. Shortly, time will bring them out and faith will get strength through them.'

The Peak of Eloquence

suicide

I once stood on a bridge in Paris and saw from a distance on a road leading down to the river a suicide victim wrapped in oilcloth. He had just been pulled dead from the Seine. Suddenly I heard someone next to me say something. It was a young blond carter in a blue jacket, very young, strawberry blond, with a smart, clever, pointed face. On his chin was a wart from which sprouted almost exuberantly a stiff bunch of red hairs like a paintbrush. Since I turned toward him, he pointed with a nod of his head toward the object that elicited our attention and said, winking at me: “Don’t you think, this one over there, since he was able to manage that, he surely could have done still other things as well.” I followed him with my gaze, astonished, while he was already walking back to his enormous cart filled with rocks, for truly: what would one not be able to achieve with exactly that strength that is necessary to untie the strong and mighty bonds of life! Since that day, I know with absolute certainty that even the worst turn of events, that even despair is only abundance, that it is an onslaught of our being that could be forced in the opposite direction with one single decision of the heart. Where something becomes extremely difficult and there we also stand always already quite near its transformation.

Rilke - Letters on Life

the great bridgebuilding of god

Catch only what you've thrown yourself, all is
mere skill and little gain;
but when you're suddenly the catcher of a ball
thrown by an eternal partner
with accurate and measured swing
towards you, to your center, in an arch
from the great bridgebuilding of God:
why catching then becomes a power—
not yours, a world's.

[ Rilke ]

majnun

Increase the remembrance of God until they call you a madman (majnun).

[ The Prophet ]

a respite from death

I believe that love that is true and real creates a respite from death. All cowardice comes from not loving, or not loving well, which is the same thing. And when the man that is brave and true looks death squarely in the face, like some rhino hunters I know, or Belmonte, who is truly brave, it is because they love with sufficient passion to push death out of their minds until it returns, as it does, to all men. And then you must make really good love again.

[ Hemingway ]

the philosopher’s task

The philosopher’s task differs from the others’ ... in detail, but in no such drastic way as those suppose who imagine for the philosopher a vantage point outside the conceptual scheme he takes in charge. There is no such cosmic exile. He cannot study and revise the fundamental conceptual scheme of science and common sense without having some conceptual scheme, whether the same or another no less in need of philosophical scrutiny, in which to work. He can scrutinize and improve the system from within, appealing to coherence and simplicity, but this is the theoretician’s method generally.

Willard Van Orman Quine

religion's manifestation in life

How and in what way does religion generally manifest itself in life?

In everyday life, and in a well-ordered society, there is no immediate need at all for religion to mould life; true morality is perfectly sufficient for this purpose. In this regard, therefore, religion is not practical, nor can and should it become practical, but is knowledge pure and simple: it renders man perfectly clear and intelligible to himself, provides an answer to the highest question he can pose, resolves the final contradiction, thus bringing perfect self-unity and clarity to his understanding. It represents his complete deliverance and liberation from all external bonds; and thus it owes him education as something that is his due simply and without ulterior purpose. Religion only acquires a domain where it can operate as an impulse either in a highly immoral and corrupt society or when man’s sphere of activity lies not within but beyond the social order and he has constantly to create and preserve this order anew – as with the regent, who often could not discharge his office in good con- science without religion. The latter case is not at issue in an education adapted to all and to the entire nation. As for the former case: if, despite a clear recognition of the incorrigibility of the age, work to improve it nevertheless continues unabated; if the sweat and toil of the sowing of the land is unflinchingly endured even with little prospect of a harvest; if even the ingrate is rewarded and those who curse are blessed with charity and goods in the clear foreknowledge that they will curse again; if after a hundredfold failures one still perseveres with faith and love: then it is not mere morality that impels one here, for morality demands a purpose. It is religion, the submission to a higher law unknown to us, the awestruck silence before God, the fervent love for His life that has broken forth in ours, the life that alone shall be saved for its own sake, where the eye sees nothing left to save.

In this way, the religious insight achieved by the pupils of the new education in the little commonwealth in which they initially grow up cannot become practical knowledge; nor should it even. This commonwealth is well ordered, and whatever is deftly undertaken there always meets with success. Also, in these still tender years man should be maintained in his innocence and serene faith in humanity. Let knowledge of its perfidy be postponed until he is ready to experience it firsthand at a mellowed and more settled age.

Only at this riper age, therefore, when life is lived in earnest, and after education has long since left him to his own resources, may the pupil, if his social relations are to advance from simplicity to a higher level, have need of his religious knowledge as a motive.

Fichte - Addresses to the German Nation

the real individuals of our time

The real individuals of our time are the martyrs who have gone through infernos of suffering and degradation in their resistance to conquest and oppression, not the inflated personalities of popular culture, the conventional dignitaries. These unsung heroes consciously exposed their existence as individuals to the terroristic annihilation that others undergo unconsciously through the social process. The anonymous martyrs of the concentration camps are the symbols of the humanity that is striving to be born. The task of philosophy is to translate what they have done into language that will be heard, even though their finite voices have been silenced by tyranny.

Max Horkheimer - Eclipse of Reason

some things are to be enjoyed, others to be used

Some things are to be enjoyed, others to be used, and there are others which are to be enjoyed and used. Those things which are to be enjoyed make us blessed. Those things which are to be used help and, as it were, sustain us as we move toward blessedness in order that we may gain and cling to those things which make us blessed. If we who enjoy and use things, being placed in the middle of things of both kinds, wish to enjoy those things which should be used, our course will be impeded and sometimes deflected, so that we are retarded in obtaining those things which are to be enjoyed, or even prevented altogether, shackled by an inferior love.

Saint Augustine

the book of books

What you have in hand is not a book. It is the book. That, of course, is what 'Bible' means. It is the book which, not only in Western humanity, defines the concept of a text. All our other books, however different in matter or method, relate, be it indirectly, to this book of books...All other books are inhabited by the murmur of that distant source.

George Steiner

high divinity is best manifested in common ways

The Gospels, particularly the first three, show the truth of the New Testament's own belief, that high divinity is best manifested in common ways. Stories and sayings from them still have the direct power of simple truth. They are, in a rich sense, popular. This was a comfort to Tennyson amid the grief and doubt of In Memoriam.

Tho' truths in manhood darkly join,
Deep-seated in our mystic frame,
We yield all blessing to the name
Of Him that made them current coin;

For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers,
Where truth in closest words shall fail,
When truth embodied in a tale
Shall enter in at lowly doors.

John Drury - Introduction to the New Testament

the science of government

The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught à priori. Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us in that practical science: because the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate; but that which in the first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter operation; and its excellence may arise even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. The reverse also happens: and very plausible schemes, with very pleasing commencements, have often shameful and lamentable conclusions. In states there are often some obscure and almost latent causes, things which appear at first view of little moment, on which a very great part of its prosperity or adversity may most essentially depend. The science of government being therefore so practical in itself, and intended for such practical purposes, a matter which requires experience, and even more experience than any person can gain in his whole life, however sagacious and observing he may be, it is with infinite caution that any man ought to venture upon pulling down an edifice, which has answered in any tolerable degree for ages the common purposes of society, or on building it up again, without having models and patterns of approved utility before his eyes.

Edmund Burke - Reflections on the French Revolution

revolution

The speculative line of demarcation, where obedience ought to end, and resistance must begin, is faint, obscure, and not easily definable. It is not a single act, or a single event, which determines it. Governments must be abused and deranged indeed, before it can be thought of; and the prospect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past. When things are in that lamentable condition, the nature of the disease is to indicate the remedy to those whom nature has qualified to administer in extremities this critical, ambiguous, bitter potion to a distempered state. Times, and occasions, and provocations, will teach their own lessons. The wise will determine from the gravity of the case; the irritable, from sensibility to oppression; the high-minded, from disdain and indignation at abusive power in unworthy hands; the brave and bold, from the love of honourable danger in a generous cause: but, with or without right, a revolution will be the very last resource of the thinking and the good.

Edmund Burke - Reflections on the French Revolution

philosophy cannot create its material

Philosophy cannot create its material; the material is always there in present or past history…the actions of people must not be deduced from their philosophy, but rather their philosophy from their actions …their history does not emerge from their way of thinking, but their way of thinking from their history.

Jacobi

incorporated in nothingness

For a person who has a deep sense of his own nothingness, there is no place where he is not, since he occupies no place at all. Therefore, the more that a righteous man is incorporated in nothingness, the more he is able to pay attention and contemplate the world. For it cannot be said of him that he occupies an elevated place and is distant from the world. For he is in no place at all.

The Kabbalistic Tradition