 |
| Our woodlands, Dec 13, 2018 |
“God described Himself as manifest and nonmanifest. He brought the cosmos into existence as a world of the unseen and a world of the visible, so that we might perceive the nonmanifest through our unseen dimension and the manifest through our visible dimension. He described Himself through good pleasure and wrath, so He brought the cosmos into existence possessing fear and hope: We fear His wrath and we hope for His good pleasure. He described Himself as beautiful and possessing majesty, so He brought us into existence having awe and intimacy.” [See note at end.]
In a footnote, Murata elaborates that Ibn ‘Arabi and the commentators on his work usually connect beauty with intimacy and majesty with awe, but sometimes it’s the other way.
Just now as I’m writing with my document on the right side of the computer screen, the image shown above fills the rest, and this reflected beauty from our woods stirs that feeling of awe at the wonder of creation. So I’m drawn to Murata’s text because it’s guiding me in the field of beauty, not just in the appreciation of the creation stirred by the magnificent oaks and maples as they breath beauty and inspire awe at this very moment (also visible through the window over my desk) as I write and wonder; but in addition, the teaching on and images of beauty bring nourishing light into the inner heart, arousing a feeling of the presence of intimacy, of caring provided by the Creator Who always extends far beyond the known. So that we don’t lose contact due to our distance from the Absolute, the Intimate holds closer than one’s jugular vein (c.f., Quran 50:16).
Paradox can be mind-numbing (perhaps for purposes discussed below) and so I want-to/need-to know beyond my thinking and to trust full-bodied experiential knowing. My experience gains texture (perhaps authority and/or lasting power) through the reflection on and wording of these engagements with beauty. Even though I read over and again the warnings that tell me not to limit knowing to cognition, I’m continually at risk of being controlled by the socialized dominance of thinking as if the mind is the only trustworthy way of gaining knowledge. Ibn ‘Arabi’s says early in the chapter on Adam: “An intellect [‘aql ] cannot know this [reality of all things] through the explorations of thought, for this kind of perception depends solely upon unveiling, from which one knows the principle of the world’s forms which receive His spirits.” [From pp. 5-6 in Dagli’s translation. Dagli’s commentary in footnote 12 helpfully elaborates on other ways of knowing and on unveiling.]
So human intellect comes as an amazing gift and also as a danger for falling into presumption. The impetus toward continuing revelation, especially with respect to the great Unknown, has crucial need for the reins of humility; otherwise our thinking function overpowers other modes of knowing. I believe that one way to deal with thinking’s dominating tendency comes through increasing devotion to beauty as well as to other expressions of art and creativity. In this line, the tenuous sense of something numinous feels strengthened as it’s being consciously connected with awe and intimacy. Perhaps through this we’re being prepared to extend even further toward Majesty and Beauty.
Something now wants me to take off following an association that's flitting by, but shouldn't I resist? My training remembers the writer's handbooks that insist on staying with the topic. In other words, my imagination wants to wander away while my logical mind warns against it. The latter demands, “Beware digressions!” while another sense responds, “Might the wandering be more important than the most direct route?”
The path of beauty seldom forces a straight road but instead meanders in its own milieu. The openness to wonder connects with increased living in the immediate, “in the moment,” in the present (e.g., beauty this moment in the winter woodlands). Also this pathway nurtures a consciousness that bows toward the always-beyond (e.g., Beauty as a manifestation of the Divine). Finding one’s way across the worlds perhaps depends on “seeing” them as separate and together.
“Thus, reality is arrayed according to various levels of being invisible and being visible. The world of sense perception is the world of visibility in an absolute way, and the divine presence is the realm of invisibility in an absolute way, and the degrees in between are combinations of the two extremes. As technical terms they are not confined to visual experience, but comprise all modes of perception.” (from Dagli, pp. 12-13, in footnote 44)
The digression, if it is such, wants to follow the association from Beauty to other qualities such as Love and into the quest for happiness. How does this exploration of appreciating beauty in nature extend to other gifts from God? Probably an increased understanding of the dimensionality between the divine (e.g., Beauty) and the created (e.g., a beauty such as the shutter catching a second of the woodland) provides help in dealing with other life experiences.
The flittering association brings up a feeling from far back, twenty or more years ago. I remember particularly some bothersome struggles with claiming to be happy. I’d inwardly wince when someone wanted me to answer, “Yes, I’m happy,” because I felt saying it would not hold integrity with a powerful deep feeling that “Happy” meant much more. To say, “I’m content/contented” felt true enough but left me a bit dissatisfied. Why couldn’t/shouldn’t I be leaping further for happiness! This frustration moved far too close to dangerous questioning about love: Were my primary relationships enough? Should I go for more while there was still time? What about Rilke’s poem of the man walking away instead of being caught in the supper dish!
Those questions no longer drive me as they used to do, but still I sense a relief from their pressures as I extend the Beauty/beauty dimensionality to other qualities such as Love/love and Joy/joy. The Absolute, the Essence, the Reality is not to be fully accomplished here. The longing for more does not have to be felt as frustrating, but instead the yearning can be accepted as connection with the Divine, with the Beloved. It’s a taste that is not to be satisfied but to be appreciated. It’s a gift of the other world and serves as a draw, an invaluable sign of walking on the path of Love.
The divine touch gets desecrated when the human fails to appreciate the “invisible” and instead selfishly insists on finding complete satisfaction of his/her response to it at the human level (e.g., in sexual experiences, material possessions, status accomplishments, etc.). All those religious commands that I used to hear as anti-body and anti-world can instead be understood as invitations to bridge the worlds, not as denial of pleasure but as tasting ecstasy. Perhaps a certain aging is required to accept Truth of this nature. For example, I now feel joy in the realization that while Beauty exceeds my grasp I love the awe and intimacy resonating from the Divine breath manifest in these trees.
* From page 91 in The Tao of Islam. The passage comes from Ibn ‘Arabi’s first chapter “Ringstone of the Divine Wisdom in the Word of Adam” in his Fusus al-hikam. Full translations of the Fusus include: R.W.J. Austin, Ibn al-‘Arabi: The Bezels of Wisdom, 1980; and Caner Dagli, Ibn al-‘Arabi: The Ringstones of Wisdom, 2004. Murata has a footnote (p. 339) to the quoted passage: “As pointed out in the previous chapter, intimacy is the human response to God’s beauty, while awe responds to His majesty. The major commentators on the Fusus such as Jandi, Kashani, and Qaysari read the present passage as making this connection. But in doing so they ignore the reversed word order here and the fact that in some of his works, Ibn al-‘Arabi provides a different analysis of the nature of these attributes by reversing the usual relationships.”
Her point about the usual pairing is evident in the Austin translation which adds the bracketed material: “He has also described Himself as being possessed of beauty and majesty, having created us as combining awe [of His majesty] and intimacy, and so on with all His attributes and Names” (p. 55).
Dagli translates this sentence: “He also described Himself as being the Beautiful and the Possessor of Majesty, and so existentiated us to experience awe and intimacy” (p. 13).
No comments:
Post a Comment