Favourite quotations from world religious traditions (mystics, saints, thinkers etc.)

[Vouthon]

Dear brother/sister Rabbity

Just WOW!

Carl Sagan’s observations are utterly profound, to the extent that they are postively religious/spiritual in my eyes. He seems to have a rare, almost prophetic gift of being able to describe the reality of things and putting them into a perspective and a significance which has never truly occured to my mind before.

I am very much amazed and impressed by this wonderful mind - and of your good self for introducing me to him!

Yes he is totally spot on, we are the local embodiement of a Universe that through us has become aware of Itself, after so many billions of years of evolution to this state. I have thought about the idea that humanity is the material universe in a self-aware state, but I have never truly worked out the ramifications of that revelation the way Carl Sagan has.

What an obligation indeed it is that we owe to the Universe from which we have sprung.

For some reason - even though its not perfectly related - I am reminded of this from the Catholic tradition:

“…Man contains the entire creation within himself, and the breath of life that never dies is within him…O human being, look to humanity. For humanity has the heavens and the earth and all created things within himself. It is one form, within which all things are hidden…Behold at the very fountainhead of life the beating of the eternal heart …] the intense energy emitted by the heart of the Father…God is eternal and God is here…God is beyond the mind and understanding of all creatures…The elements in the world are also within human beings…The body is the garment of the soul and it is the soul which gives life to the voice. That is why the body must raise its voice in harmony with the soul for the praise of God…All of Creation is a song of praise to God…Just as a circle embraces all that is within it, so does the God-Head embrace all…Creation looks on its Creator like the beloved looks on the lover…Holy persons draw to themselves all that is earthly…”

***- Saint Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), philosopher, mystic, visionary, artist, poet, composer, theologian and Doctor of the Catholic Church ***

Hildegard says, in tune with other luminaries before her in the Catholic tradition, that the human person is a mini “cosmos” or universe: we contain within ourselves all creation, the entire universe. Is this not a primitive engagement with the very same concept that Carl Sagan is explaining?

Also, from an early (gnosticized) Christian text of the second century we find this saying attributed to Jesus, which may be based on an original genuine agrapha as were many spurious Gnostic writings (often Gnostic re-workings of Orthodox or semi-Orthodox writings):

“…Let all of you seek the Light, so that the power of the stars - which exists within you - may live…”

- Jesus Christ (Pistis Sophia)

Again I consider this to be a primitive engagement with the very same idea expressed by Carl Sagan - the stars, the “starstuff” as Sagan calls it from which we are built, which lives on in our atoms etc.

 

[fred_conty]

This was found in an older thread here on CAF.​

A reworked version of “The Paradoxical Commandments” written by Dr. Kent M. Keith is written on the wall in Mother Teresa’s home for children in Calcutta.

This version is credited to Mother Teresa:

People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.
What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway.
Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.
In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.

 

[Gaber]

This was found in an older thread here on CAF.​

A reworked version of “The Paradoxical Commandments” written by Dr. Kent M. Keith is written on the wall in Mother Teresa’s home for children in Calcutta.

This version is credited to Mother Teresa:

People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.
What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway.
Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.
In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.

This is beautiful. Goodness is independent of circumstance and is always its effulgent self!

 

[Vouthon]

“…Since love has spoken in your soul, reject
The Self, that whirlpool where our lives are wrecked;
As Jesus rode his donkey, ride on it;
Your stubborn Self must bear you and submit -
Then burn this Self and purify your soul;
Let Jesus’ spotless spirit be your goal.
Destroy this burden, and before your eyes
The Holy Ghost in glory will arise…”

***- Farid al-Din Attar (c.1142–c.1220), Persian Sufi & mystic poet ***

 

[Gaber]

“…Since love has spoken in your soul, reject
The Self, that whirlpool where our lives are wrecked;
As Jesus rode his donkey, ride on it;
Your stubborn Self must bear you and submit -
Then burn this Self and purify your soul;
Let Jesus’ spotless spirit be your goal.
Destroy this burden, and before your eyes
The Holy Ghost in glory will arise…”

***- Farid al-Din Attar (c.1142–c.1220), Persian Sufi & mystic poet ***

I wish that posts on here had a “like” option, as on Facebook!

(Like) (Share)

 

[Vouthon]

I wish that posts on here had a “like” option, as on Facebook!

(Like) (Share)

Thank you very much brother Gaber

I have always loved Attar, he is one of my favourite mystic poets.

He first surfaced on my spiritual radar in, of all places, an advanced Drama class in my last year of high school when we were studying the play director Peter Brook.

The quote in my previous post is from Attar’s epic, “The Conference of the Birds”. I highly recommend that you read it if you haven’t yet. There is an Oxford World Classics edition that you can get off Amazon. Its very accessible.

Brook adapted the poem into a play titled La Conférence des oiseaux (The Conference of the Birds), which was published in 1979. Brook toured the play around rural Africa before presenting two extremely successful productions to Western audiences—one in New York City and one in Paris.

I’ve always had a “thing” for Persian literature in general - I have English translations of the Shanameh, Rumi’s Masnavi, various other pieces of Sufi poetry, history books on ancient and modern Iran, a translation of the Zend Avesta and much else besides.

A great sacred poet in our tradition is the Franciscan mystic Blessed Jacopone da Todi:

"… As air becomes the medium for light when the sun rises,
And as wax melts from the heat of fire,
So the soul drawn to that light is resplendent,
Feels self melt away,
Its will and actions no longer its own.
So clear is the imprint of God
That the soul, conquered, is conqueror;
Annihilated, it lives in triumph.

What happens to the drop of wine
That you pour into the sea?
Does it remain itself, unchanged?
It is as if it never existed.
So it is with the soul: Love drinks it in,
It is united with Truth,
Its old nature fades away,
It is no longer master of itself.

The soul wills and yet does not will:
Its will belongs to Another.
It has eyes only for this beauty;
It no longer seeks to possess, as was its wont –
It lacks the strength to possess such sweetness.
The base of this highest of peaks
Is founded on nichil,
Shaped nothingness, made one with the Lord…"

***- Blessed Jacopone da Todi (1230 - 1306), Catholic mystic & Franciscan poet ***

 

[Vouthon]

"…Human beings are members of a whole,
In creation of one essence and soul.

If one member is afflicted with pain,
Other members uneasy will remain.

If you have no sympathy for human pain,
The name of human you cannot retain…"

***Saadi (1184 - 1283), Persian mystic & Sufi poet ***

“…A people is no less a member of the human race, which is society as a whole, than a family is a member of a particular nation. Each individual owes incomparably more to the human race, which is the great fatherland, than to the particular country in which he was born. As a family is to the nation, so is the nation to the universal commonweal; wherefore it is infinitely more harmful for nation to wrong nation, than for family to wrong family. To abandon the sentiment of humanity is not merely to renounce civilization and to relapse into barbarism, it is to share in the blindness of the most brutish brigands and savages; it is to be a man no longer, but a cannibal…I love my …] country but I love humanity better than my country…All of humankind is but one family, dispersed over the face of the whole earth; all men are brothers, and ought to love each other as such. May shame and infamy overtake those impious wretches who seek a cruel unnatural glory in the blood of their brothers, which is their own blood…All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers…”

- Archbishop François Fénelon (651 – 1715), Catholic mystic

 

[Vouthon]

“…God is the fire in me and I in Him the shine;
Are we not with each other most inwardly entwined?..
God is my final end; Does he from me evolve,
Then he grows out of me, While I in Him dissolve…
Nothing else will so readily cast one into the jaws of hell
as the detestable words (mark them well!) ‘mine’ and ‘thine’…
Naught ever can be known in God: One and Alone
Is He. To know Him, Knower must be one with Known…”

- Angelus Silesius (1624 – 1677), Catholic mystic & poet

“…Turn wheresoe’er I will, I find no evidence
of End, Beginning, Centre or Circumference
The Thought and Deed of Deity
Are of such richness and extent
That It remaineth to Itself
An Undiscovered Continent.
A Loaf holds many grains of corn
And many myriad drops the Sea:
So is God’s Oneness Multitude
And that great Multitude are we.
The All proceedeth from the One,
And into One must All regress:
If otherwise, the All remains
Asunder-riven manyness.
God is an utter Nothingness,
Beyond the touch of Time and Place:
The more thou graspest after Him,
The more he fleeth thy embrace…”

- Angelus Silesius (1624 – 1677), Catholic mystic & poet

 

[Vouthon]

I wish that posts on here had a “like” option, as on Facebook!

(Like) (Share)

A Sikh forum I frequent - a wonderful forum - has a like option

The only downside is that if people aren’t liked they might think that there somehow not appreciated by the community

 

[ironchapman]

“…Since love has spoken in your soul, reject
The Self, that whirlpool where our lives are wrecked;
As Jesus rode his donkey, ride on it;
Your stubborn Self must bear you and submit -
Then burn this Self and purify your soul;
Let Jesus’ spotless spirit be your goal.
Destroy this burden, and before your eyes
The Holy Ghost in glory will arise…”

***- Farid al-Din Attar (c.1142–c.1220), Persian Sufi & mystic poet ***

It’s amazing the kind of wise sayings you can find in works like this and in other non-Christian religions (and by saying this, I do not intend any disrespect to Christianity–indeed, I am a Christian). I enjoy reading the myths, stories, and wisdom of other cultures. Thanks for posting these!

 

[Vouthon]

It’s amazing the kind of wise sayings you can find in works like this and in other non-Christian religions (and by saying this, I do not intend any disrespect to Christianity–indeed, I am a Christian). I enjoy reading the myths, stories, and wisdom of other cultures. Thanks for posting these!

Amen

There is great wisdom in other religious traditions. The Holy Spirit is present in every human heart and universally throughout all societies, religions and cultures so this should not be suprising.

Another one:

“…Tear down the mosque and temple too, break all that divides, but do not break the human heart, as it is there that God resides…”

- Shaykh Bulleh Shah (1680–1757), Punjabi Sufi poet

 

[lax16]

I am glad to see that I am not the only one who collects favorite quotations!

"You will remain the same until the pain of remaining the same is greater than the pain of change."

Author unknown

"Three things I cannot escape: the eye of God, the voice of conscience, the stroke of death.
In company guard your tongue.
In your family guard your temper.
When alone, guard your thoughts."

Venerable Matthew Talbot

"Spread love everywhere you go. Be the living expression of God’s kindness.
Kindness in your face.
Kindness in your eyes.
Kindness in your smile.
Kindness in your warm greeting."

Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

 

[Vouthon]

Thank you for those wonderful quotes Lax

 

[Vouthon]

“…The God who is pure emptiness
Is created as form:
Becoming substance, light and darkness,
The stillness and the storm…”

- Angelus Silesius (1624 – 1677), Catholic mystic & poet

 

[Vouthon]

“…The pilgrim sees no form but His and knows
That He subsists beneath all passing shows –
The pilgrim comes from Him whom he can see,
Lives in Him, with Him, and beyond all three.
Be lost in Unity’s inclusive span,
Or you are human but not yet a man.
Whoever lives, the wicked and the blessed,
Contains a hidden sun within his breast –
Its light must dawn though dogged by long delay;
The clouds that veil it must be torn away –
Whoever reaches to his hidden sun
Surpasses good and bad and knows the One.
The good and bad are here while you are here;
Surpass yourself and they will disappear…”

***- Farid al-Din Attar (c.1142–c.1220), Persian Sufi & mystic poet ***

 

[Vouthon]

“…Once more they ventured from the Dust to raise
Their Eyes – up to the Throne – into the Blaze,
And in the Centre of the Glory there
Beheld the Figure of – Themselves – as 'twere
Transfigured – looking to Themselves, beheld
The Figure on the Throne en-miracled,
Until their Eyes themselves and That between
Did hesitate which Seer was, which Seen;
They That, That They: Another, yet the Same;
Dividual, yet One: from whom there came
A Voice of awful Answer, scarce discern’d,
From which to Aspiration whose return’d
They scarcely knew; as when some Man apart
Answers aloud the Question in his Heart:
‘The Sun of my Perfection is a Glass
Wherein from Seeing into Being pass.’…”

***- Farid al-Din Attar (c.1142–c.1220), Persian Sufi & mystic poet ***

 

[Vouthon]

Attar could speak statements in line with Islamic Othodoxy, for example, when he said “No one is farther from the Arabian prophet than the philosopher. Know that philosophy (falsafa) is the wont and way of Zoroaster, for philosophy is to turn your back on all religious law”. He seemed to express a Ghazzalian dislike for pagan philosophy, unlike Saint Thomas Aquinas and the Catholic scholastics in Europe. The great Islamic scholar Al-Ghazzali, who had died in 1111, spoke out against the use of Greek philosophy and any pagan religious concepts, at the same time as he defended Sufi mysticism before the rage of his fellow Orthodox ulema. Attar, as with most Sufis after the time of Ghazzali, seemed to try and align himself with this viewpoint to present his mystical doctrines in a manner that would be sligthtly more tolerable to the Orthodox ulema.

Might he have said such things to escape persecution? Farid al-Din Attar was tried at one point for heresy and exiled from Nishapur, but he eventually returned to his home city and that is where he died.

On other occassions, he expressed himself through poetry in a most un-Orthodox - in fact blatantly heretical - stance, as in these stupendous and lushly provocative verses which show forth the mind of a genuine freethinker:

"…We are the Zoroastrians of old,
Islam is not the faith we hold;
In irreligion is our fame,
And we have made our creed a shame.

Now to the tavern we repair
To gamble all our substance there,
Now in the monastery cell
We worship with the infidel.

When Satan chances us to see
He doffs his cap respectfully,
For we have lessons to impart
To Satan in the tempter’s art.

We were not in such nature made
Of any man to be afraid;
Head and foot in naked pride
Like sultans o’er the earth we ride.

But we, alas, aweary are
And the road is very far;
We know not by what way to come
Unto the place that is our home.

And therefore we are in despair
How to order our affair
Because, wherever we have sought,
Our minds were utterly distraught.

When shall it come to pass, ah when,
That suddenly, beyond our ken,
We shall succeed to rend this veil
That hath our whole affair conceal?

What veil so ever after this
Apparent to our vision is,
With the flame of knowledge true
We shall consume it through and through.

Where at the first in that far place
We come to the world of space,
Our soul by travail in the end
To that perfection shall ascend.

And so shall ‘Attar Shattered be
And, rapt in sudden ecstasy,
Soar to godly vision, even
Beyond the veils of earth and heaven…"

***- Farid al-Din Attar (c.1142–c.1220), Persian Sufi & mystic poet ***

 

[Vouthon]

“…He is enlightened, liberated, who sees all things as One - Unseparated…”

***- Angelus Silesius (1624 – 1677), Catholic mystic & poet ***

 

[Gaber]

“…He is enlightened, liberated, who sees all things as One - Unseparated…”

***- Angelus Silesius (1624 – 1677), Catholic mystic & poet ***

That is a statement I consider to be True. Yet try to put this kind of a statement in front of most of the good folks on this forum, especially if you didn’t state that it came from a Catholic, and you will experience a barrage of adjectives in a cluster with the epithetic accusation of “new age” at the center. Same with other similar statements from other Saints, or from the contemporary Catholic contemplative Bernadette Roberts. Go figure. But I consider these to be the essence of Catholicism, as much as they seem to be militated against. Curious.

 

[Vouthon]

That is a statement I consider to be True. Yet try to put this kind of a statement in front of most of the good folks on this forum, especially if you didn’t state that it came from a Catholic, and you will experience a barrage of adjectives in a cluster with the epithetic accusation of “new age” at the center. Same with other similar statements from other Saints, or from the contemporary Catholic contemplative Bernadette Roberts. Go figure. But I consider these to be the essence of Catholicism, as much as they seem to be militated against. Curious.

In fact the work of literature which this saying is derived from is considered to be a “major” work of Catholic mysticism:

“…Angelus Silesius, original name Johannes Scheffler (born December 1624, Breslau, Silesia [now Wrocław, Pol.]—died July 9, 1677, Breslau), religious poet remembered primarily as the author of Der Cherubinischer Wandersmann (1674; “The Cherubic Wanderer”), a major work of Roman Catholic mysticism…”

- Encyclopedia Britannica

If properly understood such statements are Orthodox and certainly not pantheistic. Indeed the Cherubic Wanderer was published with an imprimatur as the old catholic encyclopedia tells us:

“…Angelus published, in 1657, the two poetical works on which his fame rests. “The Soul’s Spiritual Delight” (Heilige Seelenlust) is a collection of more than two hundred religious songs, many of them of great beauty, which have found their way not only into Catholic, but even into Protestant hymn books. “The Cherubic Pilgrim” (Der Cherubinische Wandersmann) is a collection of over sixteen hundred rhymed couplets, full of deep religious thought expressed in epigrammatic form …] They ought to be interpreted in an orthodox sense, for Angelus Silesius was not a pantheist. His prose writings are orthodox; “The Cherubic Pilgrim” was published with the ecclesiastical Imprimatur, and, in his preface, the author himself explains his “paradoxes” in an orthodox sense, and repudiates any future pantheistic interpretation…”

- Catholic Encyclopedia, 1907

So Angelus Silesius is an important Orthodox mystic. He was never even suspected of heresy or error like some other saints and mystics.