Idries Shah Quotes - Page 5

Saying of the ProphetMonkishnessNo monkery in Islam.
Idries Shah
Saying of the ProphetHelping othersI order you to assist any oppressed person, whether he is a Muslim or not.
Idries Shah
Saying of the Prophet. The Bequest: I have nothing to leave you except my family.
Idries Shah
Saying of the ProphetAngerYou ask for a piece of advice. I tell you : 'Do not get angry.' He is strong who can withhold anger.
Idries Shah
Materialism, attachment to things of the world, includes pride. Many religious people suffer from pride: taking pleasure or even delight in being good, or religious.
Idries Shah
The more wakeful a man is to the things which surround him, the more asleep is he, and his waking is worse than his sleep.
Idries Shah
Sometimes a pessimist is only an optimist with extra information.
Idries Shah
People who have fallacious objectives are like the barren soil. The flowers grow from soil which is composed of the right objectives.
Idries Shah
… the Sufi attitude is: ‘Let the real truth, whatever it may be, be revealed to me’.
Idries Shah
Humility cannot be taught by propaganda, though slavery can. Shouting for humility is a form of arrogance. One of my most abiding recollections is of a priest at a religious occasion once roaring, in the most threatening way imaginable: t‘O our Lord God, we most humbly pray…!’Real humility is not always the same as apparent humility. Remember that fighting against self-conceit is still fighting: and that it will tend to suppress it temporarily. It does not cure anything.Remember, too, that humility itself does not bring an automatic reward: it is a means to an end. It enables a person to operate in a certain manner.
Idries Shah
The Sufi way is through knowledge and practice, not through intellect and talk. As Prince Dara Shikoh says, in a Persian poem: Do you wish to be included with the Lords of Sight? From speech (then) pass on to experience. By saying 'Unity', you do not become a monotheist; The mouth does not become sweet from the word 'Sugar
Idries Shah
Definition of a SufiTo learn, people must give up a great deal, and this includes ritual as something from which they imagine they might learn. It is to emphasise this that Abu-Yaqub al-Susi, quoted in Kalabadhi's Taaruf, states that the Sufi is 'One who does not care when something is taken from him, but who does not cease to seek for what he has not.
Idries Shah
Mediation - Before you learn how to meditate, you must unlearn what you think meditation might be.
Idries Shah
No practice exists in isolation.
Idries Shah
Not to be greedy is, paradoxically, the highest form of looking after one's true interests.
Idries Shah
Exercise power by means of kindness, and you may be causing more damage than you could by cruelty. Neither approach is correct.
Idries Shah
Sufis hold that the superior experience and knowledge comes to a man or woman in exact accordance with his worth,capacity,and earning of it.
Idries Shah
Sufism is transmitted by means of the human exemplar, the teacher.
Idries Shah
Laziness - The laziness of adolescence is a rehearsal for the incapacity of old age.
Idries Shah
Only the search for truth is valid, the desire for wisdom the motive. The method is assimilation, not study.
Idries Shah
If you are 'humble', it may help you in ordinary life. If you are not, you will get nowhere in higher things.
Idries Shah
The secret of Sufism is that it has no secret at all'.
Idries Shah
Sufis are not here to satisfy a demand. They exist to share what they have got. These two things are not always the same.
Idries Shah
You can perceive a person's aspiration if it is genuine, because this creates a change in the emanations from such a person.
Idries Shah
The automatism of man is overcome, in the words of Dhun'Nun, by aiming for 'being as you were, where you were, before you were'.
Idries Shah
If you assume that it is there, you will generally not be far off the truth…
Idries Shah
The Path is not to be found anywhere except in human service
Idries Shah
it was being written in the East that 'Sufism was formerly a reality without a name: now it is a name without a reality'.
Idries Shah
But the Sufis work IN the world, and therefore WITH 'things of the world'.
Idries Shah
They have fixed our nutrition and arranged our life-span. More than this, and ahead of this, efforts will not be productive.
Idries Shah
But the world itself, as well as special attitudes, properly understood, constitute the Sufi school.
Idries Shah
Make mankind your dwelling place.
Idries Shah
What you have to learn is how to find the unworldly in everything.
Idries Shah
Trying to force something is the best way to stop it from happening.
Idries Shah
Saying of the ProphetStruggleThe holy warrior is he who struggles with himself.
Idries Shah
Saying of the ProphetHumilityHumility and courtesy are themselves a part of piety.
Idries Shah
Saying of the ProphetDeathDie before your death.
Idries Shah
You yourself are your own barrier – rise from within it.
Idries Shah
The donkey which brought you to this door must be dismissed if you want to get through it’.
Idries Shah
DeathIf he is a good man, death will be a release;If he is a bad one, it will release others from him.
Idries Shah
Saying of the ProphetSleepSleep is the brother of death.
Idries Shah
Sufi secrets are perceived, not understood by words.
Idries Shah
The Sufis have said: ‘The importance of something is in inverse proportion to its attractiveness.
Idries Shah
You may have forgotten the Way: But those who came beforeDid not forget you.Saying of Master Bahaudin Naqshband of Bokhara
Idries Shah
Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaDrugs: Source of the mystical experience of the ignorant.
Idries Shah
If you do not understand, you cannot love. You can only imagine that you love.
Idries Shah
People talk about ‘service, effort, love, knowledge’. But with knowledge you know what love is, and what it is not.
Idries Shah
Sufism was formerly a reality without a name: now it is a name without a reality.
Idries Shah
ANDAKI:tEFFORT IS NOT EFFORT WITHOUT ZAMAN, MAKAN, IKHWAN (RIGHT TIME, RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT PEOPLE).
Idries Shah
An old fool is worse than a young one: For the young may always grow wise. (Zohair)
Idries Shah
Sufism is the doing in this lifetime what any fool will be doing in then thousand years’ time.
Idries Shah
The practice of the Sufis is too sublime to have a formal beginning,
Idries Shah
The degree of necessity determines the development of organs in man… therefore increase your necessity.
Idries Shah
Sufis aim to refine human consciousness. This is Sufi mysticism: not mystification or magic, but a specific Path.
Idries Shah
Deteriorated science is a cult, so is imitative or deteriorated Sufism.
Idries Shah
Much religious teaching in the world is in reality a confused or deteriorated form, very different from its roots.
Idries Shah
We and all our existences are non-entities. Thou art the absolute being whose appearance is transitory.
Idries Shah
You will always have doubts, but only discover them at a useful time for your weakness to point them out.
Idries Shah
The sight of God in woman is the most perfect of all." Ibn Arabi.
Idries Shah
The proverb says that 'The answer to a fool is silence'. Observation, however, indicates that almost any other answer will have the same effect in the long run.
Idries Shah