Sufis Quotes - Page 7

Forms are vehicles and instruments, and vehicles and instruments cannot be called good or bad without context.

From the beginning, from the age of Adam to the time of kingship: from the powerful, pardon: from the poor, sins.

Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaCommunity: Irrationals unified by hope of the impossible.

Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaPatience: A support for the disappointed.

Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaAdherent:Someone who will believe anything except what he should.

Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaSupporter: Someone who will say anything.

Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaBribetSubstitute for law, which is a substitute for justice.

Be a dog, but don't be a younger brother.Proverb.

Inheritance and culture obscure people’s higher capacities.

Almost every day I am reminded of Saadi's reflection that there is no senseless tyranny like that of subordinates.

Ali, Son of the Father of the SeekerAli said: 'None may arrive at the Truth until he is able to think that the Path itself may be wrong. This is because those who can only believe that it must be right are not believers, but people who are incapable of thinking otherwise than they already think. Such people are not men at all. Like animals they must follow certain beliefs, and during this time they cannot learn. Because they cannot be called “humanity”, they cannot arrive at the Truth.

When a belief becomes more than an instrument, you are lost. You remain lost until you learn what 'belief' is really for.

The Sufis,' runs the saying, 'understand with their hearts what the most learned scholars cannot understand with their minds

The Sufi must be able to alternate his thought between the relative and the Absolute, the approximate and the Real.

Saying of the ProphetDesireDesire not the world, and God will love you. Desire not what others have, and they will love you.

There is a succession of experiences which together constitute the educational and developmental ripening of the learner, according to the Sufis. People who think that each gain is the goal itself will freeze at any such stage, and cannot learn through successive and superseding lessons.

Show a man too many camels' bones, or show them to him too often, and he will not be able to recognize a camel when he comes across a live one. (Mirza Ahsan of Tabriz)

They asked Abboud of Omdurman: 'Which is better, to be young or to be old?' He said: 'To be old is to have less time before you and more mistakes behind. I leave you to decide whether this is better than the reverse.

It is no accident that Sufis find that they can connect most constructively with people who are well integrated into the world, as well as having higher aims, and that those who adopt a sensible attitude towards society and life as generally known can usually absorb Sufi teachings very well indeed

The main problem is that most commentators are accustomed to thinking of spiritual schools as 'systems', which are more or less alike, and which depend upon dogma and ritual: and especially upon repetition and the application of continual and standardised pressures upon their followers.The Sufi way, except in degenerate forms which are not to be classified as Sufic, is entirely different from this.

If I knew what two and two were – I would say Four!

If you seek small things to do, and do them well, great things will seek you, and demand to be performed.

Study the assumptions behind your actions. Then study the assumptions behind your assumptions.

Worry is a cloud which rains destruction.

Better to be safe than to be sorry' is a remark of value only when these are the actual alternatives.

Show a man too many camels' bones,or show them to him too often,and he will not be able to recognize a camel when he comes across a live one.

It is axiomatic that the attempt to become a Sufi through a desire for personal power as normally understood will not succeed.

The Way of the Sufis cannot be understood by means of the intellect or by ordinary book learning.

Learning how to learn involves examining assumptions. Mulla Nasrudin tales very often fulfil this funcition.

There is a saying that, according to what a person's mentality is, even an angel may seem to him to have a devil's face.

When people believe that the form is more important than the Truth, they will not find truth, but will stay with form.

Remember that greed includes greed for being not greedy.

The existence of relative truth does not prove the non-existence of universal truth.

Saadi’s dictum, in the Bostan: ‘The Path is not in the rosary, the prayer-mat and the robe

You fear tomorrow: yet yesterday is just as dangerous.

Patience is the food of understanding.

People who cannot trust are themselves not trustworthy, and therefore cannot be entrusted with important things.

You call me an unbeliever. I shall therefore call you a True Believer since a lie is best met with one of similar magnitude.

Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaIntellectual: One who knows no craft.

Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaEmotionalist:A man or woman who thinks he has experienced the divine.

When the mind is full of established biases, it will not be able to graft Sufism on top of them.

Words, they say, are the food of minds. But, like other foods, they can do little by themselves.

A donkey eats a melon, it remains a donkey

A man's capacity is the same as his breadth of vision.

Definitions from Mulla Do-Piaza.Poverty: The result of marriage.

What is humanity? To feel pain at the sorrows of our neighbours, to feel humiliated at the humiliation of fellow-beings.

The Sufi saying has it: "God, to the bee, is something which has TWO stings!

The object of Sufi preparatory study, however, being to illustrate, expose and out-manoeuvre superficial ambition.

Sufis deny the absolute reality of time, space and physical form. These things are both relative and local. They only appear to be absolute.

Sufis deny the absolute reality of time, space and physical form. These things are both relative and local. They only appear to be absolute.

Correct teaching brings out human excellence.

Man thinks many things. He thinks he is One. He is usually several. Until he becomes One, he cannot have a fair idea of what he is at all.

If you assume that it is there, you will generally not be far off the truth.

Why did I do such-and-such a thing?' is all very well. But what about 'How otherwise could I have done it?'.

Is your division of Understanding into Greater and Lesser common to all Sufis? Nothing which is put into words is common to all Sufis.

The clothes may vary, but the person is the same.

The teaching must, of course, work with the best part of the individual, must be directed to his or her real capacity.

Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaFlattery:One of the most promising of businesses: always brisk.

Knowledge gives nothing to a man until he gives everything to it.

Sufis (the name for the realised individual, not the learner or follower) are reunited with objective Reality and Unity.

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