Sufis and silences
Asensio
"Just shut up who is not silent"
Ibn 'Arabi (d. 1240)
The great men of knowledge are often a real torrent of words. They talk incessantly of silence, but the truth is that they employ for this speech that continues, in a similar way to the silence that we experience when we stop to hear the beating of the waves on the beach or the incessant sound of a forest. The man or woman of knowledge does not cease to say and to alert about how difficult and arduous is the path of silence, and yet his words seem to be a torrent, a spontaneous flow, as if no effort earned him. And, surely, only the man who has made silence is able to speak well. Silence is the fruit of their effort, yes, but his words and not his, are beyond their capabilities. Arguably, by its silence reality seeps through his words.
Ibn 'Arabi (d. 1240)
The great men of knowledge are often a real torrent of words. They talk incessantly of silence, but the truth is that they employ for this speech that continues, in a similar way to the silence that we experience when we stop to hear the beating of the waves on the beach or the incessant sound of a forest. The man or woman of knowledge does not cease to say and to alert about how difficult and arduous is the path of silence, and yet his words seem to be a torrent, a spontaneous flow, as if no effort earned him. And, surely, only the man who has made silence is able to speak well. Silence is the fruit of their effort, yes, but his words and not his, are beyond their capabilities. Arguably, by its silence reality seeps through his words.
says the Sufi master 'Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani: "Thank you does not accomplish anything, but, necessarily, through you" (1). And in the wise, silence and word are not opposites but two sides of the same issue. Or as Ibn 'Arabi (d. 1240), the great sage Murcia and good example of what we say here: "Just shut up who is not silent." The man or woman of knowledge is not one that offers a comprehensive discourse on the why of things, or one that gives shortcuts to achieving our goals, nor one that offers strategies to avoid suffering, and one that before recommends life peers a resigned "so," peculiar to certain men of religion. And do we mean by this that the sage is alien to their peers, or the questions that beset them. Quite the contrary. Just because nothing is foreign is why can not remain silent. But with its relentless discourse is reversing the terms and seems to be telling us that these are not questions. Sage offers an answer, yes, but on condition that pose the right question. That which arises when we retreated a few steps and we reached a certain perspective. When we spied that "my goals", "My Happiness", "my suffering", etc.., not reality.
Our individual desires We do see a thousand where there is only One and that One, in capital letters, is present at any time and anywhere without exception. Only our unique approach interested and everything around us so hidden from our eyes. As the great masters insist on silence because, they say, is everything that man must do: his own silence. More than an explanatory, his speech is allusive. His words are not analyzed but suggest, say more than say the usual meanings of words. And that the wise man has a close relationship with the poet. And only then, by reference, it is possible to go beyond the immediate appearance of things and glimpse the reality of them. But this is not its only point in common. The meaning of the words of a sage, like the poet, are like "pearls in the shell, which not only shows you when you open it through" ( 2).
His ways are not repetitive and unchanging. In the same way that nature, humans and their creations appear to us in countless forms and varieties, so is the speech of the man of knowledge. It seems that reality does not like fixed and immobile forms. At all times it is said differently though without saying different things. And so the wise man himself insists in his speech but never is predictable, his words are always the same direction, that does not vary, but one never knows how to tell the next time. Reality shows every moment in a specific and different from the moment that precedes and follows it, but only the great masters are able to see reality at all times. Life contains a rhythm, yes, but never shown uniform and repetitive. No way constrains. And is that the greater the degree of fixation far darker and becomes the reality we capitalized. And the great, the teachers, we just talk about it, the only thing real, what is provided but never in the same form, the only one left but never it does so still, to be in constant motion. And the same is that we find in the word of the wise, when the moment of speaking to us and eternity seem to blend as if they were only one.
Notes:
(1) Shaykh Ahmad al-'Alawi, The fruit of the inspired words. Commentary on the teachings of Abu Madyan of Seville, Cordoba , Almuzara, 2007, p. 172.
(2) Adonis, Poetry and Poetics Arab Madrid, Ediciones del Oriente and the Mediterranean, 1997, p. 164.
(1) Shaykh Ahmad al-'Alawi, The fruit of the inspired words. Commentary on the teachings of Abu Madyan of Seville, Cordoba , Almuzara, 2007, p. 172.
(2) Adonis, Poetry and Poetics Arab Madrid, Ediciones del Oriente and the Mediterranean, 1997, p. 164.
Inara Asensio is a law graduate and a diploma in Arabic.
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