Hello Friends,
Some of you may or may not know but my favorite writer is Antoine de St Exupery. beautiful prose, for me at least. We all know him as the writer of the Little Prince, however how many of us know his as the writer of ” Les courrier Sud” ( Southern mail), Les Terres des Hommes (Wind Sands and Stars), Le vol du nuit (Night Flight). These have been for me some of themost inspiring books I have read.
I was talking to my friend from the land of eagles (each time I type that I laugh lol), and St Exupery came up. I remembered a quote from him that really impacted me when I was much younger
Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward in the same direction.
Its a really touching quote, I think its from Night Flight, but I cant remember. There should be a cool SQL for the mind. There was another quote by Camus that the afore mentioned one calls to mind and that is:
Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.
Both these quotes for me allude to the same thing, unity and mutual participation which are the alluring dream of religion and the end point of the mystics. I have had this quote in my mind from Master Nurbakhsh which precipitated this posting for me.
O Sufi!
What is Sufism?
Sufism is the apprehension of Reality through the attraction of Divine Love. It is the struggle to bring about unity of attention in one’s inner and outer being, under the guidance of a master of the path. In other words, Sufism means looking in one direction and seeing all things as One.
Sufism, love, true fraternity, the higher goal of mankind, whatever you want to call it is all about moving in one direction, past opposites, past differing ideologies, past our conceptions of ourselves, past even this movement itself to a Singular existence. I believe that is what the true annihilation of self is.
-Dave
How much I needed to read this today & your post about “no man is an island.” I think if we remembered this more, we would have a world of kindness & fellowship. Sometimes I am reminded of this when I get upset on the train commute in to work or by someone seemingly being rude – how will I respond, will I be the peace/love that I seek or will I respond with impatience & rudeness. Thank you for once again being my “moment of reflection” in an otherwise hectic day.
Thank you for collecting these three beautiful quotations into one post. They should co-exist in our heart at every moment. Sufism in my humble opinion is a form of humanism as the one promoted by the declaration of human rights. Maybe by coincidence, even though I do not believe in coincidence, the date of birth of Dr. Nurbakhsh is also the 10 December, the date of birth of the declaration of human rights.
Ya Haqq.