"The spiritual path is in one sense not so much a journey as a gradual attunement of the soul to the presence of the Spirit, a gradual reconciliation between the natural and the supernatural, between the lower waters and the upper waters, between mind and intellect, between Prophet Moses and al-Khidr." ... Abu Bakr Siraj ad-Din (Martin Lings)
7 comments:
Beautiful. I like Martin Lings. I read his works. A noble man.
The late Martin Lings, for lack of a better choice of words, is my idol.
If you like him, then you will also love the works of his friends such as Frithjof Schuon, Gai Eaton, Rene Guenon and Titus Burckhardt. Must-reads :-)
Gai Eaton, yes I like him too. I will look into the others. Cheers mate. This is really looking more and more like 84 charing cross...:)
englishrose,
this is how it works:
our famed martin lings was a lifelong student of frithjof schuon who was in turn a student of titus burckhardt.
martin lings slightly younger contemporary is seyyed hossein nasr.
if you want to trace further back, their teacher was rene guenon. their 'educational lineage' can be traced to the teachings of shaykh ahmad ibn mustafa al-alawi.
if you want to trace forward instead, their prodigy is huston smith.
alhamdulillah, i have read quite a fair bit of most of these books. let me know if you need any recommendations from any of these authors.
splendid!
Thanks! You know what, I started looking at my endless collection of books and found Seyyed Hossein Nasr's Islam; Religion, History and Civilization. It was a gift by a good friend who said that it'd be my faithful travel companion. I must read it again now. Splendid indeed...
Alhamdulillah!
Three other recommendations if you wanna start from Seyyed Hossein Nasr:
(1) Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis in Modern Man
(2) The Heart of Islam: Enduring Values for Humanity
(3) The Essential Frithjof Schuon: Selected and Edited by Seyyed Hossein Nasr (you can know 2 men in 1 book :-)
Enjoy reading ...
Just to correct the Hoopoe:
Titus Burckhardt was also a disciple and friend of Frithjof Schuon. Rene Guenon was one of the founders of the Traditionalist School who certainly influenced Frithjof Schuon, but the latter was initiated into a sufi Tariqa by Shaykh Al-Alawi. Rene Guenon had another spiritual master in Egypt where he spent his last years, writing and in seclusion. Frithjof Schuon was the master of his branch of the Tariqa Shadhiliyya in which Martin Lings, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Titus Burckhardt, et al were all disciples.
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