The Timeless Relevance of Traditional Wisdom

Introduction

By William Stoddart

During the last fourteen years, the bi-annual journal Sacred Web has become recognized as a voice to be heard in the field of comparative religion and spirituality. This is largely due to the skillful editorship of M. ali Lakhani, who, for virtually every issue, has been able to garner an impressive array of learned and distinguished contributors.

The Prince of Wales publicly expressed his appreciation of the journal and even made a gracious contribution to its pages. every enterprise must have a mission or a guiding principle and, for Lakhani, this has been the traditionalist or perennialist point of view. In recent years, the term perennialism has gained a certain notoriety, but it is not to be assumed thereby that absolutely everyone is clear as to what it means.

The traditionalist or perennialist school was founded by the french orientalist René Guénon (1886-1951) and the German poet and artist frithjof Schuon (1907-1998). Guénon was the pioneer, and Schuon the fulfillment or consummation. Schuon pointed out the analogy here with two other wisdom schools which had dual originators and expositors, namely, those associated with Plato and Socrates in 5 th century B.C. athens, and with Jalal ad-Din Rumi and Shams ad-Din at-Tabrizi in 13 th century Turkey.

Basically, the message of Guénon and Schuon is that of philosophia perennis or the perennial philosophy. This term was first used in the Renaissance, at which time it signified the recognition that the philosophies of Pythagoras, Plato, aristotle, and Plotinus incontrovertibly expounded the same truth as lay at the heart of Christianity. In more modern times, the term has been enlarged to include the metaphysics and mysticisms of all of the great world religions, notably, hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam.

Forerunners of the perennial philosophy in the east could be said to be the Islamic philosopher/mystic Ibn ‘arabi (1165-1240), who explained with particular cogency how an essence of necessity had many forms; and also the hindu saint Ramakrishna (1836-1886), who was intimately familiar, not only with hinduism, but also with Christianity and Islam, and who knew that each one of these religions was a way to God..

The central idea of the perennial philosophy is that Divine Truth is one, timeless, and universal, and that the different religions are simply different—and providential—languages expressing that one Truth. The two symbolisms most often used to express this view are, firstly, the uncolored light and the many colors of the spectrum, which are made visible only when the uncolored light is refracted. Secondly, there is the saying that all paths lead to the same summit. In this symbolism, the variety of religions is represented by the multiplicity of starting-points around the circumferential base of a mountain or a cone. The radial, upward, paths are so many ways to God. from this picture, one can see that the unity of the religious forms is a reality only at the dimensionless point that is the summit.

Following upon the two eminent originators of the traditionalist or perennialist school, there came two distinguished continuators, namely the anglo-Indian ananda Coomaraswamy (1877-1947) and the German-Swiss Titus Burckhardt (1908-1984).

Coomaraswamy was born in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) of a Tamil father and an english mother. he was educated in england. In his early days he worked in his homeland, but later he moved to the United States, where he became Keeper of the oriental Collection at the Boston Museum of fine art, a post he held for many years. During the early and middle part of his career, Coomaraswamy gained an enviable reputation as a historian and connoisseur of Indian and Indonesian art. When, in the later part of his life, he encountered the traditionalist writings of Guénon and Schuon, it was a case of love at first sight. from the late thirties onwards, he became a powerful voice for tradition in the english-speaking world, writing several books and contributing many articles expounding the traditionalist or perennialist point of view to a variety of learned journals.

Titus Burckhardt was Schuon’s oldest and closest friend. he was born in florence, but he came from a distinguished family of Basel, the city in which Schuon was born. Burckhardt was one year younger than Schuon, and they were at junior school together in Basel. Burckhardt devoted his life to the study and exposition of the different aspects of Wisdom and Tradition. he and Schuon were destined to become intellectual and spiritual colleagues for many decades.

It seems appropriate to mention in passing that the perennial-ist school has been attacked on many sides. Sometimes, because of its universalism, it has been likened to the new age movement, and sometimes, because its central principle is gnosis (the knowledge of God), it has been likened to the heretical gnosticism of the early centuries of Christianity. I will not take up space here to refute these ill-founded charges.

René Guénon began writing his principal books in the 1920s, and frithjof Schuon in the 1930s; each of them wrote over twenty books. from the start, however, their writings usually made their first appearance in the form of articles contributed to journals which could be called the predecessors of Sacred Web . These included, among others: the venerable Études Traditionnelles (Paris)—for a short time under the title of Le Voile d’Isis —which for many years was edited by Paul Chacornac; Studii Iniziatici (naples), edited by Corrado Rocco; Sophia Perennis (Tehran); Connaissance des Religions (france); Sophia (oakton, virginia); Caminos (Mexico); Religio Perennis (Sao Paulo); and Zeitschrift für Ganzheitsforschung (Journal for holistic Research, austria).

The first english-language journal dedicated to the perennialist writings was Studies in Comparative Religion (London)—for a short time under the title of Tomorrow —which was edited by francis Clive-Ross. This journal was published from 1963 to 1984, and has recently been revived as an on-line journal by World Wisdom Books of Bloomington, Indiana.

finally, in 1995, Sacred Web (vancouver) made a welcome entry onto the scene. The focus of Sacred Web is encapsulated precisely by the title of this anthology, The Timeless Relevance of Traditional Wisdom . The journal quickly became a forum for articles by highly qualified contributors on a multitude of topics, ranging from metaphysics, spirituality, and sacred art, to every conceivable problem of the modern world.

Lakhani’s perennialist background did not in any way constrain him in his capacity as editor. all manner of points of view found expression in his pages. There were differences, and sometimes conflicts, the latter occasionally spilling over onto the Letters to the editor section. no number of Sacred Web was dull.

From the beginning, each number of Sacred Web was introduced by a long and meaningful editorial by Lakhani. With a lawyer’s meticulousness, he patiently and conscientiously scrutinized the problems and ambiguities emerging from the multi-faceted modern scene, often concentrating on those that were being dealt with in the relevant number of Sacred Web .

Part one of this anthology consists of a selection of the editorials from Sacred Web . The editorials expound what is meant by Tradition, and discuss metaphysical principles such as verticality and the underlying unity of religions, as well as metaphysical problems such as reconciling evil with the existence of God, and the quest for moral certainty. Many of the editorials focus specifically on the application of metaphysical principles to the issues confronting modernity. These issues include such topics as fundamentalism, secularism, pluralism, scientism, the environmental crisis, and issues of sexuality.

In these essays, Lakhani approaches the chaotic world with both compassion and sensitivity, but what makes his writings so worthwhile is the fineness of his analyses. In any context, he always seeks the principle or the essence underlying the issue and, from this starting-point, proceeds, deductively, to define its effects. When appropriate, it is his custom to offer an opinion as to what the cure for some problem or other might be. his opinions are a combination of principles and commonsense, and always repay much pondering. The Greek method of objectivity and impartiality in defining and rectifying a problem is always visible. Bias stemming from sentimentalism is not the way of Mr. Lakhani.

Part Two of this anthology includes several philosophical studies by Lakhani. The first one, entitled The Metaphysics of human Governance, is an excerpt from a paper which he gave at an international congress organized by the Institute for humanities and Cultural Studies in Tehran in 2001. It was awarded the Institute’s first Prize for the best essay submitted in the english language. In this article Lakhani makes a close examination of the classic problem of the relationship between spiritual authority and temporal power. In the old monarchies of europe, this surfaced as the relationship between Church and Crown, and many battles have been fought over it, the most notorious case in england being the fateful case of henry vIII. Some centuries later, the even knottier problem of the relationship between authority as such and the new—and still elusive—concept of freedom began to be the subject of debate. on the question of freedom, Lakhani quotes the following insight from frithjof Schuon: freedom consists much more in satisfaction with our particular situation than in the total absence of constraints, an absence scarcely realizable in the here-below, and which in any case is not always a guarantee of happiness.

The second essay in Part Two is a wide-ranging study of aesthetics entitled The Metaphysics of Poetic experience. In this section Lakhani’s love and knowledge of literature become apparent. he takes as his subjects a wide group of thinkers who are not always reckoned strictly of the Traditionalist school, henry Corbin, Kathleen Raine, Philip Sherrard, harold Bloom and Wendell Berry, and poets and writers ranging from those of antiquity (such as homer and virgil), of the Medieval world (Dante), the Renaissance (Shakespeare, Milton, and Metaphysical poets such as Donne, herbert and vaughan), the Romantics (Coleridge, Shelley, Blake), and the Moderns (Yeats, hopkins, Whitman, emerson), to many in the non-english writing traditions (Li Po, Rumi, Sa’adi, attar, hafiz, Shabistari, Kabir, Mirabai, Juan de la Cruz, Rilke, neruda, Jiménez), but Lakhani’s own standpoint remains that of the philosophia perennis . Poetry, he writes, is the art of transcendence.

Further in his exposition, Lakhani recalls the following distinction: It is noteworthy that while Plato emphasized the moral purpose of poetry, aristotle focused on an aesthetic value associated with the unity of the artist’s composition, and that while Plato denounced the purely emotive appeal of poetry, aristotle allowed for its cathartic and cleansing values. each of the philosophers emphasized, however, that poetry must necessarily be the vehicle of Truth. Poetry…is understood as the radial reconnection of circumferential man to his origin and Center.

Another essay in this section deals with the concept of Universality both in itself and within the context of Islam. I will refrain from describing it in detail as this is an article that the reader must savor and ponder for himself. Those who are unfamiliar with the Koran will be grateful for the many references to its resounding verses. The whole article is like a hymn to the opening words of the Koranic verse of Light: Allahu nuru’s-samawati wa’l-’ard. God is the Light of the heavens and the earth.

The final article in Part Two is on education in the light of metaphysics and tradition. Before one starts to read it, one knows not to expect praise for anything resembling what is served up to students in the schools and universities of today! I have forgotten the exact words of Coomaraswamy’s quip, but it went something like: It can take a man only three years to get a harvard education, but it will take him ten years to get rid of it! Saint Symeon the new Theologian puts the point more elegantly, but equally pungently: anyone who thinks himself intelligent because of his scholarly or scientific learning will never be granted insight into the Divine mysteries unless he first humbles himself and becomes a fool. following in the footsteps of the great, Mr. Lakhani takes no prisoners!

Part Three of this anthology consists of Lakhani’s reviews of three important books. The first one is Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul by William Chittick. This evocative title comes from the sub-title of Titus Burckhardt’s highly-praised book on Alchemy . The present book is a discussion by an Islamic scholar of the two fundamentally different types of knowledge: the infallible spiritual or intellectual knowledge (intellectual in the sense of eckhart’s Intellectus ) and the empirical knowledge gained from observing, hypothesizing, and experimenting. This empirical science— supported by an illegitimate extension of aristotle’s doctrine of science—stems from the humanistic outburst that was the 15 th-century Renaissance and, even more directly—and more crassly—, from the avowedly anti-spiritual 18 th-century enlightenment.

Lakhani’s second review is of Conversations with Wendell Berry edited by Morris allen Grubbs. The review outlines, largely in Berry’s own words, the themes that define his views as an agrarian reformer and environmentalist, a cultural and economic critic, and a defender of communitarian and family values and lifestyles, whose ideas are rooted practically in a sense of fidelity of place and community and in a commitment to community-based living. With Lakhani’s interest in the application of traditional values to modern life, it is easy to understand the importance he accords to Berry’s ideas.

Tom Cheetham’s trilogy on the french Islamologist henry Corbin (1903-1978) is the occasion for an interesting discussion by Lakhani on Corbin, his philosophy, and his wide-ranging influence on many contemporary writers. Corbin was born a Protestant, but early on he immersed himself in Medieval scholastic philosophy and Platonism. The turning point in his life, however, came with his discovery of the writings of the Persian theosophic mystic Shihab ad-Din as-Suhrawardi (1155-1191), who founded the Suhrawardi tariqa (one of the earliest ever formed). Corbin declared: Through my meeting with Suhrawardi, my spiritual destiny for the passage through this world was sealed. Platonism expressed in terms of the Zoroastrian angelology of ancient Persia illuminated the path that I was seeking.

Corbin was a prominent figure in the University of Tehran, the Sorbonne in Paris, and the eranos foundation at ascona (source of the famous eranos Yearbooks), and is much beloved today by the Temenos academy in London. one of Corbin’s many merits was to castigate Jung’s failure to distinguish between soul ( psyche ) and Spirit (eckhart’s Intellectus ), which in practice amounts to the abolition of Spirit. at one stroke Jung abolishes the very notion of, and thus the capacity for, objectivity and, by the same token, for spirituality. The chaos and damage resulting from this anti-Platonic act of blindness are incalculable. We are left stranded in a satanic waste-land where everything (truth, morality, art) is relative.

Corbin was a man of conscience. Late in his life, he was a favored candidate for election to the french academy but, for the sole reason that he refused to withdraw his overt opposition to the statuary belief in evolution and progress, his candidacy was refused.

Enough has been said to indicate the wide-ranging scope of Lakhani’s interests; but his editorials, philosophical essays, and book reviews on a dauntingly large variety of topics become so many reverberations of one underlying and all-governing vision. Though Lakhani’s treatment of his many themes is free and unconfined, the same unitary message remains throughout. The message is the primacy of truth, and its inseparable concomitants: beauty and virtue. This brings to mind the following Buddhist story:

It is told that once ananda, the beloved disciple of the Buddha, saluted his Master and said: half of the holy life, o Master, is friendship with the beautiful, association with the beautiful, communion with the beautiful.

Say not so, ananda, say not so! the Master replied. It is not half the holy life, it is the whole of the holy life.

In like manner, the doctrine of Plato can be encapsulated in the phrase: Beauty is the splendor of the Truth, and Truth is the essence of Beauty. Thoughts of this kind serve to evoke the world of Mr. Lakhani and his journal Sacred Web .

Part One:

The Sacred Web Essays

What is Tradition?¹

Tradition, in the special way that the term is used by Traditionalists, refers to a particular worldview: a way of seeing the world that differs from the ordinary perception.

We ordinarily see the world as composed of mind and matter: of physical objects located in time and space, which we interpret with our minds and our senses (of which our technological instruments are but extensions).

By contrast, Traditionalists speak of a way of seeing the world in which mind and matter exist as part of a continuum of reality that involves a deeper dimension: a transcendent spiritual dimension of which the worlds of mind and matter are merely a projection—like waves upon the surface of an ocean.

The worldview of Tradition is of this deep ocean, of a Presence in which we all participate: of a Reality in which we live and move and have our being—or we can think of it as a Sacred Web, as it were, through which each strand of life is intimately connected to every other.

This worldview engages the realization that within each of us is a transcendent Center, a unique vantage point within our innermost selves, our Heart, from which the complete web of life can be seen, which is one with the transcendent Source from which all the different strands emerge and by which they are all held together.

It is the realization that what we do to the web of life, we do to ourselves, and that our outer disharmonies are but the projections of an inner malaise.

True peace or harmony can therefore only be found by an inner alignment with that deeper Reality that connects us all.

One can therefore point to three fundamental differences between the ordinary understanding of the term tradition and the special sense in which the term Tradition (with a capital T) is used by Traditionalists.

First: in its ordinary meaning, tradition refers to etiquette, custom, habit, or a conventional way of doing or seeing things; but in its special usage, Tradition is both a worldview and a way of being that reflects a sense of the sacred—the sense that the created world is a radiance of the Transcendent—one might call it the fragrance of the Divine.

Second: in its ordinary meaning, tradition looks to the past; but in its special meaning, Tradition is timeless (it proclaims the ineffable Truth which is true for all time). Therefore, Traditionalists sometimes speak of the Primordial Tradition or of the Perennial Tradition.

And third: in its ordinary meaning, tradition refers to that which denotes the conventional, the commonly accepted way; but in its special usage, Tradition refers to the Truth, which, though universally accessible, is far from common. The Path of Tradition— though there are many faith traditions, each with their particular pathways and practices—involves initiation into a hallowed spiritual Path, the commitment of receptive faith and the practice of invocatory prayer, and the full engagement of one's deepest being to the True, the Good and the Beautiful, to piety, virtue, and reverence for all that is sacred.

Footnote

This is a revised excerpt from a speech given by M. Ali Lakhani at the opening of the Sacred Web Conference on Tradition and Modernity, held at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, on September 23rd and 24th, 2006.

An Introduction to Sacred Web¹

Tradition and Modernity are two separate outlooks by which to judge the state of the contemporary world. By Tradition we mean sophia perennis or primordial wisdom, those principles which are timeless and universal, not limited to any one faith or culture, and which reconnect us to our Origin and Center. Traditionalist writers have distinguished between the terms contemporary and modern, the former designating that which is of the present age, be it traditional or modern, and the latter, particularly when used in contrast to Tradition, designating the ideology of Modernism or that which is cut off from the Transcendent, from the immutable principles which in reality govern all things and which are made known to man through revelation in its most universal sense (Seyyed Hossein Nasr).

To speak of modernity is to evoke a certain ambivalence. On the one hand, we are the creatures of our time and so we celebrate its outward achievements, its advances in the fields of science and technology, and in its social reforms. Judged in these terms, what we conventionally label as modern is an improvement upon the apparent anachronisms of the past. The outward accomplishments of the modern world, which for the most part are scientific and technological, are undoubtedly impressive, ranging from achievements in medical science, to computer technology, from nuclear power to space travel, and other marvels so wondrous that we, mere humans, might almost believe ourselves gods. As well, we note other forms of advancement associated with modernity, social reforms undertaken in the cause of basic human rights and freedoms, manifesting in movements promoting civil rights and gender equality, and causes ranging from multicultural pluralism to ecological consciousness and advocacy. And yet, on the other hand, despite these outward accomplishments, and despite great privileges of our era—which, arguably, confer upon us the equally great responsibility to make use of our gifts respectfully and for the betterment of the world and ourselves—we experience a profound malaise that has been termed the malaise of modernity.

From this perspective, wherever mankind turns its gaze, it no longer witnesses the countenance of the Divine. Instead, it is confronted by a world of increasing fragmentation and spiritual poverty: a world accultured by individualism and secularism, by hubristic scientism and materialistic greed, and by the allure of the superficial that is marked by the erosion of both interiority and verticality. This acculturation has led to a myriad of problems: the alienation of man from nature, of man from humanity, and of self from spirit. Veiled thus from his celestial Origin and Center, mankind in the grip of modernity is without anchor or rudder, buffeted by the storms of his passions. Decentered man, enslaved thus by his passions, lives in a qualitatively impoverished world, of augmented alienation and diminished humanity, a universe characterized by the cognitive and ethical relativism of postmodernism, the sclerotic dogmatism of secular and religious fundamentalism, and—what may be termed the defining feature of modernity—the loss of the sense of the sacred.

By contrast, to speak of Tradition is to admit of the Transcendent and thereby to evoke the sacred. In the words of Frithjof Schuon, the sacred is the Presence of the Center in the periphery. A central premise of Traditional metaphysics is the ultimate integrity of Reality evident in this Presence, whose locus is none other than our innermost and transcendent Self—the Heart. The goal of Traditional practices is therefore to realize Reality by discerning it and concentrating upon it—in other words, by becoming Heart-centered. It is through the faculty of the kardial Intellect (which alone is receptive to the first principles of Tradition) that we can discern (or divine) that which is Real; it is through the submission of the lesser (human) passions to the greater (spiritual) Will that we can hope to merit ultimate peace and freedom; and it is by rediscovering our spiritual foundation and the trust of sacredness which is our primordial heritage that we can begin to properly address the malaise of modernity.

Sacred Web has been conceived as a journal whose aims will be to identify Traditional first principles and their application to the contingent circumstances of modernity, and to expose the false premises of Modernism from the perspective of Tradition. The journal will encourage and invite legitimate debate in this area and will seek to examine the interaction between Tradition and modernity. It is hoped that the journal will be of interest to the Traditionalist and general reader alike, concerned about the issues of modernity.

Footnote

This essay is a revised version of the Inaugural Editorial for Sacred Web, Volume 1, published in July, 1998.

The Importance of Spiritual Literacy¹

So interpret, O possessors of eyes!

(Koran, 59.2)

The importance of literacy in the sense of the ability to read, write, and compute, is taken for granted nowadays, and there are many forms of literacy that exist, ranging from technological and computer literacy to media and consumer literacy. It is also generally accepted that these various forms of literacy enable individuals to better function in modern societies. From the perspective of Tradition, however, there is a more basic and indispensable form of literacy whose importance is mostly overlooked and largely unacknowledged by the modern world. This is spiritual literacy.

The importance of spiritual literacy is founded upon principles of Traditional metaphysics according to which Reality is perceived as an integrated whole, manifesting within a spiritual continuum in which we ourselves participate. As with other forms of literacy, spiritual literacy has its utilitarian justification: it teaches us that all things can be traced to their spiritual roots, thereby equipping us to seek more profound practical solutions to our everyday problems, from the perspective of their spiritual origin. But beyond this pragmatic value, there is a deeper significance to spiritual literacy: it is the font of purpose. For it is the spiritual perspective alone that illumines the full spectrum of meaning for man, endowing human relationships with an ethical dimension as well as conferring on each individual a sense of purpose or telos. The true justification for spiritual literacy resides in understanding that the realization of Reality is the true metier of man, a project which cannot be undertaken nor achieved without the possession and development of the spiritual faculty.

To speak of existence is at a certain level to speak of contingency and displacement, and to situate man in any given manifestation is to invoke a necessary correspondence between context and contingency. From one perspective, each creature exists at its own level, bounded by its own context and its own set of contingent circumstances. From another perspective, man is a fragment of the Absolute, and all creation a theophany radiating through multiple levels of contingent reality from a Center or Origin which is Itself Absolute and to which all of creation (and man, uniquely) is connected. To define man within any given context is therefore to evoke two outlooks, one fragmentary and discontinuous, the other integrated and continuous, which, though seemingly mutually exclusive, coexist from the perspective of Traditional metaphysics. These form the weft and warp of reality. And it is in this coexistence, in the two worlds in which we must live at the same time, in the intersection between the vertical and horizontal dimensions of reality, that the genius of man and the true project of mankind reside.

It is from the name of the Greek messenger god, Hermes, the god of boundaries, to whom was given the power of movement between the different worlds, that we derive the term hermeneu-tics, designating generally that which is concerned with the interpretation of texts. It is in the full sense of man's contextuality that the term text is to be understood, in the Muslim sense of ayat or the Christian sense of logos, in which creation is a continuous utterance whose meaning we ourselves, as divine articulations, embody. In this sense, the notion of the text as sign is inadequate to convey the true scope of its meaning insofar as it merely denotes the other without embracing a participatory dimension that includes our innermost selves. Similarly, our understanding of interpretation in spiritual literacy has to extend beyond cognitive understanding, which expression is inadequate to convey the experiential dimension of meaning that goes beyond the mere explanation of concepts. In Traditional terminology, therefore, text is understood as the symbol connecting the cipher by way of its archetype to its Center and Origin; while interpretation is understood as the experience of that which is de-ciphered. Traditional hermeneutics is therefore a means of integrating the two worlds, of beyond and within—uniting knowledge and being.

In a multi-dimensional world, it is one's level of engagement with reality that determines the quality of one's experience. It is in this respect that Tradition and Modernism part company. The approach of Modernism is anthropocentric: it proceeds outwards from man, who is at its center, and in search of a source and origin, and is premised on the belief that man can define the Infinite and know the Unknown—a viewpoint that would thereby deny the transcendent, and limit reality to that which is contingent. This is a doomed enterprise, as futile as attempting to arrive at the ever-receding horizon. By contrast, Tradition is theocentric: it proceeds outwards from God, who is the axiomatic Center and Origin of all creation, the transcendent and (because also immanent) integral Source and Font of Reality, and of knowledge, manifested by the continuous grace of ever-renewing revelation, of which the interior pole is the Intellect. From the Traditional perspective, therefore, knowledge and its objects are not the entitlement of man to be had for the taking but rather are gifts to be justified by the receiving. Accordingly, man is enjoined by Tradition to approach knowledge reverentially, mindful of its sacred nature and of its ability to retrace his path to the ultimate ground of Reality.

The faculties of man valued by Modernism (such as reason, logic and sense perception) are each viewed by Tradition as competent within their own limited realms, but as subordinate to the higher faculty of the Intellect, which alone has hermetic access to the celestial realms from which all things originate and to which all things return. The difference between the Traditional and Modernist outlooks lies in their different orientations, which account for their different interpretations of the world. The orientation of Modernism is towards the Peripheral, the Center being concealed from it by the opacity of the Veil. By contrast, the orientation of Tradition is towards the Center (located simultaneously both beyond and within), which reveals Itself through the translu-cence of the Veil. In each case, the Veil