Ablution Quotes

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art— Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors— No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable, Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever—or else swoon to death. Bright Star

Give me the benefit of your assistance during those ablutions that neccessarily, though unfortunatly, invariably follow the excercise of the culinary art.

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art-- Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors-- No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable, Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever--or else swoon to death. Glanzvoller Stern! wär ich so stet wie du, Nicht hing ich nachts in einsam stolzer Pracht! SchautŽ nicht mit ewigem Blick beiseite zu, Einsiedler der Natur, auf hoher Wacht Beim Priesterwerk der Reinigung, das die See, Die wogende, vollbringt am Meeresstrand; Noch starrt ich auf die Maske, die der Schnee Sanft fallend frisch um Berg und Moore band. Nein, doch unwandelbar und unentwegt MöchtŽ ruhn ich an der Liebsten weicher Brust, Zu fühlen, wie es wogend dort sich regt, Zu wachen ewig in unruhiger Lust, Zu lauschen auf des Atems sanftes Wehen - So ewig leben - sonst im Tod vergehen!

Work will drive you crazy if you let it.

She set the tray down on the table in the sitting area -- which instantly perked up Galahad's ears. Roarke simply pointed a warning finger that had the cat shooting up a leg to wash as if a morning ablution had been his only intention.

Satan puts three knots at the back of the head of any of you if he is asleep. On every knot he reads and exhales the following words, ‘The night is long, so stay asleep.’ When one wakes up and remembers Allah, one knot is undone; and when one performs ablution, the second knot is undone, and when one prays the third knot is undone and one gets up energetic with a good heart in the morning; otherwise one gets up lazy and with a mischievous heart.

ablutions

A large praying mantis was performing ablutions on the springy stem of the kid's cowlick. The gunslinger snorted laughter-the first in gods knew how long-and set the fire and went after water.

Make a ritual ablution before each prayer, beginning every action with "In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful." First wash your hands, intending to pull them away from the affairs of this world. Then wash your mouth, remember and reciting God's name, purifying it in order to utter His Name. Wash your nose wishing to inhale the perfumes of the Divine. Wash your face feeling shame, and intending to wipe from it arrogance and hypocrisy. Wash your forearms trusting God to make you do what is good. Wet the top of your head feeling humility and wash your ears (in preparation) to hear the address of your Lord. Wash from your feet the dirt of the world so that you don't stain the sands of Paradise. Then thank and praise the Lord, and send prayers of peace and blessing upon our Master, who brought the canons of Islam and taught them to us. After you leave the place of your ablution without turning your back to it, perform two cycles of prayer out of hope and thankfulness for His making you clean. Next, stand in the place where you are going to make your prayers as if between the two hands of your Lord. Imagine, without forms and lines, that you are facing the Ka'bah, and that there is no one else on the face of this earth but you. Bring yourself to express your servanthood physically. Choose the verses you are going to recite, understanding their meanings within you. With the verses that start with "Say..." feel that you are talking to your Lord as He wishes you to do: let every word contain praise. Allow time between the sentences, contemplating what our Master, the Messenger of God, gave us, trying to keep it in your heart. Believing that your destiny is written on your forehead, place it humbly on the floor in prostration. When you finish and give salutations to your right and to your left, keep your eyes on yourself and your connection with your Lord, for you are saluting the One under whose power you are and who is within you...

She often appeared at my chambers to talk over his lapses; for if, as she declared, she had washed her hands of him, she had carefully preserved the water of this ablution, which she handed about for analysis.

I believe he is attempting to pray,” said Sheikh Bilal. “But he isn’t clean. He hasn’t performed the ablution or checked the direction of Mecca, or begun in the correct position.” “My dear sir,” said the sheikh. “God likes catching His servants unprepared. The boy has set down what is obviously the first plate of food he has seen in a long while in order to thank his Creator. There are few acts of piety more honest than that.

...he blinks and says that there are two types of people: Those who want to cry, and those who are crying already and want to stop.

The event that will light the way for immigration in North America is the talking picture. The silent film brings nothing but entertainment—a pie in the face, a fop being dragged by a bear out of a department store—all events governed by fate and timing, not language and argument. The tramp never changes the opinion of the policeman. The truncheon swings, the tramp scuttles through a corner window and disturbs the fat lady’s ablutions. These comedies are nightmares. The audience emits horrified laughter as Chaplin, blindfolded, rollerskates near the edge of the unbalconied mezzanine. No one shouts to warn him. He cannot talk or listen. North America is still without language, gestures and work and bloodlines are the only currency.

When you sleep, your dreams are those of a dullard

One night, after hours, you are alone and running your hands under the hot water when the voice asks if you aren't through with your ablutions yet. You do not know the word but write it down to look it up the next day. You learn its definition on page 3 of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary: "The washing of one's body or part of it (as in a religious rite)." You are certain you have never heard this word before as you were raised without any religion and have never set foot inside any church or temple, and you return the dictionary to the shelf and vow never to play this game of counting your wounds again.

I hope he dies out there," you say, and you laugh-sputter at the statement because it is a terrible thing to have said aloud and you hope you can play it off as a joke but Simon is staring hard at you, and now he knows for a fact something he has suspected for years, which is that you have a streak of hate in your heart and that it is deep and wide and though you have hidden it, it is unmistakably uncovered now, and he will never feel that previously mentioned fondness for you again [...]

the hinder portion scalding-house good eating Curve B in addition to the usual baths and ablutions military police sumptuousness of the washhouse risking misstatements kept distances iris to iris queen of holes damp, hairy legs note of anger chanting and shouting konk sense of "mold" on the "muff" sense of "talk" on the "surface" konk2 all sorts of chemical girl who delivered the letter give it a bone plummy bare legs saturated in every belief and ignorance rational living private client bad bosom uncertain workmen mutton-tugger obedience to the rules of the logical system Lord Muck hot tears harmonica rascal that's chaos can you produce chaos? Alice asked certainly I can produce chaos I said I produced chaos she regarded the chaos chaos is handsome and attractive she said and more durable than regret I said and more nourishing than regret she said

He had heard a voice, a voice in his own heart, which had commanded him to seek rest under this tree, and he had neither preferred self-castigation, offerings, ablutions, nor prayer, neither food nor drink, neither sleep nor dream, he had obeyed the voice. To obey like this, not to an external command, only to the voice, to be ready like this, this was good, this was necessary, nothing else was necessary.

In the shade of the house, in the sunshine of the riverbank near the boats, in the shade of the Sal-wood forest, in the shade of the fig tree is where Siddhartha grew up, the handsome son of the Brahman, the young falcon, together with his friend Govinda, son of a Brahman. The sun tanned his light shoulders by the banks of the river when bathing, performing the sacred ablutions, the sacred offerings. In the mango grove, shade poured into his black eyes, when playing as a boy, when his mother sang, when the sacred offerings were made, when his father, the scholar, taught him, when the wise men talked. For a long time, Siddhartha had been partaking in the discussions of the wise men, practising debate with Govinda, practising with Govinda the art of reflection, the service of meditation. He already knew how to speak the Om silently, the word of words, to speak it silently into himself while inhaling, to speak it silently out of himself while exhaling, with all the concentration of his soul, the forehead surrounded by the glow of the clear-thinking spirit. He already knew to feel Atman in the depths of his being, indestructible, one with the universe.

The Dandy is the highest form of existence attainable by the human form. His life is exclusively dedicated to dressing exquisitely, parading about the fashionable boroughs of splendid cities and and holding forth at his club, where he dispenses witticism as readily as the vulgaroisie utters its banal platitudes. The only species of 'work' this singular Chap might engage in would consist of discussing buttonhole stitching with his tailor and performing his ablutions until the morning has been well aired enough for him to step into it.

Beware of the plygs of Colorado City, Arizona. They have no cups of coffee for the likes of you.

ablutions;

On May 28, I came to, knowing this was the last time I would perform my habitual ablutions and take the Infermiterol.

Your skin is prickly from fatigue and pain and there is a hissing in your ears. Time passes and the pills are taking hold like a glowing white planet coming into view. A reverse eclipse. And you watch with your eyes closed. The white planet is half exposed, it grips your heart in its light and seems to be pulling you forward and now you feel that you are falling. You are awake but dreaming. "The earth is not beautiful but the universe is," you say.

As the water of ablution, the dew falls from heaven, purifies the body, and makes it ready to receive the soul;195 in other words, it brings about the albedo, the white state of innocence,

That dawn he officiated at the daily mass of his ablutions with more frenetic severity than usual, trying to purge his body and spirit of twenty years of fruitless wars and the disillusionments of power.

You ask Raymond what he does for a living and he says, "I breathe and walk and when I'm told to sit I sit and when I'm told to leave I leave and return home to luxuriate and think of how much I despise them.

Now, in one of those utterly physical moments, when the soul takes a backseat to the digesting stomach, the skin enjoying a recent ablution and some fine linen, the mouth smoking, the eyes reveling in bare shoulders and bright lights, he repeated his prayer more indolently, doubting a miracle that would upset the psychological law of his fickleness, which was as impossible to flout as the physical laws of weight or death.

He had started to suspect that his venerable father and his other teachers, that the wise Brahmins had already revealed to him the most and best of their wisdom, that they had already filled his expecting vessel with their richness, and the vessel was not full, the spirit was not content, the soul was not calm, the heart was not satisfied. The ablutions were good, but they were water, they did not wash off the sin, they did not heal the spirit’s thirst, they did not relieve the fear in his heart.

Sister, you Malaysians always ask the same thing, she smiled. Islam is international and your sisters come in all colors. The important thing is that we pray to the same God. Why are our styles of praying, clothing, hijab, ablution so important to you?”.

Prophet Muhammad (s) says: “Whenever you go to bed, perform ablution like that for the prayer, lie or your right side and say: ‘O Allah! I surrender to You and entrust all my affairs to You and depend upon You for Your Blessings both with hope and fear of You. There is no fleeing from You, and there is no place of protection and safety except with You O Allah! I believe in Your Book which You have revealed and in Your Prophet whom You have sent.’ Then if you die on that very night, you will die with faith (i.e. the religion of Islam). Let the aforesaid words be your last utterance [before sleep]”. [Bukhari]

The mystics have always stressed the religious aspect of Islam, the rationalists the other one. All the same, both of them have always had difficulties with Islam, simply because it cannot be put into any of their classifications. Take wudu as an example. A mystic will define it as a religious ablution with symbolic meaning. A rationalist will look upon it as a matter of hygiene only. They are both right, but only partly. The defectiveness of the mystic explanation lies in the fact that it lets the hygienic side of wudu become a mere form. Following the same logic in other questions, this approach will reduce Islam to pure religion, by eliminating all physical, intellectual, and social components from it. The rationalists take quite the opposite way. By neglecting the religious side, they degrade Islam to a political movement only, creating a new type of nationalism from it, a so called Islamic nationalism, deprived of ethical-religious substance, empty and equal to all other nationalisms in this regard. To be a Muslim in this case, does not represent an appeal or a duty, a moral or a religious obligation, or any attitude to the universal truth. It means only belonging to a group different from the other one. Islam has never been only a nation. Rather, Islam is a call to a nation, " to enjoin the right and to forbid the wrong" Quran- that is, to perform a moral mission. If we disregard the political component of Islam and accept religious mysticism , we silently admit dependence and slavery. On the contrary, if we ignore the religious component , we cease to be any moral force.

He grinned: he’d turned in time to witness her delicate white shoulders dip below the water’s surface. Thankfully, she quickly completed her morning’s ablutions and made a shooing motion with her hands. Back turned again, he waited for her to dress, all the while telling his privy counselor to cease its repeated suggestions.

Dazed, he went through his ablutions. Then Ali stepped back, letting the crowd sweep him away as he surrendered to the familiar rhythm and movement of prayer. It was like slipping into oblivion, into bliss, muscle memory and the murmured song of sacred revelation relaxing his tightly wound emotions and offering a brief escape.

Epitaph On John Dove, Innkeeper Here lies Johnie Pigeon; What was his religion? Whae'er desires to ken, To some other warl' Maun follow the carl, For here Johnie Pigeon had nane! Strong ale was ablution, Small beer persecution, A dram was memento mori; But a full-flowing bowl Was the saving his soul, And port was celestial glory.

As I readied these luxuriant ablutions, my dearest Katherine said, 'Webster, my darling, the pints of love essence you erupt at the peak of oral passion taste more intoxicating than even the richest European chocolate.' My beloved belched demurely into her fist, swallowed and said, 'All women should taste your delicious emissions.

am recalling now how during that last spring (forever) we walked together at full moon, overcome by the soft dazed air of the city, the quiet ablutions of water and moonlight that polished it like a great casket. An aerial lunacy among the deserted trees of the dark squares, and the long dusty roads reaching away from midnight to midnight, bluer than oxygen.

Govinda rose. The evening had come, it was time to perform the evening’s ablution. He called Siddhartha’s name. Siddhartha did not answer. Siddhartha sat there lost in thought, his eyes were rigidly focused towards a very distant target, the tip of his tongue was protruding a little between the teeth, he seemed not to breathe. Thus sat he, wrapped up in contemplation, thinking Om, his soul sent after the Brahman as an arrow.

....It was to complete his marriage with Maimuna, the daughter of Al Hareth, the Helalite. He had become betrothed to her on his arrival at Mecca, but had post-poned the nuptials until after he had concluded the rites of pilgrimage. This was doubtless another marriage of policy, for Maimuna was fifty-one years of age, and a widow, but the connection gained him two powerful proselytes. One was Khaled Ibn al Waled, a nephew of the widow, an intrepid warrior who had come near destroy- ing Mahomet at the battle of Ohod. He now became one of the most victorious champions of Islamism, and by his prowess obtained the appellation of " The Sword of God." The other proselyte was Khaled's friend, Amru Ibn al Aass ; the same who assailed Mahomet with poetry and satire at the commencement of his prophetic career ; who had been an ambassador from the Koreishites to the king of Abyssinia, to obtain the surrender of the fugitive Moslems, and who was henceforth destined with his sword to carry victoriously into foreign lands the faith he had once so strenuously opposed. Note.— Maimuna was the last spouse of the prophet, and, old as she was at her marriage, survived all his other wives. She died many years after him, in a pavilion at Serif, under the same tree in the shade of which her nuptial tent had been pitched, and was there interred. The pious historian, Al Jannabi, who styles himself "a poor servant of Allah, hoping for the pardon of his sins through the mercy of God," visited her tomb on returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca, in the year of the Hegira 963, a.d. 1555. "I saw there," said he, "a dome of black marble erected in memory of Maimuna, on the very spot on which the apostle of God had reposed with her. God knows the truth ! and also the reason of the black color of the stone. There is a place of ablution, and an oratory ; but the building has fallen to decay.

A Palestinian village whose feudal owner sold it for a kiss through a pane of glass..." Nothing remained of Sireen after the auction apart from you, little prayer rug, because a mother slyly stole you and wrapped up her son who'd been sentenced to cold and weaning - and later to sorrow and longing. It's said there was a village, a very small village, on the border between sun's gate and earth. It's said that the village was twice sold - once for a measure of oil and once for a kiss through a pane of glass. The buyers and sellers rejoiced at its sale, the year the submarine was sunk, in our twentieth century. And in Sireen - the buyers went over the contract - were white-washed houses, lovers, and trees, folk poets, peasants, and children. (But there was no school - and neither tanks nor prisons.) The threshing floors, the colour of golden wine, and the graveyard were a vault meant for life and death, and the vault was sold! People say that there was a village, but Sireen became an earthquake, imprisoned by an amulet as it turned into a banquet - in which the virgins' infants were cooked in their mothers' milk so soldiers and ministers might eat along with civilisation! "And the axe is laid at the root of the tree..." And once again at the root of the tree, as one dear brother denies another and existence. Officer of the orbits... attend, O knight of death, but don't give in - death is behind us and also before us. Knight of death, attend, there is no time to retreat - darkness crowds us and now has turned into a rancid butter, and the forest too is full, the serpents of blood have slithered away and the beaker of our ablution has been sold to a tourist from California! There is no time now for ablution. People say there was a village, but Sireen became an earthquake, imprisoned by an amulet as it turned into a banquet - in which the virgins' infants were cooked in their mothers' milk so soldiers and ministers might eat, along with civilisation!

Here the magnetic attraction comes from the Logos. This denotes a thought or idea that has been formulated and articulated, hence a content and a product of consciousness. Consequently the Logos is very like the aqua doctrinae, but whereas the Logos has the advantage of being an autonomous personality, the latter is merely a passive object of human action. The Logos is nearer to the historical Christ-figure, just as the “water” is nearer to the magical water used in ritual (ablution, aspersion, baptism). Our three examples of magnetic action suggest three different forms of magnetic agent:

I will try to be happy, you think, and your heart and chest feel a plummeting, as in the case of the hurtling rollercoaster, and your heart wants to cry and sob, but you, not wanting to cry, hit yourself hard in the center of your chest and it hurts so much but you drive on, your face dry and remaining dry, though it had been a close call, after all.

Among the sufis, one attains purity not by ritual ablution, not by faith and worship, not by deed or merit, but by direct knowledge, experience, certainty, the drunkenness of ecstatic realization. Only this intoxication truly purifies the soul, because with this "wine" one becomes lost, and finds oneself, within the heart. One loses all separative delusions, the dirt of a muffled consciousness, and attains the One. This is to wander nude in the bazaar, like a naked Qalandar. But if the bazaar is shocked, then scandal belongs to the bazaar, not the dervish. Like a drunkard, the suf loses his reputation in the world because the world has lost its reputation with him. The petty bazaar stands accused of hypocrisy; the naked man stands before God.

IN THE SHADE OF THE house, in the sunshine of the riverbank near the boats, in the shade of the Sal-wood forest, in the shade of the fig tree is where Siddhartha grew up, the handsome son of the Brahman, the young falcon, together with his friend Govinda, son of a Brahman. The sun tanned his light shoulders by the banks of the river when bathing, performing the sacred ablutions, the sacred offerings. In the mango grove, shade poured into his black eyes, when playing as a boy, when his mother sang, when the sacred offerings were made, when his father, the scholar, taught him, when the wise men talked. For a long time, Siddhartha had been partaking in the discussions of the wise men, practising debate with Govinda, practising with Govinda the art of reflection, the service of meditation. He already knew how to speak the Om silently, the word of words, to speak it silently into himself while inhaling,

Then she dove into the morning cleaning. There weren't many rooms in the tower, which made it easy, but she liked to be thorough. Sweep, mop, polish. The garderobe and her mirror got sparkly from scrubbing with a bit of vinegar (a trick she learned from Book #14: Useful Recipes for Master Servants). She transferred a day dress that was soaking in a soapy bucket to a clean water bucket, scrubbing out the bit of lingonberry juice stain from breakfast on Monday. 7:00: Personal ablutions. She washed her face and nails and applied cream to her cuticles and everywhere on her face but the T-zone, which was, despite her fairy-tale beauty, just a tad prone to breaking out. 8:00: Reading. She (re)read Book #26, Sidereus Nuncius by Galileo. More a pamphlet than a book, but it counted. 8:30: Art! Lacking a proper canvas (or piece of wall space) she chose to spend her painting time decorating the mop handle. It might not be dry enough to actually use the next day, but that was all right. Birthday weeks meant the occasional break from routine-- that was part of the fun!

Looking into each other's eyes and speaking together in low tones, it becomes apparent that she hopes you will walk her through her troubles and show her that male-female relations can be lovely even in loveless union. She is looking for lust fulfilled but she searches also for respect, and in this she is out of luck because you do not know her or like her very much and you do not respect yourself and so the most you can offer this girl is time out of her life and an unsatisfactory meeting of bodies and, if the fates are generous, a couple of laughs and good feelings. At any rate there will unquestionably be a divot in your hearts before dawn and Peg seems to pick up on this after thirty minutes of groping and pawing (the car interior is damp with dew) she breaks away and with great exasperation says, "What do you think you're doing?" You are smiling, because it is an utterly stupid and boring question, and you say to her, "I am sitting in an American car, trying to make out in America," a piece of poetry that arouses something in her, and you both climb into the back seat for a meeting even less satisfactory than you feared it might be. Now she is crying and you are shivering and it is time to go home and if you had a watch you would snap your wrist to look meaningfully at it but she dabs at her face and says she wants you to come upstairs and share a special-occasion bottle of very old and expensive wine and as there is no way not to do this you follow her through the dusty lobby and into the lurching, diamond-gated elevator and into her cluttered apartment to scrutinize her furnishings and unread or improperly read paperbacks, and you wonder if there is anything more depressing than the habitats of young people, young and rudderless women in particular.

There is far more to the Islamic way of life than fasting and segregating women, of course. Praying five times a day, avoiding alcohol, the custom of eating with the right hand, leaving the left for ablutions and many health measures associated with Islam, such as ritual washing. Then there is the Qur’an itself and the sonorous power of the Arabic language, with an attractive system of ethics including a focus on alms-giving and the equality of believers. Putting all this together created a powerful religious technology which made its followers more aggressive, confident, united and with a higher birth rate than any competing civilization. [...] People in the West see the traditional culture of the Muslim Middle East as primitive and “backward,” and there are constant calls for modernization. In fact, as had been seen, Islamic culture is anything but backward. Civilization first arose in Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley in what is now Pakistan. It is no coincidence that these lands, with the longest experience of civilization, are now strongly and fervently Muslim. Long experience of civilization has bred a high-S genotype and culture which perfectly adapt people to survive and expand their numbers in dense agricultural and urban populations. Such countries tend to be poor (if we leave out the anomalous effects of oil wealth), since their peoples lack the temperament for industrialization. But wealth at that level is of no benefit in the long-term struggle for survival and success. To paraphrase Christian scripture, what does it benefit a civilization if it gains wealth but loses its strength and vigor? The advantages of Islam can be clearly seen in countries with mixed populations. Lebanon once had a Christian majority but is now 54% Muslim. In Communist Yugoslavia the provinces with Muslim populations grew much faster and received tax revenue from the wealthier Christian states. The population of Kosovo, the spiritual homeland of Christian Serbia, grew from 733,000 in 1948 to over two million in 1994, with the Muslim component surging from 68% to 90%, and lately going even higher. Meanwhile, Muslims are migrating into Europe where Christianity is in decline, the birth rate is far below replacement level, and people no longer have much faith in their own culture. Over the next few decades, as the next chapter will indicate, the native peoples of the West will become feebler and fewer. This means that on current trends Europe will become an Islamic continent in a century or so. The 1,400-year struggle between Islam and the West is coming to end. pp. 227 & 229-230

Contempt for causes, for consequences and for reality. Whenever an evil chance event a sudden storm or a crop failure or a plague strikes a community, the suspicion is aroused that custom has been offended in some way or that new practices now have to be devised to propitiate a new demonic power and caprice. This species of suspicion and reflection is thus a direct avoidance of any investigation of the real natural causes of the phenomenon: it takes the demonic cause for granted. This is one spring of the perversity of the human intellect which we have inherited: and the other spring arises close beside it, in that the real natural consequences of an action are, equally on principle, accorded far less attention than the supernatural (the so-called punishments and mercies administered by the divinity). Certain ablutions are, for example, prescribed at certain times: one bathes, not so as to get clean, but because it is prescribed. One learns to avoid, not the real consequences of uncleanliness, but the supposed displeasure of the gods at the neglect of an ablution. Under the pressure of superstitious fear one suspects there must be very much more to this washing away of uncleanliness, one interprets a second and third meaning into it, one spoils one's sense for reality and one's pleasure in it, and in the end accords reality a value only insofar as it is capable of being a symbol. Thus, under the spell of the morality of custom, man despises first the causes, secondly the consequences, thirdly reality, and weaves all his higher feelings (of reverence, of sublimity, of pride, of gratitude, of love) into an imaginary world: the so-called higher world. And the consequences are perceptible even today: wherever a man's feelings are exalted, that imaginary world is involved in some way. It is a sad fact, but for the moment the man of science has to be suspicious of all higher feelings, so greatly are they nourished by delusion and nonsense. It is not that they are thus in themselves, or must always remain thus: but of all the gradual purifications awaiting mankind, the purification of the higher feelings will certainly be one of the most gradual.

C’est à Ibn ‘Arabi que l’on attribue le rôle le plus éminent dans cette interprétation de plus en plus approfondie du principe féminin. Pour lui non seulement la nafs [âme] est féminine – comme c’est le cas généralement – mais aussi dhât, « essence divine », de sorte que la féminité, dans son œuvre, est la forme sous laquelle Dieu se manifeste le mieux (…) cette phrase savant exprime, en effet, parfaitement le concept d’Ibn ‘Arabi puisqu’il écrit au sujet de sa compréhension du divin : « Dieu ne peut être envisagé en dehors de la matière et il est envisagé plus parfaitement en la matière humaine que dans toute autre et plus parfaitement en la femme qu’en l’homme. Car Il est envisagé soit comme le principe qui agit soit comme le principe qui subit, soit comme les deux à la fois (…) quand Dieu se manifeste sous la forme de la femme Il est celui qui agit grâce au fait qu’Il domine totalement l’âme de l’homme et qu’Il l’incite à se donner et à se soumettre entièrement à Lui (…) c’est pourquoi voir Dieu dans la femme signifie Le voir sous ces deux aspects, une telle vision est plus complète que de Le voir sous toute autre forme par laquelle Il se manifeste. » (…) Des auteurs mystiques postérieurs à Ibn ‘Arabi développèrent ses idées et représentèrent les mystères de la relation physique entre l’homme et la femme par des descriptions tout à fait concrètes. L’opuscule du soufi cachemirien Ya’qub Sarfi (mort en 1594), analysé par Sachiko Murata, en est un exemple typique ; il y explique la nécessité des ablutions complètes après l’acte d’amour par l’expérience « religieuse » de l’amour charnel : au moment de ce plaisir extatique extrême – le plus fort que l’on puisse imagine et vivre – l’esprit est tant occupé par les manifestations du divin qu’il perd toute relation avec son corps. Par les ablutions, il ramène ce corps devenu quasiment cadavre à la vie normale. (…) On retrouve des considérations semblables concernant le « mystère du mariage » chez Kasani, un mystique originaire de Farghana (mort en 1543). Eve, n’avait-elle pas été créée afin que « Adam pût se reposer auprès d’elle », comme il est dit dans le Coran (sourate 7:189) ? Elle était le don divin pour le consoler dans sa solitude, la manifestation de cet océan divin qu’il avait quitté. La femme est la plus belle manifestation du divin, tel fut le sentiment d’Ibn ‘Arabi.

ablutions

The moral is the ablution of the mind, and morality is impossible without humanity.

ablutions

ablutions

Beau Brummell was regarded as unbalanced in his passion for daily ablutions. His ritualistic morning toilet took upward of five hours, one hour spent inching himself into his skin-tight buckskin breeches, an hour with the hairdresser, and another two hours tying and "creasing down" a series of starched cravats until perfection was achieved. But first of all two hours were spent scrubbing himself with fetish zeal from head to toe in milk, water and eau de Cologne... Beau Brummel said he used only the froth of champagne to polish his Hessian boots. He had 365 snuff boxes, those suitable for summer wear being quite unthinkable in winter, and the fit of his gloves was achieved by entrusting their cut to two firms - one of the fingers, and the often for the thumbs. Sometimes, however, the tyranny of elegance became altogether insupportable. A mr. Boothby committed suicide and left a note saying he could no longer endure the ennui of buttoning and unbuttoning.

Health in Breathing Deep Breathing. Many cases of lung trouble and of other afflictions are due to improper breathing, or rather to persons allowing themselves to fall into bad habits of breathing. Nature intends that a certain amount of oxygen must come from the air we breathe. In a natural, joyous life, nature will cause anyone to breathe in an abundance of this oxygen. But artificial habits of life, and especially despondency and work that requires much stooping or bending over, are apt to produce an apathy of the nerves and muscles that control breathing, and hence an insufficient supply of the health-giving oxygen. The remedy in such cases is easy and in everyone's hands. Moreover, it costs nothing but a slight effort, continued long enough until a correct habit is formed. How to Breathe. The most important item in breathing is that it shall be deep and rhythmic, that is, that inspiration and expiration shall be of equal length. Watch a person asleep and note his breathing: it is as regular and rhythmic as the swish of the waves on the shore, as regular as the ticking of the clock. That is the natural way; when consciousness stops controlling it, the breathing becomes natural. If, then, you are seeking health and vigor, imitate the natural. Breathing Exercise. Of marvelous value is the deep breathing exercise, which should be taken just as regular as the morning ablution. The best place is somewhere where one can get fresh air, preferably air that the sun has shone on. Then bending back the shoulders, throwing forward the chest and upward the chin, inhale slowly just as much air as the lungs will hold. Hold in this air while you count ten. Exhale it slowly Repeat this four or five times. Then, after a moment’s rest, empty the lungs to the utmost, then draw in all the air possible, and when the lungs seem full, draw in just a little more, pack the lungs, as it were, and hold the breath while you count twenty slowly. Then exhale. You will find this a wonderfully invigorating and health preserving exercise.

What distinguishes us above all from Muslim-born or converted individuals—“psychologically”, one could say—is that our mind is a priori centered on universal metaphysics (Advaita Vedānta, Shahādah, Risālat al-Ahadiyah) and the universal path of the divine Name (japa-yoga, nembutsu, dhikr, prayer of the heart); it is because of these two factors that we are in a traditional form, which in fact—though not in principle—is Islam. The universal orthodoxy emanating from these two sources of authority determines our interpretation of the sharī'ah and Islam in general, somewhat as the moon influences the oceans without being located on the terrestrial globe; in the absence of the moon, the motions of the sea would be inconceivable and “illegitimate”, so to speak. What universal metaphysics says has decisive authority for us, as does the “onomatological” science connected to it, a fact that once earned us the reproach of “de-Islamicizing Islam”; it is not so much a matter of the conscious application of principles formulated outside of Islamism by metaphysical traditions from Asia as of inspirations in conformity with these principles; in a situation such as ours, the spiritual authority—or the soul that is its vehicle—becomes like a point of intersection for all the rays of truth, whatever their origin. One must always take account of the following: in principle the universal authority of the metaphysical and initiatic traditions of Asia, whose point of view reflects the nature of things more or less directly, takes precedence—when such an alternative exists—over the generally more “theological” authority of the monotheistic religions; I say “when such an alternative exists”, for obviously it sometimes happens, in esoterism as in essential symbolism, that there is no such alternative; no one can deny, however, that in Semitic doctrines the formulations and rules are usually determined by considerations of dogmatic, moral, and social opportuneness. But this cannot apply to pure Islam, that is, to the authority of its essential doctrine and fundamental symbolism; the Shahādah cannot but mean that “the world is false and Brahma is true” and that “you are That” (tat tvam asi), or that “I am Brahma” (aham Brahmāsmi); it is a pure expression of both the unreality of the world and the supreme identity; in the same way, the other “pillars of Islam” (arqān al-Dīn), as well as such fundamental rules as dietary and artistic prohibitions, obviously constitute supports of intellection and realization, which universal metaphysics—or the “Unanimous Tradition”—can illuminate but not abolish, as far as we are concerned. When universal wisdom states that the invocation contains and replaces all other rites, this is of decisive authority against those who would make the sharī'ah or sunnah into a kind of exclusive karma-yoga, and it even allows us to draw conclusions by analogy (qiyās, ijtihād) that most Shariites would find illicit; or again, should a given Muslim master require us to introduce every dhikr with an ablution and two raka'āt, the universal—and “antiformalist”—authority of japa-yoga would take precedence over the authority of this master, at least in our case. On the other hand, should a Hindu or Buddhist master give the order to practice japa before an image, it goes without saying that it is the authority of Islamic symbolism that would take precedence for us quite apart from any question of universality, because forms are forms, and some of them are essential and thereby rejoin the universality of the spirit. (28 January 1956)

all modes of travelling, the American customs, with reference to the means of personal cleanliness and wholesome ablution, are extremely negligent and filthy; and I strongly incline to the belief that a considerable amount of illness is referable to this cause.

ablutions block

Kal returned from a place of unseeing abnegation to feast his eyes upon the unexpected pleasure of his ablutions being appreciated by a dozen-strong troop of fetchingly unclad Western-Isles warrior maidens. Double-bah.

The thought struck me, as I went about my daily ablutions, that Elliot had awfully nice hair for a man who’d take someone else’s ticket. It wasn’t long, but had a small curl to it that made you think about running your fingers through it. “Not that I have any intention of doing so ,” I told my reflection in the steam mirror. “Even if I was looking for a man, and I’m certainly not that stupid, he would be off the table. He’s friend to a rat bastard.” It was just a shame, too. How many bona fide lords does a girl meet? And how many of them have BBC voices, and nice faces, and curly hair that looks soft and silky and utterly gropeworthy?

They go deeper into the long grass, one by one, to relieve themselves and wash and whatever else they need to do, and then they eat a quick, joyless breakfast of carb-and-protein mix 3. The hungry kid is a silent, passive observer to all of this. She doesn’t piss and this time she doesn’t eat, either. Parks ties her leash to a tree when he goes off to perform his own ablutions. When

On a road one day, the eye of the Messenger (S) fell upon a woman. He turned back and went home and lay with his wife immediately, performed the greater ablution and came back out and said: “Whenever a woman appears like a devil, and passion is aroused, ye should go to your home and lie with your wife, for that which is with your wife is the just like that which is with the strange woman.

—The form of Baptism consists in the words accompanying the ablution. There are two essential parts: (i) the verbal designa tion of the baptismal act, and (2) the express in vocation of the three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity.

Jon felt dazed as he stood waiting for his turn to rinse off in the river, his skin coated and tight with dried blood. He knew he would be sick without the iron hold he had on his mind. Float above it. The water downriver was red as he stepped down the bank and waded up to his knees. Next to him, the captain scrubbed his arms and face, scooping up handfuls of the cool water nonchalantly as if performing his morning ablutions. Jon splashed further in and sank down to his chest, eyes lowered. It’s just blood. You’ve washed blood off before, he thought. Not the blood of a hundred men and women… whispered a small voice inside him; Jon felt it should have been a scream. Unnerved, he reached down to the riverbed and brought up a handful of coarse sand. As he rubbed it against his skin, he watched the red drift down current. It was a strange sort of detached hysteria that he felt, his pulse quick and feathery light as he methodically cleansed himself. John lifted his head to look for Tom. The first mate stood on the riverbank with the other slaves, waiting until the free folk were finished before taking their turns. Feeling Jon’s gaze on him, Tom turned to look at him, his lips pressed together and nostrils flared. The blood on the big man’s face made a striking contrast with the brilliant blue-green of his eyes; Jon thought the first mate looked a little pale beneath the gore. Tom’s eyes slid to the captain, and Jon read a deep worry coming off the first mate in waves. What have you not been telling me? he thought.

Eve realized after about a week that her strategy wasn’t working. Part of the problem was that other than preventing Deene from starting his lawsuit, she wasn’t entirely sure what her aim had been. To keep him at arm’s length? That wasn’t happening. Each night, he made deeper inroads on her attempts to separate their routine: he brushed her hair, he attended her baths, he helped her into and out of her clothing, and he asked for her assistance with his. The staff was colluding with him, telling him when she ordered a bath, when she’d asked not to be disturbed in the middle of an afternoon. It was maddening, really, to find such a pleasant, considerate husband where Eve needed to find a calculating, underhanded, self-interested opponent. And if she’d intended to keep him from her bed? That wasn’t happening either. Each night he tended to his ablutions, then climbed between the sheets and took her in his arms. If she turned her back to him, he rubbed her back or her neck and shoulders. His attentions were unselfish, pleasurable, and in no way could Eve consider them intimate advances. And

ablutions

I didn’t brush my teeth today and I can smell my own breath. Acrid. Stale. My hair is still wet from the shower. I couldn’t be bothered to dry it, and I know when I wake up, it’ll be a tangled nightmare. I’m also 99 percent sure I forgot to put on deodorant. I should just live like this. Abandon my ablutions. Let my teeth go yellow with rot, gums red and receding. Allow my skin to break out, forget exfoliation. Let the dead flakes congregate, create societies of zits on my face. Evil empires. I should let my hair gnarl together. Form a giant nestlike mass on top of my head. I could keep things in there. Credit cards. Snacks. I should develop a smell so terrible that no one will ever come near me. Create a force field of stink. Wouldn’t that be easier? To be left alone in my misery. To lean into what I feel, match my exterior to my interior. I won’t do it, though. I’ll wake up in the morning and floss and brush my teeth and my hair. I’ll put on deodorant and perfume. A little mascara. Apply some tinted lip gloss. I’m not brave enough to be who I am.

De retour à la caserne, le fusil rangé au râtelier, après ablutions et avoir revêtu notre tenue kakie, nous nous répandions dans la ville. Certains d'entre nous, les plus mâles sinon les plus hardis, avaient rendez-vous dans les cafés avec de jeunes femmes dont les maris creusaient ailleurs. Pâles, les yeux cernés, le sein mobile, ces jeunes et frémissantes créatures s'accrochaient au présent : nos uniformes. Carapaces dont elles nous débarrassaient dans le secret de chambres initiatiques où elles n'avaient pas tardé à nous entrainer. Comme il était bon de quitter leggings, ceinturon, drap, flanelle, et, enfin nus, de se ressembler ! Comme il était bon d'inventer notre légende, d'afficher l'insolence de nos vingt ans ! En avance de plusieurs lunes sur notre dépucelage, expertes et ne demandant qu'à l'être davantage, ces jeunes mariées fleurant la veuve nous étourdissaient de voluptés pressenties. Ô fièvres des lits adultères ! Le sentiment de se trouver en marge de notre destin (mais le destin nous avait placés là, à cette date et en ce lieu) portait nos étreintes à des violences extrêmes, parfois proches du désespoir. Cette guerre nébuleuse, fantomatique, dont on osait croire qu'elle allait, un beau jour, s'évanouir par miracle, prit soudain son véritable visage. Le 10 mai 1940, la foudre s'abattit sur une fraction du globe. Les Prussiens - encore eux ! -, enflés de leurs nombreux cousins, attaquaient la Belgique, la Hollande et le Luxembourg. Sans aucun "préavis". Sans avoir pris de gants ! Le monde civilisé était horrifié ; il ne trouvait point de termes assez durs pour dénoncer cette « odieuse agression », cette « barbarie d'un autre âge », pour flétrir la violation de neutralité de ces trois petits (et courageux) pays qui ne demandaient qu'à rester neutres !

For some Victorians, feminine beauty and purity could rightfully stem only from natural remedies such as pure water, healthy living and inner contentment. Mrs Jaimeson was strongly of that opinion. In a letter of hers that was published in The Girls’ Own Paper she wrote that ‘in the morning [they must]use pure water as an ablution; after which they must abstain from all sudden gusts of passion, particularly envy, as that gives the skin a sallow paleness.’ She also believed that pimples could be prevented by a light diet, that a daily walk provided all the colour cheeks needed, that getting up at dawn made the lips bright and red and that ‘a desire of pleasing will add fire to [a woman’s] eyes.’ Meanwhile, there was a list of behaviours that could destroy a girl’s looks, such as staying up late, playing cards, reading novels by candlelight and any outward display of surliness.

In the old countries, and still today, in order to launder one’s clothes one descends to the river, and there makes the ritualistic ablutions that people have made since the beginning of time in order to renew the cloth. This is a very fine symbol for a cleansing and purification of the entire bearing of the psyche.

Gabriel came to him one day on the high ground above Mecca, and struck with his heel the turf of the hillside, whereupon a spring gushed forth from it. Then he performed the ritual ablution to show the Prophet how to purify himself for worship, and the Prophet followed his example. Then he showed him the postures and movements of the prayer, the standing, the inclining, the prostrating and the sitting, with the repeated magnification, that is, the words Alldhu Akbar, God is Most Great, and the final greeting as-Saldmu 'alaykum, Peace be on you, and again the Prophet followed his example. Then the Angel left him, and the Prophet returned to his house, and taught Khadijah all that he had learnt, and they prayed together.

there are two types of people: Those who want to cry, and those who are crying already and want to stop.

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Une des manifestations significatives de cet universalisme est le fait que vous "autorisez" certains membres à abandonner l'Islam et la Tarîqah pour rentrer dans le Christianisme: ainsi un ancien faqîr suisse redevenu chrétien, continue très fidèlement (à vous, mais pas à la tarîqah évidemment) à être votre disciple en forme chrétienne ! Il s'agit de quelqu'un que vous aviez autorisé, lors de sa rentrée dans le Christianisme, à continuer de fréquenter les séances hebdomadaires des fuqarâ; c'est ainsi qu'il lui arriva une fois à Bâle par une sorte d'excès d'universalisme de faire l'appel (fautif) à la prière musulmane, et sans ablution, la prière elle-même. (Lettre de M.Vâlsan à F.Schuon, novembre 1950)

But what impressed him most were things he had not come to see, things of which he had never seen the like; and when he returned to Mecca he said to Quraysh: “O people, I have been sent as envoy unto kings - unto Caesar and Chosroes and the Negus - and I have not seen a king whose men so honour him as the companions of Muhammad honour Muhammad. If he commandeth aught, they almost outstrip his word in fulfilling it; when he performeth his ablution, they wellnigh fight for the water thereof; when he speaketh, their voices are hushed in his presence; nor will they look him full in the face, but lower their eyes in reverence for him. He hath offered you a goodly concession; therefore accept it from him.

It is allowed as a salutary maxim, that the light and frivolous suspicion of a contagious malady, is of sufficient weight to excuse the visits of the most intimate friends; and even the servants, who are despatched to make the decent inquiries, are not suffered to return home, till they have undergone the ceremony of a previous ablution.

As she prayed on a regular basis, especially when she needed help, she didn't feel the need to officially commit to the five-times-a-day prayers. Mind you, she wouldn't roll out a rug and go through ablution, and her prayers often featured requests more than anything else, but at least she sent up some form of communication throughout the day--while in traffic, when remembering a sick friend, while appreciating the sunset over Lake Pontchartrain.

There are ten in a circle and everyone wants to speak and no one cares what the other person presently speaking is talking about. Someone starts crying about having been molested as a child; someone starts crying about a dead mother; someone wants to go to Las Vegas. You slip out the side door and into your car. It is five-thirty in the morning and the sky is the color of a three-day-old bruise. It is beautiful.

ablutions, washed and showered in the echoing space of the communal bathrooms with a hundred other men, then made his way

this religious concept becomes evident from Josephus' description of John's baptism: "For thus, it seemed to him, would baptismal ablution be acceptable, if it were not to beg off from sins committed, but for the purification of the body, when the soul had previously been cleansed by righteous conduct" (Ant. XVIII, 117).94 By "purification of the body" Josephus means ritual purity, which was a concept of great importance in the Judaism of the Second Commonwealth generally. This purity, according to John the Baptist, is not obtainable without the previous "cleansing of the soul", i.e. repentance. This idea, that moral purity is a necessary condition for ritual purity, is emphatically preached in DSD, which says about the man whose repentance is not complete: "Unclean, unclean he will be all the days that he rejects the ordinances of God . . . But by the spirit of true counsel for the ways of man all his iniquities shall be atoned, so that he shall look at the light of life, and by the spirit of holiness which will unite him in his truth he shall be cleansed from all his iniquities; and by the spirit of uprightness and meekness his sin will be atoned, and by the submission of his soul to all the statutes of God his flesh will be cleansed, that he may be sprinkled with water for impurity and sanctify himself95 with water of cleanness" (DSD III, 5-9).96 This doctrine leads to the rule: "Let him not enter the water to touch the purity of the men of Holiness, for they will not be cleansed unless they have repented from their wickedness" (DSD V, 13-4; cf. ibid. VIII, 17-18). The regular ablutions of the sect, which enabled its members to touch their pure food97, were forbidden to outsiders (and to members of doubtful behaviour) because these ablutions were not considered valid unless preceded by full repentance. That baptism leads to the remisssion of sins was accepted by Christianity generally (Bul. 135-6), but the idea that the atonement is really caused by the repentance which precedes the actual immersion98 94. The first to interpret the NT correctly on the basis of Josephus's words was E. Meyer (Ursprung und Anfange des Christentums I, Berlin 1924, p. 88). His view is confirmed by the Scrolls. 95. See below. 96. W. H. Burrows, "John the Baptist" in The Scrolls (see note 1 above), pp. 39-41.—See also S. E. Johnson, "The Dead Sea Manual", ZAW 66 (1954), 107-8. 97. See C. Rabin, Qumran Studies, Oxford 1957, pp. 7-8. 98. The outward expression of this view in the baptism of John is the 51 gradually weakened in the new milieu.