/lit/ - Literature

>>20471615
>>20472077
Furthermore, the lataif are held to make up, to be part of the jism-i-latif, Arabic for “the subtle body.” Again, this is an obvious parallel to the koshas (sheaths, from the bodily sheath to the subtle sheath to the causal/mental sheath) of Hindu teachings, which was transposed into the Buddhist trikaya (three-bodies doctrine), a transformation-body or physical body, nirmanakaya, an enjoyment-body or subtle body, sambhogakaya, and a truth-body or mental/causal body, dharmakaya.

This is an obvious parallel to these Eastern traditions and this stuff about the lataif, visualization exercises, and the jism-e-latif a known historical teaching of some major Sufi orders for some centuries now — and yet, the probable influence by and/or derivation from Hindu or Buddhist sources, cannot be publicly admitted or stressed much, as it will make the Muslims (as well as the petty Orientalists and academics in and around Islamic Sufism) upset!

And of course this then gets into the Kalachakra teaching of Tibetan Buddhism, a fantastically complex psycho-cosmology in which the chakras, their enlivening or further development through yogic practices, mantras, deity yoga, visualization exercises, the subtle body or bodies of the human being, a cosmology of the history of the universe and prophecies of the future, are all gone into in depth.

In Sufism, interestingly enough, you have the technique used of the “dhikr”, remembrance, as in, remembrance-of-Allah — essentially, the same as a MANTRA (itself a Sanskrit word) used in Hindu and Buddhist yogic systems, repeated silently with the breath and used as a focus for one’s awareness, meditation, and contemplation, except this time an Arabic religious phrase instead of something like “om mani padme hum.”

But nevertheless, you’re right that the majority of Sufis cannot, will not, would not even want to get into all this, let alone into things like conscious preparation for the bardos (after-death state) and some type of understanding of karma and reincarnation.

Some teachings in the VEIN of, quasi-similar to teachings like of the dharmakaya true nature, or the Buddha-nature, are found in Sufic terminology and use of the phrases ruh (spirit) and qalb (heart), deeper aspects of the human self held to be often latent, obscured, something we are out-of-touch-with, which is essentially parallel to the concept of the bodhichitta, the mind of awakening or enlightenment, which has wisdom and compassion for the sake of all sentient beings as attributes.