Doctrinal Battles

Even a barely grown-up spirituality will shy from the doctrinal battles that rage between and within religions. Engaging in such battles is, of course, an indication that the person is attracted by the world. More: such combative activity is probably a violation of the very spirit of the religion the person wishes to defend or to promote. With inner growth comes insight summed up most succinctly here:

When you arrive at the sea, you
do not talk of the tributary.
[Hakim Sanai, The Walled Garden of Truth]

One Sufi master suggested the role of religion (conceived, I think, as doctrinally hedged about) in this snippet:

There are three forms of culture, the mere acquisition of information; religious culture, following rules; elite culture, self-development. [Hujwiri, Revelation of the Veiled]

The sentence above suggests a sequence that I here liken to maturing. Each of the three stages mentioned has its place and merit. Each contributes to a person’s development of true humanity. “Following rules” is quite something other than doing battle with others, including merely abstract battle, over the rules that they prefer. That a famous author declines to be in communion with this or that tradition of a faith doesn’t merit mention, never mind highlighting, unless the intention is to promote one’s own or to belittle another group’s convictions.

To rise above doctrine is not to dismiss it. That approach is used by those who insist on staying on the level beneath the religious. To rise above doctrines means to accept them all, to ignore their detectable flaws and seeming contradiction, and to receive the grace that they carry. Another Sufi saying I’m very fond of, in this context, is that “The channel doesn’t drink.”