Mar Isaac of Nineveh and Buddha Sakyamuni on the 'cessation of the world'

Mar Isaac of Nineveh and Buddha Sakyamuni on the 'cessation of the world'

" When thou hearest of being far from the world, of leaving the world, of being pure from the world, thou art first in need of learning and knowing not after the.fashion of a novice, but with the impulses of gnosis - what the term world means, how many different meanings the word conveys. Then thou wilt be able thyself to know, in how far thou art distant from or connected with the world. If a man know not first what the world is, he cannot understand with how many limbs he is bound to or far from it. There are many who think themselves wholly devoid of the world in their behaviour because on two or three points they refrain from it. [This is] because they have not understood nor perceived with discernment that they are dead to the world in one or two limbs, while others are living in the body of the world. Therefore they even cannot perceive their affections and because they do not perceive them they are not anxious to be cured from them. The world is said by speculative examination to be the extension of a common name unto distinct affections. If we wish to call the affections by a common name we call them world; if we mention the affections separately, we call them by their separate names. The affections are parts of the usual current of the world. Where they have ceased, there the world 's current has ceased. They are: love of riches; gathering of possessions; fatness of the body giving rise to the tendency towards carnal desire; love of honour which is the source of envy; exercising government; pride and haughtiness of magistracy; folly; glory among men, which is the cause of choler, bodily fear. Here their current has been dammed, there the world, after their example, has to some extent ceased to be maintained and to exist. In the same way as some of the saints, who though being alive, yet are dead; for they are alive bodily, but they do not live carnally. See in which of those thou art alive; then thou shalt know in how many parts thou art living to the world and in how many thou art dead. When thou hast learned what the world is, thou wilt be instructed in these distinctions and also concerning thy being bound to the world or thy being free from it. In short: the world is bodily behaviour and carnal thoughts. For the overcoming of the world is also to be recognised in these two: viz. from the change of behaviour and from the alteration of the impulses. From the impulses of thy mind to the things towards which its impulses go astray, thou canst understand the measure of thy behaviour: viz. to which things thy nature turns without labour; which are the constant inclinations and which are those set into motion fortuitously; whether the mind is the agent for the apprehension of incorporeal impulses only, or whether it works wholly through matter; whether this materiality is an affected state, or whether the impulses are but the stamps of the mind's service to the body, so that the mind, not of its own will, is hallucinating concerning those faculties by which it performs virtues and from which, in a sound state, it derives its motive for fervour and concentration of thought, so that the mind can act corporeally, even with the loftiest aim, because of its lack of experience, even though it be in no affected state; and whether the mind is not distressed by the unseen touch of the stamps of the imaginations, in view of its excessive radiance in God, which is wont to cut off vain recollections. The short descriptions of this chapter are sufficient for a man's illumination if he be quiet and intelligent; and they outweigh many books. Bodily fear is strong in man, so strong that it often withholds him from praiseworthy and honourable things. But when it is face to face with psychic fear it is absorbed by it as coldness by the force of a flame." (Mar Isaac, First Part, discourse 2; Wensinck translation; source: https://historicalchristian.faith/by_father.php?file=Isaac%2520of%2520Nineveh%2FMystic%2520Treatises.html )

"Reverend, I say it’s not possible to know or see or reach the end of the world by traveling to a place where there’s no being born, growing old, dying, passing away, or being reborn. But I also say there’s no making an end of suffering without reaching the end of the world. For it is in this fathom-long carcass with its perception and mind that I describe the world, its origin, its cessation, and the practice that leads to its cessation.


The end of the world can never 

be reached by traveling.

But without reaching the end of the world,

there’s no release from suffering.


So an intelligent person, understanding the world,

has completed the spiritual journey and gone to the end of the world.

Assuaged, knowing the end of the world,

they do not hope for this world or the next." (Buddha Sakyamuni, Rohitassa sutta, AN 4.45; bhikkhu Sujato translation; source: https://suttacentral.net/an4.45/en/sujato?lang=en&layout=plain&reference=none&notes=asterisk&highlight=false&script=latin)




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