The Timeless Relevance of Traditional Wisdom

by Lakhani, Ali M.; Shah-Kazemi, Reza; Stoddart, William

• ISBN13: 9781935493198
• ISBN10: 1935493191
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-09-16
• Publisher: World Wisdom

Summary

More than ever, there is an urgent need to rediscover timeless and objective principles in order to confront the issues of our times. In this collection of thirty remarkable essays, Lakhani summons us to rediscover the sacred worldview of Tradition, governed by truth, virtue, and beauty, as he addresses some of the most pressing issues today, including fundamentalism, gender and sexuality, religious diversity and pluralism, faith and science, and the problem of evil.

Author Biography

M. Ali Lakhani, a graduate of Cambridge University, is the founder and editor of the Traditionalist journal, Sacred Web. He is also the editor of The Sacred Foundations of Justice in Islam: The Teachings of 'Ali ibn Abi Talib. He is a practicing barrister in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Table of Contents

Dedication and Acknowledgments	p. vii
Foreword	p. ix
Introduction	p. xiii
The Sacred Web Essays
What is "Tradition"?	p. 3
An Introduction to Sacred Web	p. 5
The Importance of Spiritual Literacy	p. 8
Pluralism and the Metaphysics of Morality	p. 12
"What Thirst Is For"	p. 15
Of Detachment and Spiritual Courtesy	p. 20
Consecrated to the Sublime	p. 25
"Fundamentalism": A Metaphysical Perspective	p. 32
Reclaiming the Center	p. 38
Understanding "Tradition"	p. 52
On Faith and Intellect	p. 56
Umberto Eco, Fascism and Tradition	p. 60
Towards a Traditional Understanding of Sexuality	p. 68
On Translation	p. 78
The Principle of Verticality	p. 85
The Quest for Moral Certainty	p. 94
On Cultivating Awareness	p. 100
What is Normal?	p. 108
The Problem of Evil	p. 118
The Secular and the Sacred	p. 125
"Standing Unshakably in the True": A Commentary on the Teachings of Frithjof Schuon (1907-1998)	p. 132
"A Single Principle": On Faith and Pluralism	p. 143
Striving for "Wholeness" in the Kali Yuga	p. 149
The Secularization of Faith in the Modern World	p. 154
Of "Longing" and "Belonging"	p. 160
Papers on Metaphysics
Excerpt from "The Metaphysics of Human Governance"	p. 167
The Metaphysics of Poetic Expression	p. 176
Traditional Metaphysics-A Phenomenological Approach	p. 176
What is "Poetry"?	p. 182
"Poiesis" and "Logos"	p. 195
Poetic Vision-Seeing with the Eye of the Heart	p. 205
Poetic Expression-Saying the Unsayable	p. 219
Conclusion	p. 226
"Neither of the East nor of the West": Universality in Islam	p. 231
Education in the light of Tradition: A Metaphysical Perspective	p. 247
Book Reviews
Review of Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul	p. 263
Review of Conversations with Wendell Berry	p. 270
Review of the Henry Corbin Trilogy	p. 278
Biographical Notes	p. 295
Index	p. 297
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