The First Islamic Classic in Chinese by Wang Daiyu;Murata Sachiko;

Author:Wang, Daiyu;Murata, Sachiko;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2017-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

Book Two

2.1. The Five Constants

The Five Constants of the true teaching, which are the clear mandate of the Real Lord, are five affairs: remembrance, giving, abstaining, worship, and assembly.

The human outside and inside accompany each other in color and subtlety. They are interconnected and secured with a lock. The lock has five springs: eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and body. The springs can be undone only with the five keys that are the Five Constants. Once the lock is opened, you will penetrate everything as a matter of course, and no doubts will remain. If the lock remains shut, you will stay in a drunken dream.1

The first of the Five Constants is called remembrance and is of two sorts: the remembrance of intention and the remembrance of praise.

The remembrance of intention is constantly to remember and not to forget the Real Lord. Forgetting is to lose the heart, and remembering is to have the heart of humaneness. Death is lodged in forgetting, but forgetting itself is not death. Humaneness is lodged in remembrance, but remembrance itself is not humaneness. Remembrance means to remember going home to one’s homeland and to long for and look to Islam. Forgetting means to forget the memory of one’s native place and to rebel against and disobey the original beginning. Remembrance is the root of the myriad actions, so all affairs issue forth from it. The sincerity of one remembrance can pierce metal and stone, surpass the ancient and the modern, and enwrap heaven and earth. How can one not be careful? To forget the fountainhead and be self-determining is to be transformed into ignorant and deluded. To preserve the real and overcome self is to be established as sage and worthy. Body and heart, household and country, sage and ordinary, depraved and true—their tight connection lies in this one initiative, so its merits and demerits are surpassingly great.

The remembrance of praise means to praise and be grateful for the overflowing mercy of both the Real Lord and the Utmost Sage. Why? Because body and life come from the creative transformation of the Real Lord, clothing and food are granted by the Real Lord’s solicitude, the myriad things support and tend to the nature of your spiritual, and heaven and earth cover and carry the bodily form. Are these not overflowing mercy? In the former heaven and earth the Utmost Sage is the root suchness of the Non-Ultimate and the fountainhead and root of the human. In the middle heaven and earth he governs and establishes the human way, which has been the firm principle from ancient times until now. In the latter heaven and earth when everything returns to the mandate and goes home to the origin, all will depend on his pulling and promoting. How can you not praise him? When drinking water, you must think of the fountainhead and not forget the root. This is the humaneness of recalling and remembering the true teaching.

The second of the Five Constants is giving. There are two kinds of giving: giving self and giving things.

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