Liu Chih: Only those who are Pure and Real
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Photo: Uyghur woman, Kashgar, China
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Only those who are Pure and Real can fully realize their nature. Fully able to realize their nature, they can fully realize the nature of humanity. Fully able to realize the nature of humanity, they can fully realize the nature of things. Fully able to realize the nature of things, they can partake in the transformative and nourishing process of Heaven and Earth. Being able to partake in the transformative and nourishing process of Heaven and Earth, they can form the third essential element in unison with Heaven and Earth.
(Liu Chih)
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Recommended Reading:
'Chinese Gleams of Sufi Light'
By Sachiko Murata (Author)
Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk
Description:
Chinese Gleams of Sufi Light investigates, for the first time in a Western language, the manner in which the Muslim scholars of China adapted the Chinese tradition to their own needs during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The book surveys the 1400-year history of Islam in China and explores why the four books translated from Islamic languages into Chinese before the twentieth century were all Persian Sufi texts. The author also looks carefully at the two most important Muslim authors of books in the Chinese language, Wang Tai-yu and Liu Chih. Murata shows how they assimilated Confucian social teachings and Neo-Confucian metaphysics, as well as Buddhism and Taoism, into Islamic thought. She presents full translations of Wang's Great Learning of the Pure and Real--a text on the principles of Islam--and Liu Chih's Displaying the Concealment of the Real Realm, which in turn is a translation from Persian of Lawa'ih', a famous Sufi text by Jami. A new translation of Jami's Lawa'ih' from the Persian by William C. Chittick is juxtaposed with Liu Chih's work, revealing the latter's techniques in adapting the text to the Chinese language and Chinese thought.
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