Organization and Influences
The Duties of the Heart is divided into ten sections termed (She'arim) "gates," corresponding to the ten fundamental principles which, according to Bahya's view, constitute man's spiritual life. This treatise on the inner spiritual life makes numerous references to both Biblical and Talmudic texts. It draws on the contemporary Sufi Islamic influences present in his contemporary Medieval Spain and also to the Classics (translated by the school of Hunayn bin Ishaq).
Read more about this topic: Chovot HaLevavot
Famous quotes containing the words organization and/or influences:
“The organization controlling the material equipment of our everyday life is such that what in itself would enable us to construct it richly plunges us instead into a poverty of abundance, making alienation all the more intolerable as each convenience promises liberation and turns out to be only one more burden. We are condemned to slavery to the means of liberation.”
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“Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise. Once and again one of those great influences which we call a Cause arises in the midst of a nation. Men of strenuous minds and high ideals come forward.... The attacks they sustain are more cruel than the collision of arms.... Friends desert and despise them.... They stand alone and oftentimes are made bitter by their isolation.... They are doing nothing less than defy public opinion, and shall they convert it by blows. Yes.”
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