The heart of every person, both good and bad, is the abode of God, and care should be taken never to wound anyone by word or act.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
In order to awaken love and sympathy in our hearts, sacrifices must be made. We must forget our own troubles in order to sympathize with the troubles of others. To relieve the hunger of others we must forget our own hunger. Everybody is working for selfish ends, not caring about others, and this alone has brought about the misery in the world today. When the world is evolving from imperfection towards perfection, it needs all love and sympathy. Great tenderness and watchfulness is required of each one of us. The heart of every person, both good and bad, is the abode of God, and care should be taken never to wound anybody by word or act. We are only here in this world for a short time; many have been here before, and have passed on, and it is for us to see that we leave behind an impression of good.
We cannot help believing the words of Buddha, ‘The essence of all religion is harmlessness’. Harmlessness does not mean refraining from killing: one can kill many without killing. In order to kill a person one does not need to murder that one; a glance, a word, a thought can kill a person, and that is worse torture than death. It is this experience that will make us say, ‘My very feet, be conscientious lest you tread on the thorns lying on your path, lest they complain: You have crushed me’.
There is no end to consideration once a person begins applying this principle. If there is any religion it is in having consideration for everyone: earnestly to consider what feeling can be touched by a moment’s mistake. If there is any abode of God it is in the heart of humanity. If the heart is touched wrongly it has an effect upon destiny, and we do not know to what extent.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
If there were not some good in the human heart, life in the physical body would be impossible because the blood would be carrying poison to every cell and muscle and gland. We even see some strange deaths called heart failure, or given other names, which result from psychic poison impregnating the physical body.
Every harsh human thought immediately affects two fluids: the vital fluid or energy called “prana” which flows in and out with the breath, and the Universal Life-Love Essence which holds the very earth together, which is the heart energy. The harsh thought through prana affects chiefly the mind of another, for it is directed toward others. But such also is the nature of prana that the exhalation of the breath so operates that it touches the mental body of each person in its course, and whatsoever it gives to another it gives to itself.
The effect of the heart-energy, which may be considered as the Universal Life-Force, is to strike every human being upon earth, even to affect others upon earth and those in the unseen. The proper use of this heart-energy is called Ishk by the Sufis, Karuna by the Buddhists, and Agape in the New Testament, which can be translated as “selfless love.”
There is a difference here in that thoughts affect chiefly the thinker and the thing or person concerned in the thought, whereas the feeling of the heart-energy affects the whole cosmic body of Adam, the Universal Human [ This Adam is not the supposed first male human from the biblical allegory of Eden. This is Adam Kadmon (אָדָם קַדְמוֹן, “Primordial Human”). In Kabbalah. Adam Kadmon is the first spiritual World that came into being after the contraction of God’s infinite light. Adam Kadmon is not the same as the physical Adam Ha-Rishon. It is Divine Light without vessels, ie pure potential. In the human psyche, Adam Kadmon corresponds to the yechidah, the collective essence of the soul. (excerpted from Wikipedia) — Muiz ]. In this way, by our feelings and attitudes, we either raise or lower the whole humanity. So when Jesus Christ said, “Love ye one another,” when Mohammed taught in the Qur’an that Allah created us from clots of blood, it was in reference to the fact — the great truth of existence — of the Universal Love-Energy.
The Master, the Saint, the Bodhisattva place their consciousness in this great stream, in this ocean of Love, and by sending forth their thoughts of loving-kindness they benefit the whole humanity. When these thoughts are individualized they reach a few; otherwise they reach many. This is the reason for silence on the part of sages.