A study of Life is the greatest of all religions, and there is no greater or more interesting study.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
There are two ways in which we may attain control over our activity. The first is confidence in the power of our own will, [ ie yakin ( or yaqin یقین ) which literally means ‘certainty’, and by extension the confidence that arises from the inner experience of that certainty — Muiz ]; to know that if we have failed today, tomorrow we will not do so. The second is to have our eyes wide open, and to watch keenly our activity in all aspects of Life. It is in the dark that we fall, but in the light we can see where we are going.
So it is in Life: we should have our eyes wide open to see where we walk. We should study Life, and seek to know why we say a thing, and why we act as we do. We have failed perhaps hitherto because we have not been wide awake. We have fallen, and felt sorry, and have forgotten all about it, and perhaps may have fallen again. This is because we have not studied Life. A study of Life is the greatest of all religions, and there is no greater and more interesting study. Those who have mastered all grades of activity, they above all experience Life in all its aspects. They are like swimmers in the sea who float on the Water of Life and do not sink.
If we only knew how much the study of Life can tell us! One could go into the British Museum and read every book in the building, and yet not obtain satisfaction. It is not study, it is not research, it is not inquiry which gives this knowledge; it is actually going through the experiences of Life, witnessing Life in its different aspects and in its different phases or spheres; that is what reveals the ideal of Life. … Look not on Life as a person would watch a play on the stage. Rather look upon it as a student who is learning at college.
It is not a passing show; it is not a place of amusement in which to fool our lives away. It is a place for study, in which every sorrow, every heartbreak brings a precious lesson. It is a place in which to learn by one’s own suffering, by the study of the suffering of others; to learn from the people who have been kind to us as well as from the people who have been unkind. It is a place in which all experiences, be they disappointments, struggles, and pains, or joys, pleasures, and comforts, contribute to the understanding of what Life is, and the realization what it is. Then do we awake to the religion of Nature, which is the only religion. And the more we understand it, the greater our life becomes, and the more of a blessing will our life be for others.
( from the Sufi Message Series, Volume VII – In an Eastern Rose Garden: Chapter 2 – Nature’s Religion )
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
What is religion? It is that which unites human and God. And what is that? It is Ishk. Is Ishk Love? Is Ishk Life? Is Ishk Light? It is none of them and all of them. Without comprehension of Ishk we cannot understand Light, we cannot understand Life, we cannot comprehend Love.
Knowledge of Ishk is called Ilm by the Sufis. This is the truest and highest knowledge there is, which may be called Love-Knowledge — not knowledge of love or love of knowledge but the absolute Union of the two. This is “the study” and “the religion” in the truest sense of the terms.