Do not take the example of another as an excuse for your own wrongdoing.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
How few there are in this world who stop to think whether the actions of another are right for them! We are so ready to accuse another, and we are so ready to hide our own faults. Did we but look at right and wrong from another’s standpoint, we should find that the meaning of right and wrong would change. It is wrong for a little child to go out without asking its parents, because perhaps it will meet a motorcar from which it cannot protect itself. But would the same thing be wrong for a grown-up? It is only during the age of childhood that the act is wrong, later it is right.
Did we but study the object of life, we should come to understand the nature of right and wrong. And once we knew the nature of right and wrong we would not need to consult the law of the scripture, for that law itself would then begin to reveal to us its own truth. Nature herself can tell us what is right and wrong for us and for another person.
…
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 life 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.
( from the Sufi Message Series, Volume VII – In an Eastern Rose Garden: Chapter II – Nature’s Garden )
When the moral conception of life is understood better, when we know what is right, and what is wrong, what is good and what is bad and judge ourselves only, we see these two opposite things in our own life, person and character. For we see the folly of another and wish to judge another, when our sense of justice is not wide awake. Those whose personalities have brought comfort and healing to their fellow being were the ones who only used the faculty of justice to judge themselves, who tried to correct themselves of their own follies; and being engaged in correcting themselves had hardly time in their life to judge another. The teaching of Christ: “Judge not, lest ye be judged”, will always prove the greatest example to be followed.
( from The Supplementary Papers: Chapter XIX – Psychology III, Section iii – Metaphysics [ unpublished ] )
At every step of evolution our conception of good and bad, of right and wrong, changes. How does it change? Do we see more wrong or do we see less wrong as we evolve? One might naturally think that by virtue of one’s evolution one would see more wrong, but that is not the case; the more one evolves the less wrong one sees, for then it is not always the action itself which counts, it is the motive behind it. Sometimes an action, apparently right, may be made wrong by the motive behind it. Sometimes an action, apparently wrong, may be right on account of its motive. Therefore although the ignorant are ready to form an opinion of another person’s action, for the wise it is most difficult to form an opinion of the action of another.
( from the Sufi Message Series, Volume VIIIa – Sufi Teachings: Karma and Reincarnation, Section i )
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
To the talib there are two ways for selecting an ideal, and they may not be different. One way is to follow some spiritual person who has gone before you, preferably but not necessarily a person who has been met on earth. The other way is to develop the intuitive faculty and listen to the heart within, knowing that it is truly the heart which is heeded and being positively sure you are not under the sway of nufs. The difference between following nufs and following heart is simple. Nufs always speaks in terms of self and not-self; heart recognizes only principles and not personalities. By following the heart there can be no mistake, but one should not be attached even to principles.