Joy and sorrow both are for each other. If it were not for joy, sorrow could not be; and if it were not for sorrow, joy could not be experienced.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
Life is differentiated by the pairs of opposites.
If there was no pain one would not enjoy the experience of joy. It is pain which helps one to experience joy. Everything is distinguished by its opposite. The one who feels pain deeply is more capable of experiencing joy. And personally, if you were to ask me about pain, I should say that if there was no pain life would be most uninteresting to me. For it is by pain the heart is penetrated, and the sensation of pain is deeper joy. Without pain the great musicians and poets and dreamers and thinkers would not have reached that stage which they reached and from which moved the world. If they always had joy, they would not have touched the depths of life.
Seeing the nature and character of life the Sufis say that it is not very important to distinguish between two opposites. What is most important is to recognize That One which is hiding behind it all. Naturally after realizing Life the Sufis climb the ladder which leads them to Unity, to the idea of Unity which comes through the synthesis of Life, by seeing One in all things, in all beings.
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Question: What do you mean by ‘God has no opposite’?
Answer: There is the sun and there is the moon, there is man and woman, there is night and there is day. The colors are distinguished by their variety and so are the forms. Therefore to distinguish anything there must be its opposite; where there is no opposite we cannot distinguish. There must be health in order to distinguish illness; if there were no health and only illness then it would not have been (distinguished as) illness. … Life is a puzzle of duality. The pairs of opposites keep us in an illusion and make us think, ‘This is this, and that is that’. At the same time by throwing a greater light upon things we shall find in the end that they are quite different from what we had thought.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad) Samuel L. Lewis
The heart from its very nature expands and contracts, grows warmer and colder. After contraction, the very nature of Life tends to make it to expand again, and there is sorrow, there is a tightening of processes, a deadness and dullness. Pain accompanies the escape from sorrow, but the end of pain is expansion in the spirit, which surely leads to joy.
At the same time, if one becomes so rapt in joy, if one in such moments becomes attached to the self, the joy in turn will lead to further sorrow. The purpose of spiritual development is to understand the nature of life beneath joy and sorrow and so find peace in every experience regardless of its fruits.