There are two kinds of generosity – the real and the shadow; the former is prompted by love, the latter by vanity.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
When misers show any generosity they celebrate it with trumpets.
The whole tragedy of life is in losing sight of one’s natural self, and the greatest gain in life is coming into touch with one’s real self. The real self is covered by many layers of ego; those which preponderate above all others are hunger and passion, beneath these are pride and vanity. One must learn to discriminate between what is natural and what is unnatural, what is necessary and what is not necessary, what brings happiness and what brings sorrow. No doubt it is difficult for many to discriminate between right and wrong; but by standing face to face with one’s ego and recognizing it as someone who is ready to make war against us, and by keeping one’s strength of will as an unsheathed sword, one protects oneself from one’s greatest enemy, which is one’s own ego. And a time comes in life when one can say, ‘My worst enemy has been within myself.’
Our greatest enemy is our ego which manifests itself in selfishness. Even in our doing good, in our kind actions, selfishness is sometimes at work. When we do good with the thought that one day it may return to us and that we may share in the good, we sell our pearls for a price. A kind action, a thought of sympathy, of generosity, is too precious to trade with. One should give and, while giving, close the eyes. We should remember to do every little action, every little kindness, every act of generosity with our whole heart, without the desire of getting anything in return, making a trade out of it. The satisfaction must be in doing it and in nothing else.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad) Samuel L. Lewis
Often it is hard to draw a line between them for even among the vain there is often a spark of love. For instance, even those who give selfishly are not so bad as the misers who give not at all. The miser will have to learn to give as well as to find joy in giving, so for the miser there is a long road. But the other one who has practiced giving yet not found joy in it will have less difficulty.
But it is not true generosity which imparts things with the thought of self in them. What is known as “Indian giver” is one who recalls gifts, but the vain person is often a spiritual Indian giver who repeats, “Remember I gave you that thing.” In such giving there is no life and consequently no blessing.
[ MUIZ COMMENTARY: Quoting from Wikipedia about the origin of the phrase ‘Indian giver’:]
‘Indian giver’ is a pejorative American expression used to describe a person who gives a “gift” and later wants it back or who expects something of equivalent worth in return for the item. It is based on cultural misunderstandings that took place between the early European colonizers and the indigenous people with whom they traded. Often, the Europeans viewed an exchange of items as gifts stemming from a sense of entitlement to gifts and believed that they owed nothing in return to the indigenous people who had been generous with them. On the other hand the indigenous people saw the exchange as a form of trade or equal exchange and so they had differing expectations of their guests.
The phrase is used to describe a negative act or shady business dealings. [And today it] is considered disrespectful, and its use is offensive to many people of indigenous backgrounds.
…
That resulted in the Native Americans finding European behaviour ungenerous and insulting.
The racial prejudice behind this slur is further revealed by the creation of this specific term to incorrectly identify and link the very same type of nafs-driven human behavior that Pir-o-Murshid is describing here, as a primary characteristic of the various indigenous cultures and psychologies, and notably different from European behaviors … that of giving with the expectation of a return.
And of course there’s the staggering irony and hypocrisy of the term itself, in its denial of the ongoing historical reality of taking back, rescinding, or outright ignoring of most, if not everything, that was specifically given or granted in official treaties between the US Government and the various indigenous peoples. This is a fundamental aspect of nafs-driven behavior — the projection of undesirable and negative qualities outwards onto others, in a defensive attempt to maintain the self-delusion that those are not also one’s own qualities and actions. ]
For this reason, many who practice healing, who possess some psychic power, do not do real spiritual healing. They give out some magnetism, no doubt, but the Real Substance of Life is seldom transmitted in that way. This often leads to but temporary relief as well as added danger to the one practicing the art. The True Healing is healing from the nufs, the cause of all diseases.