We ourselves are the trees of desire, and the roots of those trees are in our own hearts.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
There is a story in India of someone who was told that there was a tree of the fulfillment of desires, and who went in search of it. After going through the forests and across the mountains they arrived at last at a place where they lay down and slept without knowing that the tree of the fulfillment of desires was there. Before they went to sleep they were so tired that they thought, ‘What a good thing it would be if I had just now a soft bed to rest upon and a beautiful house with a courtyard around it and a fountain, and people waiting on me!’ With this thought they went to sleep, and when they opened their eyes from sleep they were lying in a soft bed, and there was a beautiful house and a courtyard and a fountain, and there were people waiting on them. They were very much astonished and remembered that before going to sleep they had thought about this subject, and found, ‘The tree that I was looking for — it was under that tree that I slept, and it was the miracle of the tree that was accomplished.’
The interpretation of this legend is a philosophy in itself. It is we ourselves who are the trees of fulfillment of our desires, and the roots of these trees are in the hearts of each of us.
There are dead thoughts, and there are living thoughts. To which class a thought belongs depends on the power called will power. When there is will power, the word is both spoken and done.
This idea is expressed by the words Kalpa-Vriksha, the tree of desire. The story is that whoever happens to sit down for a moment under this tree will have their wish fulfilled; yet nobody knows where this tree is to be found. The tree is the mind; its root is the heart. That which gives power to thought, gives spirit or life to thought, is feeling. Those without feeling are as though dead; with feeling they are living, and so is their thought. Thought with feeling is a much greater power than thought without feeling. Merely to say, ‘I like your picture so much’ will have no effect when there is no feeling behind it. It is just a string of words. There is no life in it. But when these words are uttered with feeling they go through your heart also; the thought becomes living.
( from the Sufi Message Series, Volume VII – In an Eastern Rose Garden: Chapter XVII – Mental Creation )
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
Human beings from the very beginning feel a longing. We seek satisfaction for that longing in life — in our incarnation, in marriage, in bringing forth children, and in many common pursuits — but never does one find satisfaction until one’s longing returns to the heart from which it first came.