Bowl of Saki for May 01

You can have all good things — wealth, friends, kindness, love to give and love to receive — once you have learned not to be blinded by them, learned to escape from disappointment, and from repugnance at the idea that things are not as you want them to be.

Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net

Do not expect much from friends. Why must they be as you want them to be? They are not made by you. They are as they are. You must try to be for them what they expect you to be. It matters little if your friend proves to you to be a friend. What matters is, if you prove to be a friend.

However evolved we may be with our education and experience, yet what are we really seeking? Things from which we cannot derive any lasting gain. From these false things we gain the experience that the things to which we have hitherto attached importance and which we have valued are things that do not last. We learn at length that it would be wise to remember that all these objects and ideals and aspirations which we have in life should be judged according to whether they are dependable or not, lasting or not.

After we have perceived the truth that this or that is not to be depended upon, we find that it is not necessary to renounce them all, to give up everything in life. We can be in the crowd just as well as in seclusion in the wilderness. We can have all good things, wealth, friends, kindness, love to give and love to receive once we have learned not to be blinded by them, learned to escape from disappointment, learned to escape from repugnance at the idea that the things are not as we would want them to be. We can still attend to business, we may attain wealth, we can carry out all those things, but now our eyes are wide open; before, they were blind. This is the teaching of Life. …

It is not the actual literal renunciation which counts, it is the personal abandonment of belief in the importance of transient things. … If there is such a thing as saintly renunciation, it is renouncing small gains for better gains; not for no gains, but seeing with open eyes what is better and what is inferior. Even if the choice has to lie between two momentary gains, one of these would always be found to be more real and lasting; that is the one that should be followed for the time. When we take the torch of Wisdom to show us our path through Life, we will end by realizing what is really profitable in Life and what is not.

Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis

To begin with, the idea of “good things” must be altered; altered not to eliminate what we may call valuable, but rather augmented to include many things we may not call valuable. What we call valuable must have some value; otherwise it would not be prized. The pursuit of wealth is not wrong of itself but becomes wrong when it displaces higher ideals. The ideal pursuit is an all-inclusive pursuit which does not neglect the sustenance for body, heart, or soul.

So first we must include the term wealth, not only material good, but intellectual gifts and the treasures of the spirit. But besides that, it is important to possess these things, and not to be possessed by them. So long as we pursue them, it is only to be possessed by them, but when in our search for the Highest we come into temporary possession of goods, then it cannot be said that we possess them, for then God possesses them.

So it is with friends. To possess friends we must understand the highest friendship, and this is only possible with the realization of God. Otherwise our so-called friends are as possessions, which we try to include in our thoughts of ownership until we become owned by these thoughts. And the same is true concerning kindness, the faculty by which and through which friends are attained and maintained. That kindness which is adopted as an affectation is false, and that which is the natural outburst of the heart is true.

And this right attitude in life becomes more than true when we consider love from any standpoint. It is impossible for us to love all unless the spiritual love of God is in our heart. We may use the word “love” and make claims, but there will be no Life in it and it will fail when the test comes, for it will be centered around the nufs. Use of the word “love” is very different from the substance Love.

[ Murshid SAM also makes a similar comparison-distinction about “thoughts” and “experience” or between “thinking about” and “actually practicing” many times, in his writings … thinking about Love, or Compassion, or Kindness or Awakening, etc is not at all the same as experiencing or *practicing* Love, Compassion, Kindness, etc. In simply thinking about transpersonal and transcendent states and experiences our awareness remains below the mind-mesh, within the limiting field of ego-personality, and so our perspectives and our experiences are mixtures of light and shadow. And our understandings are partially obscured or even distorted by the shadows, by our ego preferences, our judgments and self-involved transaction-alities (ie I’ll give you ‘this’ if you give me ‘that’) of the small self. — Muiz ]

Therefore the question arises whether we are blinded by our desires or ideals, or whether we control them. When we control them, nothing can either elate us or disappoint us. Both these are forms of intoxication — the former intoxication (of ideals) by light, the latter intoxication (of desires) by darkness — and perhaps the latter may sometimes be preferable to the former which is sometimes so blinding that one cannot easily recover the sight of heart and soul.

Finally we must consider the condition of things as the result of all thoughts of all beings. We cannot control the thoughts of others. We might influence them in part, but God has given will-power to all humankind. Through this, thoughts are formed, and through these thoughts the material affairs of the world are fixed.

The consequence is tremendous, that not only is each individual but one part of billions of people, all of whose thoughts and whose Karma is affecting the world, but the influence of the past is still greater. Not only our reverence for people of the past, but constitutions, contracts, and agreements of all sorts bind us. It should be obvious therefore, that our own small individual wills are as nothing in this whirlpool. And if you add to that the thoughts of plants, animals, and rocks, of the planets and interplanetary forces, of the unfathomed activities in the unseen, even the whole humanity does not appear to be so great compared with the Universe.

This should teach us true humility. Also it should teach us resignation, but there is a true and a false resignation. The false is fatalism; the true is not to be bound by any restrictions, to seek freedom by finding full scope for the spirit *outside of these material and mental bonds*. This in itself will help the world more than anything else. Thus we can become a Bodhisattva or Nabi.

[ And how do we loosen the hold on us exerted by “these material and mental bonds”, and by the emotional patterns, the mistaken beliefs and more mistaken conclusions we’ve come to, supported by the mountains of “confirming evidence” we’ve accumulated over the years about who we are and who we aren’t, what we’re capable and incapable of? How do we reconfigure our perspectives, our beliefs, our default patterns which maintain the whole system of limitation and separation, the ego-nafs created binary structures of inclusion and exclusion, of ‘me’ and ‘other, not me’?

Murshid SAM recommends over and over again the practice of Darood (sometimes spelled ‘durood’). In general this religious or spiritual practice is the frequent or constant repetition of a sacred phrase, and there are many phrases that are used both in Islam and Islamic-centered Sufism. When Murshid SAM refers to it he specifically means keeping the phrase “Toward the One” on the breath, practicing watching the process of our inhalations, pauses, exhalations, pauses, with Loving Attention (Ya Raqib), while also centering in the Heart to engage the feelings. As we mentally repeat “Toward the One” linked with our inhalations and exhalations, we also gently practice feeling more and more deeply into our connection with that One, that Absolute Unity, the One and Only Being, the All-Pervading Life in Space, which can be visualized or imagined as the Container within which we ‘live and move, and have our being’. This Container is none other than the Womb of the Divine Mother who lovingly holds and supports and nurtures us constantly, moment by moment, minute by minute, day by day, year by year – without ceasing, without limit, without judgment, without constraint, whether we’re aware of it or not.

(See also Bowl of Saki for 27 April, 24 April, 13 April, to list just a few other places where this perspective and the practice of Darood is emphasized. In fact typing ‘darood’ in the Search box at the Becoming Clear Blog website will return all of the posts that contain the word.) — Muiz ]